Most recent 40 articles: PHYS.ORG - Earth
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El Nino not climate change driving southern Africa drought: Study - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 18) |
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Apr 18 · A drought that pushed millions of people into hunger across southern Africa has been driven mostly by the El Niño weather pattern - not climate change, scientists said on Thursday.
Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi have declared a national disaster over the severe dry spell that started in January and has devastated the agricultural sector, decimating crops and pastures.
Appealing for almost $900 million in aid this week, Zambia's President Hakainde Hichilema linked the lack of rains to climate change.
But scientists at the World Weather Attribution (WWA) research group found global warming had little to do with it.
"Over the past year, attribution studies have ... Read more ...
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Here's why experts don't think cloud seeding played a role in Dubai's downpour - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 18) |
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Apr 18 · Cloud seeding, although decades old, is still controversial in the weather community, mostly because it has been hard to prove that it does very much. No one reports the type of flooding that on Tuesday doused the UAE, which often deploys the technology in an attempt to squeeze every drop of moisture from a sky that usually gives less than 4 or 5 inches (10 to 13 centimeters) of rain a year.
"It's most certainly not cloud seeding," said private meteorologist Ryan Maue, former chief scientist at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "If that occurred with cloud seeding, they'd have water all the time. You can't create rain out of thin air per se and get 6 ... Read more ...
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NASA chief warns of Chinese military presence in space - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 18) |
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Apr 18 · China is bolstering its space capabilities and is using its civilian program to mask its military objectives, the head of the US space agency NASA said Wednesday, warning that Washington must remain vigilant.
"China has made extraordinary strides especially in the last 10 years, but they are very, very secretive," NASA administrator Bill Nelson told lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
"We believe that a lot of their so-called civilian space program is a military program. And I think, in effect, we are in a race," Nelson added.
He said he hoped Beijing would "come to its senses and understand that civilian space is for peaceful uses," but added, "We have not seen that ... Read more ...
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NASA's Ingenuity Mars helicopter team says goodbye - for now - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · The final downlink shift by the Ingenuity team was a time to reflect on a highly successful mission - and to prepare the first aircraft on another world for its new role.
Engineers working on NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter assembled for one last time in a control room at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California on Tuesday, April 16, to monitor a transmission from the history-making helicopter.
While the mission ended Jan. 25, the rotorcraft has remained in communication with the agency's Perseverance Mars rover, which serves as a base station for Ingenuity. This transmission, received through the antennas of NASA's Deep Space Network, marked the ... Read more ...
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Anthropocene activities dramatically alter deep underground fluid flux, researchers find - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · Mining, oil and gas production, water wells, and other human activities involve extracting various fluids from or injecting them into the ground. Much attention has been paid to the toll these processes take on shallow groundwater and the water cycle. But less is known about how these activities affect the deep subsurface (500 meters to several kilometers deep), much of which was previously isolated for very long periods of geologic time.
In a new study in Earth's Future, Ferguson and colleagues illustrate how deep subsurface fluid flow rates associated with human activities such as oil and gas production most likely already exceed natural fluxes at these depths on a global ... Read more ...
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Astronomers discover the most metal-poor extreme helium star - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · Using the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT), astronomers have performed high-resolution observations of a recently detected extreme helium star designated EC 19529–4430. It turned out that EC 19529–4430 is the most metal deficient among the population of known extreme helium stars. The finding was reported in a research paper published April 5 on the pre-print server arXiv.
Extreme helium (EHe) stars are supergiants much larger and hotter than the sun, but less massive. They are almost devoid of hydrogen, which is unusual, as hydrogen is the most abundant chemical element in the universe.
EHes are characterized by relatively sharp and strong lines of ... Read more ...
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Biden administration set to deny 200-mile Ambler mining road through Alaska wilderness - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · The U.S. Department of the Interior is expected to issue an environmental report that recommends denying a permit needed to build a 200-mile access road to the Ambler mining district, according to national news reports on April 16.
The Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority applied for the permit to develop the road to access the mining district in Northwest Alaska. The Trump administration had approved the right-of-way permit in 2020.
Conservation groups and Alaska tribal entities, including the Tanana Chiefs Conference, sued to overturn the decision. The Biden administration also said it identified legal flaws in the process related to subsistence impacts ... Read more ...
