Top Stories

Large Outdoor Study Shows Biodiversity Improves Stability of Algal Biofuel Systems

A diverse mix of species improves the stability and fuel-oil yield of algal biofuel systems, as well as their resistance to invasion by outsiders, according to the findings of a federally funded outdoor study by University of Michigan researchers.

>> Read the Full Article

Study Finds a Pesticide-Free Way to Combat Mosquitos and West Nile

Researchers at the University of Waterloo may have discovered a new, pesticide-free way to limit mosquito populations in some area and reduce the spread of the West Nile virus.

>> Read the Full Article

Explosive Volcanoes Spawned Mysterious Martian Rock Formation

Explosive volcanic eruptions that shot jets of hot ash, rock and gas skyward are the likely source of a mysterious Martian rock formation, a new study finds. The new finding could add to scientists’ understanding of Mars’s interior and its past potential for habitability, according to the study’s authors.

>> Read the Full Article

June 2018 El Niño/Southern Oscillation Update: El Niño Watch!

Well, well, well… what have we here? Favorable conditions for El Niño to develop?

>> Read the Full Article

National Weather Service director cautions: Don't chase single model runs this hurricane season

The sultry summer months along the Gulf Coast and East Coast are a time of volatile weather as warm ocean water fuels storms, some just bringing rain and some growing into fierce tropical storms and hurricanes.

>> Read the Full Article

Better Be Safe Than Sorry: Economic Optimization Risks Tipping of Important Earth System Elements

Optimizing economic welfare without constraints might put human well-being at risk, a new climate study argues. While being successful in bringing down costs of greenhouse gas reductions for instance, the concept of profit maximization alone does not suffice to avoid the tipping of critical elements in the Earth system which could lead to dramatic changes of our livelihood. The scientists use mathematical experiments to compare economic optimization to the governance concepts of sustainability and the more recent approach of a safe operating space for humanity. All of these turn out to have their benefits and deficits, yet the profit-maximizing approach shows the greatest likelihood of producing outcomes that harm people or the environment.

>> Read the Full Article

Critical Plant Gene Takes Unexpected Detour That Could Boost Biofuel Yields

For decades, biologists have believed a key enzyme in plants had one function—produce amino acids, which are vital to plant survival and also essential to human diets.

>> Read the Full Article

When the River Runs High

A massive world-wide study of dry riverbeds has found they’re contributing more carbon emissions than previously thought, and this could help scientists better understand how to fight climate change.

>> Read the Full Article

Why the Tongue of the Pine Island Glacier Suddenly Shrank

The Pine Island Glacier in Western Antarctica is not only one of the fastest-flowing ice streams in the Southern Hemisphere; over the past eleven years, four major icebergs have calved from its floating tongue. In February 2017, researchers on board the German research icebreaker Polarstern successfully mapped an area of seafloor previously covered by shelf ice. A comparison of these new maps with satellite images of the ice stream reveals why the glacier suddenly retreated toward the coast: at important points, it had lost contact with the ground, as the experts report in the online journal The Cryosphere, a journal of the European Geosciences Union. 

>> Read the Full Article

Leading Antarctic Experts Offer Two Possible Views of Continent’s Future

The next 10 years will be critical for the future of Antarctica, and choices made will have long-lasting consequences, says an international group of award-winning Antarctic research scientists in a paper released today. It lays out two different plausible future scenarios for the continent and its Southern Ocean over the next 50 years.

>> Read the Full Article