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Category: climatology – Page 11

Envision a settlement where the sunlight that beams across Australia buoy on its vast outback powers millions of homes and industries across Southeast Asia. This is how the Australia-Asia PowerLink (AAPowerLink) is being realized: the longest sub-sea cable in the world, linking northern Australia to Singapore, presently is one of the all-time break-through renewable energy developments. By virtue of this mammoth solar farm with its advanced energy transmission technology, this ambitious vision will shape the future energy systems around the world while addressing some critical climate issues.

Taking enormous advantage from its plentiful sunlight, northern Australia houses the world’s biggest Solar Precinct in its Northern Territory gathering between 17–20 GW peak electricity, a size surpassing that of Australia’s largest coal-fired power station.

The project incorporates advanced storage of 36–42 GWh, supplying 800 MW to Darwin and 1.75 GW to Singapore. In addition to reducing emissions and electricity prices for the Darwin region, it creates a renewable energy export marketplace for the region and demonstrates the use of the solar-rich area to meet 15 percent of Singapore’s electricity demand.

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How much does sulfur emitted by marine life cool the atmosphere and help mitigate the effects of climate change? This is what a recent study published in Science Advances hopes to address as an international team of researchers conducted a first-time numerical analysis regarding the amount of sulfur is emitted by marine life and how much it cools the climate, with an emphasis on the Southern Ocean. This study holds the potential to help researchers, climate scientists, and the public better understand how the planet cools itself, thus enabling us to work together to protect it.

“This is the climatic element with the greatest cooling capacity, but also the least understood,” said Dr. Charel Wohl, who is a senior research associate at the University of East Anglia and lead author of the study. “We knew methanethiol was coming out of the ocean, but we had no idea about how much and where. We also did not know it had such an impact on climate. Climate models have greatly overestimated the solar radiation actually reaching the Southern Ocean, largely because they are not capable of correctly simulating clouds. The work done here partially closes the longstanding knowledge gap between models and observations.”

For the study, the researchers produced a database of ocean methanethiol concentrations with the goal of estimating their produced emissions and how this contributes to ocean-derived aerosols that are responsible for cooling the planet. In the end, the researchers discovered that methanethiol emissions increase the aerosol amount between 30 to 70 percent over the Southern Ocean while simultaneously decreasing atmospheric oxidants and increasing planetary cooling. The Southern Ocean is located around Antarctica and serves as a staging ground for the world’s oceans, influencing their circulation.

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Professor Carlos Duarte, Ph.D. is Distinguished Professor, Marine Science, and Executive Director, Coral Research \& Development Accelerator Platform (CORDAP — https://cordap.org/), Biological and Environmental Science and Engineering Division, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST — https://www.kaust.edu.sa/en/study/fac…), in Saudi Arabia, as well as Chief Scientist of Oceans2050, OceanUS, and E1Series.

Prior to these roles Professor Duarte was Research Professor with the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and Director of the Oceans Institute at The University of Western Australia. He also holds honorary positions at the Arctic Research Center in Aarhus University, Denmark and the Oceans Institute at The University of Western Australia.

Professor Duarte’s research focuses on understanding the effects of global change in marine ecosystems and developing nature-based solutions to global challenges, including climate change, and developing evidence-based strategies to rebuild the abundance of marine life by 2050.

Building on his research showing mangroves, seagrasses and salt-marshes to be globally-relevant carbon sinks, Professor Duarte developed, working with different UN agencies, the concept of Blue Carbon, as a nature-based solution to climate change, which has catalyzed their global conservation and restoration.

For the past years, Professor Duarte has also lead efforts to quantify the global role and importance of algal forests. He has conducted research across all continents and oceans, spanning most of the marine ecosystem types, from inland to near-shore and the deep sea and from microbes to whales, and has a particular focus on the role of seaweed aquaculture as a sustainable solution for multiple challenges.

Professor Duarte led the Malaspina 2010 Expedition, including over 700 scientists from 38 institutions from across 18 nations, that sailed the world’s oceans to examine the impacts of global change on ocean ecosystems and explore deep-sea biodiversity.

