Aquatic ‘Dead Zones’ Contributing to Climate Change
University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science oceanographer Dr. Lou Codispoti.
As oxygen-deprived waters increase, they emit more greenhouse gasses into atmosphere.
The increased frequency and intensity of oxygen-deprived “dead zones” along the world’s coasts can negatively impact environmental conditions in far more than just local waters. In the March 12 edition of the journal Science, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science oceanographer Dr. Lou Codispoti explains that the increased amount of nitrous oxide (N2O) produced in low-oxygen (hypoxic) waters can elevate concentrations in the atmosphere, further exacerbating the impacts of global warming and contributing to ozone “holes” that cause an increase in our exposure to harmful UV radiation.
“As the volume of hypoxic waters move towards the sea surface and expands along our coasts, their ability to produce the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide increases,” explains Dr. Codispoti of the UMCES Horn Point Laboratory. “With low-oxygen waters currently producing about half of the ocean’s net nitrous oxide, we could see an additional significant atmospheric increase if these ‘dead zones’ continue to expand.”
Although present in minute concentrations in Earth’s atmosphere, nitrous oxide is a highly potent greenhouse gas and is becoming a key factor in stratospheric ozone destruction. For the past 400,000 years, changes in atmospheric N2O appear to have roughly paralleled changes in carbon dioxide CO2 and have had modest impacts on climate, but this may change. Just as human activities may be causing an unprecedented rise in the terrestrial N2O sources, marine N2O production may also rise substantially as a result of nutrient pollution, warming waters and ocean acidification. Because the marine environment is a net producer of N2O, much of this production will be lost to the atmosphere, thus further intensifying its climatic impact. (more…)
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New Study Debunks Myths About Amazon Rain Forests
Arindam Samanta, the study's lead author from Boston University.
A new NASA-funded study has concluded that Amazon rain forests were remarkably unaffected in the face of once-in-a-century drought in 2005, neither dying nor thriving, contrary to a previously published report and claims by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
“We found no big differences in the greenness level of these forests between drought and non-drought years, which suggests that these forests may be more tolerant of droughts than we previously thought,” said Arindam Samanta, the study’s lead author from Boston University.
The comprehensive study published in the current issue of the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters used the latest version of the NASA MODIS satellite data to measure the greenness of these vast pristine forests over the past decade.
A study published in the journal Science in 2007 claimed that these forests actually thrive from drought because of more sunshine under cloud-less skies typical of drought conditions. The new study found that those results were flawed and not reproducible. (more…)
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ARS Sends Third Seed Shipment to Norway Seed Vault
A shipment of seed sent by the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) earlier this month to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway included a wild Russian strawberry that an expeditionary team braved bears and volcanoes to collect.
The seed shipment–ARS’ third since January 2008–included wild and cultivated soybeans, semi-dwarf wheat and rice cultivars, and other samples maintained in the agency’s National Plant Germplasm System (NPGS). ARS’ goal, over the next 10 to 15 years, is have the majority of the system’s 511,000 collections stored in the vault, which is administered by Norway’s Nordic Genetic Resources Center together with the Global Crop Diversity Trust.
The vault itself is built into a mountainside on Spitsbergen Island, located midway between Norway’s northernmost coast and the North Pole. With this third U.S. shipment, the facility will house more than 500,000 plant accessions obtained from around the world. However, the total storage capacity is likely 10 times that amount, notes plant physiologist David Ellis with ARS’ National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation in Fort Collins, Colo. Ellis coordinates the shipments of seed obtained from multiple ARS locations. (more…)
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Carbon Emissions ‘Outsourced’ to Developing Countries
China is by far the largest "exporter" of carbon dioxide emissions, as seen in this map of the net flow of emissions embodied in trade among the major exporting and importing countries. Arrows indicate direction and magnitude of flow; numbers are megatons (millions of tons). (Steven Davis/Carnegie Institution for Science)
A new study by scientists at the Carnegie Institution finds that over a third of carbon dioxide emissions associated with consumption of goods and services in many developed countries are actually emitted outside their borders. Some countries, such as Switzerland, “outsource” over half of their carbon dioxide emissions, primarily to developing countries. The study finds that, per person, about 2.5 tons of carbon dioxide are consumed in the U.S. but produced somewhere else. For Europeans, the figure can exceed four tons per person. Most of these emissions are outsourced to developing countries, especially China.
