Environment

World-first facility ‘will change the way we design and construct major infrastructure’

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High performance shaking tables and deep soil pit will cut financial and environmental costs whilst ensuring resilience of high-value infrastructure

The new UKCRIC Soil-Foundation-Structure Interaction (SoFSI) facility is a one-of-a-kind facility that promises to deliver major cost savings and reduce the carbon cost of high-value infrastructure projects such as High Speed 2 (HS2), bridges and offshore wind farms.

The centre, located at Bristol University, western England, officially opens tomorrow, Thursday 27 January.

The University of Bristol received £12 million from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) for the construction of the SoFSI Laboratory at its Langford Campus to enable large, close to prototype scale experiments for use by both academics and industry. [Read more…] about World-first facility ‘will change the way we design and construct major infrastructure’

Himalayan glaciers melting at ‘exceptional rate’

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The accelerating melting of the Himalayan glaciers threatens the water supply of millions of people in Asia, new research warns.

The study, led by the University of Leeds, concludes that over recent decades the Himalayan glaciers have lost ice ten times more quickly over the last few decades than on average since the last major glacier expansion 400-700 years ago, a period known as the Little Ice Age.

The study also reveals that Himalayan glaciers are shrinking far more rapidly than glaciers in other parts of the world – a rate of loss the researchers describe as “exceptional”. [Read more…] about Himalayan glaciers melting at ‘exceptional rate’

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    Sea levels influence eruptions on volcanic islandThe rise and fall of sea levels influence the likelihood of volcanic eruptions on the Greek island of Santorini, new research led by Oxford Brookes University has discovered. Analysing the timings of eruptions over hundreds of thousands of years, the researchers found that a 40 metre fall in sea level…
    Tags: ice, news, environment

Making methane from CO2: Carbon capture grows more affordable

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In their ongoing effort to make carbon capture more affordable, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have developed a method to convert captured carbon dioxide (CO2) into methane, the primary component of natural gas.

By streamlining a longstanding process in which CO2 is converted to methane, the researchers’ new method reduces the materials needed to run the reaction, the energy needed to fuel it and, ultimately, the selling price of the gas.

A key chemical player known as EEMPA makes the process possible. EEMPA is a PNNL-developed solvent that snatches CO2 from power plant flue gas, binding the greenhouse gas so it can be converted into useful chemicals. [Read more…] about Making methane from CO2: Carbon capture grows more affordable

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    Researchers take key step toward cleaner, more sustainable production of hydrogenEfficiently mass-producing hydrogen from water is closer to becoming a reality thanks to Oregon State University College of Engineering researchers and collaborators at Cornell University and the Argonne National Laboratory. The scientists used advanced experimental tools to forge a clearer understanding of an electrochemical catalytic process that's cleaner and more…
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  • Aquatic ecosystems source of half of global methane emissions
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    Aquatic ecosystems source of half of global methane emissionsDirect human alterations to natural aquatic ecosystems can increase methane emissions, a new study has found.  Atmospheric methane has tripled since pre-industrial times. It traps heat far more effectively than carbon dioxide and accounts for 25% of atmospheric warming to date. And much of that methane is coming from aquatic…
    Tags: methane, study, news, environment

How does a flood become a disaster?

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What are the causes, patterns and effects of disastrous river flood? An international group of researchers led by GFZ hydrologist Bruno Merz has investigated this question in a review article published in the journal Nature Reviews Earth and Environment. The short answer: It’s complicated.

What is certain, however, is that there is an opposing trend of property damage and personal injury. Since the 1990s, the number of fatalities from river floods has declined worldwide, but the amount of damage has risen sharply. The researchers attribute the decline in casualties to improved flood warning, technical protection measures and heightened hazard awareness.

Asia is the worst hit by floods worldwide: “More than ninety percent of the people affected by flood disasters live in Asia,” says Bruno Merz. The head of GFZ’s Hydrology Section cites a few reasons: “There are huge floodplains of large rivers there, and that’s exactly where many people live together.” [Read more…] about How does a flood become a disaster?

A database of 3,000 lead isotope analyses in geological and archaeological samples from the Iberian Peninsula

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“This work set out to compile all possible data on lead isotopes in the Iberian Peninsula and to make them accessible to everyone; the data have a set of geological criteria, whereby the mines can be separated by the area in which they appear, by the type of material, etc,” said Sonia García de Madinabeitia, author of the work.  

“One of the applications of lead isotope analyses is to try to associate archaeological remains, samples produced by humans in ancient times, with deposits and ores, i.e. with the spot where the metal was extracted. To this end, it is essential to obtain a lot of data and to have a database for comparison purposes,” explained García de Madinabeitia.

In the end, “the aim of any database,” said the researcher, “is to have as comprehensive and detailed a collection of comparable samples and results as possible.

