NewScITech

A major study sheds new light on the role of carbon dioxide once it’s transported to the oceans’ depths. The research indicates that instead of sinking, carbon dioxide is often consumed by animals and bacteria and recycled in the “twilight zone,” a dimly lit area 100 to 1,000 meters below the surface. Because the carbon often never reaches the deep ocean, where it can be stored and prevented from re-entering the atmosphere as a green-house gas, the oceans may have little impact on changes in the atmosphere or climate. Read the rest of this entry »

Scientists using one of the nation’s newest and most capable research aircraft are launching a far-reaching field project this month to study plumes of airborne dust and pollutants that originate in Asia and journey to North America. Read the rest of this entry »

The theory that Earth once underwent a prolonged time of extreme global freezing has been dealt a blow by new evidence that periods of warmth occurred during this so-called ‘Snowball Earth’ era. Read the rest of this entry »

As climate change scientists develop ever more sophisticated climate models to project an expected path of temperature change, it is becoming increasingly important to include the effects of aerosols on clouds, according to Joyce E. Penner, a leading atmospheric scientist at the University of Michigan. Read the rest of this entry »

While humans can survive large temperature fluctuations, such species as corals are only comfortable within a 12-degree temperature range. And rising global temperatures appear to be threatening their survival, according to Drew Harvell, Cornell professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. Read the rest of this entry »

Using corncob waste as a starting material, researchers have created carbon briquettes with complex nanopores capable of storing natural gas at an unprecedented density of 180 times their own volume and at one seventh the pressure of conventional natural gas tanks. Read the rest of this entry »

The largest climate change in central North America since the age of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, a temperature drop of nearly 15 degrees Fahrenheit, is documented within the fossilized teeth of horses and other plant-eating mammals, a new study reveals. Read the rest of this entry »

A new analysis led by an MIT scientist describes a mechanism for capturing carbon dioxide emissions from a power plant and injecting the gas into the ground, where it would be trapped naturally as tiny bubbles and safely stored in briny porous rock. Read the rest of this entry »

While government leaders argue about the practicality of reducing world emissions of carbon dioxide, scientists and engineers are seeking ways to make it happen. Read the rest of this entry »

Sections of rainforest used to grow coffee maintain more intact ecosystems than areas cleared for intensive agriculture such as rice-growing or pasture, a study by scientists from Oxford, New Zealand and Germany has found. Read the rest of this entry »

While two late December blizzards paralyzed the Midwest, Long Islanders were enjoying mostly mild temperatures with no snow during the entire month. According to weather statistics recorded at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory since 1949, 2006 brought the warmest December on record for Long Islanders with a monthly average temperature of 40.9 (4.94 C) degrees Fahrenheit (F), as well as the warmest November, with an average temperature of 48.6 (9.22 C) degrees F. Read the rest of this entry »

Western U.S. wildfires are likely to increase in the coming decades, according to a new tree-ring study led by the University of Comahue in Argentina and involving the University of Colorado at Boulder that links episodic fire outbreaks in the past five centuries with periods of warming sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic. Read the rest of this entry »

Healthy coral reefs provide their adjacent coasts with substantially more protection from destructive tsunami waves than do unhealthy or dead reefs, a Princeton University study suggests. Read the rest of this entry »

Want biodiversity? Look no further than the air around you. It could be teeming with more than 1,800 types of bacteria, according to a first-of-its-kind census of airborne microbes recently conducted by scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). Read the rest of this entry »

Geologists have uncovered evidence in the oil fields of Oman that explains how Earth could suddenly have changed 540 million years ago to favor the evolution of the single-celled life forms to the multicellular forms we know today. Read the rest of this entry »