“Instead of looking at carbon dioxide emissions only in terms of what is released inside our borders, we also looked at the amount of carbon dioxide released during the production of the things that we consume,” says co-author Ken Caldeira, a researcher in the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology.
Caldeira and lead author Steven Davis, also at Carnegie, used published trade data from 2004 to create a global model of the flow of products across 57 industry sectors and 113 countries or regions. By allocating carbon emissions to particular products and sources, the researchers were able to calculate the net emissions “imported” or “exported” by specific countries. (more…)
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Environmental Engineers Receive Award for Investigation of Lead Poisoning of Washington D.C. Children
Marc Edwards, Virginia Tech professor of civil and environmental engineering, is the recipient of the Editor’s Choice Award for Best Science Paper of 2009 in Environmental Science and Technology (ES&T) for his investigative work that demonstrated a major increase in childhood lead poisoning of Washington D.C. children during the 2001-2004 lead-in-water crisis. (Virginia Tech Photo)
Marc Edwards and Simoni Triantafyllidou of Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering, along with colleague Dr. Dana Best of Children’s National Medical Center, published a 2009 article in Environmental Science and Technology (ES&T) that demonstrated a major increase in childhood lead poisoning of Washington D.C. children during the 2001-2004 lead-in-water crisis. The research contradicted years of government assertions that no residents in Washington D.C. had been harmed by years of unnecessary exposure to very high levels of lead in their potable water.
These discoveries prompted investigations by Congress and the D.C. Office of Inspector General into potential wrong-doing by the government agencies that made the claims.
ES&T has now selected the paper written by Edwards of Blacksburg, Va., Triantafyllidou of Veria, Greece, and Best of Washington, DC, as the Editor’s Choice Award for Best Science Paper of 2009, and is presenting the award today. ES&T publishes nearly 1500 papers annually. (more…)
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Methane Releases from Arctic Shelf May Be Much Larger and Faster Than Anticipated
A section of the Arctic Ocean seafloor that holds vast stores of frozen methane is showing signs of instability and widespread venting of the powerful greenhouse gas, according to the findings of an international research team led by University of Alaska Fairbanks scientists Natalia Shakhova and Igor Semiletov.
The research results, published in the March 5 edition of the journal Science, show that the permafrost under the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, long thought to be an impermeable barrier sealing in methane, is perforated and is starting to leak large amounts of methane into the atmosphere. Release of even a fraction of the methane stored in the shelf could trigger abrupt climate warming.
“The amount of methane currently coming out of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is comparable to the amount coming out of the entire world’s oceans,” said Shakhova, a researcher at UAF’s International Arctic Research Center. “Subsea permafrost is losing its ability to be an impermeable cap.”
Methane is a greenhouse gas more than 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide. It is released from previously frozen soils in two ways. When the organic material (which contains carbon) stored in permafrost thaws, it begins to decompose and, under anaerobic conditions, gradually releases methane. Methane can also be stored in the seabed as methane gas or methane hydrates and then released as subsea permafrost thaws. These releases can be larger and more abrupt than those that result from decomposition. (more…)
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Chemicals That Eased One Environmental Problem May Worsen Another
Forests are being damaged by acid rain, which contains a corrosive ingredient that may result from the breakdown of chemicals introduced to help protect Earth's ozone layer. (Wikimedia Commons)
Chemicals that helped solve a global environmental crisis in the 1990s — the hole in Earth’s protective ozone layer — may be making another problem — acid rain — worse, scientists are reporting. Their study on the chemicals that replaced the ozone-destroying chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) once used in aerosol spray cans, air conditioners, refrigerators, and other products, appears in ACS’ Journal of Physical Chemistry A, a weekly publication.