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Dubai reels from floods chaos after record rains - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · Dubai's giant highways were clogged by flooding and airport passengers were urged to stay away on Wednesday as the glitzy financial center reeled from record rains.
Huge tailbacks snaked along six-lane expressways after up to 254 millimeters of rain - about two years' worth - fell on the desert United Arab Emirates on Tuesday.
At least one person was killed after a 70-year-old man was swept away in his car in Ras Al-Khaimah, one of the country's seven emirates, police said.
Passengers were warned not to come to Dubai airport, the world's busiest by international traffic, "unless absolutely necessary", an official said.
"Flights continue to be delayed and ... Read more ...
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Earth Day: How a senator's idea more than 50 years ago got people fighting for their planet - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · Here are answers to some common questions about Earth Day and how it came to be:
WHY DO WE CELEBRATE EARTH DAY?
Earth Day has its roots in growing concern over pollution in the 1960s, when author Rachel Carson's 1962 book "Silent Spring," about the pesticide DDT and its damaging effects on the food chain, hit bestseller lists and raised awareness about nature's delicate balance.
But it was a senator from Wisconsin, Democrat Gaylord Nelson, who had the idea that would become Earth Day. Nelson had long been concerned about the environment when a massive offshore oil spill sent millions of gallons onto the southern California coast in 1969. Nelson, after touring the ... Read more ...
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East coast mussel shells are becoming more porous in warming waters - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · "Mussels are important on so many levels: They provide habitats on reefs, they filter water, they protect coasts during storms, and they are important commercially as well - I love mussels and I know many other people do, too," said Leanne Melbourne, a Kathryn W. Davis postdoctoral fellow in the Museum's Master of Arts in Teaching program and the lead author on the study. "Human-caused environmental changes are threatening the ability of mussels and other mollusks to form their shells, and we need to better understand what risks will come from this in the future."
Previous studies on the blue (common) mussel (Mytilus edulis) have used lab experiments to investigate how ocean ... Read more ...
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Field-margin wetlands alone can't fix the Gulf of Mexico's dead zone, say researchers - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · Shan Zuidema and colleagues took a whole-system approach to modeling the potential for wetlands to ameliorate the flow of nitrate to the Gulf. The paper is published in the journal PNAS Nexus.
The authors found that wetland restoration through existing federal programs could not, in isolation, reduce nitrate by the 45%–60% needed to prevent the formation of the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. Even if fully utilized, these programs could, at most, reduce nitrate export to the Gulf by 30%.
One reason for the gap is that many croplands are not suitable for wetland restoration, and the runoff from these croplands enters deeper flow-paths that cannot be intercepted by ... Read more ...
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Ice age climate analysis reduces worst-case warming expected from rising CO2 - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · The open-access study was published April 17 in Science Advances.
"The main contribution from our study is narrowing the estimate of climate sensitivity, improving our ability to make future warming projections," said lead author Vince Cooper, a UW doctoral student in atmospheric sciences. "By looking at how much colder Earth was in the ancient past with lower levels of greenhouse gases, we can estimate how much warmer the current climate will get with higher levels of greenhouse gases."
The new paper doesn't change the best-case warming scenario from doubling CO2—about 2 degrees Celsius average temperature increase worldwide—or the most likely estimate, ... Read more ...
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James Webb Space Telescope data pinpoint possible aurorae on a cold brown dwarf - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · More massive than planets but lighter than stars, brown dwarfs are ubiquitous in our solar neighborhood, with thousands identified. Last year, Jackie Faherty, a senior research scientist and senior education manager at the American Museum of Natural History, led a team of researchers who were awarded time on JWST to investigate 12 brown dwarfs.
Among those was CWISEP J193518.59–154620.3 (or W1935 for short)—a cold brown dwarf 47 light years away that was co-discovered by Backyard Worlds: Planet 9, citizen science volunteer Dan Caselden and the NASA CatWISE team. W1935 is a cold brown dwarf with a surface temperature of about 400° Fahrenheit. The mass for W1935 ... Read more ...
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Lightning, downpours kill 65 in Pakistan, as April rain doubles historical average - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · At least 65 people have died in storm-related incidents including lightning in Pakistan, officials said, with rain so far in April falling at nearly twice the historical average rate.
