The Space Age is leaving fingerprints on one of the most remote parts of the planet — the stratosphere — which has potential implications for climate, the ozone layer and the continued habitability of Earth. Using tools hitched to the nose cone of their research planes and sampling more than 11 miles above the planet’s … Read more
Surface ice in Greenland has been melting at an increasing rate in recent decades, while the trend in Antarctica has moved in the opposite direction, according to researchers at the University of California, Irvine and Utrecht University in the Netherlands. For a paper published recently in the American Geophysical Union journal Geophysical Research Letters, the … Read more
A bacterium found in the sea can degrade a plastic that otherwise resists microbial breakdown in marine environments. A bacterium that can degrade the common polymer polybutylene succinate (PBS), which naturally biodegrades to only a limited extent in marine environments, could lead to improved ways to recycle this polymer. The bacterium’s potential, and its enzyme … Read more
The growing global population needs sufficient food. Its production causes overfertilization and increased nitrogen concentration in agriculture, which negatively affects the population, climate, and ecosystems. According to models of researchers of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), however, today’s crop production might be maintained with a far smaller global fertilizer consumption, if nitrogen fertilizer would be … Read more
In this photo taken on October 10, 2023, a man looks at a forest fire as it approaches houses in Ogan Ilir, South Sumatra. Al Zulkifli | Afp | Getty Images With El Nino in full force, officials are bracing for the worst transboundary haze in southern Southeast Asia since before the pandemic in 2019. … Read more