Tag Archives: University of California

Real Global Temperature Trend, part 3 – Global Dimming declining, but could still mask 50 percent of CO2 warming(!)

Amidst a storm of climate records here at Bits of Science we’re searching for ‘The Real Global Temperature Trend’. Today is part three of the series – the second episode about ‘Global Dimming‘. Although worldwide aerosol pollution is slowly declining … Continue reading →

The Syrian drought of 2006-2010 fits in climate trend of lower precipitation and higher temperatures, this graph shows

Over 2006 to 2010 a prolonged drought, unprecedented in modern documented history, caused a farming collapse in Northeastern Syria. Winter rainfall in the otherwise green & productive ‘Fertile Crescent’ decreased by at least a third in Syria (and up to … Continue reading →

Nature study: population growth and ecological crises drive Earth to tipping point

Nature population growth ecological tipping point EarthA group of scientists from around the world is warning that population growth, widespread destruction of natural ecosystems, and climate change may be driving Earth toward an irreversible change in the biosphere, a planet-wide tipping point that would have destructive consequences absent adequate preparation and mitigation.

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Zeolites can reduce carbon capture energy costs by 30 per cent

Zeolite structure

In this zeolite structure, the arrangement of oxygen atoms (red) and silicon atoms (tan) influences the regions in the pores (colored surface) where CO2 can be captured.

A detailed analysis of more than 4 million absorbent minerals has determined that new materials could help electricity producers slash as much as 30 percent of the “parasitic energy” costs associated with removing carbon dioxide from power plant emissions.

The research by scientists at Rice University, the University of California, Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) was published online this week in the journal Nature Materials (“In silico screening of carbon-capture materials”).

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Nano-giraffe leaves opposition behind in Science as Art competition

Out of 150 entries an image of a nano-structure resembling a giraffe has won first prize in the 2012 Science as Art competition of the Materials Research Society. The creator of the picture is Shaahin Amini a Ph.D. student at … Continue reading →

Shining solar cell design sets new efficiency record

high-efficiency Alta Devices solar cell

High-efficiency Alta Devices solar cell

To produce the maximum amount of energy, solar cells are designed to absorb as much light from the Sun as possible. Now researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, have suggested – and demonstrated – a counterintuitive concept: solar cells should be designed to be more like LEDs, able to emit light as well as absorb it. The Berkeley team will present its findings at the Conference on Lasers and Electro Optics (CLEO: 2012), to be held May 6-11 in San Jose, Calif.

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The frog that 20 million New Yorkers failed to spot

A team of scientists of Rutgers University, the University of California (LA & Davis) and the University of Alabama has today announced the discovery of a thus far undocumented species of frog. Although in face of the worldwide amphibian decline … Continue reading →

Some weather extremes simply lie beyond Gaussian distribution

When assessing the climate system it doesn’t hurt to include some geography to your statistical assumptions. After all, without mountains, oceans and coastlines there would be no weather, just one boring climatic average – and therefore no ground to create … Continue reading →

When the ice goes, so does the rainforest – boreal warming linked to Amazon droughts

We knew there must have been a connection between climate warming and damaging droughts in the world’s largest rainforest, as the two globally hottest years on record (2005 and 2010) coincide with the two record droughts in the Amazon – … Continue reading →

54,000 gallons of spilled bunker oil can be enough to devastate a commercial herring population

Such an oil spill, which occurred during the 2007 Cosco Busan collision (container ship vs bridge) in San Francisco Bay, is (supposed to be) peanuts compared to for instance the 1989 Exxon Valdez’s 32,000,000 gallons of crude, or the BP … Continue reading →