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Category: climatology

Seawater is raising salt levels in coastal woodlands along the entire Atlantic Coastal Plain, from Maine to Florida. Huge swaths of contiguous forest are dying. They’re now known in the scientific community as “ghost forests.”

Trekking out to my research sites near North Carolina’s Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, I slog through knee-deep water on a section of trail that is completely submerged. Permanent flooding has become commonplace on this low-lying peninsula, nestled behind North Carolina’s Outer Banks. The trees growing in the water are small and stunted. Many are dead.

Throughout coastal North Carolina, evidence of forest die-off is everywhere. Nearly every roadside ditch I pass while driving around the region is lined with dead or dying trees.

As an ecologist studying wetland response to sea level rise, I know this flooding is evidence that climate change is altering landscapes along the Atlantic coast. It’s emblematic of environmental changes that also threaten wildlife, ecosystems, and local farms and forestry businesses.

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Russia is amassing unprecedented military might in the Arctic and testing its newest weapons in a region freshly ice-free due to the climate emergency, in a bid to secure its northern coast and open up a key shipping route from Asia to Europe.

Weapons experts and Western officials have expressed particular concern about one Russian ‘super-weapon,’ the Poseidon 2M39 torpedo. Development of the torpedo is moving fast with Russian President Vladimir Putin requesting an update on a “key stage” of the tests in February from his defence minister Sergei Shoigu, with further tests planned this year, according to multiple reports in state media.

This unmanned stealth torpedo is powered by a nuclear reactor and intended by Russian designers to sneak past coastal defences — like those of the US — on the sea floor.

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New study points to potential widespread phagocytosis among green algae, suggests improved methodology in environmental microbiology.

New research suggests that the ability of green algae to eat bacteria is likely much more widespread than previously thought, a finding that could be crucial to environmental and climate science. The work, led by scientists at the American Museum of Natural History, Columbia University, and the University of Arizona, found that five strains of single-celled green algae consume bacteria when they are “hungry,” and only when those bacteria are alive. The study is published today in The ISME Journal.

“Traditionally, we think of green algae as being purely photosynthetic organisms, producing their food by soaking in sunlight,” said Eunsoo Kim, an associate curator at the American Museum of Natural History and one of the study’s corresponding authors. “But we’ve come to understand that there are potentially a number of species of green algae that also can eat bacteria when the conditions are right. And we’ve also found out just how finicky they are as eaters.”

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Livescience.com|By LiveScience

A severe thunderstorm cloud that formed over the Pacific Ocean in 2018 reached the coldest temperatures ever recorded, according to a new study.

The very top of the storm cloud reached a bone-chilling minus 167.8 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 111 degrees Celsius), colder than any storm cloud measured before. Thunderstorms and tropical cyclones, a circular low-pressure storm, can reach very high altitudes — up to 11 miles (18 kilometers) from the ground — where the air is much cooler, according to a statement from the U.K.’s National Center for Earth Observation.

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The recent eruptions in Iceland, vividly captured through dramatic drone footage, have drawn public attention to the immense power of volcanoes. Beautiful though they are, and mesmerizing to watch, they are also deadly.

History has recorded eruptions so spectacular they’ve never been forgotten. These include Krakatoa in 1883, whose explosion was heard around the world and Mount Tambora, which resulted in famines across the northern hemisphere.

But perhaps the most famous of all is the eruption of Vesuvius in Italy, in AD79, which sealed the Roman towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum beneath layers of ash.

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Turntide’s basic innovation is a software-controlled motor, or switch reluctance motor, that uses precise pulses of energy instead of a constant flow of electricity.

Sometimes the smallest innovations can have the biggest impacts on the world’s efforts to stop global climate change. Arguably, one of the biggest contributors in the fight against climate change to date has been the switch to the humble LED light, which has slashed hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide emissions simply by reducing energy consumption in buildings.

And now firms backed by Robert Downey Jr. and Bill Gates are joining investors like Amazon and iPod inventor Tony Fadell to pour money into a company called Turntide Technologies that believes it has the next great innovation in the world’s efforts to slow global climate change — a better electric motor.

It’s not as flashy as an arc reactor, but like light bulbs, motors are a ubiquitous and wholly unglamorous technology that have been operating basically the same way since the nineteenth century. And, like the light bulb, they’re due for an upgrade.

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Amid population growth and a changing climate, we meet the food producers doing more with less.

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“Genius Makers” and “Futureproof,” both by experienced technology reporters now at The New York Times, are part of a rapidly growing literature attempting to make sense of the A.I. hurricane we are living through. These are very different kinds of books — Cade Metz’s is mainly reportorial, about how we got here; Kevin Roose’s is a casual-toned but carefully constructed set of guidelines about where individuals and societies should go next. But each valuably suggests a framework for the right questions to ask now about A.I. and its use.

Two new books — “Genius Makers,” by Cade Metz, and “Futureproof,” by Kevin Roose — examine how artificial intelligence will change humanity.

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A new type of rock created during large and exceptionally hot volcanic eruptions has been discovered beneath the Pacific Ocean.

An international team of researchers including the University of Leeds unearthed the previously unknown form of basalt after drilling through the Pacific ocean floor.

The discovery suggests that ocean floor eruptions sourced in the Earth’s mantle were even hotter and more voluminous than previously thought. Report co-author is Dr Ivan Savov, of Leeds’ Institute of Geophysics and Tectonics, in the university’s School of Earth and Environment.

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