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Environmental News Network -- Know Your Environment
A new study by Webster University Biology Associate Professor Nicole Miller-Struttmann, University of Missouri at Columbia Professor Emerita Candace Galen and University of Missouri Ph.D. student Zack Miller has identified a critical piece of the puzzle for a question that has troubled scientists tracking biodiversity as the climate warms– why are once abundant species declining?
A study led by the University of Reading found that the amount of winter rain and snow in the western Himalayas could vary by almost 50% depending on the air pressure gradient over the Atlantic Ocean between the Azores and Iceland.
While funding is pumped into preventing low-probability scenarios such as asteroid collision, the far more likely threat of a large volcanic eruption is close to ignored – despite much that could be done to reduce the risks, say researchers.
Over the last decade, researchers have learned a lot about the polar night — discovering everything from how tiny marine critters migrate up and down in the sea in response to the weak light of the moon, to seabirds that dive into the pitch-black ocean to feast on bioluminescent plankton and krill.
A previously overlooked factor — the position of continents — helps fill Earth’s oceans with life-supporting oxygen.
Comprehensive data from several seasons of field research in the Alaskan Arctic will address uncertainties in Earth-system and climate-change models about snow cover across the region and its impacts on water and the environment.
