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Tropical rainforests are often described as the “lungs of the earth,” able to essentially inhale carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and exhale oxygen in return. The faster they grow, the more they mitigate climate change by absorbing CO2.

This role has made them a hot research topic, as scientists question what will happen to this vital carbon sink long-term as temperatures rise and rainfall increases.

Conventional wisdom has held that forest growth will dramatically slow with high levels of rainfall. But CU Boulder researchers this month turned that assumption on its head with an unprecedented review of data from 150 forests that concluded just the opposite.

An annual survey led by researchers at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science shows the abundance of underwater grasses in Chesapeake Bay increased 8% between 2015 and 2016, continuing an upward trend initiated in 2012.

The increase makes 2016 the second consecutive year since VIMS began its aerial survey in 1984 that the baywide acreage of submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) has reached a new high. A total of 97,433 acres of SAV were mapped in Chesapeake Bay during 2016.

By precisely controlling the quantum behavior of an ultracold atomic gas, Rice University physicists have created a model system for studying the wave phenomenon that may bring about rogue waves in Earth’s oceans.

The research appears this week in Science. The researchers said their experimental system could provide clues about the underlying physics of rogue waves — 100-foot walls of water that are the stuff of sailing lore but were only confirmed scientifically within the past two decades. Recent research has found rogue waves, which can severely damage and sink even the largest ships, may be more common than previously believed.

The air we breathe out can help us improve the quality of the air we breathe in.

Measurements of indoor carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations are used to evaluate indoor air quality, which is strongly linked to the levels of contaminants, such as gases and particles, circulating about with CO2. This information also can be used to control ventilation, which helps clean the air, and reduce the need for heating and cooling, which saves energy. However, according to National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) mechanical engineer Andrew Persily and George Mason University nutrition professor and human metabolism scientist Lilian de Jonge, the formula that’s been used since the early 1980s to estimate an integral part of those calculations—the amount of CO2 generated by building occupants—relies on old data and a method lacking scientific documentation. This means current estimates of CO2 generation rates may be off by as much as 25 percent.

The ability of some Western conifer forests to recover after severe fire may become increasingly limited as the climate continues to warm, according to a new study published today in Global Change Biology, by ?HF Senior Ecologist Jonathan Thompson and fellow scientists from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute (SCBI) and UVA.

Although most of the evergreen trees in the study region are well adapted to fire, the study examined whether two likely facets of climate change — hotter, drier conditions and larger, more frequent and severe wildfires — could potentially transform landscapes from forested to shrub-dominated systems.