Jeffrey Gaffney, Carrie J. Christiansen, Shakeel S. Dalal, Alexander M. Mebel and Joseph S. Francisco point out that hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) emerged as CFC replacements because they do not damage the ozone layer. However, studies later suggested the need for a replacement for the replacements, showing that HCFCs act like super greenhouse gases, 4,500 times more potent than carbon dioxide. The new study adds to those concerns, raising the possibility that HCFCs may break down in the atmosphere to form oxalic acid, one of the culprits in acid rain.
They used a computer model to show how HCFCs could form oxalic acid via a series of chemical reactions high in the atmosphere. The model, they suggest, could have broader uses in helping to determine whether replacements for the replacements are as eco-friendly as they appear before manufacturers spend billions of dollars in marketing them.
Download full text article:
http://pubs.acs.org/stoken/presspac/presspac/full/10.1021/jp9045116
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New Estimate of Glacier Melt Less Than Previously Thought
NAU geographer Erik Schiefer in British Columbia studying glacier melt. (Photo by Karl Schiefer)
The melting of glaciers is well documented, but when looking at the rate at which they have been retreating, a team of international researchers steps back and says not so fast.
Previous studies have largely overestimated mass loss from Alaskan glaciers over the past 40-plus years, according to Erik Schiefer, a Northern Arizona University geographer who coauthored a paper in the February issue of Nature Geoscience that recalculates glacier melt in Alaska.
The research team, led by Étienne Berthier of the Laboratory for Space Studies in Geophysics and Oceanography at the Université de Toulouse in France, says that glacier melt in Alaska between 1962 and 2006 contributed about one-third less to sea-level rise than previously estimated.
Schiefer said melting glaciers in Alaska originally were thought to contribute about .0067 inches to sea-level rise per year. The team’s new calculations put that number closer to .0047 inches per year. The numbers sound small, but as Schiefer said, “It adds up over the decades.” (more…)
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Researchers Evaluate Climate Fluctuations from 115,000 Years Ago
Russian and German researchers took sediment probes of four silted up lakes in Central and Eastern Europe in order to reconstruct the climate of the Eemian Interglacial 115,000 years ago. At this time the Eemian Interglacial ended and was followed by the Weichselian Glacial which ended 15,000 years ago. (Frank W. Junge/SAW)
At the end of the last interglacial epoch, around 115,000 years ago, there were significant climate fluctuations. In Central and Eastern Europe, the slow transition from the Eemian Interglacial to the Weichselian Glacial was marked by a growing instability in vegetation trends with possibly at least two warming events. This is the finding of German and Russian climate researchers who have evaluated geochemical and pollen analyses of lake sediments in Saxony-Anhalt, Brandenburg and Russia. Writing in Quaternary International, scientists from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), the Saxon Academy of Sciences (SAW) in Leipzig and the Russian Academy of Sciences say that a short warming event at the very end of the last interglacial period marked the final transition to the ice age.
The Eemian Interglacial was the last interglacial epoch before the current one, the Holocene. It began around 126,000 years ago, ended around 115,000 years ago and is named after the river Eem in the Netherlands. The followed Weichselian Glacial ended around 15,000 years ago is the most recent glacial epoch named after the Polish river Weichsel. At its peak around 21,000 years ago, the glaciers stretched as far as the south of Berlin (Brandenburg Stadium). (more…)
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Chile Quake Occurred in Zone of “Increased Stress”
The massive, 8.8-magnitude earthquake that struck Chile Feb. 27 occurred in an offshore zone that was under increased stress caused by a 1960 quake of magnitude 9.5, according to geologist Jian Lin of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).
The earthquake, some 300-500 times more powerful than the magnitude 7.0 quake in Haiti Jan. 12, ruptured at the boundary between the Nazca and South American tectonic plates. The temblor was triggered when the “subducting” Nazca plate was thrust under the South American plate, uplifting a large patch of the seafloor and prompting tsunami warnings throughout the Pacific Ocean. The two plates are converging at a rate of 80 mm per year, says Lin, “which is one of the fastest rates on Earth.”
