Month: September 2016

  • Increased ocean acidification is due to human activities, say scientists

    Oceanographers from MIT and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution report that the northeast Pacific Ocean has absorbed an increasing amount of anthropogenic carbon dioxide over the last decade, at a rate that mirrors the increase of carbon dioxide emissions pumped into the atmosphere.The scientists, led by graduate student Sophie Chu, in MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric,…

  • Tropics told to ban coral-killing sunscreen

    Tropical island nations should team up to ban coral-killing sunscreen products, following the example of Hawaii, a conference has heard. Chemical compounds in sunscreen lotions cause irreparable damage to reefs, which are crucial to the livelihoods of 500 million people in the tropics, scientist and policymakers said at the IUCN World Conservation Congress on 3 September.…

  • Future fisheries can expect $10 billion revenue loss due to climate change

    Global fisheries stand to lose approximately $10 billion of their annual revenue by 2050 if climate change continues unchecked, and countries that are most dependent on fisheries for food will be the hardest hit, finds new UBC research.Climate change impacts such as rising temperatures and changes in ocean salinity, acidity and oxygen levels are expected…

  • Toxic air pollution nanoparticles discovered in the human brain

    A team involving Oxford University scientists has, for the first time, discovered tiny magnetic particles from air pollution lodged in human brains – and researchers think they could be a possible cause of Alzheimer's disease.Researchers led by Lancaster University found abundant magnetite nanoparticles in the brain tissue of 37 individuals aged three to 92 who…

  • New simulations of wind power generation

    There has been a massive boom in wind power capacity both in Europe and worldwide. In 2015 global installed capacity was around 350 gigawatt (GW), with 135 GW installed in Europe, distributed across some 87,000 wind turbines. Wind power now provides a bigger share (13 percent) of electricity than nuclear power stations. In countries such…

  • Detecting forest fragility with satellites

    Over the past decades’ forests in different parts of the world have suffered sudden massive tree mortality. Now an international team of scientists led by researchers from Wageningen University in the Netherlands has found a way to spot from satellite images which forests may be most likely to fall prey to such die-off events.

  • Climate change could make coffee extinct by 2080

    The sun may be setting on a popular morning brew. According to a new report issued by the Climate Institute, global warming will underpin an estimated 50 percent drop in coffee production by 2050. Bad news for coffee lovers, but catastrophic for the 120 million people in dozens of mostly developing nations who depend on…

  • Clues in ancient mud hold answers to climate change

    New research suggests that Africa has gradually become wetter over the past 1.3 million years — instead of drier as was thought previously.The research from Berke, assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences at the University of Notre Dame and Environmental Change Initiative affiliate, suggests that Africa has gradually…

  • Motivating Eco-Friendly Behaviors Depends on Cultural Values

    The specific cultural values of a country may determine whether concern about environmental issues actually leads individuals to engage in environmentally friendly behaviors, according to the new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.The findings suggest that individual concern is more strongly associated with motivation to act in countries that espouse individualistic values,…

  • Subantarctic seabed creatures shed new light on past climate

    A new marine biodiversity study in one of the largest Marine Protected Areas in the world reveals the impact of environmental change on subantarctic seabed animals and answers big questions about the extent of South Georgia's ice sheet during the Last Glacial Maximum around 20,000 years ago.Reporting this week in the Journal of Biogeography researchers at British…