Environment
press releases.

Environment4 Apr 2024

Tracing the largest solar storm in modern times from tree rings in Lapland

A research group coordinated by the University of Helsinki was able to measure a spike in radiocarbon concentration of trees in Lapland that occurred after the Carrington flare. This discovery helps to prepare for dangerous solar storms. The Carrington Event of 1859 is one of the largest recorded solar storms in the last two centuries. It was seen as white light flares on a giant sunspot group, fires at telegraph stations and disturbances in geomagnetic measurements, as well as aurorae even in tropical regions. In a joint study carried ...

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Environment4 Apr 2024

Climate change impacts terrorist activity

Changing weather patterns induced by climate change are contributing to shifts in the location of terrorist activity, according to new research. An exploratory study led by extremism expert Dr Jared Dmello, from the University of Adelaide’s School of Social Sciences, found some climatological variables affected terrorist activity in India. “Suitability analyses indicate that all the climatological variables tested – temperature, precipitation, and elevation – relate to shifting patterns of terrorist activity,” says Dr Dmello. “Urban centres have increasingly grown in population ...

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Environment3 Apr 2024

Out of the park: new research tallies total carbon impact of tourism at Yellowstone

People depend on natural ecosystems of trees, grasses and shrubs to capture carbon from the atmosphere and pull it underground to slow the decline toward climate-change disaster. Ironically, these same protected spaces also tend to be highly photogenic hot-spots for tourism. New research from the Quinney College of Natural Resources and the Institute of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism makes a case study of one such place — Yellowstone National Park — to calculate surplus carbon visitors from across the world add to the atmosphere each year as a direct ...

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Environment3 Apr 2024

Butterflies, bees, ants and flies are the most widely referenced arthropods in a sample of almost 4,000 haiku - which commonly describe their color, flight and ecology

Butterflies, bees, ants and flies are the most widely referenced arthropods in a sample of almost 4,000 haiku - which commonly describe their color, flight and ecology ### Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0298865 Article Title: Diversity and complexity of arthropod references in haiku Author Countries: USA Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work. END ...

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Environment3 Apr 2024

Tourism to Yellowstone National Park produces more than a billion kilos of CO2 emissions annually

Tourism to Yellowstone National Park produces more than a billion kilos of CO2 emissions annually, with 90% arising through travel to and from the park, especially from visitors arriving by plane. #### Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal.pclm.0000391 Article Title: Quantifying and evaluating strategies to decrease carbon dioxide emissions generated from tourism to Yellowstone National Park Author Countries: United States Funding: This work was supported by the Utah Agricultural Experiment Station (Project ...

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Environment3 Apr 2024

New Jurassic fossil findings provide insights into the development of the middle ear in mammals

New Jurassic fossil findings provide insights into the development of the middle ear in mammals An international team of palaeontologists has made a significant discovery in fossils that offer key information about the evolutionary shift from the jaw joint bones to those of the middle ear in early mammals. The findings published today in the prestigious journal Nature provide a clearer insight into the evolution of hearing in mammaliaforms. The fossils, from the Jurassic Period, are of two different ...

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Environment3 Apr 2024

Novel high entropy alloy nanoparticle catalysts for growing high-density carbon nanotubes

High entropy alloys (HEAs) have attracted significant attention in various fields due to their unique properties such as high strength and hardness, and high thermal and chemical stabilities. Unlike conventional alloys, which typically incorporate small quantities of one or two additional metals, HEAs constitute a solid solution of five or more metals in equal atomic ratio. This unique composition results in unique and complex surface structures that contain many different active sites suitable for catalytic reactions. As a result, in recent years, HEA nanoparticles (NPs) have been extensively studied for their catalytic potential. However, despite their ...

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Environment3 Apr 2024

California leads U.S. emissions of little-known greenhouse gas

California, a state known for its aggressive greenhouse gas reduction policies, is ironically the nation’s greatest emitter of one: sulfuryl fluoride. As much as 17% of global emissions of this gas, a common pesticide for treating termites and other wood-infesting insects, stem from the United States. The majority of those emissions trace back to just a few counties in California, finds a new study led by Johns Hopkins University. “When we finally mapped it out, the results were puzzling because the emissions were all coming from one place,” said co-author Scot ...

