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.
More than half of the tipping points that could push the planet towards a Hothouse Earth and threaten human civilisation are now “active”, a group of leading scientists have warned. The scientists, including Emeritus Professor Will Steffen from The Australian National University (ANU), argue in a commentary in Nature that these nine active tipping points … Read more
Atmospheric rivers pose a $1 billion-a-year flood risk in the West, according to a study released today. Researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers analyzed the economic impact of the winter storms that deliver an increasingly large share of rain and snow … Read more
With 2019 on pace as one of the warmest years on record, a major new study from the University of California, Davis, reveals how rapidly the Arctic is warming and examines global consequences of continued polar warming. The study, published today in the journal Science Advances reports that the Arctic has warmed by 0.75 degrees C in … Read more
The world’s second-largest ice sheet, and the single largest contributor to global sea-level rise, is potentially becoming unstable because of fractures developing in response to faster ice flow and more meltwater forming on its surface. Using custom-built drones strong enough to withstand the extreme Arctic conditions, researchers led by the University of Cambridge made the … Read more
Soil erosion is a global problem that threatens food security and the functioning of ecosystems. It has an adverse effect on water and air and, of course, on the soil itself. It also produces a number of harmful knock-on effects; farmers, for example, have to compensate for the loss of natural soil productivity by increasing … Read more
This week, Nature Geoscience released an article co-authored by Laurentian University Professor Alessandro Ielpi which could reshape the way we think about the interplay between plant life, water and the earth. The article, entitled ‘A tenfold slowdown in river meander migration driven by plant life’, is about a data model developed by both Professor Ielpi … Read more
Understanding how earthquakes occur is one of the main open questions in the field of seismology. Decades of research have not been enough to establish a model to predict earthquake’s behaviour neither to explain the systematic variation of the properties of their seismic rupture observed according to the depth where they initiate. This situation has … Read more
Burning of the rainforest in southwestern Amazonia (the Brazilian, Peruvian and Bolivian Amazon) may increase the melting of tropical glaciers in the Andes, according to a study in Scientific Reports. Newton de Magalhães Neto and colleagues modelled the possible effect of biomass burning in the Amazon Basin on the Bolivian Zongo Glacier using data collected between … Read more
As thousands of wildfires and deforestation escalate in the Amazon rainforest, a team of international scientists has called for governments to enact six key goals to protect the vital wilderness. The team, including a group of University of Queensland researchers, discussed the signing of the Leticia Pact in September, where seven South American governments managing … Read more
The rainfall pattern across the globe is likely changing due to rapid warming of the Indo-Pacific Ocean, reports a study led by Roxy Mathew Koll of the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune. In the study published in the journal Nature, the researchers report a twofold expansion of the IndoPacific warm pool—the largest expanse … Read more