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UAF to host Eighth Conference of Arctic Parliamentarians
08 08 2008 (University of Alaska Fairbanks) The University of Alaska Fairbanks campus will be home to the Eighth Conference of Arctic Parliamentarians Aug. 12-14, 2008.
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Scientists to assess Beijing Olympics air pollution control efforts
08 08 2008 (National Science Foundation) As the Summer Olympics in Beijing kicks off this week, the event is giving scientists a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to observe how the atmosphere responds when a heavily populated region substantially curbs everyday industrial emissions.
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Scripps scientists will assess Beijing Olympics air pollution control efforts
08 08 2008 (University of California - San Diego) Flying downwind from Chinese mainland, unmanned aerial vehicles will measure emissions of soot and other forms of black carbon during China's "great shutdown."
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UGA gets $2.5 million in grants to study plants to make biofuels
08 08 2008 (University of Georgia) University of Georgia researchers were recently awarded two grants totaling $2.5 million to help find better ways to produce biofuels from switchgrass and sunflowers.
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Forward step in forecasting global warming
08 08 2008 (Arizona State University) Arizona State University researchers say brown carbons -- a nanoscale atmospheric aerosol species -- are being overlooked when scientists put together computer models for climate studies.They have developed a new technique to precisely determine optical properties of brown carbon nanoparticles over the entire visible light, ultraviolet and infrared spectrums. The method promises to provide more accurate prediction of climate change, including global warming.
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Climate change: When it rains it (really) pours
08 08 2008 (University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science) Climate models have long predicted that global warming will increase the intensity of "extreme" precipitation events. A new study conducted at the University of Miami and the University of Reading (UK) provides the first observational evidence to confirm the link between a warmer climate and more powerful rainstorms.
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Clean 3-way split observed
08 08 2008 (University of Southern California) A study in Science shows for the first time that a molecule can break into three identical parts in one step. Aside from being a theoretical and experimental tour-de-force, study has implications for certain reactions in organic chemistry, in atmospheric science (i.e. ozone formation) and in combustion.
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AGU journal highlights -- August 6, 2008
07 08 2008 (American Geophysical Union) In the issue: Recent African drought heralds drier conditions to come; Is climate change reducing hail over China?; Mapping Venus's winds; Deep evidence shows past and present warming; Climate models may underestimate heat stored in ground; and Soot from ships worse than expected.
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Dartmouth awarded NSF grant for new polar sciences, engineering grad program
07 08 2008 (Dartmouth College) Dartmouth's Dickey Center for International Understanding, through its Institute for Arctic Studies, has been awarded nearly $3 million by the National Science Foundation through its Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship program. The five-year grant supports the development of an interdisciplinary doctoral program in the polar sciences and engineering with a focus on rapid environmental change.
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Iowa Corn Promotion Board, NJIT to license breakthrough, safe bio-plastic alternative
06 08 2008 (New Jersey Institute of Technology) The Iowa Corn Promotion Board, NJIT and University of Sao Paulo today announced a joint agreement for licensing four pending patents on a safe, building block chemical derived from corn known as isosorbide to chemists.
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Vine invasion? UWM ecologist looks at coexistence of trees and lianas
06 08 2008 (University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee) An ecologist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee studies how woody vines, or lianas, are affecting tropical forests and atmospheric CO2 levels. Through a comprehensive community-level study on liana-tree interactions in Panama, Stefan Schnitzer is untangling how lianas survive -- and whether they are really threatening trees.
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Aphids are sentinels of climate change
06 08 2008 (Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council) Aphids are sentinels of climate change, researchers at Rothamsted Research have shown. One of the UK's most damaging aphids -- the peach-potato aphid (Myzus persicae) -- has been found to be flying two weeks earlier for every 1°C rise in mean temperature for January and February combined. This year, the first aphid was caught on April 25, almost four weeks ahead of the 42-year average. This work is reported in BBSRC Business, the quarterly magazine of BBSRC.
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Stevens assists enXco with construction of solar photovoltaic system
06 08 2008 (Stevens Institute of Technology) On July 29, 2008, enXco, an EDF Energies Nouvelles company, announced that a Power Purchase Agreement was made with Stevens Institute of Technology to construct a 487 kW solar photovoltaic system in Hoboken, N.J.
