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Category: Environment

Nature’s ‘engine is grinding to a halt’ as climate change gains pace, says study

Nature’s ‘engine is grinding to a halt’ as climate change gains pace, says study

Phys.org reports: Many ecologists hypothesize that, as global warming accelerates, change in nature must speed up. They assume that as temperatures rise and climatic zones shift, species will face local extinction and colonize new habitats at an ever-increasing rate, leading to a rapid reshuffling of ecological communities. A new study by researchers at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and published in Nature Communications shows this is emphatically not the case. The researchers analyzed a massive database of biodiversity surveys,…

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We need Greenland. But not in the way Trump imagines

We need Greenland. But not in the way Trump imagines

A year ago, Paul Bierman wrote: Donald Trump has a thing for Greenland. First, he wanted to buy the Arctic island. Then, his son visited for a photo-op. Now, he refuses to rule out using the U.S. military to seize it. Decades ago, the value of Greenland was indeed its strategic location between superpowers and its unique mineral resources. No longer. Today, Greenland’s value is the ice that covers 80 percent of the island. Keeping Greenland’s ice frozen preserves at…

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Hundreds of iceberg earthquakes detected at the crumbling end of Antarctica’s Doomsday Glacier

Hundreds of iceberg earthquakes detected at the crumbling end of Antarctica’s Doomsday Glacier

Copernicus / ESA, CC BY By Thanh-Son Pham, Australian National University Glacial earthquakes are a special type of earthquake generated in cold, icy regions. First discovered in the northern hemisphere more than 20 years ago, these quakes occur when huge chunks of ice fall from glaciers into the sea. Until now, only a very few have been found in the Antarctic. In a new study published in Geophysical Research Letters, I present evidence for hundreds of these quakes in Antarctica…

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The Amazon is shifting into a ‘hypertropical’ state unseen for millions of years

The Amazon is shifting into a ‘hypertropical’ state unseen for millions of years

Science Alert reports: A new study of the Amazon rainforest has found the region is shifting toward a ‘hypertropical’ state as droughts become longer, hotter, and more frequent. These conditions have “no current analogue” according to the international team of researchers behind the study. Trees are becoming exposed to whole new levels of stress, and the Amazon’s capacity to absorb carbon dioxide is being reduced, too. So drastic are the contemporary and impending changes, based on data gathered across the…

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How rare and vulnerable our temperate moment is

How rare and vulnerable our temperate moment is

Peter Brannen writes: Some 4 billion years after its creation, a small planet circling an unexceptional star in the outlying Orion-Cygnus spiral arm of the Milky Way enjoyed a brief and bustling season of complex life. The planet blushed with a breathable atmosphere, and for a few hundred million years it also hosted temperatures that somehow stayed within a surprisingly narrow window — one amenable to a biosphere that now teemed with energetic, multicellular creatures. For its entire prior history,…

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America’s biggest oil field is turning into a pressure cooker creating a huge toxic mess

America’s biggest oil field is turning into a pressure cooker creating a huge toxic mess

The Wall Street Journal reports: Shale drillers have turned the biggest oil field in the U.S. into a pressure cooker that is literally bursting at the seams. Producers in the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico extract roughly half of the U.S.’s crude. They also produce copious amounts of toxic, salty water, which they pump back into the ground. Now, some of the reservoirs that collect the fluids are overflowing—and the producers keep injecting more. It is creating…

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Antarctica’s ‘Doomsday Glacier’ is getting closer and closer to irreversible collapse

Antarctica’s ‘Doomsday Glacier’ is getting closer and closer to irreversible collapse

Wired reports: Known as the “Doomsday Glacier,” the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica is one of the most rapidly changing glaciers on Earth, and its future evolution is one of the biggest unknowns when it comes to predicting global sea level rise. The eastern ice shelf of the Thwaites Glacier is supported at its northern end by a ridge of the ocean floor. However, over the past two decades, cracks in the upper reaches of the glacier have increased rapidly, weakening…

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After ruining a treasured and ancient water resource, Iran is drying up

After ruining a treasured and ancient water resource, Iran is drying up

Yale Environment 360 reports: More than international sanctions, more than its stifling theocracy, more than recent bombardment by Israel and the U.S. — Iran’s greatest current existential crisis is what hydrologists are calling its rapidly approaching “water bankruptcy.” It is a crisis that has a sad origin, they say: the destruction and abandonment of tens of thousands of ancient tunnels for sustainably tapping underground water, known as qanats, that were once the envy of the arid world. But calls for…

