SciGlow | All Science News In One Place
SciGlow is a newsletter of science stories from the major research labs. Headlines link to in-depth articles and editorials. SciGlow keeps scientists and others up-to-date on current research.
How can fossils predict the consequences of climate change? A German research team from Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), the Museum of Natural History Berlin and the Alfred Wegener Institute compared data from fossil and marine organisms living today to predict which groups of animals are most at risk from climate change. They published their results … Read more
The concept of nutrient limitation originated from middle 1840s, when the famous Germany chemist Justus Freiherr von Liebig first proposed the Liebig’s Law of the Minimum based on experiments that added essential nutrients to improve crop productivity. The idea was later introduced to natural plant communities, evoking numerous efforts to evaluate the extent and strength … Read more
Global Ocean Circulation Is Accelerating from the Surface to the Abyss Contradicting previous studies that suggest global warming will weaken ocean circulation, especially in tropical waters, a new study reports that global ocean circulation has accelerated over the past twenty years, and in tropical waters in particular. This is due to a near 2%-per-decade rise … Read more
Much more oxygen than previously thought is being transported into deep layers of the ocean through a ‘trap door’ off Canada’s Atlantic coast that some researchers say could be closing as a result of climate change. Scientists from Dalhousie University in Halifax, N.S., and Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego … Read more
Large-scale irrigation can help alleviate and even reverse hot extremes driven by human activity and other drivers of global warming, a new international study has found. The research, led by ETH Zurich in Switzerland, showed that irrigation dampens and in some cases offsets the combined effects of global warming on hot days. The researchers compared … Read more
In the aftermath of the devastating Tohoku-Oki earthquake that struck off the coast of Japan in March 2011, seismologists were stunned by the unprecedented 50 meters of shallow displacement along the fault, which ruptured all the way to the surface of the seafloor. This extreme slip at shallow depths exacerbated the massive tsunami that, together … Read more
A recent study finds that the observed weak linkage between the Labrador Sea convection, a process that mixes surface waters to depth, and the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a basin-scale circulation critical to the climate system, can be attributed to the density compensation by temperature and salinity. Using observational and reanalysis data, this study … Read more
In response to future fossil fuel burning, climate computer models simulate a pronounced warming in the tropical oceans. This warming can influence the El Niño phenomenon and shift weather and rainfall patterns across the globe. Despite being robustly simulated in computer models of the climate system, the origin of this accelerated tropical warming has remained … Read more
Permafrost is ground that remains frozen throughout the year; it covers nearly a quarter of Northern Hemisphere land. The frozen state of permafrost enables it to store large amounts of carbon; about twice as much as in the atmosphere. The rate and extent of future thawing of permafrost, and consequent release of its carbon, is … Read more
The decommissioning of coal-fired power plants in the continental United States has reduced nearby pollution and its negative impacts on human health and crop yields, according to a new University of California San Diego study. The findings published this week in Nature Sustainability use the U.S. transition in recent years from coal towards natural gas for electric … Read more