Earth

Autosub, a robot submarine built and developed by the UK's National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, has successfully completed a high-risk campaign of six missions travelling under an Antarctic glacier.

EAST LANSING, Mich. --- Tiny creatures at the bottom of the food chain called diatoms suck up nearly a quarter of the atmosphere's carbon dioxide, yet research by Michigan State University scientists suggests they could become less able to "sequester" that greenhouse gas as the climate warms. The microscopic algae are a major component of plankton living in puddles, lakes and oceans.

CO2GeoNet, Europe's Network of Excellence working on the geological storage of carbon dioxide (CO2), will meet in Venice on 18-20th March 2009 to present highlights from five years of research and development carried out by hundreds of scientists and to interact with stakeholders on future needs to be addressed by science.

The stabilising influence that land and ocean carbon sinks have on rising carbon emissions is gradually weakening, scientists who attended the international Copenhagen Climate Change Conference."Forests, grasslands and oceans are absorbing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere faster than ever but they are not keeping pace with rapidly rising emissions," says CSIRO scientist and co-Chair of the Global Carbon Project, Dr Mike Raupach.

Scientists have long established that the Antarctic Peninsula is one of the most rapidly warming spots on Earth. Now, new research using detailed satellite data indicates that the changing climate is affecting not just the penguins at the apex of the food chain, but simultaneously the microscopic life that is the base of the ecosystem.

RICHLAND, Wash. -- Single oxygen atoms dancing on a metal oxide slab, glowing brighter here and dimmer there, have helped chemists better understand how water splits into oxygen and hydrogen. In the process, the scientists have visualized a chemical reaction that had previously only been talked about. The new work improves our understanding of the chemistry needed to generate hydrogen fuel from water or to clean contaminated water.

MADISON, WI, MARCH 16, 2009--Throughout the world, nitrogen compounds are released to the atmosphere from agricultural activities and combustion of fossil fuels. These pollutants are deposited to ecosystems as precipitation, gases, and particles, sometimes many hundreds of miles downwind of their release point.

MADISON, WI, March 16, 2009 -- Planting soybean on the optimum date produces maximum yield and profit without increasing production costs. Unfortunately, the optimum planting date is hard to indentify, because it varies from year to year, depending on the weather and how much it rains and when it rains.

Kingston, ON – A new Queen's University study shows that detergents used to clean up spills of diesel oil actually increase its toxicity to fish, making it more harmful.

"The detergents may be the best way to treat spills in the long term because the dispersed oil is diluted and degraded," says Biology professor Peter Hodson. "But in the short term, they increase the bioavailability and toxicity of the fuel to rainbow trout by 100-fold."

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Global warming is expected to cause the sea level along the northeastern U.S. coast to rise almost twice as fast as global sea levels during this century, putting New York City at greater risk for damage from hurricanes and winter storm surge, according to a new study led by a Florida State University researcher.

A free online portal is providing deep-sea researchers and managers with new tools for finding and accessing information on the biological communities that live on seamounts (undersea mountains), facilitating improved management of seamount resources, and conservation of seamount habitat.

New tracking and observing technologies are giving marine conservationists a fish-eye view of conditions, from overfishing to climate change, that are contributing to declining fish populations, according to a new study.

Until recently, scientists provided fishery managers only such limited data as stock counts and catch estimates, said Charles Greene, Cornell professor of ocean sciences and lead author of the study published in the March issue (Vol. 22, No. 1) of the journal Oceanography.

Natural releases of carbon dioxide from the Southern Ocean due to shifting wind patterns could have amplified global warming at the end of the last ice age--and could be repeated as manmade warming proceeds, a new paper in the journal Science suggests.

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. – As the cold, dry climate of the western Antarctic Peninsula becomes warmer and more humid, phytoplankton – the bottom of the Antarctic food chain – is decreasing off the northern part the peninsula and increasing further south, Rutgers marine scientists have discovered. In research to be published tomorrow in the journal Science, Martin Montes-Hugo and Oscar Schofield report that levels of phytoplankton off the western Antarctic Peninsula have decreased 12 percent over the past 30 years.

Tiny, ubiquitous particles in the atmosphere may play a profound role in regulating global climate. But the scientists who study these particles -- called aerosols -- have long struggled to accurately measure their composition, size, and global distribution. A new detection technique and a new satellite instrument developed by NASA scientists, the Aerosol Polarimetry Sensor (APS), should help ease the struggle.