A constellation of satellites will be flown this decade to try to pinpoint significant releases of climate-changing gases, in particular carbon dioxide and methane. The initiative is being led by an American non-profit organisation called Carbon Mapper. The prototypes will launch in 2023, with...
Science Daily - Earth and Climate
Ethiopia may produce less specialty coffee and more rather bland tasting varieties in the future. This is the result of a new study by an international team of researchers that looked at the peculiar effects climate change has on Africa's largest coffee producing nation. Their results are...
To Improve Climate Models, an International Team Turns to Archaeological Data
Climate modeling is future facing, its general intent to hypothesize what our planet might look like at some later date. Because the Earth's vegetation influences climate, climate models frequently include vegetation reconstructions and are often validated by comparisons to the past. Yet such...
Google Earth has launched a time-lapse feature that lets users wind back the clock and see how the world has changed over several decades. The feature uses millions of satellite images from the past 37 years to let people scroll through time. It allows people to see, for example, the retreat of...
Google has drawn on satellite images dating back 37 years to introduce a time-lapse feature to its tool that lets users explore view of the Earth from above. The tech firm says it hopes the feature will highlight the impacts of climate change as well as the many other ways that humans are...
New York Times - Climate Section
John Kerry, President Biden’s climate envoy, is pressing China to do more to address global warming. But he faces an emboldened Beijing leadership that thinks the United States has lagged behind. The United States and China do not agree on much nowadays, but on climate change both countries are...
The Northern Ireland farming industry saw its profit surge by 26% in real terms last year, rising from £342m to £456m, official figures suggest. The profit is calculated by assessing the value of output and subsidies and subtracting the cost of production and finance. Total turnover rose by 4%...
A council has called for heavier fines for fly-tippers and "potential prison time for the worst offenders". It comes after Dorset Council received 1,501 reports of fly-tipping from April 2020 to January. The local authority said the cost of clearing dumped rubbish over the 10-month period was...
Plans have been revealed to restore Llyn Brân reservoir in Denbighshire back to a natural lake. Dwr Cymru Welsh Water said the reservoir was no longer needed to supply drinking water and the area would eventually become a Special Area of Conservation. Natural Resources Wales and environmental...
PHYS.ORG - Technology
New computational tool could help design futuristic turbines for jet engines
Will it be possible to design materials that are unfazed by extreme temperatures in the near future? In a study published in the journal Nature Computational Materials, researchers at Texas A&M University have described a computational tool to evaluate a material's suitability for...
Current research on flexible electronics is paving the way for wireless sensors that can be worn on the body and collect a variety of medical data. But where do the data go? Without a similar flexible transmitting device, these sensors would require wired connections to transmit health data....
A quarter of bird species in Ireland are now deemed to be at risk, according to a new conservation survey published on Thursday. The joint report by Birdwatch Ireland and RSPB NI found that 54 of the 211 species studied in the survey are on a so-called Red List. It uses a traffic light system to...
Major industries across south Wales have joined forces to work out how to slash their carbon emissions over the next 20 years. It is a "massive challenge" that could protect tens of thousands of jobs while creating many more, they say. The region is currently the second-largest emitter of...
Sir David Attenborough has urged people to remember their impact on the natural world, ahead of his new documentary on the impacts of lockdown on nature. He spoke to the BBC's David Shukman about his hopes for the project, the upcoming global climate summit and his young fan base. 'The...
Guardian - Energy
UK support for Mozambique gas plant fuelling conflict – Friends of the Earth
Environmental group warns UK’s £750m funding for fossil fuel project could worsen Isis-led insurgency The UK government is facing fresh calls to abandon its £750m plan to support a gas export terminal in Mozambique over fears the fossil fuel project is stoking the insurgency in the north of the...
PHYS.ORG - Biology
Only between 2% and 3% of the Earth's terrestrial surface can be considered ecologically intact, according to a new study published in Frontiers in Forests and Global Change. This percentage is drastically lower than past assessments, which estimated it to be between 20% and 40%, because it...
PHYS.ORG - Earth
A simplified new process transforms wood waste from agriculture and forest management into ethanol
Reliance on petroleum fuels and raging wildfires: Two separate, large-scale challenges that could be addressed by one scientific breakthrough. Teams from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and Sandia National Laboratories have collaborated to develop a streamlined and efficient...
Genomes from University of Liverpool excavations of burials around some of the earliest houses in history contributed to a major study by an international team of geneticists, anthropologists and archaeologists, revealing more about the remarkable diversity of kinship types in ancient human...
As peach harvest begins, scientists find rootstocks that survive flooding
As you bite into a peach, remember farmers are harvesting the fruit this month and next in Florida. Those growers and University of Florida scientists are always concerned about flooding because it can damage peach trees permanently and cause trees to die. As a result of Hurricane Irma in 2017,...
Scientific American - Climate
Biden’s Earth Day Summit Is a Crucial Opportunity for Climate Action
Celebrate Math Awareness Month The president should commit to cutting U.S. emissions at least 50 percent below 2005 levels by 2030 Science has a stark message for us all. In this decade, we could lose the fight for the Paris Agreement climate goals, with profound consequences for life on Earth,...