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.
Impacts of climate change on cities such as flooding, cyclones or heat stress are to be tackled at The University of Queensland’s annual Placemaking Summit. The one-day event, titled ‘Shifting Climate/Shifting Places’, will investigate how urban planners, environmental designers, architects, and other design professionals can best address climatic threats to urban living. [rand_post] Co-organiser UQ’s … Read more
Contrary to popular belief, seasonal rains are not the most important factor for starting the growth cycle of plants across Africa. New research shows that the amount of daylight plants receive is the biggest contributing factor to starting the iconic ‘green-up’ phenomenon in Africa – where the continent’s plants and trees grow their leaves. A … Read more
Mountains cover 25% of the Earth’s surface, and the streams draining these mountains account for more than a third of the global runoff. But the role that mountain streams play in global carbon fluxes has not yet been evaluated; until now scientists have focused mainly on streams and rivers in low-altitude tropical and boreal regions. … Read more
Ice shelves in the eastern Antarctic Peninsula may have been predisposed to collapse by hundreds years of thinning according to a study in Scientific Reports. To investigate past drivers of ice mass loss and its effect on the present, William Dickens and colleagues constructed a 6,250 year record of glacial meltwater discharge by analysing oxygen variants … Read more
Deep Carbon Observatory highlights 10 top discoveries to celebrate a 10-year global investigation of Earth’s largest, least-known ecosystem; 1,200 scientists from 55 nations, 1,400 peer-reviewed papers. Thousands of diamonds, formed hundreds of kilometers deep inside the planet, paved the road to some of the 10-year Deep Carbon Observatory program’s most historic accomplishments and discoveries, being … Read more
A rare element discovered in Great Barrier Reef coral skeletons will help scientists understand the environmental history of nearby regions. Researchers at The University of Queensland’s Sustainable Minerals Institute (SMI) and School of Earth and Environmental Sciences (SEES) found concentrations of the element vanadium in coral is directly linked to forest burning and land clearing … Read more
Fluctuations in atmospheric pressure can heavily influence how much natural gas leaks from wells below the ground surface at oil and gas sites, according to new University of British Columbia research. However, current monitoring strategies do not take this phenomenon into account, and therefore may be under- or over-estimating the true magnitude of gas emissions. … Read more
Arctic regions have captured and stored carbon for tens of thousands of years, but a new study shows winter carbon emissions from the Arctic may now be putting more carbon into the atmosphere than is taken up by plants each year. The study, published today in Nature Climate Change, warns that winter carbon dioxide (CO2) … Read more
A new report published in Nature Climate Change today unveils a land sector roadmap laying out critical actions on forests, farming and food systems the world should take to veer away from spiking global temperatures. The study is the first of its kind to offer a point-by-point identification of specific land use actions, their related … Read more
Half of the drop in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels during glacial periods is the result of Antarctic sea ice modifying ocean circulation and acting as a ‘lid’, trapping carbon stored in the ocean beneath. This is according to the new research by scientists at the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) and the University of Chicago, published … Read more