“IBERLID brings together about 3000 lead isotopic analyses originating from more than 140 different references. The database includes results on minerals, rocks and metallic archaeological objects, which are standardised to allow samples to be selected, grouped and traced,” added the researcher from the UPV/EHU’s Department of Geology. [Read more…] about A database of 3,000 lead isotope analyses in geological and archaeological samples from the Iberian Peninsula

Sea levels influence eruptions on volcanic island

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The rise and fall of sea levels influence the likelihood of volcanic eruptions on the Greek island of Santorini, new research led by Oxford Brookes University has discovered.

Analysing the timings of eruptions over hundreds of thousands of years, the researchers found that a 40 metre fall in sea level is a crucial point beyond which eruptions are more likely to occur. The findings could have implications for millions of people living on volcanic islands around the world.

Santorini – cliffs reveal history of eruptions

The research on the popular tourist destination was led by Dr Christopher Satow, Senior Lecturer in Physical Geography at Oxford Brookes.

He says there are clues about past volcanic activity on Santorini in the layers of rock on the cliff face encircling the inner part of the island: “A huge eruption 3,600 years ago caused the centre of what was then a conical island to sink into the sea, revealing an extraordinarily detailed history of over 200 volcanic eruptions preserved within the remaining circle of cliffs. [Read more…] about Sea levels influence eruptions on volcanic island

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  • Melting ice sheets over the past 300 years raised sea levels 18 metres
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    Melting ice sheets over the past 300 years raised sea levels 18 metresIt is well known that climate-induced sea level rise is a major threat. New research has found that previous ice loss events could have caused sea-level rise at rates of around 3.6 metres per century, offering vital clues as to what lies ahead should climate change continue unabated. A team…
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  • Population and climate change point to future water shortages
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  • Ice-free Arctic summers could happen on early side of predictions
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  • Energy unleashed by underwater volcanoes could power a continent
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Can East Asian monsoon enhancement induce global cooling?

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The study of the orogenic effects of the Tibetan Plateau uplift on global climate during the Cenozoic has focused almost exclusively on the India-Asia collision zone, the Himalayas.

The strong erosion in the Himalayas was assumed to be a primary driver of Cenozoic atmospheric CO2 decline and global cooling predominantly through accelerating silicate chemical weathering in the India-Asia collision zone or through effective burial of organic carbon in the nearby Bengal Fan in South Asia.

However, the size of the India-Asia collision and the associated closure of the Tethys Ocean had a prominent effect on the reorganization of the climatic patterns beyond the collision zone. [Read more…] about Can East Asian monsoon enhancement induce global cooling?

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    Climate and carbon cycle trends of the past 50 million years reconciledPredictions of future climate change require a clear and nuanced understanding of Earth's past climate. In a study published today in Science Advances, University of Hawai'i (UH) at Mānoa oceanographers fully reconciled climate and carbon cycle trends of the past 50 million years--solving a controversy debated in the scientific literature for…
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How climate change and fires are shaping the forests of the future

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Forest fires are already a global threat. “But considering how climate change is progressing, we are probably only at the beginning of a future that will see more and bigger forest fires,” explains Rupert Seidl, Professor of Ecosystem Dynamics and Forest Management in Mountain Landscapes at TUM.

In many places, fire is part of the natural environment, and many tree species have become naturally adapted to recurrent fires.

These adaptations range from particularly thick bark, which protects the sensitive cambium in the trunk from the fire, to the cones of certain types of pine, which open only due to the heat of fire, allowing a quick regeneration and recovery of affected woodland. [Read more…] about How climate change and fires are shaping the forests of the future

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  • Fossil trees on Peru's Central Andean Plateau tell a tale of dramatic environmental change
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Improved prediction of Indian Monsoon onset three months in advance using machine learning

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The onset of the Indian summer monsoon has been predicted three months ahead for the last 40 years with the highest precision up until today.

The result indicates longer seasonal forecasts based on machine learning may be a way to mitigate the consequences of an erratic monsoon system under future global warming.

Dr. Takahito Mitsui and Dr. Niklas Boers of the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research (PIK Potsdam), Germany, published the results in Environmental Research Letters. The work is part of the European TiPES project, Coordinated from The Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark and PIK Potsdam. [Read more…] about Improved prediction of Indian Monsoon onset three months in advance using machine learning

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  • Will global warming bring a change in the winds? Dust from the deep sea provides a clue
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Transformation of controller software to ensure safe behavior under perceptual uncertainty

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A research team consisting of Tsutomu Kobayashi, Ichiro Hasuo, Fuyuki Ishikawa, and Shinya Katsumata at the National Institute of Informatics (NII, Japan) and Rick Salay and Krzysztof Czarnecki at University of Waterloo (Canada) developed a method that automatically transforms models of controller software into models that satisfy safety requirements even when there is uncertainty in sensing the state of the environment.

In addition to the transformation, the method generates formulas that represent the degree of uncertainty that the controller software can tolerate. The method can be applied to various controller systems that interact with the external environment, including autonomous vehicles.

This research was conducted under the ERATO MMSD Project (*1) funded by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST, Japan). The findings were presented at the 13th NASA Formal Methods Symposium (online) on May 26th, 2021. [Read more…] about Transformation of controller software to ensure safe behavior under perceptual uncertainty