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Global fossil fuel emissions would have to be reduced by as much as 20% more than previous estimates to achieve the Paris Agreement targets, because of natural greenhouse gas emissions from wetlands and permafrost, new research has found.

A new design of rechargeable battery, created using salt, could lead the way for greener energy.

Researchers at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC) have joined forces with a specialist group at the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics (SINAP), Chinese Academy of Sciences on designs for the novel energy store which allows for greater power while also lasting longer than conventional batteries.

Most of the carbon resulting from wildfires and fossil fuel combustion is rapidly released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. Researchers at the University of Zurich have now shown that the leftover residue, so-called black carbon, can age for millennia on land and in rivers en route to the ocean, and thus constitutes a major long-term reservoir of organic carbon. The study adds a major missing piece to the puzzle of understanding the global carbon cycle.

Birds around the world eat 400 to 500 million metric tonnes of beetles, flies, ants, moths, aphids, grasshoppers, crickets and other anthropods per year. These numbers have been calculated in a study led by Martin Nyffeler of the University of Basel in Switzerland. The research, published in Springer’s journal The Science of Nature, highlights the important role birds play in keeping plant-eating insect populations under control. 

Fish that ‘farm’ their own patches of seaweed alter their ‘cropping’ practices under high CO2 conditions, researchers at the University of Adelaide in Australia have found.