news 2018

Earlier this year, the United Nations announced that the ozone layer, which shields the Earth from the sun's harmful ultraviolet radiation, and which was severely depleted by decades of human-derived, ozone-destroying chemicals, is on the road to recovery. The dramatic turnaround is a direct result of regulations set by the 1987 Montreal Protocol, a global treaty under which nearly every country in the world, including the United States, successfully acted to ban the production of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), the main agents of ozone depletion.

Laboratory tests at the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre (SUERC) on 21 different bottles of rare Scotch whisky, potentially worth around £635,000, have confirmed them all as modern fakes. Based on these results, Rare Whisky 101 (RW101), one of the world's leading experts in rare whisky, has estimated that around £41million worth of rare whisky currently circulating in the secondary market, and present in existing collections, is fake.

A study by the University of Birmingham and Loughborough University has shown that regular weighing at home and simple tips to curb excess eating and drinking can prevent people from piling on the pounds at Christmas. Researchers, supported by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and funded by the University of Birmingham, carried out the 'Winter Weight Watch Study' - a trial that aimed to prevent participants from gaining weight over the festive season by arming them with tips and techniques to avoid overindulging.

An international team of palaeontologists, which includes the University of Bristol, has discovered that the flying reptiles, pterosaurs, actually had four kinds of feathers, and these are shared with dinosaurs - pushing back the origin of feathers by some 70 million years. Pterosaurs are the flying reptiles that lived side by side with dinosaurs, 230 to 66 million years ago.

Volcanoes are not fed by molten magma formed in large chambers finds a new study, overturning classic ideas about volcanic eruptions. Instead, the study suggests that volcanoes are fed by so-called 'mush reservoirs' - areas of mostly solid crystals with magma in the small spaces between the crystals.

Volcanoes are not fed by molten magma formed in large chambers finds a new study, overturning classic ideas about volcanic eruptions. Instead, the study suggests that volcanoes are fed by so-called 'mush reservoirs' - areas of mostly solid crystals with magma in the small spaces between the crystals.

The 300-million-mile journey that culminated in NASA's InSight landing on Mars this week represents a major scientific coup for all involved, including mission participants from the University of Bristol. The £635m lander, which came to rest on Mars on Monday, will study the makeup and dimensions of the Red Planet's core.

A new study has found ground-breaking evidence from an ice core in the Swiss-Italian Alps that proves the 7 th century switch from gold to silver currencies in western Europe actually occurred a quarter of a century earlier than previously thought. The findings, from the University of Nottingham and which are published in the journal Antiquity , will have major implications on the history of the European monetary system, and what we thought we knew about trade and the economy during this period.

Professor Tom Spencer from Cambridge's Department of Geography and Professor Gerd Masselink from the University of Plymouth say evidence suggests there should be far stricter controls on coastal developments. In October 2018, a stark report suggested that current methods being used to protect England's coastal communities are 'not fit for purpose'.

Dr Juliet Biggs, Dr Claire Haworth and Dr John Russo have each been awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize for their research. The Prize is awarded for 'achievement of outstanding researchers whose work has already attracted international recognition and whose future career is exceptionally promising'. Dr Juliet Biggs (School of Earth Sciences) Dr Biggs studies active volcanoes and earthquakes to examine the physics of plate boundary development.

26 October 2018 Researchers from the University of Bristol have found significant ongoing emissions of a potent ozone-depleting substance from eastern China. The compound, carbon tetrachloride, contributes to the destruction of the Earth's ozone layer, which protects us from harmful ultraviolet radiation.

Century-scale climate variability was enhanced when the Earth was warmer during the Last Interglacial period (129-116 thousand years ago) compared to the current interglacial (the last 11,700 years), according to a new UCL-led study. The findings, published today and funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Australian Research Council (ARC), reveal that the Last Interglacial period was punctuated by a series of century-scale arid events in southern Europe and cold water-mass expansions in the North Atlantic.

A location often earmarked as a potential habitat for extra-terrestrial life could prove to be a tricky place for spacecraft to land, new research has revealed. A team led by scientists from Cardiff University has predicted that fields of sharp ice growing to almost 15 metres tall could be scattered across the equatorial regions of Jupiter's moon, Europa.

Imperial experts have predicted that sustained Antarctic warming of just 2°C could melt the largest ice sheet on earth. New research on Antarctic sediment layers has shown that the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS), also known as Antarctica's 'sleeping giant', retreated during extended warm periods in the past - when temperatures were like those predicted for this century.

A new study published today in Nature, using research carried out at the University of Bristol, shows that getting smaller was a key factor contributing to the exceptional evolution of mammals over the last 200 million years. The origin of modern mammals can be traced back more than 200 million years to the age of dinosaurs.

A first of its kind study, led by Dr Claire Horwell of the Department of Earth Sciences and Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience , has found that industry-certified particle masks are most effective at protecting people from volcanic ash, whilst commonly used surgical masks offer less protection.

The University of Bristol is pioneering the monitoring of volcanic activity by developing a cutting-edge measurement system that can withstand the harsh conditions around the heart of an active volcano. Such extreme, hazardous and unpredictable environments present a very difficult challenge to reliably record volcanic behaviour for analytical models.

A new study by scientists at the University of Bristol has shown that ancient global warming was associated with intense rainfall events that had a profound impact on the land and coastal seas. The Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), which occurred about 56 Million years ago, is of great interest to climate scientists because it represents a relatively rapid global warming event, with some similarities to the human-induced warming of today.

The timing and size of three deadly earthquakes that struck Italy in 2016 may have been pre-determined, according to new research that could improve future earthquake forecasts. A joint British-Italian team of geologists and seismologists have shown that the clustering of the three quakes might have been caused by the arrangement of a cross-cutting network of underground faults.

Despite plants and vegetation being key to the Earth's ecosystem, little is known about the origin of their roots. However in new research that sheds light on how roots have evolved. The findings suggest that plant roots have evolved more than once, and that the characteristics of roots developed in a step-wise manner - with the central root organ evolving first.