Solution Sets the Bar for Quantifying Carbon Budget and Credit. Carbon is everywhere. It’s in the atmosphere, in the oceans, in the soil, in our food, in our bodies. As the backbone of all organic molecules that make up life, carbon is a very accurate predictor of crop yields. And soil is the largest carbon pool on earth, playing an important role in keeping our climate stable. As such, computational models that track carbon as it cycles through an agroecosystem…

In a study led by the University of Bonn, geologists compared the spatial and temporal distribution of methane concentrations in the air of northern Siberia with geological maps. The result: the methane concentrations in the air after last year’s heat wave indicate that increased gas emissions came from limestone formations. Which effects did the heat wave of summer 2020 have in Siberia? In a study led by the University of Bonn, geologists compared the spatial and temporal distribution of methane…

The rise and fall of sea levels influence the likelihood of volcanic eruptions on the Greek island of Santorini, new research led by Oxford Brookes University has discovered. Analysing the timings of eruptions over hundreds of thousands of years, the researchers found that a 40 metre fall in sea level is a crucial point beyond which eruptions are more likely to occur. The findings could have implications for millions of people living on volcanic islands around the world. Santorini –…

Carbon dioxide is one of the main drivers of climate change – which means that we need to reduce Carbon dioxide emissions in the future. Fraunhofer researchers are highlighting a possible way to lower these emissions: They use the greenhouse gas as a raw material, for instance to produce plastics. To do this, they first produce methanol and formic acid from carbon dioxide, which they convert via microorganisms into building blocks for polymers and the like. As fossil-based raw materials…

Plastic-free water sports… Stand-up paddling has become a popular sport. However, conventional surfboards are made of petroleum-based materials such as epoxy resin and polyurethane. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Wood Research, Wilhelm-Klauditz-Institut, WKI, want to replace plastic boards with sustainable sports equipment: They are developing a stand-up paddle board that is made from one hundred percent renewable raw materials. The ecological lightweight material can be used in many ways, such as in the construction of buildings, cars and ships….

A long-term hazard from flood water is often underestimated: The raging rivers swirl up pollutants out of their sediments that stem from environmental pollution decades or centuries ago. Such harmful substances can not only cause ecological damage in the river. They can also deposit themselves on flooded areas and affect crops, grazing livestock and humans. This has been pointed out by an international research team in a review of scientific studies on flood events throughout the world. The paper has…

Climate models predict that rainfall variability over wet regions globally will be greatly enhanced by global warming, causing wide swings between dry and wet conditions, according to a joint study by the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Met Office, the UK’s national meteorological service. This study was published in Science Advances on July 28th 2021. Rainfall plays an important part of our daily life. More leads to floods, less to drought. It has been…

Surrounding land reacts to fluctuations in the water level. The Dead Sea is shrinking. There are many reasons for this: climate change is a contributing factor, as is human overuse of water as a resource. The sinking water level has a number of dangerous consequences. For example, fresh groundwater flowing downstream causes salts to dissolve in the soil, resulting in sinkholes. But it also leads to large-scale subsidence of the surrounding land surface. Researchers from an interdisciplinary team of several…

Benthic filamentous algae are an emerging threat to clear lakes worldwide. Many of the world’s clear lakes are affected by a new phenomenon: At the shore, where people play or swim, the lake bottom is covered with green carpets of algae. These are mass accumulations of filamentous algae that have recently appeared even in remote mountain lakes as well as in some large lakes such as Lake Tahoe (USA) and Lake Baikal (Russia). An international group of lake researchers from…

The Hallertau is Germany’s largest hop-growing region. During harvesting, hop bine chaff is left over, which is converted into environmentally friendly bio natural gas on site in a biogas plant. But that is not the end of the utilization chain for this fiber plant. Researchers at the German Institutes of Textile and Fiber Research Denkendorf (DITF) have used the plant-containing biogas digestate to produce a composite material that can be used to make furniture. Laminates are in great demand in…

As temperatures rise, the risk of devastating forest fires is increasing. Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) are using artificial intelligence to estimate the long-term impact that an increased number of forest fires will have on forest ecosystems. Their simulations show how Yellowstone National Park in the USA could change by the end of the century. Forest fires are already a global threat. “But considering how climate change is progressing, we are probably only at the beginning of…

Seismic waves passing through the ground near Longyearbyen in the Adventdalen valley, Svalbard, Norway have been slowing down steadily over the past three years, most likely due to permafrost warming in the Arctic valley. The trend, reported in a new study published in Seismological Research Letters, demonstrates how seismic monitoring can be used to track permafrost stability under global climate change. The study is part of a focus section in an upcoming issue of the journal on Arctic and Antarctic…

Supervolcano fed from Earth’s mantle caused crustal plates to rotate. The plates of the Earth’s crust perform complicated movements that can be attributed to quite simple mechanisms. That is the short version of the explanation of a rift that began to tear the world apart over a length of several thousand kilometers 105 million years ago. The scientific explanation appears today in the journal Nature Geoscience. According to the paper, a super volcano split the Earth’s crust over a length…

Conditions in the tropical ocean affect weather patterns worldwide. The most well-known examples are El Niño or La Niña events, but scientists believe other key elements of the tropical climate remain undiscovered. In a study recently published in Geophysical Research Letters, scientists from the University of Washington and NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory use remotely-piloted sailboats to gather data on cold air pools, or pockets of cooler air that form below tropical storm clouds. “Atmospheric cold pools are cold air…

From above, the Antarctic Ice Sheet might look like a calm, perpetual ice blanket that has covered Antarctica for millions of years. But the ice sheet can be thousands of meters deep at its thickest, and it hides hundreds of meltwater lakes where its base meets the continent’s bedrock. Deep below the surface, some of these lakes fill and drain continuously through a system of waterways that eventually drain into the ocean. Now, with the most advanced Earth-observing laser instrument…

Plants rotting in the soil are valuable for more than just compost. In fact, plant residues play a crucial role in keeping carbon in the soil, which is important for reducing the planet’s CO2 emissions. This is the conclusion of a new study by researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and other institutions. Soils are a key player in the global carbon cycle, storing more than twice as much carbon as the atmosphere. Researchers have now studied the…