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Rare Antarctic fossils reveal extinction of tundra before full polar climate arrived
06 08 2008 (Boston University) An unusual and amazing discovery of fossilized plants and insects in an ice-free region of Antarctica reveals the last traces of tundra before a dramatic and abrupt cooling some 14 million years ago. An international team, led by earth scientist Robert Marchant of Boston University, documented the magnitude and the timing of the climate change. Their research suggests that climate conditions over a considerable portion of Antarctica seem impervious to moderate global warming.
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NASA data show some African drought linked to warmer Indian Ocean
06 08 2008 (NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center) A new study, co-funded by NASA, has identified a link between a warming Indian Ocean and less rainfall in eastern and southern Africa. Computer models and observations show a decline in rainfall, with implications for the region's food security.
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Antarctic fossils paint a picture of a much warmer continent
05 08 2008 (National Science Foundation) National Science Foundation-funded scientists working in an ice-free region of Antarctica have discovered the last traces of tundra -- in the form of fossilized plants and insects -- on the interior of the southernmost continent before temperatures began a relentless drop millions of years ago.
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ESA to feature wide range of UW-Madison presentations
05 08 2008 (University of Wisconsin-Madison) The Ecological Society of America will hold its 93rd annual meeting on Aug. 3-8, 2008, in Milwaukee, Wis. The society was founded in 1915 to promote the practice and awareness of ecological science.
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Addressing 'Global Challenges' at ACS National Meeting in Philadelphia
05 08 2008 (American Chemical Society) The American Chemical Society has launched a major series of podcasts, Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions, www.acs.org/globalchallenges focusing on some of the 21st Century most serious world-wide problems and how new discoveries from the labs of chemists and other scientists offer solutions. Selected papers and symposia at the ACSÆ 236th National Meeting involve a wide range of Global Challenges topics, including providing safe water, coping with climate change, combating disease, developing new fuels and more.
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Patagonian glacier yields clues for improved understanding of global climate change
04 08 2008 (Institut de Recherche Pour le Développement) An expedition in 2005 by an IRD team and its partners on the San Valentin glacier in the Chilean part of Patagonia demonstrated the potential of that site for exploring climatic variations of the past. The analyses gave the first evidence of influences from Antarctica and the Pacific on the Southern climate of the American continent, thus indicating the complexity of the climate system in this ecologically fragile region.
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Climate change and species distributions
04 08 2008 (Ecological Society of America) Scientists have long pointed to physical changes in the Earth and its atmosphere as indicators of global climate change. But changes in climate can wreak havoc in more subtle ways, such as the loss of habitat for plant and animal species. At the Ecological Society of America 93rd Annual Meeting, climate change scientists will discuss how temperature-induced habitat loss can spell disaster for many living things.
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Tracking down abrupt climate changes
01 08 2008 (Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres) Extremely fast climate change in Western Europe. This took place long before man-made changes in the atmosphere commenced.
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The emerging scientific discipline of aeroecology
01 08 2008 (Boston University) Aeroecology is the emerging discipline for studying how airborne organisms -- birds, bats, arthropods and microbes -- depend on the support of the lower atmosphere that is closest to the Earth's surface. Called the aerosphere, it influences the daily and seasonal movements, development traits, such as size and shape, and evolution of behavioral, sensory, metabolic and respiratory functions of airborne organisms. Understanding how they respond to altered landscapes and atmospheric conditions can also help mitigate adverse effects.
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GKSS membranes reduce air pollution in Beijing
01 08 2008 (Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres) In China, new legal regulations prescribe the recovery of petrol vapour at filling stations (vent processing) in especially polluted regions like Beijing or Shanghai. Due to these new conditions, the Chinese oil company PetroChina has now equipped about 140 filling stations with a membrane technique developed by the polymer researchers of the GKSS Research Centre Geesthacht.
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Climate Change Science Program issues report on climate models
31 07 2008 (DOE/US Department of Energy) The US Climate Change Science Program today announced the release of the report "Climate Models: An Assessment of Strengths and Limitations," the 10th in a series of 21 Synthesis and Assessment Products. This report describes computer models of the Earth's climate and their ability to simulate current climate change.
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Cold and ice, not heat, episodically gripped tropical regions 300 million years ago
31 07 2008 (National Science Foundation) Geoscientists have long presumed that, like today, the tropics remained warm throughout Earth's last major glaciation 300 million years ago.
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