Lin and colleague Ross S. Stein of the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Ca., have studied the region extensively, and alerted the scientific community to a build up of stress along the interface of the two plates in a 2004 paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research.
“In 2004, we calculated that the 1960 magnitude 9.5 earthquake has caused large stress increase on both the northern and southern ends of its rupture,” said Lin. That quake, centered a few hundred kilometers south of Saturday’s earthquake, was the largest instrumentally recorded earthquake in the world. It killed 1,655 people in southern Chile and unleashed a tsunami that crossed the Pacific, killing 61 people in Hawaii and 185 in Japan. Saturday’s “quake picked up where the 1960 rupture ended in the north,” Lin said. (more…)
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Study Examines How US Industry Uses Scarce Water Resources
Chris T. Hendrickson, the Duquesne Light Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Just think, every time you feed Fido or flip a spoonful of sugar into your coffee cup, you use more than 300 gallons of water.
Checking the amounts of water it takes to make a $1 worth of sugar, cat and dog food or milk is part of a comprehensive study by Carnegie Mellon University researchers to document American industry’s thirst for this scarce resource.
Chris T. Hendrickson, the Duquesne Light Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, said the study shows that most water use by industry occurs indirectly as a result of processing, such as packaging and shipping of food crops to the supermarket, rather than direct use, like watering crops.
The study found it takes almost 270 gallons of water to produce a $1 worth of sugar; 140 gallons to make $1 worth of milk; and 200 gallons of water to make $1 worth of cat and dog food.
“The study gives us a way to look at how we might use water more efficiently and allows us to hone in on the sectors that use the most water so we can start generating ideas and technologies for better management,” said Hendrickson, co-director of Carnegie Mellon’s Green Design Institute, a major interdisciplinary research effort aimed at making an impact on environmental quality through design.
Hendrickson, along with civil engineering Ph.D. candidates Michael Blackhurst and Jordi Vidal, said his team is trying to help industries track and make better management decisions about how they use water, which makes up more than 72 percent of the earth’s land surface.
The study, featured in the Feb. 23 edition of the journal Environmental Science & Technology, reports that a lot of water consumption is hidden because companies don’t use all the water directly.
“We discovered that among 96 percent of the sectors evaluated, indirect use exceeded direct uses throughout the supply chain,” Hendrickson said.
But Hendrickson and Blackhurst are quick to report that their data are national findings and do not apply regionally. In addition, they could only track withdrawals, and were unable to determine how much water was returned to the system or recycled.
“That is a big deal because water that gets degraded during industrial processes might not be suitable for future uses,” Hendrickson said. “Effective water management is critical for social welfare and our fragile ecosystems.”
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Small Family Farms in Tropics Can Feed the Hungry and Preserve Biodiversity
University of Michigan researcher John Vandermeer.
Conventional wisdom among many ecologists is that industrial-scale agriculture is the best way to produce lots of food while preserving biodiversity in the world’s remaining tropical forests. But two University of Michigan researchers reject that idea and argue that small, family-owned farms may provide a better way to meet both goals.
In many tropical zones around the world, small family farms can match or exceed the productivity of industrial-scale operations, according to U-M researchers Ivette Perfecto and John Vandermeer. At the same time, smaller diversified farms are more likely to help preserve biodiversity in tropical regions undergoing massive amounts of deforestation, Perfecto and Vandermeer conclude in a paper to be published online Feb. 22 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
“Most of the tropical forest that’s left is fragmented, and what you have are patches of forest surrounded by agriculture,” said Perfecto, a professor at the School of Natural Resources and Environment. “If you want to maintain biodiversity in those patches of forest, then the key is to allow organisms to migrate between the patches.
“And small-scale family farms that adopt sustainable agricultural technologies are more likely to favor migration of species than a huge, monocultural plantation of soybeans or sugar cane or some other crop.”
