ScienceCentric: Environment

Science Centric | News | Environment

• Study finds black carbon implicated in global warming
  Increasing the ratio of black carbon to sulphate in the atmosphere increases climate warming, suggests a study conducted by a University of Iowa professor and his colleagues and published in the July 25 issue of the journal Nature Geoscience...
  
  
• Gender-bending fish on the rise in southern Alberta
  Chemicals present in two rivers in southern Alberta are likely the cause of the feminisation of fish say researchers at the University of Calgary who have published results of their study in the journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry...
  
  
• Mass coral bleaching closes dive sites, threatens future of world's most diverse marine region
  Mass coral bleaching caused by global warming is threatening the health of the Coral Triangle, a vast marine region that is home to 76% of all known corals in the world...
  
  
• Russia tiger habitat gets a boost with protection of key tree species
  World Tiger Day - the Russian government has introduced measures to protect the Korean pine, a key species found in Amur tiger habitat in the Russian Far East...
  
  
• Signs of reversal of Arctic cooling in some areas
  Parts of the Arctic have cooled clearly over the past century, but temperatures have been rising steeply since 1990 also there. This is the finding of a summer temperature reconstruction for the past 400 years produced on the base of tree rings from regions beyond the Arctic Circle. German and Russian researchers analysed tree growth using ring width of pine from Russia's Kola Peninsula and compared their findings with similar studies from other parts of the Arctic. For the past 400 years since AD 1600, the reconstructed summer temperature on Kola in the months of July and August has varied between 10.4 C (1709) and 14.7 C (1957), with a mean of 12.2 C. Afterwards, after a cooling phase, a ongoing warming can be observed from 1990 onwards...
  
  
• Highlight of the Polarstern expedition
  The Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association for the first time sent its Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) on an under-ice mission at about 79 North. The four-metre-long, torpedo shaped underwater vehicle was deployed from the research icebreaker Polarstern under heavy pack ice. The vehicle was subsequently recovered by helicopter...
  
  
• More frequent, more intense heat waves in store for New York
  Heat waves like those that baked the Northeast in July are likely to be more frequent and more intense in the future, with their effects amplified in densely built urban environments like Manhattan, according to climate scientists at The City College of New York (CCNY)...
  
  
• Best hope for saving Arctic sea ice is cutting soot emissions, says Stanford researcher
  The quickest, best way to slow the rapid melting of Arctic sea ice is to reduce soot emissions from the burning of fossil fuel, wood and dung, according to a new study by Stanford researcher Mark Z. Jacobson...
  
  
• Scientists uncover global distribution of marine biodiversity
  In an unprecedented effort that will be published online on the 28th of July by the international journal Nature, a team of scientists mapped and analysed global biodiversity patterns for over 11,000 marine species ranging from tiny zooplankton to sharks and whales. The researchers found striking similarities among the distribution patterns, with temperature strongly linked to biodiversity for all thirteen groups studied. These results imply that future changes in ocean temperature, such as those due to climate change, may greatly affect the distribution of life in the sea. The scientists also found a high overlap between areas of high human impact and hotspots of marine diversity...
  
  
• New study reveals decline of marine phytoplankton over the past century
  A new article published in the 29 July issue of the international journal Nature reveals for the first time that microscopic marine algae known as 'phytoplankton' have been declining globally over the 20th century. Phytoplankton forms the basis of the marine food chain and sustains diverse assemblages of species ranging from tiny zooplankton to large marine mammals, seabirds, and fish. Says lead author Daniel Boyce, 'Phytoplankton is the fuel on which marine ecosystems run. A decline of phytoplankton affects everything up the food chain, including humans'...
  
  
• Birth of a hurricane
  Summer storms are a regular feature in the North Atlantic, and while most pose little threat to our shores, a choice few become devastating hurricanes...
  
  
• Artificially controlling water condensation leads to 'room-temperature ice'
  Earth's climate is strongly influenced by the presence of particles of different shapes and origins - in the form of dust, ice and pollutants - that find their way into the lowest portion of the atmosphere, the troposphere. There, water adsorbed on the surface of these particles can freeze at higher temperatures than pure water droplets, triggering rain and snow...
  
  
• Waste chip fat fuels hydrogen economy
  Don't pour that dirty fat from the frier down the sink - it could be used to make the fuel of the future...
  
  
• A future with or without trees
  In some cases, it can be difficult for scientists to see the deforestation for the trees...
  
  
• Stanford engineers use rocket science to make wastewater treatment sustainable
  Within the sludge of wastewater treatment plants is an invisible world teeming with microbes. Here, diverse species of bacteria convert solid and liquid wastes into gases, some of which contribute to global warming...
  
  
• Hot topic: Improving communications to fight wildfires
  Wildfires can be deadly, as well as causing millions of dollars worth of damage to homes, businesses and natural resources. Efforts to control wildfires often include a staggering array of federal, state and local government agencies. New research from North Carolina State University is shedding light on how these agencies can better communicate with each other in order to respond more efficiently and effectively to wildfire disasters...
  
  
• Shade-coffee farms support native bees that maintain genetic diversity in tropical forests
  Shade-grown coffee farms support native bees that help maintain the health of some of the world's most biodiverse tropical regions, according to a study by a University of Michigan biologist and a colleague at the University of California, Berkeley...
  
  
• Converging weather patterns caused last winter's huge snows
  The memory of last winter's blizzards may be fading in this summer's searing heat, but scientists studying them have detected a perfect storm of converging weather patterns that had little relation to climate change. The extraordinarily cold, snowy weather that hit parts of the U.S. East Coast and Europe was the result of a collision of two periodic weather patterns in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, a new study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters finds...
  
  
• Unaccounted feedbacks from climate-induced ecosystem changes may increase future climate warming
  The terrestrial biosphere regulates atmospheric composition, and hence climate. Projections of future climate changes already account for 'carbon-climate feedbacks,' which means that more CO2 is released from soils in a warming climate than is taken up by plants due to photosynthesis. Climate changes will also lead to increases in the emission of CO2 and methane from wetlands, nitrous oxides from soils, volatile organic compounds from forests, and trace gases and soot from fires. All these emissions affect atmospheric chemistry, including the amount of ozone in the lower atmosphere, where it acts as a powerful greenhouse gas as well as a pollutant toxic to people and plants...
  
  
• Method developed to measure solute movement in soils
  Scientists from Aarhus University and Aalborg University in Denmark have developed a new method for measuring the movement of solutes in intact soil. Improving on the existing method, the new procedure can be used on intact, undisturbed soil and provides more confident estimates...