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Environment2 Apr 2024

A new estimate of U.S. soil organic carbon to improve Earth system models

Soil contains about twice as much carbon as the atmosphere and plants combined. It is a major carbon sink, capable of absorbing more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than it releases. Management of soil carbon is key in efforts to mitigate climate change, in addition to being vital to soil health and agricultural productivity. Measuring soil carbon, however, is a painstaking, expensive process. Samples must be dug from the ground and sent to a lab for analysis, making upscaling measurements on a large spatial scale ...

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Environment2 Apr 2024

Scientists’ urgent call: end destruction and forge a just, sustainable future

An international team of scientists published a study today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences NEXUS emphasizing the urgent need to align political will, economic resources, and societal values to ensure a more sustainable and equitable world. Led by University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa researchers, the 18 authors combine their expertise in earth and ocean sciences, politics, law, public health, renewable energy, geography, communications, and ethnic studies to assess causes, impacts, and solutions to a multitude of worldwide crises. “Climate change, ecological destruction, disease, pollution, and socio-economic inequality ...

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Environment2 Apr 2024

Companies ignoring climate risks get punished by markets, new study reveals

A pioneering study from the University of Florida has quantified corporations’ exposure to climate change risks like hurricanes, wildfires, and climate-related regulations and the extent to which climate risks are priced into their market valuations. The research also exposes a costly divide – companies that proactively manage climate risks fare much better than those that ignore the threats. Using textual analysis of earnings call transcripts from almost 5,000 U.S. public companies, researchers developed novel measures of firms’ physical climate risk exposure ...

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Environment2 Apr 2024

Gloom and doom warnings about climate change do not work

If you want to spread a message about climate change and global warming, you need to adapt the message according to your intended audience and what you want to achieve. Researchers have now developed an app to help people who want to spread their message on climate issues to ensure they generate the most support possible – be they researchers, politicians, various decision makers or legislators. Huge survey involving 63 countries 59,000 people participated in surveys as part of the work on creating the app, and Norway was among ...

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Environment2 Apr 2024

UMass Amherst-led team creates biofilm-resistant glass for marine environments

AMHERST, Mass. – A group of researchers led by University of Massachusetts Amherst engineers have created ultraviolet (UV) rays-emitting glass that can reduce 98% of biofilm from growing on surfaces in underwater environments, as reported in the journal Biofilm. Biofilm is a slimy layer of various types of microorganisms that grows on wet surfaces. “If you look down your sink and touch the inner side of it—that slimy substance is biofilm,” describes Mariana Lanzarini-Lopes, ...

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Environment2 Apr 2024

Intergenerational altruism and climate policy support

Investments in mitigating climate change in many cases benefit future generations more than those alive today. However, initial costs must be borne by those living now, so many climate mitigation policies rely on some level of intergenerational altruism for support. To investigate the strength and shape of intergenerational altruism, Gustav Agneman and colleagues asked Swedish study participants to engage in an experimental task in which they allocated fictional resources across generations, after being told how many descendants they might be expected to have in the next 250 years. On average, participants allocated most of the resources to the present generation, and fewer and ...

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Environment2 Apr 2024

Australia on track for unprecedented, decades-long megadroughts

Australia could soon see megadroughts that last for more than 20 years, according to new modelling from The Australian National University (ANU) and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes. The researchers’ bleak findings are before factoring in human impact on the climate since the Industrial Revolution. The ANU-led team also found that 20th century droughts in southwestern and eastern Australia, including the Murray-Darling Basin, were longer on average compared to pre-industrial times. According to the scientists, the findings paint a worrying picture of future droughts in Australia that are far worse than anything in recent experience. Megadroughts are exceptionally ...

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Environment1 Apr 2024

Fungal resources —— Eleven new species of Trichoderma (Hypocreaceae, Hypocreales) from China

Trichoderma spp. are globally distributed and are considered significant fungal resources. They are widely studied and applied due to their economic and ecological importance, offering numerous benefits, such as producing enzymes and antibiotics, aiding in plant growth, and protecting them from pathogens. This study led by Prof. Chu-Long Zhang (Fungal Resources Utilization and Plant Protection Research Group, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China) presents the discovery of eleven new species of Trichoderma. The team obtained a total of 618 Trichoderma ...

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Environment1 Apr 2024

Simple equations clarify cloud climate conundrum

New analysis based on simple equations has reduced uncertainty about how clouds will affect future climate change. Clouds have two main effects on global temperature – cooling the planet by reflecting sunlight, and warming it by acting as insulation for Earth’s radiation. The impact of clouds is the largest area of uncertainty in global warming predictions. In the new study, researchers from the University of Exeter and the Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique in Paris created a model that predicts how ...

