Scienceblogtwo

According to a significant new analysis published in the journal Science, if global temperature increases by more than 1.5°C beyond pre-industrial levels, many climate tipping points might be set off. Five severe climatic tipping points are currently possible at the current rate of global warming, and the dangers are worse with every additional tenth of a degree of warming. An extensive analysis of more than 200 publications published since 2008, when climatic tipping points were first properly defined, allowed an international research team to synthesize the evidence for tipping points, their temperature thresholds, timelines, and implications. From nine to sixteen potential tipping points are now on the list. The study finds that human emissions have already pushed Earth into the tipping points danger zone. It was released ahead of the big conference "Tipping Points: from climate crisis to positive transformation" at the University of Exeter (12–14 September). The melting o...

According to specialists from the University of Birmingham and the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) at the University of Cambridge, the world is "woefully underprepared" for a major volcanic eruption and its expected effects on global supply networks, the climate, and food. They claim that there is a "widespread misperception" that the likelihood of big eruptions is minimal and call the government's present lack of investment in monitoring and mitigating possible volcano disasters "reckless" in a paper that was published in the journal Nature. The researchers contend that protective measures against volcanic destruction can be adopted, including better surveillance, enhanced public awareness, and magma management, and the funding required to do so is long overdue. "According to information gleaned from ice cores on the frequency of eruptions over a long period of time, there is a one-in-six possibility that a magnitude seven explosi...

Although the ozone hole over Antarctica is well known, few people are aware that the protective ozone in the stratosphere periodically breaks down over the Arctic, depleting the ozone layer there. Prior to that, it occurred in the spring of 2011 and most recently in the months of spring 2020. Climate scientists have recorded weather abnormalities every time the ozone layer has been breached, which has affected the whole northern hemisphere. Those springtimes were extremely warm and dry in Siberia, central and northern Europe, Russia, and especially in the former Soviet Union. However, there were other places, like the arctic regions, where it was damp. These meteorological irregularities were especially noticeable in 2020. Additionally, that spring in Switzerland was abnormally warm and dry. Climate research is divided on the issue of whether the loss of stratospheric ozone causes the observed weather anomalies. Another factor is the stratospheric polar vortex, which develops in the wi...

According to new research, the Amazon rainforest's ability to grow amid our atmosphere's rising carbon content may be constrained by phosphate deficiency in the soil. Because plants develop more quickly in environments with higher carbon dioxide (CO2) levels, they store more carbon. This storage, particularly in vast forests like the Amazon, aids in containing growing CO2 levels and reducing climate change. However, plants also require nutrients to develop, and a recent study indicates that the availability of phosphorus in particular may limit the Amazon's potential to boost productivity (growth rate) as CO2 levels rise. The researchers caution that this might also reduce the rainforest's ability to withstand climate change. An international team led by the University of Exeter and Brazil's National Institute of Amazonian Research (INPA) conducted the study, which was published in the journal Nature. Lead author Hellen Fernanda Viana Cunha from INPA stated that ...

According to a new research published today in the inaugural issue of Environmental Research: Climate, a new open access magazine, the imbalance of energy on Earth is the most crucial indicator of the scope and consequences of climate change. Kevin Trenberth, a renowned researcher at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), and Lijing Cheng, a climate scientist and co-author, have created a new comprehensive inventory of all the different sources of surplus heat on Earth. In order to identify the imbalance, he looked at energy changes in the climate system's components of the atmosphere, ocean, land, and ice from 2000 to 2019. He then compared these changes to radiation at the top of the Earth's atmosphere. According to Trenberth, whose paper was published today, "the net energy imbalance is calculated by looking at how much heat is absorbed from the Sun and how much is able to radiate back into space. It is not yet possible to measure the imbalance directly; t...

According to recent study performed by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the Canadian Museum of Nature, people have been homogenizing the mammal populations of North America for more than 10,000 years, whether by the spear or the plow. 8.831 fossils from 365 mammal species from 366 locations in North America were analyzed by Kate Lyons of Nebraska, Danielle Fraser of the CMN, and international collaborators. The team's analysis of homogenization—the degree to which a particular mammal species in one ecological community mirrored the species composition of its neighboring communities—was made possible by relying on these ancient data. One of the main causes of the homogeneity and heterogenization that they discovered was climate, according to a few other studies that looked at North American animals from tens of millions to millions of years ago. Other study has documented the recent human effects of land conversion, poaching, and territorial expansion, concentrating just on th...

We humans have always liked the sport of speculating about the end of mankind. We create religions based on our eschatological dreams, produce dystopian novels based on our anxieties, and even compose music that predicts the end of the world as we know it. So it's astonishing that potential global disasters are so understudied in the face of an intensifying global climate crisis, one that affects everything from human health to the sustainability of entire ecosystems and their resources. In a research recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, it is suggested that it is past time that we begin considering worst-case scenarios and develop a sound game plan for what will happen if — or rather, when — our existing way of life crumbles. "Every mass extinction event has been influenced by climate change. It has influenced history and helped bring down civilizations. Even the contemporary world appears to have found its climate niche "Luke Kemp, ...

The Western wildfire smoke plumes have gotten higher in recent years, with more smoke and aerosols lofted up where they may travel further and have an influence on air quality over a larger area. Climate change is most likely to blame, since the Western United States has more aridity and less precipitation, which exacerbates wildfire activity. According to Kai Wilmot, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Utah, "should these trends persist into the future," increased Western U.S. wildfire activity will probably coincide with more frequent air quality degradation on a local to continental scale. The iNterdisciplinary EXchange for Utah Science, or NEXUS, at the University of Utah provided funding for the study, which was published in Scientific Reports. Wilmot and U colleagues Derek Mallia, Gannet Haller, and John Lin modelled plume activity for about 4.6 million smoke plumes in the Western U.S. and Canada between 2003 and 2020...