Future global warming may eventually be twice as warm as projected by climate models and sea levels may rise six metres or more even if the world meets the 2°C target, according to an international team of researchers from 17 countries. The findings published last week in Nature Geoscience are based on observational evidence from…
Glaciers in the European Alps could lose up to 90 percent of their remaining ice by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions continue unchecked, according to a new study published in the journal The Cryosphere. If nations do manage to drastically reduce emissions, ice loss would be limited to two-thirds by the end of the century. The study, led…
By acting as gatekeepers, microbes can affect geological processes that move carbon from the earth’s surface into its deep interior, according to a study published in Nature and coauthored by microbiologists at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The research is part of the Deep Carbon Observatory’s Biology Meets Subduction project. “We usually think of geology as something…
The ROSETTA-Ice project, a three-year, multi-institutional data collection survey of Antarctic ice, has assembled an unprecedented view of the Ross Ice Shelf, its structure and how it has been changing over time. In a study published today in Nature Geoscience, the ROSETTA-Ice team members detail how they discovered an ancient geologic structure that restricts where ocean water…
A new analysis shows that individuals with high levels of genetic variation and elevated exposure to ozone in the environment are at an even higher risk for developing autism than would be expected by adding the two risk factors together. The study is the first to look at the combined effects of genome-wide genetic change…
Indigenous Peoples have ownership, use and management rights over at least a quarter of the world’s land surface according to a new study published this week in the journal Nature Sustainability. The 38 million square kilometers (14.6 million square miles) are spread across 87 countries or politically distinct areas and overlap with about 40 percent of…
In conjunction with the annual Solar Power International conference, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) released new research today that shows the solar industry has achieved the 2020 utility-scale solar cost target set by the SunShot Initiative. Largely due to rapid cost declines in solar photovoltaic (PV) hardware, the average price of utility-scale solar is now 6…
Half of the world’s stomachs, particularly in Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, depend heavily on one staple food crop: rice. Although rice is one of the world’s most important crops, it is also one of the most water-intensive. For centuries, farmers have grown rice by flooding fields with fresh water, requiring more…
The Amazon and the adjacent Andean slopes in South America host an astonishing richness of plants and animals. These species have been sources of food, shelter and medicine since the arrival of humans and a target of scientific curiosity since the days of the earliest European naturalist explorers. What processes produce such hot spots of species richness, and…
It may be only a matter of time before urban dwellers can hail a self-driving taxi, so researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and UC Berkeley decided to analyze the cost, energy, and environmental implications of a fleet of self-driving electric vehicles operating in Manhattan. Using models they built…