A new Tulane University study questions the reliability of how sea-level rise in low-lying coastal areas such as southern Louisiana is measured and suggests that the current method underestimates the severity of the problem. This research is the focus of a news article published this week in the journal Science. Relative sea-level rise, which is…
Month: January 2019
Prairie strips can transform farmland conservation
Modern agriculture’s large monoculture fields grow a lot of corn and soybeans, planted annually. The outputs from row crops can be measured both in dollars paid in the market and also in non-market costs, known as externalities. Soil, nutrients, groundwater, pollinators, wildlife diversity, and habitat (among other things) can be lost when crop yields are…
Climate change and global heat transfers
The Earth’s atmosphere and oceans play important roles in moving heat from one part of the world to another, and new research is illuminating how those patterns are changing in the face of climate change. “The greenhouse effect and carbon dioxide aren’t the only issues to consider as the planet grows warmer – they are…
Baffin landscape uncovered after 40,000 years
Glacial retreat in the Canadian Arctic has uncovered landscapes that haven’t been ice-free in more than 40,000 years and the region may be experiencing its warmest century in 115,000 years, new University of Colorado Boulder research finds. The study, published today in the journal Nature Communications, uses radiocarbon dating to determine the ages of plants…
Causal link established between climate, conflict, and migration
IIASA-led research has established a causal link between climate, conflict, and migration for the first time, something which has been widely suggested in the media but for which scientific evidence is scarce. There are numerous examples in recent decades in which climatic conditions have been blamed for creating political unrest, civil war, and subsequently, waves…
Scientists turn carbon emissions into usable energy
A recent study, affiliated with UNIST has developed a system that produces electricity and hydrogen (H2) while eliminating carbon dioxide (CO2), which is the main contributor of global warming. Published This breakthrough has been led by Professor Guntae Kim in the School of Energy and Chemical Engineering at UNIST in collaboration with Professor Jaephil Cho…
Boreal forests and climate change mitigation
Boreal forests and forestry play a crucial role in the global carbon cycle and climate change mitigation. The use of boreal forests and forest-based biomass (timber and energy biomass) responds to the increasing demand for renewable energy and wood-based materials. Using wood-based materials and energy biomass from sustainably managed forests has great potential for the…
Water limits global forest growth
The growth of forest trees all over the world is becoming more water-limited as the climate warms, according to new research from an international team that includes University of Arizona scientists. The effect is most evident in northern climates and at high altitudes where the primary limitation on tree growth had been cold temperatures, reports…
Permafrost soil warming
Global warming is leaving more and more apparent scars in the world’s permafrost regions. As the new global comparative study conducted by the international permafrost network GTN-P shows, in all regions with permafrost soils the temperature of the frozen ground at a depth of more than 10 meters rose by an average of 0.3 degrees…
Antarctic ice sheet could suffer a one-two climate punch
Writing this week (Jan. 14, 2019) in the journal Nature Geoscience, a team led by Richard Levy of New Zealand’s GNS Science and Victoria University of Wellington, and Stephen Meyers of the University of Wisconsin-Madison describes research that matches the geologic record of Antarctica’s ice with the periodic astronomical motions of the Earth. Comparing the…