Some ecologists have suggested that the history of eastern North American forests provides a preview of what’s likely to happen in the tropics. European colonization of eastern North America led to massive deforestation that accompanied the expansion of agriculture. Later, industrialization drew people to cities from the rural areas, and the forests recovered. (more…)
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Ice Shelves Disappearing on Antarctic Peninsula
This image shows ice-front retreat in part of the southern Antarctic Peninsula from 1947 to 2009. USGS scientists are studying coastal and glacier change along the entire Antarctic coastline. The southern portion of the Antarctic Peninsula is one area studied as part of this project. (U.S. Geological Survey)
Ice shelves are retreating in the southern section of the Antarctic Peninsula due to climate change. This could result in glacier retreat and sea-level rise if warming continues, threatening coastal communities and low-lying islands worldwide.
Research by the U.S. Geological Survey is the first to document that every ice front in the southern part of the Antarctic Peninsula has been retreating overall from 1947 to 2009, with the most dramatic changes occurring since 1990. The USGS previously documented that the majority of ice fronts on the entire Peninsula have also retreated during the late 20th century and into the early 21st century.
The ice shelves are attached to the continent and already floating, holding in place the Antarctic ice sheet that covers about 98 percent of the Antarctic continent. As the ice shelves break off, it is easier for outlet glaciers and ice streams from the ice sheet to flow into the sea. The transition of that ice from land to the ocean is what raises sea level.
“This research is part of a larger ongoing USGS project that is for the first time studying the entire Antarctic coastline in detail, and this is important because the Antarctic ice sheet contains 91 percent of Earth’s glacier ice,” said USGS scientist Jane Ferrigno. “The loss of ice shelves is evidence of the effects of global warming. We need to be alert and continually understand and observe how our climate system is changing.” (more…)
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Cultivating Food Security in Africa
By Danielle Nierenberg and Abdou Tenkouano
Want to flag (feel free to re-post) an opinion-editorial I co-wrote visiting the World Vegetable Center in Arusha, Tanzania with their director Abdou Tenkouano published today in the Kansas City Star. I am currently in Madagascar, traveling across Africa for the Worldwatch Insitute and blogging everyday on a site called “Nourishing the Planet” [http://blogs.worldwatch.org/nourishingtheplanet/]. I pasted the article below. All the best, Danielle Nierenberg (www.borderjumpers.org)
Cultivating food security in Africa
Kansas City Star
By Danielle Nierenberg and Abdou Tenkouano
As hunger and drought spread across Africa, a huge effort is underway to increase yields of staple crops, such as maize, wheat, cassava, and rice.
While these crops are important for food security, providing much-needed calories, they don’t provide much protein, vitamin A, thiamin, niacin, and other important vitamins and micronutrients—or taste. Yet, none of the staple crops would be palatable without vegetables.
Vegetables are less risk-prone to drought than staple crops that stay in the field for longer periods. Because vegetables typically have a shorter growing time, they can maximize scarce water supplies and soil nutrients better than crops such as maize, which need a lot of water and fertilizer.
Unfortunately, no country in Africa has a big focus on vegetable production. But that’s where AVRDC – The World Vegetable Center steps in. Since the 1990s, the Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center (based in Taiwan) has been working in Africa, with offices in Tanzania, Mali, Cameroon, and Madagascar, to breed cultivars that best suit farmers’ needs. (more…)
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New Institute to Target Dirty Marine Diesel
Kenneth Koo of Tai Chong Cheang Steamship Co. has pledged up to $4.1 million to fund research on reducing emissions and improving combustion efficiency in marine diesel engines.
A Hong Kong shipping executive has pledged up to $4.1 million to fund a research program at the University of Southern California to reduce emissions and improve combustion efficiency in engines.
Kenneth Koo of Tai Chong Cheang Steamship Co. (H.K.) Ltd (TCCHK) says collaboration between industry and academia is needed to substantially reduce the greenhouse gas emissions and harmful pollutants emitted by conventional large bore two-stroke single-acting marine diesel engines used by the world’s merchant shipping fleets.
