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Category: climatology – Page 79

Surprise finding suggests ‘water worlds’ are more common than we thought

Water is the one thing all life on Earth needs, and the cycle of rain to river to ocean to rain is an essential part of what keeps our planet’s climate stable and hospitable. When scientists talk about where to search for signs of life throughout the galaxy, planets with water are always at the top of the list.

A new study published in Science suggests that many more planets may have large amounts of water than previously thought—as much as half water and half rock. The catch? All that water is probably embedded in the rock, rather than flowing as oceans or rivers on the surface.

“It was a surprise to see evidence for so many water worlds orbiting the most common type of star in the galaxy,” said Rafael Luque, first author on the new paper and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago. “It has enormous consequences for the search for .”

Amazon rainforest fires 2022: Facts, causes, and climate impacts

Based on the live fire Map from nasa south America has too many fires to count probably estimating in the millions of acres burned circa 2022.

The Amazon rainforest is shrinking. The fires in the Amazon are growing.

Just six weeks before the crucial 2022 Brazilian presidential election, a historic day of Amazon burning was detected by satellite monitoring. On 22 August, 3,358 fires were detected in the Brazilian Amazon, according to the Brazilian space agency, INPE. This was the highest number of fires recorded for any 24-hour period since 2007.

That alarming day of fire was no anomaly, but simply another day in a tragic trend of destruction in the Amazon rainforest since Jair Bolsonaro became president of Brazil in 2019. Just in the month of August 2022, there were 33,116 illegal fire hotspots registered in the Amazon, the highest level in 12 years.

High-frequency radio-wave emission by coherent transition radiation of runaway electrons produced by lightning stepped leaders

Lightning can produce multiband radio waves and high-energy radiations. Some of them are associated with the formation of lightning leaders. However, their generation mechanisms are not fully understood yet. Based on the understanding of thermal runaway electrons generated at the leader tip, we propose transition radiation of these runaway electrons as an alternative mechanism for producing very-high-frequency radio signals. Transition radiations are induced when runaway electrons cross the interfaces between lightning coronas and the air. By the use of estimated parameters of electron beams emerging from the leader tips, we calculate their coherent transition radiation and find that the energy spectra and radiation powers are consistent with some detection results from stepped leaders and even narrow bipolar events. Moreover, our model also predicts strong THz radiation during the stepped-leader formation. As a standard diagnosis technique of electron bunches, the proposed coherent transition radiation here may be able to reconstruct the actual properties of electron beams in the leader tips, which remains an open question.

Building Future Cities Out of Timber Could Save 100 Billion Tons of CO2 Emissions

Housing the world’s rapidly-growing population will require massive urban expansion and lots of concrete and steel, but these materials have a huge carbon footprint. A shift to building cities out of wood could avoid more than 100 billion tons of CO2 emissions, according to a new study.

Replacing reinforced concrete with timber might sound unwise, but innovations in engineered wood mean it’s now feasible to construct multi-story buildings without traditional materials. So-called “mass timber” is increasingly being used for structural and load-bearing elements in mid-rise developments, which refers to buildings between 4 and 12 stories high.

One of the main selling points of mass timber is that it’s much less carbon-intensive than steel and cement. In theory it’s actually carbon negative, because trees absorb CO2 in the process of producing wood. But question marks have remained over exactly how much more climate-friendly wood-based construction is, and what impact demand for timber could have on the environment.

Easing pain at the pump with food waste: New method for making biodiesel fuel

With gas prices soaring and food costs pinching family budgets, an interdisciplinary team of researchers at WPI is looking at ways to use food waste to make a renewable and more affordable fuel replacement for oil-based diesel. The work, led by Chemical Engineering Professor Michael Timko, is detailed in a new paper in the journal iScience.

“By creating a biodiesel through this method, we’ve shown that we can bring the price of gas down to $1.10 per gallon, and potentially even lower,” said Timko.

The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that, in 2018 in the United States, about 81% of household food—about 20 tons—ended up in landfills or combustion facilities. Food waste is also a major contributor to : once it’s placed in landfills, it emits methane, a greenhouse gas.

Everything to know about Hawaii Volcanoes National Park

Two celebrated volcanoes—one of them very tall, the other very active—frame this large national park. From glowing lava flows and earth-shaking tremors to wind, rain, and waves, the geological and meteorological forces that shaped our planet are fully on display on the Big Island. While volcanism rules the day, pockets of rainforest and grassland shelter rare Hawaiian flora and fauna.

“Double, double toil and trouble; fire burn and caldron bubble.” Shakespeare could just as easily have been describing Hawaiian volcanoes rather than a witch’s brew in Macbeth. No other national park produces so much drama on a regular basis.

Kilauea is one of the world’s most active volcanoes. Its monthslong 2018 event destroyed hundreds of homes, sent massive plumes of ash rocketing into the air, and collapsed nearly 2,000 feet of the crater’s summit. Its most recent and currently ongoing eruption began in September 2021.

2 Small Changes to How Airplanes Fly Could Reduce Impact

Aviation is responsible for around five percent of human-induced climate change.

Commercial aviation has become a cornerstone of our economy and society. It allows us to rapidly transport goods and people across the globe, facilitates over a third of all global trade by value, and supports 87.7 million jobs worldwide. However, the 80-tonne flying machines we see hurtling through our skies at near supersonic speeds also carry some serious environmental baggage.

My team’s recent review paper highlights some promising solutions the aviation industry could put in place now to reduce the harm flying does to our planet. Simply changing the routes we fly could hold the key to drastic reductions in climate impact.

Research project to accelerate the market introduction of agri-PV

“This makes agri-PV systems increasingly attractive for agriculture, because it provides a way to keep domestic agriculture competitive with the international market and to enable farmers to earn additional income,” explains Max Trommsdorff, project manager at Fraunhofer ISE. “At the same time, we can drive the expansion of renewable energies, reduce pressure on scarce land and increase resilience to weather extremes and climate change in different farming systems.”

Nevertheless, only a few projects have been realised so far. Those involved in the project see one of the crucial hurdles in the existing legal framework. These include inadequate incentive systems and comparatively complex approval processes. In addition, there are growing concerns about the acceptance of the local population and the attractiveness of the landscape.

Such economic, legal and social hurdles are to be compiled within the framework of the project. Subsequently, the participants want to work out proposals for solutions on how to reduce and overcome these hurdles. The focus should be on the optimal use of the potentials and the avoidance of wrong decisions in the application of agriphotovoltaics.

Crypto platform accidentally transfers $10.5m to Melbourne woman — now they want it back

When you hit the jackpot-or don’t.

Imagine receiving $10.5 million while expecting a $100 refund to be transferred to your bank account and no one, except you, recognizes it until seven months have passed. That’s recently what happened in Melbourne, Australia when a cryptocurrency company bestowed a fortune to a woman, initially reported by 7NEWS. Back in May 2021, Crypto.com, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency trading platforms, transferred the amount to Thevamanogari Manivel. Upon receiving the money, Manivel and her sister Thilagavathy Gangadory started spending it like greased lightning.

It took the company seven months to realise its mistake. By the time they did, millions had already been spent.