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Rewilded lab mice, lose their anxiety after a week outdoors

Rewilded lab mice, lose their anxiety after a week outdoors

Cornell University: When postdoctoral researcher Matthew Zipple releases lab mice into a large, enclosed field just off Cornell’s campus, something remarkable happens. The mice, which have only ever lived in a cage a little larger than a shoebox, rear up on their back legs, sniff the air, move into the grass and begin to bound over it, a new way of moving and a totally new experience for them. It’s one of many they’ll have as “rewilded” mice, and in…

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Humans have an internal lunar clock. We are accidentally destroying it

Humans have an internal lunar clock. We are accidentally destroying it

PsyPost reports: Most animals, including humans, carry an internal lunar clock, tuned to the 29.5-day rhythm of the Moon. It guides sleep, reproduction and migration of many species. But in the age of artificial light, that ancient signal is fading – washed out by the glow of cities, screens and satellites. Just as the circadian rhythm keeps time with the 24-hour rotation of the Earth, many organisms also track the slower rhythm of the Moon. Both systems rely on light…

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‘The precedent is Flint’: How Oregon’s data center boom is supercharging a water crisis

‘The precedent is Flint’: How Oregon’s data center boom is supercharging a water crisis

Rolling Stone reports: In the spring of 2022, Jim Doherty kept having the same conversation with folks at the only grocery store in Boardman, his eastern Oregon hometown, or at the grain depot where he picked up food for his four ranch dogs. Healthy adults that these people knew were coming down with unexplained medical conditions, including diseases and cancers that usually afflicted the elderly. “It was kinda grim,” Doherty says. Sixty years old, broad-chested, with a salt-and-pepper goatee, Doherty…

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Nature can bounce back if we just give it a chance

Nature can bounce back if we just give it a chance

Emma Marris writes: When the last of four dams on the Klamath River in southern Oregon and Northern California was demolished in October 2024, everyone who knew the river well had a question: How long would it take for salmon to reclaim the upper reaches they’d been cut off from for more than 100 years? About 10 months later, when they began their fall migration, Chinook salmon immediately took advantage of their new river access, looking for places upstream to…

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How humanity has broken a cycle that sustains life on Earth

How humanity has broken a cycle that sustains life on Earth

Jack Lohmann writes: Stored in rock and organic material, phosphorus cycles slowly around Earth, through magma and mountains, down rivers, through waste and into oceans. Without it, there’d be no life – every living being needs it to grow. Unlike other mined materials, we all eat it. In the human body, it gives our cells energy, structure and identity, and it is particularly concentrated in our bones. Rare enough to be notable, common enough to be necessary, phosphorus tracks the…

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Thousands of toxic sites across America at risk of coastal flooding

Thousands of toxic sites across America at risk of coastal flooding

The Guardian reports: More than 5,500 toxic sites nationwide could face coastal flooding by 2100 due to rising sea levels, according to new research. The study, published on Thursday in Nature Communications and led by scientists at the University of California, warns that if heat-trapping pollution continues unabated, rising seas will flood a wide range of hazardous facilities including those handling sewage, toxic waste, oil and gas, as well as other industrial pollutants. The analysis relies on projections of a…

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Northern Hemisphere absorbing more sunlight than Southern, and clouds can no longer keep the balance

Northern Hemisphere absorbing more sunlight than Southern, and clouds can no longer keep the balance

Live Science reports: Years ago, scientists noted something odd: Earth’s Northern and Southern Hemispheres reflect nearly the same amount of sunlight back into space. The reason why this symmetry is odd is because the Northern Hemisphere has more land, cities, pollution, and industrial aerosols. All those things should lead to a higher albedo — more sunlight reflected than absorbed. The Southern Hemisphere is mostly ocean, which is darker and absorbs more sunlight. New satellite data, however, suggest that symmetry is…

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Humans have an internal lunar clock – but light pollution is disrupting it

Humans have an internal lunar clock – but light pollution is disrupting it

Flash Vector/Shutterstock By Stefano Arlaud, Queen Mary University of London Most animals, including humans, carry an internal lunar clock, tuned to the 29.5-day rhythm of the Moon. It guides sleep, reproduction and migration of many species. But in the age of artificial light, that ancient signal is fading – washed out by the glow of cities, screens and satellites. Just as the circadian rhythm keeps time with the 24-hour rotation of the Earth, many organisms also track the slower rhythm…

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