For the first time, researchers have been able to obtain data from underneath Thwaites Glacier, also known as the “Doomsday Glacier”. They find that the supply of warm water to the glacier is larger than previously thought, triggering concerns of faster melting and accelerating ice flow. With the help of the uncrewed submarine Ran that made its way under Thwaites glacier front, the researchers have made a number of new discoveries. Professor Karen Heywood of the University of East Anglia…

The Tibetan Plateau, known as “the roof of the world”, has warmed more rapidly than global average in the past decades. The observed warming of the Tibetan Plateau since 1960s can be attributed to human activities, particularly greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, the Plateau may warm faster in the future than climate models projected, according to a study recently published in Environmental Research Letters. The Tibetan Plateau contains the largest volumes of ice outside the Arctic and Antarctic, feeding water to…

The year-to-year change in the amount of carbon taken up by Earth’s land ecosystems is primarily driven by variations in soil moisture which is affecting air humidity. This has been found by an international team of scientists including Markus Reichstein and Martin Jung from Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany. Surprisingly, variations in soil moisture affect land carbon uptake mostly indirectly, through mechanisms coupling land ecosystems and atmospheric properties. Earth’s land ecosystems absorb a large portion of carbon…

Technological progress is not possible without raw materials from mines – e-mobility or digitalization come to mind. However, in order to minimize the subsequent ecological damages of mining, a consortium led by Fraunhofer IKTS puts efficient technologies for treating mine and mining waters to the test. These are intended to purify contaminated water, so that it can be used as process water and additional recyclables can be recovered. For pilot tests under real conditions, the research association secured itself access…

– expanding genome engineering … In a new publication in Nature Communications, associate professor of Plant Science at the University of Maryland Yiping Qi continues to innovate genome editing and engineering in plants, with the ultimate goal of improving the efficiency of food production. His recent work contributes six novel variants of CRISPR-Cas12a that have never before been proven in plants, testing them first in rice as a major global crop. In addition to allowing for a much broader scope…

Intensity of phytoplankton production during Antarctic summer affects the structure of seafloor ecosystems. Understanding the evolution of the polar sea ice is not enough to study the effects of the climate change on marine ecosystems in Antarctic seafloors. It is also necessary to determine the intensity of phytoplankton local production during the Antarctic summer, as stated in a new study by a research team of the Faculty of Biology and the Biodiversity Research Institute (IRBio) of the University of Barcelona,…

Effects of CO2 increase were already apparent in the past century. “Based on field experiments with increased carbon dioxide concentration, artificial warming, and modified water supply, scientists understand quite well how future climate change will affect grassland vegetation. Such knowledge is largely missing for effects that already occurred in the last century,” says Hans Schnyder, Professor of Grassland at the TUM. Based on the Park Grass Experiment at Rothamsted, researchers have now shown that future predicted effects of climate change…

A new type of rock created during large and exceptionally hot volcanic eruptions has been discovered beneath the Pacific Ocean. An international team of researchers including the University of Leeds unearthed the previously unknown form of basalt after drilling through the Pacific ocean floor. The discovery suggests that ocean floor eruptions sourced in the Earth’s mantle were even hotter and more voluminous than previously thought. Report co-author is Dr Ivan Savov, of Leeds’ Institute of Geophysics and Tectonics, in the…

The surface of the moon is well mapped, but the same is not true for its subsurface. In preparation for future lunar missions, the European Space Agency (ESA) was looking for innovative ideas on how caves and lava tubes on the moon could be discovered, studied and measured. Scientists and students from Jacobs University Bremen are involved in one of the two concepts that have been accepted. Millions of craters cover the lunar surface. But photos also show steep faced…

New method illuminates shape of Alaskan quake A University of Tsukuba research team find that the irregular behavior of the conjugate fault system responsible for the 2018 Gulf of Alaska earthquake was linked to pre-existing features of the ocean floor. An earthquake is generally viewed to be caused by a rupture along a fault that is transmitted outward from its point of origin in a uniform, predictable pattern. Of course, given the complexity of the environments where these ruptures typically…

A new study shows how microplastics found in our daily personal care products can also host pathogens and boost antibiotic-resistant bacteria by up to 30 times once they wash down household drains and enter municipal wastewater treatment plants. It’s estimated that an average-sized wastewater treatment plant serving roughly 400,000 residents will discharge up to 2,000,000 microplastic particles into the environment each day. Yet, researchers are still learning the environmental and human health impact of these ultra-fine plastic particles, less than…

Researchers analyse data from the last millennium In the future, droughts could be even more severe than those that struck parts of Germany in 2018. An analysis of climate data from the last millennium shows that several factors have to coincide to produce a megadrought: not only rising temperatures, but also the amount of solar radiation, as well as certain meteorological and ocean-circulation conditions in the North Atlantic, like those expected to arise in the future. A group of researchers…

The study results are based on investigations of repeated mass movements and are expected to benefit planning, maintenance, and development of transportation infrastructure in affected areas. Mass movements such as landslides and hill-slope debris flows cause billions of euros in economic damage around the world every year. Between 20 and 80 million euros are spent annually from the disaster fund to repair disaster damage in Austria, 15 to 50 percent of which is attributable to mud flows and landslides. Now,…

Nature study finds transform faults play active role in shaping ocean floors. Forces acting inside the Earth have been constantly reshaping the continents and ocean basins over millions of years. What Alfred Wegener published as an idea in 1915 has finally been accepted since the 1960s, providing a unifying view about our planet. The fact that the theory of plate tectonics took so long to gain acceptance had two simple reasons. First, the geological formations that are most important for…

Experts explore for the first time life on the seafloor in a region formerly covered by thick ice Roughly two weeks ago, a massive iceberg calved from the Antarctic Ice Sheet. As the only research vessel nearby, the Polarstern took the opportunity to enter the area between the iceberg and the Brunt Ice Shelf. The first images from the seafloor reveal an amazing level of biodiversity in a region that was covered by thick ice for decades. The sediment samples…

Streetlights alter the number of flower visits by insects not just at night, but also during the daytime. Artificial light at night thus indirectly affects the entire plant-pollinator community, with unknown consequences for functioning of the ecosystem, as researchers from the University of Zurich and Agroscope have proven for the first time. The use of artificial light at night around the world has increased enormously in recent years, causing adverse effects on the survival and reproduction of nocturnal organisms. Artificial…