Continue reading “Prof. Carlos Duarte, Ph.D. — Executive Director, Coral Research & Development Accelerator Platform” | >

Hailstones are formed during thunderstorms, when raindrops are propelled into very cold parts of a cloud, where they freeze. Once the particles are heavy enough, gravity pulls them back towards Earth. As they plummet, they grow into hailstones, which can cause injury to people and significant damage to homes and cars.

Scientists have been studying how hailstones grow since the 1960s but doing so meant breaking them in the process. To better understand the anatomy and growth of hailstones, researchers in Catalonia have used computed tomography (CT) scans to examine the giant hailstones that hit the north-east of the Iberian Peninsula during an exceptionally strong thunderstorm in the summer of 2022.

“We show that the CT scanning technique enables the observation of the internal structure of the hailstones without breaking the samples,” said Carme Farnell Barqué, a researcher at the Meteorological Service of Catalonia and lead author of the study published in Frontiers in Environmental Science.

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The National Weather Service allowed the Tsunami Warning to expire on Thursday morning after a major magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck off the coast of Ferndale, California. The quake was the strongest for the area since 2005.

SAN FRANCISCO – A magnitude 7.0 earthquake off the coast of Northern California prompted a rare tsunami warning for coastal areas near the California–Oregon state line, including San Francisco Bay.

A powerful 7.0 earthquake was recorded around 10:44 a.m. PT about 60 miles offshore of Ferndale, California, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

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The find intrigued scientists, including my colleagues and I. Upon closer investigation, we realised the scar was created by a ferocious tornado that no-one knew had occurred. We outline the findings in new research published today.

Tornadoes are a known threat in the United States and elsewhere. But they also happen in Australia.

Without the power of technology, this remarkable example of nature’s ferocity would have gone unnoticed. It’s important to study the tornado’s aftermath to help us predict and prepare for the next big twister.

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Did Venus have oceans in its ancient past and could they have supported life as we know it, or even as we don’t know it? This is what a recent study published in Nature Astronomy hopes to address as a team of researchers from the University of Cambridge investigated the climate history of Venus and whether it possessed liquid water oceans on its surface deep in its past. This study holds the potential to help scientists better understand past conditions on planetary bodies throughout the solar system and what this could mean for finding evidence of ancient life beyond Earth.

For the study, the researchers used computer models to estimate how fast the Venusian atmosphere is losing water, carbon dioxide, and carbonyl sulphide molecules, all of which are required to be replenished by volcanic gases so atmospheric stability can be maintained. Therefore, by studying how fast these molecules are leaving the atmosphere, scientists can estimate the amount of present and past volcanic activity on Venus, thus determining if Venus once had oceans of liquid water that might have supported life as we know it. In the end, the researchers determined that Venus is far too dry to have ever possessed bodies of liquid oceans on its surface.

“We won’t know for sure whether Venus can or did support life until we send probes at the end of this decade,” said Tereza Constantinou, who is a PhD student at Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy and lead author of the study. “But given it likely never had oceans, it is hard to imagine Venus ever having supported Earth-like life, which requires liquid water.”

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Tesla’s annual holiday software update for its vehicles will begin rolling out next week with an official Apple Watch app, SiriusXM support, and more than a dozen other features.

The Apple Watch app is one of the highlights and will let owners perform some basic functions offline while in Bluetooth range, like locking and unlocking their car, adjusting the climate, and popping open the front trunk. Tesla’s iOS app leaked the Apple Watch news back in October, so while it is a welcome addition, it may be less of a surprise than some of the other features.

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From birth to death, tech is stretching the boundaries of biology. In this episode of Posthuman, we explore the discoveries that could transform reproduction, healthcare and how we die.

Technology that once seemed like science fiction is rapidly becoming reality, transforming the very essence of our existence. In this four-part series, Emily Chang unravels the future of being human in an age of unprecedented innovation.

Watch more Posthuman with Emily Chang: • Posthuman with Emily Chang.

#Tech #Science #Posthuman.
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Continue reading “How Tech Is Breaking the Rules of Biology | Posthuman with Emily Chang” | >