… 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…

The research network “TrinkXtrem” wants to improve the forecast quality of groundwater models during extreme weather events. Ensuring the supply of drinking water during extreme weather events such as a long drought or heavy rainfall – this is the overarching goal of a new research project named TrinkXtrem. In this project, which starts with a kickoff meeting on April 12 and 13, 2022, water supply companies from various regions in Germany are cooperating with research institutions of the federal government…

… by ground-based very-low-frequency (VLF) transmitters. Narrow-band VLF transmitter waves originate from the powerful ground-based VLF transmitters for submarine communications, which are typically over the frequency range of 10–30 kHz. VLF transmitter signals, being guided by the gradients of the Earth’s magnetic field, can leak a portion of the wave power into the magnetosphere. Early theoretical studies suggested that VLF transmitter waves potentially play an important role in electron precipitations in the near-Earth space. With the availability of high-resolution wave…

Vast stores of helium from the Big Bang lingering in the core suggest Earth formed inside a solar nebula. Helium-3, a rare isotope of helium gas, is leaking out of Earth’s core, a new study reports. Because almost all helium-3 is from the Big Bang, the gas leak adds evidence that Earth formed inside a solar nebula, which has long been debated. Helium-3 has been measured at Earth’s surface in relatively small quantities. But scientists did not know how much…

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…

HALO-(AC)3 field campaign investigates a worrying phenomenon. In mid-March 2022, the large-scale international HALO-(AC)3 research campaign will begin investigating transformations of air masses in the Arctic. Three German aircraft will be deployed, scientists from the UK and France will also be involved during joint flights with two further aircraft. The team of researchers will be focusing particularly on northwards-flowing warm air reaching into the central Arctic, which are often called warm air intrusions. The counterpart, cold air outbreaks with southwards-moving…

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…

In the classic example of mountain-building, the Indian and Asian continental plates crashed – and continue colliding today – to form the world’s largest and highest geologic structures: the Himalayan Mountains and the Tibetan Plateau. Despite the importance of these formations, which influence the global climate through atmospheric circulation and seasonal monsoons, experts have proposed contradicting theories about how tectonic plates below the surface created the iconic behemoths. Now, using geochemical data from 225 hot springs, scientists have mapped the boundary…

Climate scientists reconsider the meaning and implications of drought in light of a changing world. Maps of the American West have featured ever darker shades of red over the past two decades. The colors illustrate the unprecedented drought blighting the region. In some areas, conditions have blown past severe and extreme drought into exceptional drought. But rather than add more superlatives to our descriptions, one group of scientists believes it’s time to reconsider the very definition of drought. Researchers from…

The tectonic plates that form the Earth’s surface are like puzzle pieces that are in constant, very slow motion – on average, they move only up to around 10 centimeters a year. But these puzzle pieces don’t quite fit together: there are zones on one plate that end up plunging under another – the so-called subduction zones, central to the dynamics of the planet. This movement is slow, but it can lead to moments of great energy release and, over…

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…

High pressure softens the Earth’s crust in subduction zones and can detach it from the plate. Earth’s thin crust softens considerably when it dives down into the Earth attached to a tectonic plate. That is demonstrated by X-ray studies carried out using DESY’s X-ray source PETRA III on a mineral which occurs in large quantities in basaltic crust. This softening can even cause the crust to peel away from the underlying plate, as an international team led by Hauke Marquardt…

… 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…

Levante the new, fourth high-performance computing system for Earth system research (HLRE-4) will start its operation on March 3, 2022, at the German Climate Computing Center (DKRZ) in the first expansion stage. The supercomputer, which like its predecessor “Mistral” is provided by the company Atos, will quadruple the computing power at DKRZ with 14 PetaFLOPS. This enables researchers to perform, for example, more or longer simulations with particularly high-resolution global climate and Earth system models on the DKRZ system. Such…