The mystery of the methane decline at the end of the twentieth century

It started in the 1980s: a sudden levelling of methane release into the atmosphere. It was a mystery as to why it happened. Now scientists have found the answer to the mystery, or in fact they have found two different reasons. An increased commercial use of natural gas on one hand and heavier commercial fertiliser use in Asia on the other hand.

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Japanese tsunami causes breaking of Antarctic ice shelf

As Edward Lorentz once put it so eloquently in his Chaos Theory is that something as small as the flutter of a butterfly’s wing can ultimately cause a typhoon halfway around the world. Then what influence could something as large as the earthquake and subsequent tsunami in March that wreaked havoc on the Japanese mainland have around the world? As it turns out the quake that could be felt as high up as the ionosphere had a visible effect on Antarctic ice some 13,600 kilometres away.

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Permian-Triassic mass extinction: 11,000 Gt CO2 worth of climate change led to microbial plagues that killed the world’s forests

Permian-Triassic mass extinction was climate causedNew research shows an example of a missing link between climatic disruptions and biodiversity decline: killer microbes.

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Graphene not just made out of graphite but also chocolate and cockroach

For all its possible applications in electronics, but also as an immensely strong material, graphene has always had one major drawback: it is expensive. With a price of around 175 euros for no more than a two inch square it is difficult to truly implement the prodigious material on a large scale. But this may soon change as Rice University graduate students have proven that graphene can be made out of any carbon source imaginable, not just pure graphite.

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Fossil driftwood tells Danish scientists the Arctic sea ice variations during Holocene are larger than we thought

Holocene temperature record - Arctic sea ice is variableDuring the Holocene Climatic Optimum of 8,000 to 5,000 years ago, the Arctic sea ice was less than 50% [so <2.6 mln sq km] of the lowest extent on satellite record, the 2007 melting record, researchers of Copenhagen University stated on Tuesday, today reaching the news – ahead of their publication in Science.

Does this disprove ‘global warming causes the polar ice to melt’? To the contrary, as during the HCO or HTM (Holocene Thermal Maximum) it was warmer than today – in the Arctic on average about 1.6 degrees Celsius.

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Crop geoengineering #3: doubling root depth would store 230 Gt carbon in agricultural soils – minus 118 ppm CO2

Breeding crops with deeper (and larger) root systems could help to lower atmospheric CO2 levels, while also making the crops better drought-resistant, Douglas Kell, a Professor of Bioanalytical Science at the University of Manchester says.

Crop CDR geoengineering: longer roots store more carbon in soils
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Lull in upper ocean warming explained through ENSO – warming trend continues

El Niño ocean warmingShortly after an El Niño event there is elevated heat exchange from the upper ocean layers to the cosmos over the tropical Pacific Ocean. In the North Atlantic Ocean, variations in the ocean circulation affect the heat exchange to the deeper waters of the ocean.

Together, these effects explain a measured decline in the upper ocean warming of 0.02 degrees Celsius since 2003, say climate researchers of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute KNMI.

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Children multi-task their media

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Tired of trying to get the kids away from the screen/computer/gaming console (or all three)? A new study published today by Dr. Russell Jago in the BioMed Central Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity assessed the viewing patterns on 10-11 year olds in the UK. Data revealed that most kids engage in multi-screen viewing instead on using just one media format. Most often, the television was one media included, however tv viewing was not the dominant activity.

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