Earth

The human impact on the environment, especially through the release of greenhouse gases, is an area of controversy in public understanding of climate change, and is important for predicting future changes. Many studies into our collective impact use climate models to understand the causes of observed climate changes, both globally and in specific regions.

The tropics and much of the Northern Hemisphere are likely to experience an irreversible rise in summer temperatures within the next 20 to 60 years if atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations continue to increase, according to a new climate study by Stanford University scientists. The results will be published later this month in the journal Climatic Change.

The ALPHA Collaboration, an international team of scientists working at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, has created and stored a total of 309 antihydrogen atoms, some for up to 1,000 seconds (almost 17 minutes), with an indication of much longer storage time as well.

ALPHA announced in November, 2010, that they had succeeded in storing antimatter atoms for the first time ever, having captured 38 atoms of antihydrogen and storing each for a sixth of a second. In the weeks following, ALPHA continued to collect anti-atoms and hold them for longer and longer times.

Berkeley — Trapping antihydrogen atoms at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) has become so routine that physicists are confident that they can soon begin experiments on this rare antimatter equivalent of the hydrogen atom, according to researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.

New York — June 5, 2011 — Moisture and heat fluctuations from the land surface to the atmosphere form a critical nexus between surface hydrology and atmospheric processes, especially those relevant to rainfall. While current theory has suggested that soil moisture has had a positive impact on precipitation, there have been very few large-scale observations of this.

The rate of release of carbon into the atmosphere today is nearly 10 times as fast as during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), 55.9 million years ago, the best analog we have for current global warming, according to an international team of geologists. Rate matters and this current rapid change may not allow sufficient time for the biological environment to adjust.

"We looked at the PETM because it is thought to be the best ancient analog for future climate change caused by fossil fuel burning," said Lee R. Kump, professor of geosciences, Penn State.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---Think "mass extinction" and you probably envision dinosaurs dropping dead in the long-ago past or exotic tropical creatures being wiped out when their rainforest habitats are decimated. But a major mass extinction took place right here in North America in the first half of the 20th century, when 47 species of mollusk disappeared after the watershed in which they lived was dammed.

When earthquake, tsunami, tornado or flood strike, among the most vulnerable group are the elderly. Writing in the International Journal of Emergency Management, researchers in New Zealand suggest that emergency response plans must take into account the age-related needs of adults with regards to the personal and social resources they have available.

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COPENHAGEN (3 JUNE 2011)—A new study has matched future climate change "hotspots" with regions already suffering chronic food problems to identify highly-vulnerable populations, chiefly in Africa and South Asia, but potentially in China and Latin America as well, where in fewer than 40 years, the prospect of shorter, hotter or drier growing seasons could imperil hundreds of millions of already-impoverished people.

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CORVALLIS, Ore. – A new study concludes that models may be predicting releases of atmospheric carbon dioxide that are either too high or too low, depending on the region, because they don't adequately reflect variable temperatures that can affect the amount of carbon released from soil.

The study points out that many global models make estimates of greenhouse gas emissions from soils based on "average" projected temperatures. But temperatures vary widely from those averages. That variability, along with complex biological processes, makes the issue far more complicated.

A Spanish research team, using 3D reflection seismology, has for the first time mapped the geomorphological features of the Ebro river basin between five and six million years ago. The images obtained show that the surface analysed is today 2.5 or 3 kilometres below the sea bed.

Humans have been building reservoirs and dams for thousands of years. Over the past few decades, their construction has spiked as our need to harness water – critical in flood control, irrigation, recreation, navigation and the creation of hydroelectric power – has grown. And while dams and reservoirs have important benefits, they can also be disruptive and costly to both humans and the environment.

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Female blood-feeding mosquitoes, some species of which can transmit deadly diseases such as malaria and dengue to humans, largely find their human blood meals by detecting carbon dioxide emitted when people exhale. In a new study funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, a research team led by Anandasankar Ray of the University of California, Riverside, identified three types of odor molecules that disrupt the carbon dioxide-sensing machinery of mosquitoes.