Hot on the heels of the Royal Society's Geoengineering the Climate report, September's Physics World contains feature comment from UK experts stressing the need to start taking geoengineering – deliberate interventions in the climate system to counteract man-made global warming – more seriously.
Earth
The future of the Earth could rest on potentially dangerous and unproven geoengineering technologies unless emissions of carbon dioxide can be greatly reduced, a new study has found.
The report found that unless future efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are much more successful than they have been so far, additional action in the form of geoengineering will be necessary to cool the planet. However, the report identified major uncertainties regarding the effectiveness, costs, and environmental impacts of geoengineering technologies.
In the open ocean, species of large predatory fish will swim and hunt for food at various depths, which leads to unique diets in these fish. Oceanographers and geologists in the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (UHM) and colleagues have found that those fish that hunt deeper in the open ocean have higher mercury concentrations than those that feed near the surface of the ocean because their deep water food has higher mercury. This research was detailed in the journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Researchers have completed the first thorough, system-level assessment of the diversity of an environmentally important genus of microbes known as Shewanella. Microbes belonging to that genus frequently participate in bioremediation by confining and cleaning up contaminated areas in the environment.
Hurricane Warnings are up for the southern Baja California, as powerful Category Four Hurricane Jimena threatens. Jimena developed over the weekend, and the infrared instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite captured that explosive development.
A hurricane warning is in effect for the southern portion of the Baja California peninsula from Bahia Magdalena southward on the west coast, and from San Evaristo southward on the east coast, including Cabo San Lucas. Hurricane conditions are expected in the Warning area within 24 hours.
Research by U.S. Forest Service Southern Research Station (SRS) scientists and partners suggests that the expansion of rosebay rhododendron (Rhododendron maximum) in Southern Appalachian mountain hollows may increase the likelihood of landslides during and after intense rain events.
The U.S. Geological Survey has released the results of a long-term study of key glaciers in western North America, reporting this month that glacial shrinkage is rapid and accelerating and a result of climate change.
Travelers to the neotropics —— the tropical lands of the Americas——might be forgiven for thinking that all of the colorful insects flittering over sunny puddles or among dense forest understory are butterflies. However, many are not. Some are moths that have reinvented themselves as butterflies, converging on the daytime niche typically dominated by their less hairy relatives. Now, a new revision of the taxonomic relationships among one such group of insects, the subfamily Dioptinae, sheds light on the diversity of tropical moth species and presents a unique story of parallel evolution.
The search for the best observatory site in the world has lead to the discovery of what is thought to be the coldest, driest, calmest place on Earth. No human is thought to have ever been there but it is expected to yield images of the heavens three times sharper than any ever taken from the ground.
The joint US-Australian research team combined data from satellites, ground stations and climate models in a study to assess the many factors that affect astronomy – cloud cover, temperature, sky-brightness, water vapour, wind speeds and atmospheric turbulence.
University Park, Pa. -- Manipulating tiny objects like single cells or nanosized beads often requires relatively large, unwieldy equipment, but now a system that uses sound as a tiny tweezers can be small enough to place on a chip, according to Penn State engineers.
Scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and their colleagues at Creighton University have deciphered the highly unusual molecular structure of a naturally produced, ocean-based compound that is giving new understanding of the function of mammalian nerve cells.
Some slow-moving faults may help protect some regions of Italy and other parts of the world against destructive earthquakes, suggests new research from The University of Arizona in Tucson.
Until now, geologists thought when the crack between two pieces of the Earth's crust was at a very gentle slope, there was no movement along that particular fault line.
"This study is the first to show that low-angle normal faults are definitely active," said Sigrún Hreinsdóttir, UA geosciences research associate.
The parasitic flowering plant Striga, or "witchweed," attacks the roots of host plants, draining needed water and nutrients and leaving them unable to grow and produce any grains. Witchweed is endemic throughout sub-Saharan Africa, causing crop losses that surpass hundreds of millions of dollars annually and exacerbating food shortages in the region.
Among the crops heavily parasitized by witchweed is black-eyed pea, known in Africa as "cowpea" or "niebe" in Francophone countries.
Ice, when heated, is supposed to melt.
That's why a collection of glaciers in the Southeast Himalayas stymies those who know what they did 9,000 years ago. While most other Central Asian glaciers retreated under hotter summer temperatures, this group of glaciers advanced from one to six kilometers.
A new study by BYU geologist Summer Rupper pieces together the chain of events surrounding the unexpected glacial growth.