Earth | Page 1108 | Science Codex

Proton beam experiments open new areas of research

By focusing proton beams using high-intensity lasers, a team of scientists have discovered a new way to heat material and create new states of matter in the laboratory.

Researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; the Jacobs School of Engineering at the University of California, San Diego; Los Alamos National Laboratory; Hemoltz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf of Germany; Technische Universitat Darmstadt of Germany, and General Atomics of San Diego unveiled new findings about how proton beams can be used in myriad applications.

Carbon dioxide emissions rebound quickly after global financial crisis

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Dec. 5, 2011 -- The sharp decrease in global carbon dioxide emissions attributed to the worldwide financial crisis in 2009 quickly rebounded in 2010, according to research supported by the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Early Earth may have been prone to deep freezes, says CU-Boulder study

Two University of Colorado Boulder researchers who have adapted a three-dimensional, general circulation model of Earth's climate to a time some 2.8 billion years ago when the sun was significantly fainter than present think the planet may have been more prone to catastrophic glaciation than previously believed.

Ground-level ozone pollution helped to recover normal ozone levels over the Iberian Peninsula

The reconstruction of ozone levels over the Iberian Peninsula between 1979 and 2008 reveals that positive trends began eight years after the ratification of the Montreal Protocol. Furthermore, results show that Spain quickly recovered part of its lost ozone thanks to tropospheric ozone, a secondary pollutant derived from industrial emissions.

When the heat's on, fish can cope

Australian scientists have discovered that some tropical fish have a greater capacity to cope with rising sea temperatures than previously thought – by adjusting over several generations.

The discovery, by researchers at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University and CSIRO sheds a ray of hope amid the rising concern over the future of coral reefs and their fish under the levels of global warming expected to occur by the end of the 21st century.

People matter in climate change models

Climate change does not discriminate among regions or their inhabitants, but the continued growth of the human population will most likely contribute to the ill-effects of climate change. US researchers writing in the International Journal of System of Systems Engineering suggest an interdisciplinary approach, recruiting expertise from the social sciences, is best for conducting the needed research and model development to move forward in the study of climate change.

Global warming changes balance between parasite and host in fish -- new study

Parasitic worms that infect fish, and have a devastating effect on fish reproduction, grow four times faster at higher temperatures – providing some of the first evidence that global warming affects the interactions between parasites and their hosts.

The study from the University of Leicester revealed that global warming had the potential to change the balance between parasite and host - with potentially serious implications for fish populations.

Global carbon emissions reach record 10 billion tons, threatening 2 degree target

Global carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels have increased by 49 per cent in the last two decades, according to the latest figures by an international team, including researchers at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of East Anglia (UEA).

Published today in the journal Nature Climate Change, the new analysis by the Global Carbon Project shows fossil fuel emissions increased by 5.9 per cent in 2010 and by 49 per cent since 1990 – the reference year for the Kyoto protocol.

New reports identify impacts of climate change on world's highest mountains

DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA -- Findings from the most comprehensive assessment to date on climate change, snow and glacier melt in Asia's mountainous Hindu Kush-Himalayan (HKH) region -- site of Mount Everest and many of the world's tallest peaks -- highlight the region's extreme vulnerability to climate change, as rising temperatures disturb the balance of snow, ice and water, threatening millions of mountain people and 1.3 billion people living downstream in Asia's major river basins.

Climate-smart agriculture should be livelihood-smart too

Encouraging climate-smart agriculture can lead to climate change adaptation practices in a partnership where the farmer's needs are addressed.

"Climate-smart agriculture has the potential to increase sustainable productivity, increase the resilience of farming systems to climate impacts and mitigate climate change through greenhouse gas emission reductions and carbon sequestration," says Henry Neufeldt the lead expert on climate change at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF).

Simultaneous ice melt in Antarctic and Arctic

The end of the last ice age and the processes that led to the melting of the northern and southern ice sheets supply basic information on changes in our climate. Although the maximum size of the ice sheet in the northern hemisphere during the last ice age is relatively well known, there is little reliable data on the dimensions of the Antarctic ice sheet. A publication appearing in the journal Science on 1 December now furnishes indications that the two hemispheres attained their maximum ice sheet size at nearly the same time and started melting 19,000 years ago.

Swiss scientists prove durability of quantum network

Scientists and engineers have proven the worth of quantum cryptography in telecommunication networks by demonstrating its long-term effectiveness in a real-time network.

Their international network, created in collaboration with ID Quantique and installed in the Geneva metropolitan area and crossing over to the site of CERN in France, ran for more than one-and-a-half years from the end of March 2009 to the beginning of January 2011.

Drop in carbon dioxide levels led to Antarctic ice sheet

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - A drop in carbon dioxide appears to be the driving force that led to the Antarctic ice sheet's formation, according to a recent study led by scientists at Yale and Purdue universities of molecules from ancient algae found in deep-sea core samples.

The key role of the greenhouse gas in one of the biggest climate events in Earth's history supports carbon dioxide's importance in past climate change and implicates it as a significant force in present and future climate.

Unique geologic insights from 'non-unique' gravity and magnetic interpretation

Boulder, Colorado, USA - A GSA TODAY article says there are often tensions and disagreements between scientists who specialize in analyses of problems using mathematical models to describe sets of collected data, and those that rely on on-the-ground observations and empirical analyses.

Rise of atmospheric oxygen more complicated than previously thought

The appearance of oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere probably did not occur as a single event, but as a long series of starts and stops, according to an international team of researchers who investigated rock cores from the FAR DEEP project.