“The best way to initiate change is to partner with an institution of higher learning,” says Koo, TCCHK’s group chairman and CEO. “Let’s come up with the designs that work and bang on the maritime walls of industry.”
The problem Koo wants to solve is significant. Most of the world’s merchant ships, including tankers, container ships, and bulk carriers, use large diesel engines that emit significant amounts of carbon dioxide and toxic pollutants.
Compounding the problem are the lower-priced, lower quality fuels typically used by merchant ships, as well as the modest emissions standards for their engines.
Koo intends to work with the USC Viterbi School of Engineering to establish the TCC Institute for Emissions Reduction from Marine Diesel Engines. The first phase of research will be conducted at USC, with the goal of producing lab-scale prototype technology that can be scaled up for eventual testing in actual full-size engines. (more…)
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Geoengineering Solutions to Environmental Problems Could Miss Mark
Arizona State University engineering professor Brad Allenby.
The adage says that to discover the right solutions to a problem you first have to ask the right questions.
As Arizona State University engineering professor Brad Allenby sees it, our search for technological solutions to large-scale environmental problems sometimes gets off on the wrong track largely because we’re posing the wrong questions.
Particularly in the debates about how to respond to atmospheric greenhouse gas buildup, climate change and humankind’s impact on the global environment, Allenby says, “We are often framing the discussion from narrow and overly simplistic perspectives, but what we are dealing with are systems that are highly complex. As a result, the policy solutions we come up with don’t match the challenges we are trying to respond to.”
Allenby will offer his recommendations for reframing the approach to such challenges in his Feb. 19 presentation, “Technological Change and Earth Systems: A Critique of Geoengineering,” at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Allenby is a professor in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, a part of ASU’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering. (more…)
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Ocean Geoengineering Scheme No Easy Fix for Global Warming
This map displays simulated additional surface warming (in Celsius) for the year 2100 caused by the temporary use of artificial upwelling in the green areas for the time period 2011-2060. (IFM-GEOMAR)
Pumping nutrient-rich water up from the deep ocean to boost algal growth in sunlit surface waters and draw carbon dioxide down from the atmosphere has been touted as a way of ameliorating global warming. However, a new study led by Professor Andreas Oschlies of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (IFM-GEOMAR) in Kiel, Germany, pours cold water on the idea.
“Computer simulations show that climatic benefits of the proposed geo-engineering scheme would be modest, with the potential to exacerbate global warming should it fail,” said study co-author Dr Andrew Yool of the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS).
If international governmental policies fail to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide to levels needed to keep the impacts of human-induced climate change within acceptable limits it may necessary to move to ‘Plan B’. This could involve the implementation of one or more large-scale geo-engineering schemes proposed for reducing the carbon dioxide increase in the atmosphere. (more…)
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A Breakthrough in the Search for Greener Plastics
Research leader Dr Charlotte Williams is a champion of the widespread application of biomass to make fuels and materials.
Food packaging and other disposable plastic items could soon be composted at home along with organic waste thanks to a new sugar-based polymer.
The degradable polymer is made from sugars known as lignocellulosic biomass, which come from non-food crops such as fast-growing trees and grasses, or renewable biomass from agricultural or food waste.
It is being developed at Imperial College London by a team of Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council scientists led by Dr Charlotte Williams.
The search for greener plastics, especially for single use items such as food packaging, is the subject of significant research worldwide. “It’s spurred on not only from an environmental perspective, but also for economic and supply reasons,” explains Dr Williams.
Around 7% of worldwide oil and gas resources are consumed in plastics manufacture, with worldwide production exceeding 150 million tons per year. Almost 99% of plastics are formed from fossil fuels.
“Our key breakthrough was in finding a way of using a non-food crop to form a polymer, as there are ethical issues around using food sources in this way,” said Williams. Current biorenewable* plastics use crops such as corn or sugar beet. (more…)
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Geoengineering and the Carbon Cycle Before Humans
Geoengineering — deliberate manipulation of the Earth’s climate to slow or reverse global warming — has gained a foothold in the climate change discussion. But before effective action can be taken, the Earth’s natural biogeochemical cycles must be better understood.
