Fraunhofer IOF contributed mirrors for the first German hyperspectral satellite. Recently, the first hyperspectral satellite developed and built in Germany was launched into space. Its name: EnMAP. In the future, it will analyze Earth’s environment from space, making visible not only the consequences of climate change but also potential natural hazards. A total of eleven mirrors and various optical layers for telescope and spectrometer optics were manufactured for this mission at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering…
Biological invasions interact with changing climate in unpredictable ways. Native species in California’s estuaries are expected to experience greater declines as invasive species interact with climate change, according to a study from the University of California, Davis. The study, published in the Ecological Society of America’s journal, Ecology, said these declines are expected not only because of climate-related stressors, but also because of the expanding influence of new invasive predators whose impacts are occurring much farther up the estuary. “Our…
Using future projections from the latest generation of Earth System Models, a recent study published in Science Advances found that most of the world’s ocean is steadily losing its year-to-year memory under global warming. Compared with the fast weather fluctuations of the atmosphere, the slowly varying ocean exhibits strong persistence, or “memory”, meaning the ocean temperature tomorrow is likely to look a lot like it does today, with only slight changes. As a result, ocean memory is often used for…
How climate can benefit from the conservation of biodiversity. When the global community is expected to meet for the second part of the UN Biodiversity Conference in Kunming, China, in autumn, it must also adopt the next generation of UN biodiversity targets. These will then replace the Aichi Targets that were aimed for until 2020 – and have hardly been achieved. 21 “Post-2020 Action Targets for 2030” have already been pre-formulated. While they still have to be finally agreed, they…
Microplastics can carry land-based parasites to ocean, affecting wildlife and human health. Microplastics are a pathway for pathogens on land to reach the ocean, with likely consequences for human and wildlife health, according to a study from the University of California, Davis. The study, published April 26 in the journal Scientific Reports, is the first to connect microplastics in the ocean with land-based pathogens. It found that microplastics can make it easier for disease-causing pathogens to concentrate in plastic-contaminated areas…
Burns allow fungi, bacteria to transform redwood forests. New UC Riverside research shows fungi and bacteria able to survive redwood tanoak forest megafires are microbial “cousins” that often increase in abundance after feeling the flames. Fires of unprecedented size and intensity, called megafires, are becoming increasingly common. In the West, climate change is causing rising temperatures and earlier snow melt, extending the dry season when forests are most vulnerable to burning. Though some ecosystems are adapted for less intense fires,…
A team of scientists led by the University of East Anglia (UEA) has made a major breakthrough in detecting changes in fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions more quickly and frequently. In a study published today they quantified regional fossil fuel CO2 emissions reductions during the Covid-19 lockdowns of 2020-2021, using atmospheric measurements of CO2 and oxygen (O2) from the Weybourne Atmospheric Observatory, on the north Norfolk coast in the UK. The estimate uses a new method for separating CO2 signals…
Air pollution heating up the Southern Ocean. New research has identified a lesser-known form of ozone playing a big role in heating the Southern Ocean — one of Earth’s main cooling systems. Ozone is a gas composed of three oxygen atoms. Many studies have described ozone in the stratosphere, and its role in shielding people from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet radiation. Closer to ground level, in the troposphere, ozone is harmful to humans. New research led by UC Riverside scientists…
Between 19 and 21 million tons of plastic waste end up in the world’s waters every year. The trend has been rising strongly over the last decade. To meet the challenge and to solve these environmental problems, creating a broad societal awareness of the plastic litter and microplastics issue is crucial. Therefore, the Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon has now developed a digital platform about plastic pollution and related topics. Researchers from various disciplines at the Helmholtz- Zentrum Hereon, led by the Institute…
… help to better predict extreme rainfall in Mediterranean countries. From large-scale weather variability to localized extremes: Researchers at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts and TU Freiberg develop a framework to better predict extreme rainfall events in Mediterranean countries. The researchers make use of the general (synoptic scale) picture of weather variability over the Mediterranean to better predict extreme precipitation in the region some days and weeks in advance. As the team reports in the current issue of…
In collaboration with the Institute for Energy, Recycling and Environmental Protection (IEkrW) at Bremen University of Applied Sciences, the Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy Systems IWES is developing comprehensive concepts aimed at making it possible to recycle and reuse rotor blades considerably better in the future. The aim of the “Concept for recycling and reuse of rotor blades made of plastic composite materials” project – KoReNaRo for short – is to set up an economically feasible disposal strategy allowing as…
A new AWI-led study shows: there is now a concerning degree of plastic pollution in the Arctic Ocean. Even the High North can’t escape the global threat of plastic pollution. An international review study just released by the Alfred Wegener Institute shows, the flood of plastic has reached all spheres of the Arctic: large quantities of plastic – transported by rivers, the air and shipping- can now be found in the Arctic Ocean. High concentrations of microplastic can be found…
According to the latest assessment report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a considerable reduction in CO2 emissions is required to limit the consequences of climate change. Producing fuel from renewable sources such as waste wood and straw or renewable electricity would be one way to reduce carbon emissions from the area of transportation. This is an area which is being addressed by researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). Ethanol is usually produced through the fermentation of…
Runoff in coastal waters is linked to pollution and degradation of coral reefs and other marine ecosystems. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have now been used to overcome the challenges of monitoring water flow between ecosystems and over large areas. High-frequency hovering UAV images and flight surveys were used by KAUST researchers to track the movement of dye plumes released during an ebbing tide. Led by remote sensing researcher Kasper Johansen, the team also used information from aerial images combined with…
Introducing dynamic stop pooling. Sustainable mobility is an important research field of the Chair of Network Dynamics (headed by Prof. Marc Timme) at the Center for Advancing Electronics Dresden (cfaed) at TU Dresden. Here, the chair’s researchers put a strong focus on “ride sharing”, i.e. the bundling of simultaneous trips of several people in one vehicle. A recently published study on this topic addresses the question how a dynamic combination of nearby stops enables more efficient ride sharing services. The…
… worries scientists worldwide. International forest experts analyzed major tree and forest dieback events that occurred globally in the last decades in response to climate extremes. To their surprise many forests were strongly affected that were not considered threatened based on current scientific understanding. The study, led by the MPI-BGC and published in Annual Reviews in Plant Biology, underscores also that further tree and forest dieback is likely to occur. The experts highlight how improved data structures can contribute to…
Feedback
