Mercury is released by coal combustion and mining activities to the atmosphere as a gaseous pollutant. Following global dispersal, mercury deposits partly to the ocean where it accumulates within the marine food chain—with grave consequences for human health and nutrition. A new study published in Nature on 29 September 2021 reveals that, contrary to earlier hypotheses, rainwater is not the primary deposition vector of this mercury; rather, the ocean breathes mercury, so to speak.1 This research also suggests that the…

The “North Sea Wrecks” team from the German Maritime Museum (DSM) / Leibniz Institute for Maritime History in Bremerhaven was on another research trip in the North Sea. Thanks to technical support from the German Aerospace Center (DLR), detailed images of four wrecks were obtained. They were at sea again: the researchers from the North Sea Wrecks (NSW) project, who are investigating the dangers posed by old World War II munitions at the bottom of the North Sea and the…

Researchers found that salinity changes as a result of water cycle changes lead to less surface warming. A new study led by scientists at the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, in collaboration with scientists at Princeton University, shows that the intensification of global hydrological cycle drives more ocean heat uptake into the deep ocean and moderates the pace of global warming. As a result of a warming climate, the global water cycle becomes more…

Study helps to better assess the capacity of global ecosystems to adapt to climate and environmental change. Ecosystems on Earth’s land surface support multiple functions and services that are critical for society, like biomass production, vegetation’s efficiency of using sunlight and water, water retention and climate regulation, and ultimately food security. Climate and environmental changes, as well as anthropogenic impacts, are continuously threatening the provision of these functions. To understand how terrestrial ecosystems will respond to this threat, it is…

Unlike the Antarctic ozone hole that develops annually during austral spring (September, October, and November), Arctic ozone levels usually stay well above the ozone hole threshold. The Arctic stratospheric vortex is typically too warm for polar stratospheric clouds to form, which are a key ingredient in severe ozone depletion processes. Much stronger planetary wave activity occurs in the Northern Hemisphere than in the Southern Hemisphere, which generates stronger dynamical heating to warm the stratospheric Arctic vortex. Despite this, polar meteorologists…

Rhogostoma minus is the most common amoeba in wastewater treatment plants worldwide. It can serve as a host for bacteria of the order Legionellales, which includes pathogens such as Legionella pneumophila, the cause of Legionnaires’ disease. Researchers from Professor Michael Bonkowski’s working group at the University of Cologne’s Institute of Zoology have found that Rhogostoma minus is the most common amoeba in wastewater treatment plants worldwide and also serves as a host for Legionellales. The Legionellales identified in the amoebae…

Negative trend continues – Comparatively moderate shrinkage of ice extent in 2021. The sea ice extent in the Arctic Ocean reached its annual minimum of 4.81 million square kilometres on 12 September 2021. As such, the 2021 Arctic sea-ice minimum comes in at 12th place on the negative list for absolute values. Sea-ice extent in September is one of the strongest signs of climate change, experts pointed out in the recently published 6th Assessment Report of Working Group I of…

Lava samples have revealed a new truth about the geological make-up of the Earth’s crust and could have implications for volcanic eruption early warning systems, a University of Queensland-led study has found. UQ volcanologist Dr Teresa Ubide said it was previously understood that cooled lava from so-called ‘hot spot’ volcanoes was ‘pristine’ magma from the melting mantle, tens of kilometres under the Earth’s surface. “This isn’t quite the case – we’ve been misled, geologically deceived,” Dr Ubide said. “For decades, we have…

Geophysicists solve a key problem in physics and provide results that can be applied in such diverse areas as planetary research and 3-D printing / publication in ‘PNAS’. The prediction of the angle of repose for raised mounds of dry cohesive granular material is a long-standing problem in the natural sciences and in industry. Using numerical (particle-based) simulations, geophysicists Dr Eric Parteli (until 2020 at the University of Cologne, now at the University of Duisburg-Essen) and Filip Elekes (University of…

Seismic instruments generally have a built-in navigation-grade single-mode GPS receiver. During the operation of the station, while recording seismic data, the equipment also records the location of the station at regular intervals. Broadband seismic instruments generally record the locations of stations every hour (or every day), while short-period seismometers often record the locations of stations at shorter intervals (for example, every ten minutes). Although the positioning accuracy of these single-mode GPS receivers is not as good as that of geodetic…

A publication saw light in Chemosensors. Mycotoxins are secondary metabolites of fungi that contaminate agriculture products. Their release in the environment can cause severe damage to human health. Aptasensors are compact analytical devices that are intended for the fast and reliable detection of various species able to specifically interact with aptamers attached to the transducer surface. Among many others, mycotoxins are frequently mentioned as one of the most pertinent problems in food safety and human health control. They affect a…

… climate change will impact Antarctic seals differently. A New Zealand-led international study published today in Global Change Biology, reveals how climate change may impact seals in one of the most remote ocean regions in the world, the Weddell Sea. With funding from Pew Charitable Trusts, the University of Canterbury-based team engaged thousands of citizen scientists over a few years to search for Southern Ocean seals– crabeater and Weddell seals – using satellite images. “We found that Weddell and crabeater…

Surviving corals from past underwater heatwaves may be more tolerant of rising ocean temperatures, providing hope for conservation and restoration of reefs. Some coral communities are becoming more heat tolerant as ocean temperatures rise, offering hope for corals in a changing climate. After a series of marine heatwaves hit the Phoenix Islands Protected Area (PIPA) in the central Pacific Ocean, a new study finds the impact of heat stress on the coral communities lessened over time. While a 2002-2003 heatwave devastated coral…

Study with participation from Heidelberg shows that supervolcanoes remain dangerous long after erupting. Besides cosmic impacts, supervolcanic eruptions rank among the worst catastrophes in the Earth’s history, like that of the Toba volcano on Sumatra (Indonesia) approximately 75,000 years ago, which affected all of Southeast Asia and beyond. Eruptions of a similar magnitude are known worldwide only from Yellowstone (USA) and a few other volcanoes that were active within the current geological period of the Quaternary. Until now, scientists assumed…

Landslides are recurrent geological phenomena on Earth that cause heavy casualties and property losses annually. While teleseismic receiver functions have been widely used for crust-mantle structure analysis, they have rarely been employed for inverting shallow structures, mainly because of their lower sensitivity due to Earth’s attenuation of high-frequency waves. Now researchers have pioneered the use of the high-frequency receiver functions of local earthquakes to invert the Poisson’s ratios and shear-wave velocities of the Quaternary Xishancun landslide. Situated in the town…

The solar wind-magnetosphere coupling and its dynamic process are the basic driving factors for space weather. To understand its physical connotation, it is necessary to understand the processes of global scale responses, mass and energy transportation, and the coupling between different regions. However, relying on single-point or multi-point in-situ measurements is not enough for grasping the global effects caused by the solar wind disturbance, which is the key to understand how the Sun affects and controls the plasma and space…