Two Northwestern University studies, both published online recently by Nature Geoscience, contribute new — and related — clues as to what drove large-scale changes to the carbon cycle nearly 100 million years ago. Both research teams conclude that a massive amount of volcanic activity introduced carbon dioxide and sulfur into the atmosphere, which in turn had a significant impact on the carbon cycle, oxygen levels in the oceans and marine plants and animals.
Both teams studied organic carbon-rich sediments from the Western Interior Seaway, an ancient seabed stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean, to learn more about a devastating event 94.5 million years ago when oxygen levels in the oceans dropped so low that one-third of marine life died.
The authors of the first paper, titled “Volcanic triggering of a biogeochemical cascade during Oceanic Anoxic Event 2,” reveal that before oxygen levels dropped so precipitously there was a massive increase in oceanic sulfate levels. Their conclusion is based on analyses of the stable isotopes of sulfur in sedimentary minerals from the central basin of the Western Interior Seaway, located in Colorado. (more…)
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Climate Change Will Lead to Fewer Traffic Accidents in UK
Anna Andersson at the Department of Earth Sciences Centre, Physical Geography, University of Gothenburg. (Credit: Gothenburg University)
Climate change will lead to fewer traffic accidents in West Midlands, UK. Research from the University of Gothenburg estimates climate change to decrease the number of days with temperatures below zero degrees in West Midlands. It will also reduce the number of traffic accidents – and the need for winter road maintenance may decrease by almost 40 percent.
A study lead by Anna Andersson explores the link between winter road conditions and traffic accidents in Sweden and in West Midlands, UK. Andersson considers four different types of slipperiness, from snowy and icy roads to above-zero temperatures with slippery ice patches, and how climate change may affect these conditions in the next 90 years.
Andersson concludes that by the 2080s, West Midlands will have an average of 28 frosty days per year compared to today’s 69. Theoretically, this will reduce the number of traffic accidents by 43%. It may also lead to a decrease in the need for winter road maintenance by 38%.
However, the total number of accidents is not determined entirely by the number of below-zero days per year, since the road conditions are in fact the most dangerous at temperatures close to zero.
‘Roads can still be dangerous when the temperature rises above zero. When we don’t think it’s slippery, and even the thermometer tells us it’s not slippery, we tend to drive as if it were summer roads. But temperatures around zero often lead to slippery spots, increasing the risk for accidents’, says Andersson, at the Department of Earth Sciences.
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Free Trade, Loss of Support Systems Crippling Food Production in Africa
A small rice mill in Cote d'Ivoire, West Africa, offers possible job opportunities for local residents, waiting here in hope of getting work operating pushcarts. (Photo courtesy of Oregon State University)
Despite good intentions, the push to privatize government functions and insistence upon “free trade” that is too often unfair has caused declining food production, increased poverty and a hunger crisis for millions of people in many African nations, researchers conclude in a new study.
Market reforms that began in the mid-1980s and were supposed to aid economic growth have actually backfired in some of the poorest nations in the world, and just in recent years led to multiple food riots, scientists report today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a professional journal.
“Many of these reforms were designed to make countries more efficient, and seen as a solution to failing schools, hospitals and other infrastructure,” said Laurence Becker, an associate professor of geosciences at Oregon State University. “But they sometimes eliminated critical support systems for poor farmers who had no car, no land security, made $1 a day and had their life savings of $600 hidden under a mattress.
“These people were then asked to compete with some of the most efficient agricultural systems in the world, and they simply couldn’t do it,” Becker said. “With tariff barriers removed, less expensive imported food flooded into countries, some of which at one point were nearly self-sufficient in agriculture. Many people quit farming and abandoned systems that had worked in their cultures for centuries.” (more…)
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Team Finds Subtropical Waters Flushing Through Greenland Fjord
Fiamma Straneo from the physical oceanography department at Woods Hole Oceaonographic Institution, at work on the deck of the Arctic Sunrise. (© Greenpeace/ Nick Cobbing)
Waters from warmer latitudes — or subtropical waters — are reaching Greenland’s glaciers, driving melting and likely triggering an acceleration of ice loss, reports a team of researchers led by Fiamma Straneo, a physical oceanographer from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).
