TALLAHASSEE, Fla. ⎯ The heat generated by everyday energy consumption in metropolitan areas is significant enough to influence the character of major atmospheric circulation systems, including the jet stream during winter months, and cause continental-scale surface warming in high latitudes, according to a trio of climate researchers that includes Ming Cai, a professor in Florida State University's Department of Meteorology.
Earth
Simon Fraser University earth scientist Diana Allen, a co-author on a new paper about climate changes' impacts on the world's ground water, says climate change may be exacerbating many countries' experience of water stress.
"Increasing food requirements to feed our current world's growing population and prolonged droughts in many regions of the world are already increasing dependence on groundwater for agriculture," says Allen. "Climate-change-related stresses on fresh surface water, such as glacier-fed rivers, will likely exacerbate that situation.
Charged particle accelerators have become crucially important to modern day life, be it in health care for cancer treatment or for answering important fundamental scientific questions like the existence of the HIGGS boson, the so called 'God particle'. In a simple picture, charged particles like electrons and protons are accelerated between two end plates across which an electrical voltage is applied.
HOUSTON – (Jan. 28, 2013) – Rice University scientists have taken an important step toward the creation of two-dimensional electronics with a process to make patterns in atom-thick layers that combine a conductor and an insulator.
The materials at play – graphene and hexagonal boron nitride – have been merged into sheets and built into a variety of patterns at nanoscale dimensions.
BOULDER – Even if you live more than 1,000 miles from the nearest large city, it could be affecting your weather.
In a new study that shows the extent to which human activities are influencing the atmosphere, scientists have concluded that the heat generated by everyday activities in metropolitan areas alters the character of the jet stream and other major atmospheric systems. This affects temperatures across thousands of miles, significantly warming some areas and cooling others, according to the study in Nature Climate Change.
Policymakers are attempting to contain global warming at less than 2°C. New estimates from a Norwegian project on climate calculations indicate this target may be more attainable than many experts have feared.
Internationally renowned climate researcher Caroline Leck of Stockholm University has evaluated the Norwegian project and is enthusiastic.
"These results are truly sensational," says Dr Leck. "If confirmed by other studies, this could have far-reaching impacts on efforts to achieve the political targets for climate."
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists in Fort Pierce, Fla. are helping citrus growers and juice processors address the threat posed by Huanglongbing (HLB), a disease that is costing the citrus industry millions of dollars each year.
Citrus trees infected with HLB, also called citrus greening, usually die within five to 10 years. Fruit on infected trees often falls to the ground before harvest, and fruit that remains on trees may become misshapen and sometimes only partially ripen.
A study conducted at the University of Granada has demonstrated that men like female thinness more than women and they find female overweight more unpleasant than women. In addition, the study revealed that women who are not comfortable with their body perceive women with a "normal" body –i.e. women with a healthy weight– as a threat. Specifically, when these women see a "normal" body they experience feelings of displeasure and lack of control, since they feel they have not any control on their own body and cannot make it be as they want.
Tropical Cyclone Garry is in a good environment to intensify and satellite imagery from NOAA's GOES-15 satellite helped confirm that the storm has become more organized.
Northwestern University graduate student Jonathan Barnes had a hunch for creating an exotic new chemical compound, and his idea that the force of love is stronger than hate proved correct. He and his colleagues are the first to permanently interlock two identical tetracationic rings that normally are repelled by each other. Many experts had said it couldn't be done.
Is it possible to put a price tag on the natural world? A researcher at The University of Nottingham has been examining the rise of a new concept — ecosystem services — to describe the multitude of resources supplied to us by Mother Nature.
Academic Dr Marion Potschin, of the University's Centre for Environmental Management, is among an international team of researchers who have been investigating the ethical considerations of this new concept, which some have argued turns nature into a 'commodity'.
Like flocks of birds, cells coordinate their motions as they race to cover and ultimately heal wounds to the skin. How that happens is a little less of a mystery today.
Throughout the 20th century and into the first decade of the 21st, America had not been impacted by global warming. This was an 'anomaly' according to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and climate scientists. Finally, in summer of 2012, the American midwest had a drought and that was proof of global warming.
It seems independent voters believed - in both cases. Their acceptance changes with the weather.
Magma forms far deeper than geologists previously thought, according to new research results.
A team led by geologist Rajdeep Dasgupta of Rice University put very small samples of peridotite, rock derived from Earth's mantle, under high pressures in a laboratory.
The scientists found that the rock can and does liquify, at least in small amounts, at pressures equivalent to those found as deep as 250 kilometers down in the mantle beneath the ocean floor.
Dasgupta said that this answers several questions about Earth's inner workings.
A new study by an international team of scientists analyzing ice cores from the Greenland ice sheet going back in time more than 100,000 years indicates the last interglacial period may be a good analog for where the planet is headed in terms of increasing greenhouse gases and rising temperatures.