Eco-friendly underwater cleaning of ship hulls. The settlement of mussels and algae on ship hulls not only increases the fuel consumption of ships but can also threaten ecosystems. The Laser Zentrum Hannover e.V. (LZH) and partners have now developed a laser process to clean ship hulls underwater. Biofouling is the growth of algae, mussels, and other marine organisms on the hull of a ship. The fouling increases the flow resistance of the ship – and thus increases fuel consumption and…

Thanks to a new method developed by researchers at the University of Bern and Empa, greenhouse gas concentrations in 1.5 million year old ice can be measured even more accurately. Ice cores are a unique climate archive. Thanks to a new method developed by researchers at the University of Bern and Empa, greenhouse gas concentrations in 1.5 million year old ice can be measured even more accurately. The EU project “Beyond EPICA” with the participation of the University of Bern…

A new method for removing the greenhouse gas from the ocean could be far more efficient than existing systems for removing it from the air. As carbon dioxide continues to build up in the Earth’s atmosphere, research teams around the world have spent years seeking ways to remove the gas efficiently from the air. Meanwhile, the world’s number one “sink” for carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is the ocean, which soaks up some 30 to 40 percent of all of…

The tropical oceans are home to the most diverse plankton populations on Earth, where they form the base of marine food chains. Modern plankton biodiversity in the tropics is a surprisingly recent development and the result of 8 million years of global cooling, according to a study led by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin.  The finding raises concerns that rapid ocean warming could force the plankton to move away from the tropics, which would negatively affect ocean…

Natural gas furnaces not only heat your home, they also produce a lot of pollution. Even modern high-efficiency condensing furnaces produce significant amounts of corrosive acidic condensation and unhealthy levels of nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons and methane. These emissions are typically vented into the atmosphere and end up polluting our soil, water and air. Now, scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed an affordable add-on technology that removes more than 99.9% of acidic gases…

… to promote a circular bioeconomy. Funding awarded for developing tools to harness marine microbiome data for biotechnological applications and ecosystem services. The European Commission has funded the BlueRemediomics project, which will develop novel tools and approaches to catalogue marine microbiome data and marine culture collections. These tools will help facilitate the development of industrial processes that reduce waste, increase the reuse of natural products and by-products, and improve aquaculture – the farming of seafood. The project simultaneously aims to…

Study highlights regions with high wetland loss over past 300 years. Wetlands are among the most threatened ecosystems in the world. A new study, published in Nature, has found that the loss of wetland areas around the globe since 1700 has likely been overestimated. This is good news overall, however, the global picture hides significant variations, with several regions and distinct wetland types under significant levels of pressure. For instance, temperate river floodplains have been highly impacted while remote boreal-arctic…

New insight into the relationship between slow slip events and the build-up and release of tectonic strain. The Japanese archipelago is actively undergoing seismic shifts due to interactions between the oceanic plate and the continental plate. At the plate boundaries located directly beneath areas of Japan (especially the Bungo Channel, Tokai and Boso-Oki regions), slow slip events (SSEs *1) occur, which involve gradual aseismic slipping taking place at a recurrence interval of several years. However, it is still not clear…

Hydrothermal vents have been identified as a previously undiscovered source of dissolved black carbon in the oceans, furthering the understanding of the role of oceans as a carbon sink. The ocean is one of the largest dynamic carbon sinks in the world, and is susceptible to increased carbon emissions from human activities. There are even proposals to use the ocean to sequester carbon in an effort to reduce the carbon emissions. However, much of the processes by which the ocean…

Sea ice extent in the Southern Ocean now the lowest since the beginning of satellite observation forty years ago. There is currently less sea ice in the Antarctic than at any time in the forty years since the beginning of satellite observation: in early February 2023, only 2.20 million square kilometres of the Southern Ocean were covered with sea ice. Researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute and the University of Bremen analyse the situation for the Sea Ice Portal. January…

Detailed knowledge about whales in European waters will be provided by the Biodiversa+ project “eWHALE”, which started in January and is led by molecular ecologist Bettina Thalinger from the University of Innsbruck. The transnational research project brings together partners from science, industry and the public to establish a far-reaching, non-invasive cetacean and biodiversity monitoring system using water samples. To effectively protect whales and other endangered marine species, it is necessary to emphasize conservation measures for entire marine areas. This is…

Stainless steel recycling is considered to be a sustainable way to save CO2 in the globally growing steel production. As early as 2010, Fraunhofer UMSICHT researchers determined a savings potential of more than 4.5 t CO2 per ton of blend on behalf of the Oryx Stainless Group. More recent calculations by the UMSICHT team even come to savings of over 6.7 t CO2 -eq. per ton of blend for the reference year 2021. The results show: The recycling of stainless…

– including Germany. AWI researchers have analysed the origins of plastic debris on the shores of Svalbard. “Citizen Science” gives interested citizens the chance to actively engage in scientific research. A citizen-science project conducted by AWI in the Arctic now shows just how successful this can be. In the course of five years, citizens who went on sailing cruises to the Arctic surveyed and collected plastic debris that had washed up on the shores of Svalbard. This has now been…

A special issue of the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment lays the foundation for pursuing structural diversity as a new research direction in ecology. The issue, funded by the National Science Foundation, also describes the digital data collection methods that enable the new research direction, and the applications of the work in various ecosystems. “Structural diversity is thinking about what elements occupy a space and how they have been arranged in the space,” said the special issue’s lead editor, Songlin…

Rocks, rain and carbon dioxide help control Earth’s climate over thousands of years — like a thermostat — through a process called weathering. A new study led by Penn State scientists may improve our understanding of how this thermostat responds as temperatures change. “Life has been on this planet for billions of years, so we know Earth’s temperature has remained consistent enough for there to be liquid water and to support life,” said Susan Brantley, Evan Pugh University Professor and…

Volcanoes draw plenty of attention when they erupt. But new research led by the University of Washington shows that volcanoes leak a surprisingly high amount of their atmosphere- and climate-changing gases in their quiet phases. A Greenland ice core shows that volcanoes quietly release at least three times as much sulfur into the Arctic atmosphere than estimated by current climate models. The study, led by the University of Washington and published Jan. 2 in Geophysical Research Letters, has implications for…