Researchers uncover why a complex earthquake in the south Atlantic sent an unexpected tsunami around the world in 2021. Highlights A 47 km-deep, magnitude 7.5 earthquake that struck the south Atlantic in 2021 and caused a global tsunami was actually a sequence of five earthquakes. A shallow, “almost invisible” magnitude 8.2 quake accounted for 70% of the energy released during the event. Global earthquake monitoring needs to improve to understand and mitigate such complex earthquakes and their associated hazards. Scientists…

The Congo Basin is the second largest contiguous tropical forest area on earth. Even though it is so vast and plays such a major role in the global climate system, there is no empirical data on the forest’s gas exchange with the atmosphere. Especially with regard to the greenhouse gases nitrous oxide and methane, research is still in the dark. Other tropical forests are known to be a major source of nitrous oxide and a sink for methane. But because…

Due to climate change, Arctic winters are getting warmer. An international study by UZH researchers shows that Arctic warming causes temperature anomalies and cold damage thousands of kilometers away in East Asia. This in turn leads to reduced vegetation growth, later blossoming, smaller harvests and reduced CO2 absorption by the forests in the region. Switzerland has had relatively little snow so far this winter, but last year was different: Trains and trams stopped running, and tree branches broke under the…

Imagine trying to understand how climate change affects vast tropical forests by determining how many trees die each year. Clouds get in the way of satellite views and on-the-ground estimates are expensive and impractical in remote areas. But researchers at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) are excited by a new analysis that explains variation in tree mortality based on drone images of 1500 hectares of the most-studied tropical forest, Barro Colorado Island, in Panama. There is concern that many…

»SCIP Plastics« Project Worth Millions Launches in Weimar and Bangladesh. Approximately 480 tonnes of waste end up of the streets of Khulna, the largest city in the densely populated Ganges Delta, every day. This waste includes huge quantities of plastic, which then makes it way into the ocean via the adjacent waterways. If nothing is done to stop this, ocean contamination will continue to increase. The goal of this joint project is to establish a sustainable waste management system in…

Melting and sublimation on Mount Everest’s highest glacier due to human-induced climate change have reached the point that several decades of accumulation are being lost annually now that ice has been exposed, according to a University of Maine-led international research team that analyzed data from the world’s highest ice core and highest automatic weather stations. The extreme sensitivity of the high-altitude Himalayan ice masses in rapid retreat forewarns of quickly emerging impacts that could range from increased incidence of avalanches…

An Indo-Swiss research team led by Empa researchers is developing an ecological and solidarity-based business model that reduces the environmental impact of e-waste recycling. In this way, micro-entrepreneurs without investment capital are to be integrated into the value chain. In India, more than 90% of e-waste is handled by the informal sector. While this provides income for many families, it also often has a negative impact on the environment and on workers’ health. Introducing and enforcing standards is difficult because…

AWI study provides the basis for reliable projections of the impacts of climate change in the Antarctic. Despite global warming and the sea-ice loss in the Arctic, the Antarctic sea-ice extent has remained largely unchanged since 1979. However, existing climate model-based simulations indicate significant sea-ice loss, contrary to actual observations. As experts from the Alfred Wegener Institute have now shown, the ocean may weaken warming around Antarctica and delay sea-ice retreat. Given that many models are not capable of accurately…

Insufficiently considered carbon stocks in very old sediments are released as greenhouse gases / publication in ‘Frontiers in Earth Science’. Thawing permafrost in the Arctic could be emitting greenhouse gases from previously unaccounted-for carbon stocks, fuelling global warming. That is the result of a study conducted by a team of geologists led by Professor Dr Janet Rethemeyer at the University of Cologne’s Institute of Geology and Mineralogy, together with colleagues from the University of Hamburg and the Helmholtz Centre Potsdam…

In both the Arctic and Antarctic, the contamination with hazardous chemicals has been increasing. The German Environment Agency (UBA) and the Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon together hosted the workshop „Act now – Legacy and Emerging Contaminants in Polar Regions“. On January 25th and January 26th, experts from four continents met and discussed potential impacts of legacy and new hazardous chemi-cals, which accumulate in snow, ice and wildlife. Today, we live in the “Chemical Anthropocene” and our society, the environment and human health…

It’s the front line of climate change and could hold the key to predicting global sea level rise, but what goes on at the underwater face of Greenland’s glaciers is a mystery to science. That could change in 2023 with a bold new mission led by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin that will explore three of Greenland’s glaciers with a submersible robot. The voyage will be the first time Greenland’s glaciers — which make up the world’s…

Scientists repeatedly check the weather forecasts as they prepare aircraft for flight and perform last-minute checks on science instruments. There’s a large winter storm rolling in, but that’s exactly what these storm-chasing scientists are hoping for. The team is tracking storms across the Midwest and Eastern United States in two NASA planes equipped with scientific instruments to help understand the inner workings of winter storms as they form and develop. The team is flying two aircraft to investigate winter storms,…

Scientists identify key features in microbes that predict how warming affects carbon dioxide emissions. The Science Microbes play an important role in climate because they release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere when they eat. Bacteria and their main predators, protists, account for more than 40 times the biomass of all animals on Earth. As a result, they have a huge effect on carbon dioxide emissions. However, predicting the size of that effect and how global warming will affect microbial carbon…

Protected areas are among the most effective tools for preserving biodiversity. However, new protected areas are often created without considering existing ones. This can lead to an overrepresentation of the biophysical characteristics, such as temperature or topography, that define a certain area. A research group at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has now assessed a global analysis of the scope of protection of various biophysical conditions. Protected areas are important for maintaining populations of various species. They ensure that…

In a large-scale fundraising campaign, popular YouTubers like Mister Beast and Mark Rober are currently trying to rid the oceans of almost 14,000 tonnes of plastic waste. That’s about 0.15 per cent of the amount that ends up in the oceans every year. But it’s not just our waters that are full of plastic. A new study shows that the spread of nanoplastic through the air is a more widespread problem than previously thought. In a new study, Empa researcher…

Smoke from wildfires could increase ozone depletion in the upper layers of the atmosphere and thus further enlarge the ozone hole over the Arctic. This was recognized according to data from the international MOSAiC expedition, which studied the region around the North Pole in 2019/20. A connection between unusually high temperatures, severe droughts and increasing wildfires with a lot of smoke in the lower stratosphere and strong ozone depletion over the polar regions is likely. If this assumption is confirmed,…