Phys.org Earth Science

• Dallas greenhouse gas emissions fall below 2015 levels, city data show

  Dallas is discharging less greenhouse gas than it did a decade ago, according to a newly released environmental report from the city.

• Is California really 100% drought-free for the first time in 25 years? Yes and no: Here's why

  For the second time in the past two weeks, the U.S. Drought Monitor, a prominent national report, has classified 100% of California as being drought-free. That's a rating that hasn't occurred in 25 years.

• New interactive map models dust exposure from shrinking Great Salt Lake

  Most people can imagine why a shrinking Great Salt Lake would mean unhealthy dust storms for the Wasatch Front, or why refilling the lake through water conservation could reduce dust exposure. Now, there is a data-based modeling tool to visualize it, hosted at the University of Utah's Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy.

• New temperature record challenges extreme high-latitude warmth paradigm

  Reliable predictions of how the Earth's climate will respond as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels increase are based on climate models. These models, in turn, are based on data from past geological times in which the CO2 content in the Earth's atmosphere changed in a similar way to today and the near future. The data originate from measurable indicators (proxies), the interpretation of which is used to reconstruct the climate of the past.

• Protected forests under threat in DRC's lucrative mining belt

  Valery Kyembo was leading an inspection of his community's protected forest reserve deep in the Democratic Republic of Congo's mining belt when two armed Congolese soldiers blocked their way.

• Climate and land-use changes projected to raise nitrogen pollution in rivers

  While a wealth of nutrient export models exists, a knowledge gap persists regarding how climate and land-use changes specifically drive dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) export in subtropical catchments.

• New map reveals a rugged world beneath the Antarctic ice sheet

  Scientists have discovered there is more to Antarctica than meets the eye. A new map of the landscape beneath the frozen continent's ice sheet has revealed a previously hidden world of mountains, deep canyons and rugged hills in unprecedented detail.

• When tropical oceans were oxygen oases

  Research reveals when and why ancient tropical seas transitioned from oxygen oases to marine dead zones, providing clues to the long-term evolution of oceanic environments.

• Exposing how humidity can escalate a heat wave

  When Floridians talk about extreme weather, hurricanes dominate the conversation. Each season brings updates on storm tracks, cone predictions and wind speeds, all in the hopes of predicting the unpredictable. But a quieter, more deceptive threat is already reshaping the way people live and work in the Sunshine State: extreme heat.

• Learning about public consensus on climate change does little to boost people's support for action, study shows

  Providing accurate information about the climate crisis can help to correct misperceptions about how much public support exists for action.

• Greening school playgrounds can improve quality of life in cities and help deal with climate change

  Adapting urban spaces to tackle climate change through nature-based solutions, especially in school playgrounds and environments, benefits both children and society as a whole. This is one of the main findings of a three-year study conducted by a group of experts at European universities and research centers under the leadership of a team of researchers at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) and Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya—BarcelonaTech (UPC). The study is an interdisciplinary applied research project that seeks to analyze the many benefits of nature-based solutions for climate adaptation.

• Rethinking climate impacts through human well-being

  A new study by IIASA researchers offers a pioneering way to understand how climate change affects people's lives over the long term. Using a global model and the Years of Good Life (YoGL) metric, the research shows that today's emissions shape future well-being, especially for younger generations.

• The hidden risk of combined stressors for soils

  Global change—a term that encompasses climate change and phenomena such as changes in land use or environmental pollution—is increasingly putting ecosystems around the world under pressure. Urban soils in particular are susceptible to stressors like heat, drought, road salt, nitrogen deposition, surfactants, and microplastics.

• Historic ocean treaty to safeguard and sustainably use the high seas to take effect on Jan. 17

  Oregon State University research into marine protected areas plays a crucial role in the historic High Seas Treaty that goes into effect Jan. 17.

• Crowd sensing for the environment: Citizen science and plant apps map how urbanization alters city soils and climate

  Plants reflect urban climate and soil conditions with remarkable precision. Using more than 80 million observations from plant identification apps, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry have produced a detailed picture of fine-scale climate and soil conditions for 326 European cities.

• When lightning strikes: Models of multi-ignition wildfires could predict catastrophic events

  Multi-ignition wildfires are not overly common. But when individual fires do converge, the consequences can be catastrophic. The largest fire on record in California, the 2020 August Complex fire, grew from the coalescence of 10 separate ignitions.

• Methyl bromide pesticide still widely used in California, raising health concerns

  In a new study of the continuing use in California of the pesticide methyl bromide, a known developmental, neurologic and respiratory toxin, researchers from UCLA and UC Irvine found that the compound is still in widespread use across the state, from San Diego and Los Angeles counties northward through the Central Valley.

• Tiny earthquakes reveal hidden faults under Northern California

  By tracking swarms of very small earthquakes, seismologists are getting a new picture of the complex region where the San Andreas fault meets the Cascadia subduction zone, an area that could give rise to devastating major earthquakes.

• Collapse of the Tang dynasty: Climate change likely played a role

  Environmental phenomena and their consequences can disrupt social structures and destabilize political systems. An interdisciplinary research team demonstrated this using the example of the late Tang dynasty in medieval China.

• Construction emissions are higher than thought—but the solution isn't building less, new study finds

  Many cities are making great strides in the fight against climate change, such as improving building energy efficiency, reducing traffic congestion and switching to renewable power sources. But there is another often overlooked problem, and that is the environmental impact of construction.

• Large parts of the tropics overlooked in environmental research, study says

  Environmental research in the tropics is heavily skewed, according to a comprehensive study led by Umeå University. Humid lowland forest ecosystems receive a disproportionate amount of attention, while colder and drier regions that are more affected by climate change are severely underrepresented.

• Earth system models overestimate river flow increases, research reveals

  Understanding how water moves through the Earth system is fundamental to predicting climate impacts and ensuring sustainable water management. Yet despite decades of research, uncertainties persist regarding how global precipitation is partitioned into evapotranspiration and river flow—the two dominant pathways by which water returns from land to the atmosphere and oceans.

• Disinfecting drinking water produces potentially toxic byproducts—new AI model is helping to identify them

  Disinfecting drinking water prevents the spread of deadly waterborne diseases by killing infectious agents such as bacteria, viruses and parasites. Without disinfection, even clear-looking water can carry pathogens that can cause severe and even life-threatening illness, especially in children, older adults, and people with weakened immune systems.

• Utah's other Great Salt Lake is underground, ancient, deep....and fresh

  Under the Great Salt Lake playa lies a potentially vast reservoir of pressurized freshwater that has accumulated over thousands of years from mountain-derived snowmelt, according to new research from University of Utah geoscientists. This groundwater occupies the pore spaces in sediments that fill the basin west of the Wasatch Mountains and below a 30-foot-thick salty layer.

• Ocean impacts nearly double economic cost of climate change, study finds

  For the first time, a study by researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego integrates climate-related damages to the ocean into the social cost of carbon—a measure of economic harm caused by greenhouse gas emissions.