Heavy downpours between Friday and Monday unleashed flash floods and caused houses to collapse, while lightning killed at least 28 people.
The largest death toll was in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where 32 people have died, including 15 children, and more than 1,300 homes have been damaged.
"All the casualties resulted from the collapse of walls and roofs," Anwar Khan, spokesman for the province's disaster management authority, told AFP on Wednesday.
Villagers whose homes ... Read more ...
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New geological map reveals secrets of Greenland's icy interior - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · This comprehensive synthesis, published in Geophysical Research Letters, promises to advance our understanding of this critical component of the global climate system.
The new subglacial geology map provides an invaluable modernized framework for interpreting the solid Earth properties that shape the Greenland Ice Sheet's past, present, and future behavior.
Using a wealth of geophysical data, including seismic, gravity, magnetic, and topographic surveys, the researchers have meticulously delineated the boundaries of geological provinces across the island and, crucially, beneath the ice.
Revealing a complex and heterogeneous landscape
This updated map ... Read more ...
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Plumbing problem at Glen Canyon Dam brings new threat to Colorado River system - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · Plumbing problems at the dam holding back the second-largest reservoir in the U.S. are spurring concerns about future water delivery issues to Southwestern states supplied by the Colorado River.
Federal officials recently reported damage to four tubes known as "river outlet works" at Glen Canyon Dam on the Utah-Arizona border. The dam is responsible for generating hydropower and releasing water stored in Lake Powell downstream to California, Arizona, Nevada and eventually Mexico.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which operates the major dams in the Colorado River system, is evaluating issues related to Glen Canyon Dam when Lake Powell reaches low levels. Those issues ... Read more ...
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Queen bumblebees surprise scientists by surviving underwater - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · Bumblebees can surprisingly withstand days underwater, according to a study published Wednesday, suggesting they could withstand increased floods brought on by climate change that threaten their winter hibernation burrows.
The survival of these pollinators that are crucial to ecosystems is "encouraging" amid worrying global trends of their declining populations, the study's lead author Sabrina Rondeau told AFP.
With global warming prompting more frequent and extreme floods in regions around the world, it poses "an unpredictable challenge for soil-dwelling species, particularly bees nesting or overwintering underground", co-author Nigel Raine of the University of Guelph ... Read more ...
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Research group runs simulations capable of describing South America's climate with unprecedented accuracy - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · The work was presented at a panel discussion on climate on April 10, during FAPESP Week Illinois, in Chicago (United States).
"We're now beginning to be able to correctly represent the hydroclimate of South America at the scales needed," said Francina Dominguez, a researcher at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign and coordinator of the project.
According to Dominguez, the climate in South America, like in all regions of the world, is changing. Increased droughts have been recorded in the southern Amazon, the Cerrado region, northern Brazil, and Chile. This scenario has affected agricultural yields, water ... Read more ...
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Researchers uncover human DNA repair by nuclear metamorphosis - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · The study, published in the journal Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, also sheds light on the mechanism of action of some existing chemotherapy drugs.
"We think this research solves the mystery of how DNA double-strand breaks and the nuclear envelope connect for repair in human cells," said Professor Karim Mekhail, co-principal investigator on the study and a professor of laboratory medicine and pathobiology at U of T's Temerty Faculty of Medicine.
"It also makes many previously published discoveries in other organisms applicable in the context of human DNA repair, which should help science move even faster."
DNA double-strand breaks arise when cells are ... Read more ...
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Scientists discover how soil microbes survive in harsh desert environments - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · Prolonged droughts followed by sudden bursts of rainfall - how do desert soil bacteria manage to survive such harsh conditions? This long-debated question has now been answered by an ERC project led by microbiologist Dagmar Woebken from the Centre for Microbiology and Environmental Systems Science (CeMESS) at the University of Vienna.
The study reveals that desert soil bacteria are highly adapted to survive the rapid environmental changes experienced with each rainfall event. These findings were recently published in the journal Nature Communications.
Drylands cover over 46% of global land area and are expanding, not only due to climate change but also unsustainable land ... Read more ...
