The report, which was prepared under the auspices of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and The Cyprus Institute, in preparation to COP27, which will take place in Egypt in November 2022, provides an updated, comprehensive assessment of measurement data and recent climate analyses, covering a wide range of time scales, phenomena and possible future …
“There are a bunch of ecogeographic rules that scientists use to explain trends that we see again and again in nature,” says Noé de la Sancha, a research associate at Chicago’s Field Museum, an assistant professor of Environmental Science and Studies at DePaul University, and the paper’s corresponding author. “With this paper, I think we …
In their study, the team analysed a dataset of around 170,000 vegetation plots from all of the Earth’s climate zones. The data included information on all of the plant species found at a location and the coordinates of the respective area under study. The data was taken from the globally unique vegetation database “sPlot,” which …
High plant diversity is often found in the smallest of areas Read More »
Dry reforming: Greenhouse gases become synthesis gas Carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane are the two human-made greenhouse gases that contribute most to climate change. Both gases often occur in combination, for example in biogas plants. “So-called methane dry reforming is a method that can be used to convert both gases into useful synthesis gas at …
Turning CO2 and methane into valuable products, effectively Read More »
Researchers at UBC, the Stanford Center for Ocean Solutions and University of Bern projected the impact that different global temperature increases and ranges of fishing activity would have on biomass, or the amount of fish by weight in a given area, from 1950 to 2100. Their simulations suggest that climate change has reduced fish stocks …
Global fish stocks can’t rebuild if nothing done to halt climate change and overfishing Read More »
“Vast quantities of batteries are being produced and consumed, raising the possibility of environmental problems,” says lead author Liangbing Hu, director of the University of Maryland’s Center for Materials Innovation. “For example, polypropylene and polycarbonate separators, which are widely used in Lithium-ion batteries, take hundreds or thousands of years to degrade and add to environmental …
A sustainable battery with a biodegradable electrolyte made from crab shells Read More »
In the last 50 years, oxygen-deficient zones in the open ocean have increased. This poses major problems not only for marine ecosystems, but also for coastal inhabitants and countries that rely on fisheries as a source of food and income. Scientists have attributed this development to rising global temperatures: Less oxygen dissolves in warmer water, …
Enhanced ocean oxygenation during Cenozoic warm periods Read More »
The Earth’s core is the largest carbon storage on Earth — roughly 90% is buried there. Scientists have shown that the oceanic crust that sits on top of tectonic plates and falls into the interior, through subduction, contains hydrous minerals and can sometimes descend all the way to the core-mantle boundary. The temperature at the …
Diamonds and rust at Earth’s core-mantle boundary Read More »
In research just published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, a team led by Jianxi Gao, assistant professor of computer science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, developed equations that allow the comparison of distances to tipping points across various mutualistic systems. In other words, for the first time, diverse environments can be analyzed as to how close …
Over the past century, scientists have developed and deployed amazing technologies such as X-ray crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy to determine protein structure, and thereby answered countless important questions. But new work shows that understanding protein structure can sometimes be more complicated than we think. A group of researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) …
