How do we reduce the distrust in the face of climate change and other existential threats? Teaching scientific reasoning skills is proposed.
Category: climatology – Page 84
Arctic Greening is Happening Faster Than We Thought
White Spruce trees are on the march northward in the Arctic increasing the rate of warming.
Trees are growing in the Arctic tundra where none have survived before. The Arctic is warming four times faster than the rest of the planet which means the barriers that made Arctic terrain hostile to trees are diminishing. Forests are marching towards the North Pole.
Last August a paper appeared in the Journal Nature entitled, “Sufficient conditions for rapid range expansion of a boreal conifer.” It is one of a number of papers describing a changing pattern of tree growth and range across the Arctic landscape in Alaska, Siberia, Canada, and Scandinavia. The more trees establish themselves in high latitude environments, the faster warming is coming as a low albedo effect takes hold.
The paper described what was happening to the North American White Spruce population in Alaska tundra conditions. White Spruce require temperatures of 10 Celsius (50 Fahrenheit) or greater for seeds to germinate. And White Spruce don’t start producing seeds until they are 30 years of age. So seeing an expanding population of White Spruce in areas where none have been observed in human recorded history is rather compelling evidence that the Arctic climate conditions are undergoing significant change. The rate of the northward march is about 4 kilometres (2.5 miles) per decade. The advance corresponds with both rising land temperatures and disappearing sea ice.
Strong earthquake hits Taiwan, triggers tsunami warning in Japan
A powerful 6.9 magnitude earthquake hit Taiwan Sunday, derailing carriages and prompting tsunami warnings in southern Japan.
The U.S. Geological Survey measured the quake at 7.2-magnitude before downgrading it to 6.9 and said the tsunami threat had passed.
Taiwan’s Central Weather Bureau said the quake, which struck near Taitung city on its southeastern coast, registered 6.8 magnitude and was a relatively shallow depth of 4 miles.
World’s largest carbon removal facility could suck up 5 million metric tonnes of CO2 yearly
The U.S.-based facility hopes to capture CO2, roughly the equivalent of 5 million return flights between London and New York annually.
A U.S. climate tech company has developed a project that could remove millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere annually.
CarbonCapture Inc. has revealed plans for the largest carbon capture facility in the world in Wyoming, in an exclusive partnership with premier carbon storage company Frontier Carbon Solutions, according to a press release published by Business Wire last week.
SeaTwirl to install 1 MW floating vertical-axis wind turbine in Norway
The steel structures will be fabricated at Westcon’s shipyard in Florø and then transported to Dommersnes Industrial Area for complete assembly and testing. The complete turbine is then towed to Bokn, where it will be installed.
SeaTwirl has been around for a while now. In July 2015, the company first deployed its prototype named S1 off the coast of Lysekil in Sweden. The S1 is a small, 30-kW test version of its floating turbine technology. Rising 13 meters above the waterline and reaching down 18 meters below, it offers energy-producing companies an attractive test platform for offshore wind power and an alternative to diesel generators in remote areas that are off-grid or prone to power outages. It’s been connected to the grid and tested according to plan since its deployment. S1 has withstood harsh weather conditions, autumn and winter storms reaching hurricane wind speeds.
SeaTwirl describes its design as simple and robust, with a minimum of breakable moving parts, which means less downtime and more output. It is a vertical-axis wind turbine that has a high structural limit and can be built larger than horizontal-axis wind turbines.
‘Doomsday Glacier’ is teetering even closer to disaster than scientists thought, new seafloor map shows
Underwater robots that peered under Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier, nicknamed the “Doomsday Glacier,” saw that its doom may come sooner than expected with an extreme spike in ice loss. A detailed map of the seafloor surrounding the icy behemoth has revealed that the glacier underwent periods of rapid retreat within the last few centuries, which could be triggered again through melt driven by climate change.
Thwaites Glacier is a massive chunk of ice — around the same size as the state of Florida in the U.S. or the entirety of the United Kingdom — that is slowly melting into the ocean off West Antarctica (opens in new tab). The glacier gets its ominous nickname because of the “spine-chilling” implications of its total liquidation, which could raise global sea levels between 3 and 10 feet (0.9 and 3 meters), researchers said in a statement (opens in new tab). Due to climate change, the enormous frozen mass is retreating twice as fast as it was 30 years ago and is losing around 50 billion tons (45 billion metric tons) of ice annually, according to the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration (opens in new tab).
The Thwaites Glacier extends well below the ocean’s surface and is held in place by jagged points on the seafloor that slow the glacier’s slide into the water. Sections of seafloor that grab hold of a glacier’s underbelly are known as “grounding points,” and play a key role in how quickly a glacier can retreat.
Slowing of continental shift could be the cause of major volcanic extinction events
For the first time, volcanologists reveal to IE real-time observations of the deepest parts of a volcanic system.
Scientists from the University of Iceland and the Icelandic Meteorological Office, Reykjavik, have presented unexpected observations of seismic activity and magma movements before and during the 2021 Fagradalsfjall volcanic eruption, according to a pair of papers published in Nature.
The insights could provide a boost in understanding the processes that drove the unusually ‘silent’ eruption and for future monitoring of volcanic activity. This is critical for creating warnings to prevent loss of life and damage to infrastructure. Beboy_ltd.
Dubai will be home to the world’s largest net-zero carbon urban tech district
The new district will create over 4,000 jobs.
Architectural practice URB has been commissioned to engineer the world’s largest Urban Tech District along the Al Jaddaf Creekside in Dubai. “Rising population, urbanization and impacts of climate change are increasing the need for cities to be resilient, liveable and smart. Thus the creation of sustainable cities is no longer a choice, it has become a necessity. This requires planners with experience in designing and delivering sustainable communities,” says URB on its website.
The new construction will join the global transition towards achieving net-zero carbon goals and become home to top-tier entrepreneurs, establishing Dubai as an urban center for innovation and empowering a unique tech ecosystem to unfold in the emirate and across the world. It will also feature several commercial and educational facilities. population, urbanization and impacts of climate change are increasing the need for cities to be resilient, liveable and smart. Thus the creation of sustainable cities is no longer a choice, it has become a necessity. This requires planners with experience in designing and delivering sustainable communities, says URB on its website.
Scientists Just Made Hydrogen Fuel With Nothing But Air and Solar Power
Even in the driest climates, though, there is a considerable amount of moisture in the air. The researchers note that even in places like the Sahel desert, relative humidity is still around 20 percent on average. So they set about finding a way to use this untapped water resource to produce hydrogen.
Their device consists of a water harvesting unit that houses a sponge soaked in a water-absorbing liquid that can pull moisture from the air. On either side of this reservoir are electrodes that can be powered by any renewable energy source. When a current runs through the circuit, the water is split via electrolysis into its constituent oxygen and hydrogen atoms, which can then be collected as gas.
The team showed that the device could run efficiently for 12 consecutive days and produced hydrogen with 99 percent purity. What’s more, the device continues to work in relative humidity as low as four percent.