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Environment28 Mar 2024

Discovering Van Gogh in the wild: scientists unveil a new gecko species

You’ve probably seen nature depicted in art, but how often do you see an artwork hiding in nature? When they saw the back of a lizard in the Southern Western Ghats, a group of scientists from the Thackeray Wildlife Foundation in India were reminded of Van Gogh’s The Starry Night. As soon as they figured out it was a new species, it was only apt to name it in honour of the famous painter. “Cnemaspis vangoghi is named for Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) as the striking colouration of the new species is reminiscent of one of his most iconic paintings, The ...

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Environment28 Mar 2024

New approach to monitoring freshwater quality can identify sources of pollution, and predict their effects

The source of pollutants in rivers and freshwater lakes can now be identified using a comprehensive new water quality analysis, according to scientists at the University of Cambridge and Trent University, Canada. Microparticles from car tyres, pesticides from farmers’ fields, and toxins from harmful algal blooms are just some of the organic chemicals that can be detected using the new approach, which also indicates the impact these chemicals are likely to have in a particular river or lake. Importantly, the approach can also point to the origin of specific organic matter dissolved in the water, because it has a distinct ...

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Environment28 Mar 2024

Environment: More than half of Colorado River’s water used to irrigate crops

Irrigation for agriculture uses more than half of the Colorado River’s total annual water flow, reports a paper published in Communications Earth & Environment. This finding is part of a new comprehensive assessment of how the Colorado River’s water is consumed — including both human usage and natural losses — and provides a more complete understanding of how the river’s water is used along its over 2,300 km (almost 1,500-mile) length. The Colorado River flows through the southwestern United States (including the Grand Canyon) and northwestern Mexico whilst supplying water to more than 40 million people and more than 2 million ...

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Environment28 Mar 2024

Going ‘back to the future’ to forecast the fate of a dead Florida coral reef

Rising temperatures and disease outbreaks are decimating coral reefs throughout the tropics. Evidence suggests that higher latitude marine environments may provide crucial refuges for many at-risk, temperature-sensitive coral species. However, how coral populations expand into new areas and sustain themselves over time is constrained by the limited scope of modern observations. What can thousands of years of history tell us about what lies ahead for coral reef communities? A lot. In a new study, Florida Atlantic University researchers and collaborators provide geological insights into coral range expansions by reconstructing the composition of a Late Holocene-aged subfossil coral ...

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Environment28 Mar 2024

How extratropical ocean-atmosphere interactions can contribute to the variability of jet streams in the Northern Hemisphere

Fukuoka, Japan—The interaction between the oceans and the atmosphere plays a vital role in shaping the Earth’s climate. Changing sea surface temperatures can heat or cool the atmosphere, and changes in the atmosphere can do the same to the ocean surface. This exchange in energy is known as “ocean-atmosphere coupling.” Now, researchers from Kyushu University have revealed that this ocean-atmosphere coupling enhances teleconnection patterns—when climate conditions change across vast regions of the globe—in the Northern Hemisphere. In their recent ...

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Environment28 Mar 2024

Ancient isolation’s impact on modern ecology

A new study led by Michigan State University researcher Peter Williams sheds light on the profound influence of deep geographic isolation on the evolution of mammals. Published in Nature Communications on March 28, the research reveals how long-lasting separation between continents has shaped distinct mammal communities around the globe. “Today’s ecology was not inevitable. If there were different isolating factors long ago, we might have vastly different ecosystems today,” said Peter Williams, the lead author of the study. Williams is a research ...

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Environment28 Mar 2024

How commercial rooftop solar power could bring affordable clean energy to low-income homes

Lower-income communities across the United States have long been much slower to adopt solar power than their affluent neighbors, even when local and federal agencies offer tax breaks and other financial incentives. But, commercial and industrial rooftops, such as those atop retail buildings and factories, offer a big opportunity to reduce what researchers call the “solar equity gap,” according to a new study, published in Nature Energy and led by researchers at Stanford University. “The ...

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Environment28 Mar 2024

What progress has China made in agriculture green development over the past five years？

Reconciling the tasks of producing adequate amounts of nutritious food for the increasing global population while preserving the environment and natural ecosystems simultaneously is an enormous challenge. The concept of agriculture green development (AGD) was detailed in 2017 and the necessary governmental policies were developed to address the aforementioned challenge in China and to help achieve the related global sustainable development goals. AGD emphasizes the synergy between green and development; current agriculture has to transform from the intensive farming with high inputs, high environmental impacts ...

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