“This is the first time we’ve seen waters this warm in any of the fjords in Greenland,” says Straneo. “The subtropical waters are flowing through the fjord very quickly, so they can transport heat and drive melting at the end of the glacier.”
Greenland’s ice sheet, which is two-miles thick and covers an area about the size of Mexico, has lost mass at an accelerated rate over the last decade. The ice sheet’s contribution to sea level rise during that time frame doubled due to increased melting and, to a greater extent, the widespread acceleration of outlet glaciers around Greenland.
While melting due to warming air temperatures is a known event, scientists are just beginning to learn more about the ocean’s impact — in particular, the influence of currents — on the ice sheet.
“Among the mechanisms that we suspected might be triggering this acceleration are recent changes in ocean circulation in the North Atlantic, which are delivering larger amounts of subtropical waters to the high latitudes,” says Straneo. But a lack of observations and measurements from Greenland’s glaciers prior to the acceleration made it difficult to confirm. (more…)
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Chemists Create Synthetic ‘Gene-Like’ Crystals for Carbon Dioxide Capture
UCLA chemists Omar M. Yaghi and Hexiang Deng led a team that created three-dimensional synthetic DNA-like crystals that have a sequence of information which is believed to code for carbon capture. The discovery, published in the journal Science, could result in a new way to capture heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions and could lead to cleaner energy. (CNSI, UCLA–Department of Energy Institute of Genomics and Proteomics)
UCLA chemists report creating a synthetic “gene” that could capture heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions, which contribute to global warming, rising sea levels and the increased acidity of oceans.
The research appears in the Feb. 12 issue of the journal Science.
“We created three-dimensional, synthetic DNA-like crystals,” said UCLA chemistry and biochemistry professor Omar M. Yaghi, who is a member of the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) at UCLA and the UCLA–Department of Energy Institute of Genomics and Proteomics. “We have taken organic and inorganic units and combined them into a synthetic crystal which codes information in a DNA-like manner. It is by no means as sophisticated as DNA, but it is certainly new in chemistry and materials science.”
The discovery could lead to cleaner energy, including technology that factories and cars can use to capture carbon dioxide before it reaches the atmosphere.
“What we think this will be important for is potentially getting to a viable carbon dioxide–capture material with ultra-high selectivity,” said Yaghi, who holds UCLA’s Irving and Jean Stone Chair in Physical Sciences and is director of UCLA’s Center for Reticular Chemistry. “I am optimistic that is within our reach. Potentially, we could create a material that can convert carbon dioxide into a fuel, or a material that can separate carbon dioxide with greater efficiency.” (more…)
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Researchers Propose Rethinking Renewable Energy Strategy
Mechanical engineering professor Joshua Pearce. (Courtesy Queen's University /Tyler Ball)
Researchers at Queen’s University suggest that policy makers examine greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions implications for energy infrastructure as fossil fuel sources must be rapidly replaced by windmills, solar panels and other sources of renewable energy.
Their recommendations could be used to help policy makers restructure renewable energy production in a way that will optimize greenhouse gas emission reductions.
“The energy industry is expanding so rapidly that the dynamic nature of greenhouse gas emissions could pass a tipping point in the climate system if we’re not careful,” says Mechanical and Materials Engineering Professor Joshua Pearce, lead researcher on the study.
Pearce, Colin Law and Renee Kenny propose using dynamic life-cycle analyses for determining carbon-neutral growth rates that will not dramatically increase the level of GHG emissions as the energy industry expands.
This means, for example, weighing the benefits of dramatically increasing wind power against the increase in GHG emissions when the materials used to build the windmill are mined and when it is manufactured – not just after it’s been erected.
It also means decreasing production in some of the most polluted areas of the world, including China. (more…)
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