Start-up LiBCycle takes complete care of used e-car batteries. What began as an idea about a transport container for old batteries has in the meantime grown into a complete recycling service for used batteries. The start-up LiBCycle, founded at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), is committed to Circular Economy and is thus contributing to sustainable mobility. “We don’t want to spend all our time running from one financing round to the next, we want to do something to make…

According to a new study that combined GPS, satellite data, and numerical modelling, ice loss from northeast Greenland could be six times greater by the end of the century than previously thought. Ice is continuously streaming off Greenland’s melting glaciers at an accelerating rate, dramatically increasing global sea levels. New results published [DATE] in Nature indicate that existing models have underestimated how much ice will be lost during the 21st century. Hence, its contribution to sea-level rise will be significantly…

… while other marine life languishes in the Florida Keys. In the summer of 2020, Florida Museum researchers Tobias Grun and Michał Kowalewski dove into the shallow waters off the coast of the Florida Keys and scoured the ocean floor for sea urchins. Telltale tracks and dimples in the sediment alerted them to the presence of sand dollars, sea biscuits and heart urchins concealed just beneath the surface. Between August and April of the following year, Grun and Kowalewski visited…

KIT researchers and partners suspect that much more plastic is transported in flowing waters than previously assumed and are developing new modelling approaches. Rivers play a key role in the transport of plastic in the environment. “As soon as plastic enters a river, it is transported rapidly and can spread throughout the environment,” says Dr Daniel Valero from the Institute of Water and River Basin Management at KIT and lead author of a new study on plastic transport. “But, depending…

Early crust on Mars may be more complex than previously thought—and it may even be similar to our own planet’s original crust. The Martian surface is uniformly basaltic, a product of billions of years of volcanism and flowing lava on the surface that eventually cooled. Because Mars did not undergo full-scale surface remodeling like the shifting of continents on Earth, scientists had thought Mars’ crustal history was a relatively simple tale. But in a new study, researchers found locations in…

Researchers decipher the history and sensitivity of the largest tropical peatland in Congo. When peat swamps dry out they can release large amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Because they react so sensitively to climate changes, they are also important tipping points. A study published in Nature by an international team, led by researchers from MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences at the University of Bremen, the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD, France) and the…

Using images captured by satellites, researchers in the University of Oxford’s Department of Physics and RAL Space have confirmed that the January 2022 eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano produced the highest-ever recorded plume. The colossal eruption is also the first to have been directly observed to have broken through to the mesosphere layer of the atmosphere. The results have been published today in the journal Science. On 15 January 2022, Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai, a submarine volcano in the…

A peculiar property of the Earth’s magnetic field could help us to work out how our planet was created 4.5 billion years ago, according to a new scientific assessment. There are several theories about how the Earth and the Moon were formed, most involving a giant impact. They vary from a model where the impacting object strikes the newly formed Earth a glancing blow and then escapes, through to one where the collision is so energetic that both the impactor…

Federal Minister of Research Stark-Watzinger christens research cutter Uthörn. Today, German Federal Minister of Education and Research Bettina Stark-Watzinger christened the Alfred Wegener Institute’s new research vessel Uthörn at the Fassmer shipyards in Berne. The new ship, measuring 35 metres long and with a price tag of ca. 15 million euros, will be the first seaworthy German ship powered by environmentally friendly, low-emissions methanol, setting new standards for sustainability in German shipping. After a two-year construction phase, the cutter is…

Global warming is changing the Arctic by causing permafrost thaw, glacier melt, droughts, fires and changes in vegetation. These developments are strongly linked to the energy exchange between land and the atmosphere. Researchers at the University of Zurich have now shown that different plant communities in the tundra play a key role in this energy exchange but are not taken into account in climate models. The heat waves that swept across Europe this summer made many people realize how important…

– NASA and NOAA scientists say. The annual Antarctic ozone hole reached an average area of 8.9 million square miles (23.2 million square kilometers) between Sept. 7 and Oct. 13, 2022. This depleted area of the ozone layer over the South Pole was slightly smaller than last year and generally continued the overall shrinking trend of recent years. “Over time, steady progress is being made, and the hole is getting smaller,” said Paul Newman, chief scientist for Earth sciences at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight…

When algae, mussels or barnacles settle on ship hulls, this can lead to billions of euros worth of damage. To counteract this, they are treated with antifouling coatings. A scientist at the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT) has now investigated the extent to which newly developed antifouling coatings could be used to curb algal growth, which often affects coral larvae as they settle and develop. The results of the study were published in the journal Scientific Reports. Tropical…

The Yield consortium uses satellite data and artificial intelligence to reliably predict agricultural yields. In collaboration with BASF Digital Farming, John Deere, and Munich Re, DFKI develops predictive models for selected arable crops in the focus regions of Europe, South and North America. Later models will extend to other relevant crops and growing regions. How can artificial intelligence help the agricultural sector? Environmental challenges in our world today are materializing on a global scale, in the form of food crises,…

A KIT team has analyzed the extraction of lithium from thermal water resources in Germany – feasible extraction volumes and time horizon limit the potential. Pumping up thermal water, separating lithium, and using it to produce batteries for electric mobility – the idea of lithium as an environmentally compatible and regionally available by-product of geothermal energy plants appears highly promising. However, it has not been clear so far whether domestic lithium extraction is really worthwhile. A team of researchers from…

Climate models without the lightness of water vapor risk uncertainty in cloud simulations. Clouds are notoriously hard to pin down, especially in climate science. A study from the University of California, Davis, and published in the journal Nature Geoscience shows that air temperature and cloud cover are strongly influenced by the buoyancy effect of water vapor, an effect currently neglected in some leading global climate models. Global climate models are the primary tools used to study Earth’s climate, predict its…

Chinese and European satellite missions to advance global carbon dioxide monitoring. An international research team has analyzed measurements from the TanSat mission and the Copernicus Sentinel-5 Precursor mission to identify carbon dioxide from human activities. This is the first attempt to use TanSat measurements to detect anthropogenic, or human-caused, carbon dioxide emission signatures. Quantifying anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions is one of the most important requirements needed for greenhouse gases to be monitored on a global basis. The team, with researchers…