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Category: climatology

Salt may have pushed us further into Snowball Earth 700 million years ago

Our planet plunged into one of the most dramatic climate states in its long history, approximately 720–635 million years ago. During a period geologists call Snowball Earth, ice sheets crept from the poles all the way to the tropics, covering the oceans and continents in a nearly global freeze.

Evidence for this extreme climate comes from rock formations around the world that bear the signatures of ancient glaciers at low latitudes—signs that Earth’s surface was encased in ice far beyond what we see in today’s polar regions.

Scientists have long studied how a feedback process known as ice-albedo helped lock in and amplify this deep chill. Albedo is a measure of how much sunlight a surface reflects; snow and ice are bright and reflect most of the sun’s energy back into space, cooling the planet further as more of it spreads across the surface.

NASA’s MAVEN detects first evidence of lightning-like activity on Mars

While sifting through the extensive data collected by NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft over the last decade, scientists discovered a familiar type of electromagnetic signal commonly caused by lightning. This rare find represents the first direct indication of lightning activity on Mars. The team recently published their findings in Science Advances, where they describe the event and why it’s so difficult to detect lightning-like activity on Mars.

Whistler waves are low-frequency radio wave signals generated by lightning, which create an impulse that propagates through a planet’s magnetosphere, following along the magnetic field lines. The whistler waves disperse due to the slower velocity of the lower frequencies through the plasma of the ionosphere and magnetosphere. These waves are typical on Earth, but have also been observed on Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune. All of these planets all possess strong magnetic fields and corresponding magnetospheres, facilitating the movement of whistler waves.

Mars, on the other hand, does not have a global, Earth-like magnetic field. This is because the internal activity that causes these magnetic fields ceased on Mars billions of years ago. This may contribute to the fact that lightning-like discharges in the Martian atmosphere have not yet been observed. But lightning-like activity on Mars is not impossible.

Greenland’s largest glacier could soon reach a tipping point, scientists say

Greenland’s largest glacier, Jakobshavn Glacier, may be edging closer to a critical threshold as meltwater runoff from the Greenland Ice Sheet accelerates in ways not seen in over a century, according to new research published in Climate of the Past. The study reconstructs more than 100 years of freshwater discharge flowing from the ice sheet into Disko Bay in western Greenland, revealing a striking and sustained change that began in the early 2000s.

Researchers from Kiel University, Germany, and colleagues found that runoff did not increase gradually, but instead shifted into sharp acceleration. By 2007, the volume of freshwater entering the ocean had permanently exceeded the range of natural variability seen throughout the 20th century. Simply put, the system appears to have moved into a new state, one characterized by consistently higher meltwater output. This pattern suggests the ice sheet may be approaching what scientists call a “tipping point”—a threshold beyond which changes become self-reinforcing and potentially difficult to reverse.

Cooling without gases: Molecular design brings solid-state cooling closer to reality

Some solid materials can cool down or heat up when pressure is applied or released. This behavior enables cooling and heating technologies that do not rely on climate-damaging refrigerant gases. In practice, however, a major obstacle remains: many materials behave differently during heating and cooling, which makes their response difficult to use reliably in real devices. In a study published in the journal Communications Materials, researchers investigate a solid material known for its exceptionally large cooling/heating response (thermal response) under pressure and ask a simple question: can this response be made more reliable? They show that a very small change in composition leads to a clear improvement and use neutron experiments to explain why this improvement occurs.

Wastewater Methane Gaps Found in National Climate Reports

“If you don’t know exactly how much emissions you have, then it’s really difficult to make effective policies or technologies or methods to reduce the emissions,” said Dr. Z. Jason Ren. [ https://www.labroots.com/trending/earth-and-the-environment/…-reports-2](https://www.labroots.com/trending/earth-and-the-environment/…-reports-2)

Are national climate reports missing crucial data points regarding wastewater greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions? This is what a recent study published in Nature Climate Change hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated the accuracy of national inventory reports (NIRs) for wastewater GHG. This study has the potential to help researchers, climate scientists, legislators, and the public better understand the methods for tracking climate change and steps that can be taken to fill the gaps in report lapses.

For the study, the researchers obtained data from 38 countries regarding wastewater GHG emissions with the goal of ascertaining existing data gaps in NIRs. The motivation of this study comes from the lack of consistent data methods and large changes that occur over many years and in global regions. The overarching goal of the study was to ascertain where the data gaps exist and how to fill them.

In the end, the researchers discovered massive data gaps in wastewater GHG emissions, including an unreported gap of 52.0–73.2 million metric tons (MMT) of CO2-equivalent (CO2e) annually across the 38 countries. Additionally, they found that global gap of 94–150 MMT CO2e annually.

Technology is NOT Enough!

Fifteen years ago, I wrote something that annoyed many techno-optimists.

Ten years ago, I filmed it as a podcast.

Today it feels less controversial — and more urgent.

Technology is NOT Enough.

We have the science to feed everyone. We have the tech to provide clean water. We understand climate change. We know how to reduce suffering.

And yet we don’t act.

Continue reading “Technology is NOT Enough!” | >

Core–Shell Engineering of One-Dimensional Cadmium Sulfide for Solar Energy Conversion

Fabricating efficient photocatalysts that can be used in solar-to-fuel conversion and to enhance the photochemical reaction rate is essential to the current energy crisis and climate changes due to the excessive usage of nonrenewable fossil fuels.

Microsoft’s glass data storage system saves terabytes for 10,000 years

Imagine being an explorer, cracking open a 10,000-year-old tomb, uncovering a priceless ancient artifact – and getting rickrolled. Our deep descendants might just get the pleasure, thanks to a Global Music Vault due to be built in Norway, featuring Microsoft’s Project Silica, a tough new data storage medium that’s never gonna give you up.

There’s a common saying that once something is on the internet, it’s there forever, and even if you delete it, it will persist in some server somewhere. But that’s demonstrably untrue – just try to find your cringey old MySpace page. Even the most secure data center is vulnerable to the increasingly common and severe environmental disasters brought on by climate change. Many will lose their data if there’s a long-term power outage, or a large-scale electromagnetic pulse from an attack or, worse still, the Sun. Even in the best-case scenario, physical storage media like Blu-Rays, archival tape, hard drives and even solid state drives will degrade in decades.

To ensure that our history lives on for longer, Microsoft has been experimenting with storing data on glass with what it calls Project Silica. In 2019, the company demonstrated the tech in a partnership with Warner Bros by writing the 1978 movie Superman onto a slide of quartz silica glass and reading it back. The slide, measuring just 75 × 75 mm (3 × 3 in) and 2 mm (0.08 in) thick, could hold as much as 75.6 GB, and remained readable even after being scratched, baked, boiled, microwaved, flooded and demagnetized.

Why I fear for the future of mankind

Go to https://ground.news/sabine to get 40% off the Vantage plan and see through sensationalized reporting. Stay fully informed on events around the world with Ground News.

It seems clear that we have given up on trying to stop climate change. It worries me profoundly, not so much because of climate change itself, but because of what it says about our collective ability to make intelligent decisions.

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