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Scientists navigate the paradox of extreme cold events in a warming world - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · However, North America, Asia, and parts of Europe experienced record-breaking cold temperatures. In some places, such as China's Mohe and Russia's Yakutsk, temperatures dipped to the life-threatening lowest levels. Alarmingly, this juxtaposition of increasing temperatures amidst extreme coldness pushes the future of our planet's climate into uncertainty.
This paradoxical situation is captured by the Warm Arctic-Cold Continent (WACC) phenomenon, where warm Arctic temperatures lead to sea-ice decline and cold blasts across specific mid-latitude regions. The Arctic's rapid warming indicates global climate change. However, as global warming and the Arctic's temperature keep ... Read more ...
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Soil bacteria link their life strategies to soil conditions: Study - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · By analyzing large DNA sequencing datasets from around the globe, researchers discovered a new way of categorizing the dominant life strategies of soil bacteria based on their genes. This technique allowed the researchers to link different life strategies with specific climate and soil conditions. Their paper is published in the journal Nature Microbiology.
Soil bacteria are crucial for planetary health, but they are hard to study because they are so diverse and invisible to the human eye. In their study, researchers used widely available gene sequence data to classify soil bacteria according to their life strategies. This makes it easier for researchers to predict how soils ... Read more ...
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Spintronics: A new path to room temperature swirling spin textures - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · Spintronics aims to make use of such tiny magnetic structures to store data or perform logic operations with very low power consumption compared to today's dominant microelectronic components. However, the generation and stabilization of most of these magnetic textures is restricted to a few materials and achievable under very specific conditions (temperature, magnetic field, etc.).
An international collaboration led by HZB physicist Dr. Sergio Valencia has now investigated a new approach that can be used to create and stabilize complex spin textures, such as radial vortices, in a variety of compounds. In a radial vortex, the magnetization points towards or away from the ... Read more ...
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Study finds world economy already committed to income reduction of 19% due to climate change - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · Even if CO2 emissions were to be drastically cut down starting today, the world economy is already committed to an income reduction of 19% until 2050 due to climate change, a study published in Nature finds. These damages are six times larger than the mitigation costs needed to limit global warming to two degrees.
Based on empirical data from more than 1,600 regions worldwide over the past 40 years, scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) assessed future impacts of changing climatic conditions on economic growth and their persistence.
"Strong income reductions are projected for the majority of regions, including North America and Europe, ... Read more ...
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Study reveals substantial global cost of climate inaction - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · Using projections from 33 global climate models, an international research team, led by Paul Waidelich at ETH Zurich, conducted a pioneering study, published in the journal, Nature Climate Change, to quantify such impacts on gross domestic product (GDP) across the globe.
The investigative study revealed a global GDP loss of up to 10% if the planet warms by +3ºC. Importantly, accounting for variability and extremes increases the costs of climate change around the world.
"If we take into account that warmer years also come with changes in rainfall and temperature variability, it turns out that the estimated impact of spiking temperatures is worse than previously ... Read more ...
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Two-dimensional nanomaterial sets expansion record - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · Working at Interface Science Western, home of the Tandetron Accelerator Facility, Stocek, and Fanchini formulated two-dimensional nanosheets of tungsten semi-carbide (or W2C, a chemical compound containing equal parts of tungsten and carbon atoms), which, when stretched in one direction, expand perpendicular to the applied force. This structural design is known as auxetics.
The trick is that the structure of the nanosheet itself isn't flat. The atoms in the sheet are made of repeating units consisting of two tungsten atoms for every carbon atom, which are arranged metaphorically like the dimpled surface of an egg carton. As tension is applied across the elastic nanosheet in ... Read more ...
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Understanding climate warming impacts on carbon release from the tundra - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · The warming climate shifts the dynamics of tundra environments and makes them release trapped carbon, according to a new study published in Nature. These changes could transform tundras from carbon sinks into carbon sources, exacerbating the effects of climate change.
A team of more than 70 scientists from different countries used so-called open-top chambers (OTCs) to experimentally simulate the effects of warming on 28 tundra sites around the world. OTCs basically serve as mini-greenhouses, blocking wind and trapping heat to create local warming.
The warming experiments led to a 1.4 degrees Celsius increase in air temperature and a 0.4 degrees increase in soil ... Read more ...
