Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: climatology

Exploring a smarter way to build climate-resilient roads

Every year from June to September, India experiences the monsoon season. While the visible heavy rainfall often takes the blame for many roads requiring repairs much sooner than expected, a far less visible yet critical force is at play long before the first raindrop falls on the road.

Rigid, or concrete, pavements are a type of road construction that uses concrete slabs. They distribute traffic loads over a wide area and can withstand heavy loads. These pavements are used in places like highways and airports and are becoming increasingly popular on city roads as well.

What is interesting is that, together with their surrounding environments, concrete pavements form an integrated system. Daily temperature fluctuations, such as those due to sunlight and cool nights, along with seasonal changes, result in cycles of heating and cooling of the pavement layers. It is these cycles that create internal stresses within the pavement structure.

AI-powered system offers unprecedented insight into the forces shaping Earth’s climate

The world’s oceans may appear calm from space, but beneath the surface, an intricate web of fast-moving currents drives Earth’s climate. Now, a new study led by Tel Aviv University has unveiled a breakthrough that allows scientists to observe these hidden motions with unprecedented clarity.

The researchers developed GOFLOW, an artificial intelligence-powered system that can reconstruct high-resolution ocean current patterns directly from satellite images. The technology provides scientists with an entirely new way to study the small-scale ocean dynamics that influence weather, climate change and the exchange of heat and gases between the ocean and atmosphere.

The study was led by Roy Barkan, a professor, physical oceanographer and fluid dynamics expert in Tel Aviv University’s Department of Geophysics at the Faculty of Exact Sciences. The research was conducted in collaboration with scientists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCLA and the University of Rhode Island, and published in Nature Geoscience.

Unraveling the climate behind the collapse of Bronze Age civilizations

The most severe droughts in the ancient Eastern Mediterranean arose when multiple natural climate cycles coincided, according to a new study from Stockholm University published in Science Advances. The findings shed new light on the climate conditions surrounding the Late Bronze Age collapse and may help improve understanding of future drought risks in a warming world.

“Rather than being caused by a single climatic event, we found that the most extreme droughts emerged when natural climate cycles operating over different timescales coincided. This helps explain why the droughts associated with the Late Bronze Age collapse were so severe,” said Katherine Power, a doctoral student in the Department of Physical Geography at Stockholm University and the study’s first author.

How a pandemic detour helped researchers uncover clues to a mysterious disease

When the COVID-19 pandemic shut down international travel in 2020, Michigan State University researcher Eric Benbow faced a problem. A $2.5 million research project designed to study an environmental pathogen in South America was suddenly on hold. With fieldwork canceled and uncertainty surrounding when travel might resume, Benbow and his collaborators needed a new plan.

That unexpected detour led to a surprising discovery—and new insights into a disease that has puzzled scientists for decades.

In their study published in Communications Medicine, the international team of researchers examined the environmental and human factors that influence the distribution of Buruli ulcer, a neglected tropical disease caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium ulcerans. The work helps explain how ecosystems, climate, land use and human activities interact to shape disease risk.

Moisture-driven tech can power green batteries—and destroy spy gear

Researchers from North Carolina State University and Rice University have created a nontoxic, stretchable battery that operates by extracting moisture from the ambient environment—even in climates as dry as the desert. The batteries could be useful in Internet of Things (IoT) applications ranging from wearables to advanced surveillance monitors with built-in kill switches. The study is published in the journal Science Advances.

Emerging technologies like wearable monitors, miniature robotics and other IoT devices require lightweight, flexible power sources. Conventional batteries, which represent the best power source options, are often too rigid and heavy to be useful, and they contain toxic materials that can leak. Energy harvesters, so called because they capture energy from the surrounding environment and convert it into electrical power, are lighter, but their performance is limited.

Running on moisture and salt The new moisture-activated battery (MAB) includes a magnesium anode and a silver/silver chloride cathode, with a cellulose membrane loaded with lithium chloride salts that serves as a separator. The separator harvests moisture from ambient air, which dissolves the salts and creates the electrolyte, allowing charge to flow through the battery.

Rust-to-iron cycle may unlock long-term storage for renewable energy

In the future, iron might be used as a chemical energy storage material, making large quantities of renewable energy available in the long term. Iron powder is combusted in a cyclic process that is carbon neutral and then reconverted to its original state using energy input. Scientists at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) were the first to conduct an extensive study to evaluate the potential of this technology for power generation. Their results show that iron, while not superseding hydrogen, may usefully complement it in a climate-neutral energy system. The findings have been published in Chem Circularity.

Be it for wind energy from coastal regions or for solar power from desert areas, iron could serve as a transportable energy carrier in the future to make these renewable energy sources usable worldwide. “This works in a cycle that emits no carbon dioxide or environmentally harmful substances,” said Julia Schuler from KIT’s Institute for Industrial Production (IIP). For power generation, iron powder is combusted, producing iron oxide, i.e. rust. Using hydrogen from renewable sources, it is reduced to iron again in a process that removes the oxygen it contains. The iron powder can then be reused.

“When burned, iron powder behaves very much like coal. We wanted to find out whether it was possible to repurpose existing coal power plants to iron-firing,” said Schuler. She believes that modifications are primarily necessary in the heat generator; other components, such as the steam cycle, turbines, generator and power grid connection, could continue to be used.

Fossils found decades ago reveal extinct 3.5 million-year-old giant salamander species

In the late 1990s in the Ajimu region of Japan’s Oita Prefecture, researchers discovered three fossilized vertebrae belonging to the Cryptobranchidae family of giant salamanders. These were embedded in the Tsubusugawa Formation, Pliocene-era strata of lake deposits dating back approximately 3.5 million years. The strata have also yielded fossils of animals that no longer roam Japan, such as elephants and crocodiles, revealing a glimpse of an era much warmer and more humid than Japan’s current climate.

Researchers originally assigned the three Ajimu specimens to the genus Andrias, which includes the world’s largest living amphibians, but at the time, a lack of comparative specimens and research prevented their precise taxonomic identification. Now, more than two decades later, a new research team at Kyoto University has succeeded in shedding more light on these mysterious fossils.

After comparing the Ajimu specimens with the skeletons of extant Cryptobranchidae species, the team found that the three fossils belonged to an anterior trunk vertebra, a mid-trunk vertebra and a sacro-caudal vertebra. Further comparisons revealed that the mid-trunk vertebra possessed unique morphological characteristics not seen in other Cryptobranchidae species. This led the researchers to conclude that the Ajimu specimens represent a new species and genus.

/* */