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Weather and climate extremes in 2023 impacting the globe with emerging features - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · A year on, scientists at the Chinese Academy of Science's Institute of Atmospheric Physics, the Met Office in the UK, Sorbonne Université in France, the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Germany, Instituto Argentino de Nivología, Glaciología Y Ciencias Ambientales in Argentina and China Meteorological Administration's Shanghai Typhoon Institute, have had a look back at the year.
The team reviewed the facts and current physical understanding of the year's events and put them in context relative to the past and future to provide a better understanding of the roles of internal climate variability and anthropogenic climate change. The work is published ... Read more ...
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Wine growers 'on tip of Africa' race to adapt to climate change - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · At a South African wine farm, dry, uprooted grapevines are stacked at the bottom of a hilly stretch of brown fallow land.
Much of the vineyard is being replanted to better cope with climate change, which is projected to bring rarer but more violent rainfall to this wine-loving corner of the world.
From Australia to California, France, Spain and Italy, producers in wine-growing regions around the world face a race to adapt to a changing climate which affects the grapes.
"I don't like just accepting things. Let's put up a bit of a fight," said Rosa Kruger, the viticultural consultant overseeing the project in the Cape Winelands region east of Cape Town.
Like ... Read more ...
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NASA's Fermi mission sees no gamma rays from nearby supernova - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 16) |
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Apr 16 · On May 18, 2023, a supernova erupted in the nearby Pinwheel galaxy (Messier 101), located about 22 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. The event, named SN 2023ixf, is the most luminous nearby supernova discovered since Fermi launched in 2008.
"Astrophysicists previously estimated that supernovae convert about 10% of their total energy into cosmic ray acceleration," said Guillem Martí-Devesa, a researcher at the University of Trieste in Italy.
"But we have never observed this process directly. With the new observations of SN 2023ixf, our calculations result in energy conversion as low as 1% within a few days after the explosion. This doesn't ... Read more ...
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A solar neighborhood census, thanks to NASA citizen science - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 16) |
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Apr 16 · Looking to understand more about our neighbors and how they came to be, scientists collaborate with citizen scientists and volunteers from around the world. They have helped professional scientists create a new census of more than 4,000 cosmic objects through the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 citizen science project.
A new study in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series shows the results of that census within 65 light-years of the sun. Researchers found that there are four times more stars than brown dwarfs in this area but that low-mass objects are more common than high-mass objects. The average mass of an object in this area is 40% of the mass of the sun.
"There is ... Read more ...
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Animals deserve to be included in global carbon cycle models as well, say researchers - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 16) |
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Apr 16 · A new theoretical framework, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences by Matteo Rizzuto and colleagues, offers a road map for including animals in carbon cycle models. Their work shows that adding both herbivores and predators to such models significantly alters both the amount and the dynamics of carbon cycling.
Future modeling of carbon dynamics, important for understanding climate change and designing nature-based carbon sequestration projects, should take animals into consideration as well, researchers argue.
Animals affect carbon cycling directly by eating plants or by eating other animals that eat plants. By producing waste, respiring, and ... Read more ...
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Chemists invent a more efficient way to extract lithium from mining sites, oil fields, used batteries - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 16) |
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Apr 16 · "It's a low-cost, high-lithium-uptake process," said Parans Paranthaman, an ORNL Corporate Fellow and National Academy of Inventors Fellow with 58 issued patents. He led the proof-of-concept experiment with Jayanthi Kumar, an ORNL materials chemist with expertise in the design, synthesis, and characterization of layered materials.
"The key advantage is that it works in a wider pH range of 5 to 11 compared to other direct lithium extraction methods," Paranthaman said. The acid-free extraction process takes place at 140 degrees Celsius, compared to traditional methods that roast mined minerals at 250 degrees Celsius with acid or 800 to 1000 degrees Celsius without ... Read more ...
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CO₂ worsens wildfires by helping plants grow, model experiments show - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 16) |
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Apr 16 · The worldwide surge in wildfires over the past decade is often attributed to the hotter, drier conditions of climate change. However, the study found that the effect of increasing levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) on plants may be a bigger factor.
"It's not because it's hotter that things are burning, it's because there's more fuel, in the form of plants," said UCR doctoral student in Earth and planetary sciences and study author James Gomez.
This conclusion, and a description of the eight model experiments that produced it, have been published in Communications Earth & Environment.
To convert light into food in a process called photosynthesis, plants require CO2. ... Read more ...
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Dating the solar system's giant planet orbital instability using enstatite meteorites - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 16) |
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Apr 16 · Space scientists led by the University of Leicester have combined evidence from simulations, observations and analysis of meteorites to recreate the orbital instability caused as the giant planets of our solar system moved into their current locations, known for 20 years as the Nice model.
The findings are published in the journal Science and presented at the European Geological Union General Assembly in Vienna.
At the beginning of the solar system, the giant planets—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune—had more circular and more compact orbits than they do today. Previous research has established that orbital instability in the solar system changed that ... Read more ...
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Dubai airport diverts flights as 'exceptional weather' hits Gulf - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 16) |
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Apr 16 · Dubai's major international airport diverted scores of incoming flights on Tuesday as heavy rains lashed the United Arab Emirates, causing widespread flooding around the desert country.
The world's busiest air hub for international passengers confirmed a halt to arrivals at 7:26 pm (1526 GMT) before announcing a "gradual resumption" more than two hours later.
Earlier the airport, which had been expecting more than 100 flight arrivals on Tuesday evening, took the equally unusual step of briefly halting its operations in the chaos caused by the storm.
Dubai, the Middle East's financial center, has been paralyzed by the torrential rain that caused floods across the ... Read more ...
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Global ocean summit nets $10 bn in pledges: Greek PM - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 16) |
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Apr 16 · An international summit on saving the oceans netted $10 billion in pledges, the prime minister of host country Greece said on Tuesday.
The "Our Oceans" summit was launched in 2014 as the first international event of its kind to address all issues related to oceans, with some 122.3 billion euros pledged since then to protect them.
This year's three-day conference began Monday with delegates from around 120 countries.
"We're heartened by the commitments that have been made during this gathering - over 400 pledges exceeding $10 billion in value," Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Tuesday.
"Our ocean is literally sending us distress signals. Of ... Read more ...
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More climate-warming methane leaks into the atmosphere than ever gets reported - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 16) |
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Apr 16 · The good news is that many of those leaks can be fixed—if they're spotted quickly.
Riley Duren, a research scientist at the University of Arizona and former NASA engineer and scientist, leads Carbon Mapper, a nonprofit that is planning a constellation of methane-monitoring satellites. Its first satellite, a partnership with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Earth-imaging company Planet Labs, launches in 2024.
Duren explained how new satellites are changing companies' and governments' ability to find and stop methane leaks and avoid wasting a valuable product.
Why are methane emissions such a concern?
Methane is the second-most common ... Read more ...
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Most countries are struggling to meet climate pledges from 2009, emissions tracking study shows - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 16) |
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Apr 16 · Nineteen out of 34 countries surveyed failed to fully meet their 2020 climate commitments set 15 years ago in Copenhagen, according to a new study led by UCL researchers.
The study, published in Nature Climate Change, compared the actual net carbon emissions of more than 30 nations to their 2009 pledged emission reduction targets set during the Copenhagen Climate Summit.
The paper led by researchers at UCL and Tsinghua University is the first effort to comprehensively gauge how well countries were able to meet their Nationally Determined Contribution reduction pledges from COP15.
Of the 34 nations analyzed in the study, 15 successfully met their goals while 12 ... Read more ...
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NASA confirms mystery object that crashed through roof of Florida home came from space station - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 16) |
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Apr 16 · The cylindrical object that tore through the home in Naples on March 8 was subsequently taken to the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral for analysis.
The space agency said it was a metal support used to mount old batteries on a cargo pallet for disposal. The pallet was jettisoned from the space station in 2021, and the load was expected to eventually fully burn up on entry into Earth's atmosphere, but one piece survived.
The chunk of metal weighed 1.6 pounds (0.7 kilograms) and was 4 inches (10 centimeters) tall and roughly 1 1/2 inches (4 centimeters) wide.
Homeowner Alejandro Otero told television station WINK at the time that he was on vacation when his son ... Read more ...
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