news 2018

Electrically charged volcanic ash short-circuited Earth's atmosphere in 1815, causing global poor weather and Napoleon's defeat, says new research. Historians know that rainy and muddy conditions helped the Allied army defeat the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Waterloo. The June 1815 event changed the course of European history.

Coral bleaching across Australia's Great Barrier Reef has been occurring since the late 18 th century, new research shows. Coral bleaching Using cores taken from long-lived corals, scientists show that bleaching events have steadily affected more and more corals, and are happening more frequently than in the past, adding to existing concerns about the future of coral reefs.

10 August 2018 New research led by glaciologists and isotope geochemists from the University of Bristol has found that melting ice sheets provide the surrounding oceans with the essential nutrient silica. Silica is needed by a group of marine algae (the microscopic plants of the oceans) called diatoms, who use it to build their glassy cell walls (known as frustules).

Scientists have discovered a new species of lobopodian, an ancient relative of modern-day velvet worms, in 430 million-years-old Silurian rocks in Herefordshire, UK. The team, comprising researchers from the universities of Oxford, Yale, Leicester and Manchester, and Imperial College London, has been able to three-dimensionally reconstruct the exceptionally well-preserved fossil using digital technology.

The chemical composition of gases emitted from volcanoes - which are used to monitor changes in volcanic activity - can change depending on the size of gas bubbles rising to the surface, and relate to the way in which they erupt. The results , published Geoscience, could be used to improve the forecasting of threats posed by certain volcanoes.

Warming streams and rivers could be disproportionately contributing to the amount of planet-warming greenhouse gases, according to a new study. Many such watercourses with high levels of fine sediment and organic materials building up in their streambeds could be increasing greenhouse gas emissions from rivers, as well as increasing the risk of communicable disease and putting wildlife at risk.

Scientists at the University of Manchester and the University of Bristol have used powerful X-rays to peer inside the skeletons of some of our oldest vertebrate relatives, solving a 160-year-old mystery about the origin of our skeletons. Living vertebrates have skeletons built from four different tissue types: bone and cartilage (the main tissues that human skeletons are made from), and dentine and enamel (the tissues from which our teeth are constructed).

A new study led by scientists at the University of Bristol has warned that unless we mitigate current levels of carbon dioxide emissions, Western Europe and New Zealand could revert to the hot tropical climate of the early Paleogene period - 56-48 million years ago. As seen from the ongoing heat wave, the knock-on effects of such extreme warmth include arid land and fires as well as impacts on health and infrastructure.

The oceans are the planet's most important depository for atmospheric carbon dioxide on time scales of decades to millennia. But the process of locking away greenhouse gas is weakened by activity of the Southern Ocean, so an increase in its activity could explain the mysterious warmth of the past 11,000 years, an international team of researchers reports.

A new study carried out by an international team of researchers, using the chemistry of ocean sediments has highlighted a widespread picture of Atlantic circulation changes associated with rapid climate change in the past. The new integrated dataset, published today , provides new insights into the interactions of melting ice, ocean circulation and climate change, with potential implications for future long-term changes in the Earth systems with global climate change.

Global biodiversity is at tipping point and on the verge of collapse, according to a major research collaboration. The team caution that urgent, concerted action is needed to reverse species loss in the tropics and prevent an environmental catastrophe.

A new dinosaur called Lingwulong shenqi or 'amazing dragon from Lingwu' has been discovered by an Anglo-Chinese team involving UCL. The announcement, published today , reports the surprising discovery of the new dinosaur which roamed the Ningxia Autonomous Region, northwest China, approximately 174 million years ago.

A newly published experimental protocol, involving University of Bristol scientists, could change the way fossilisation is studied. In addition to directly studying fossils themselves, experimental treatments of fresh organismal remains can be utilised to study fossilisation. One commonly employed experimental approach is known as 'artificial maturation', where high heat and pressure accelerate the chemical degradation reactions that normally occur over millions of years when a fossil is buried deep underground and exposed to geothermal heat and pressure from overlying sediment.

An intriguing new exhibition using rocks to represent different aspects and interpretations of climate change will be on display at the University of Bristol's School of Earth Sciences, Wills Memorial Building, from Wednesday 25 July. For the past six months, artist and sculptor, Alice Cunningham has been working as an artist-in-residence as part of the School's EarthArt programme which encourages local artists to work with members academics on an art-science collaborative project.

The world's oceans are likely to become more acidic than at any time in the past 14 million years, scientists have found. New research led by Cardiff University has shown that under a 'business-as-usual' scenario of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, ocean acidification is likely to hit unprecedented levels.

Under warmer conditions, plants can take up more carbon dioxide by using carbon more efficiently for growth, shows a new study. Plants take in - or 'fix' - carbon dioxide from the atmosphere during photosynthesis. Some of the carbon is used for plant growth, and some of it is used in respiration, where the plant breaks down sugars to get energy.

Groundwater pumped from the depths of the coastal Bengal Basin supporting more than 80 million people is largely secure from contamination, according to new research by UCL and the British Geological Survey. The study shows that groundwater pumped from depths below 150m in the coastal regions of the Bengal Basin is thousands of years old, and generally secure from contamination by salinity and arsenic found in shallow groundwater.

Marshlands in the south east of England could start to disappear from the year 2040 due to rapid sea level rise, according to new research involving Durham University scientists. Using data from more than 800 sediment cores which record how salt marshes responded to variable rates of sea-level rise over the past 10,000 years, the researchers estimate that marshes in the south east of England could start to disappear from the year 2040, and across all of Great Britain by 2100.

A new framework to understand how uneven the effects of a 1.5°C world are for different countries around the world has been published today in Geophysical Research Letters, led by researchers from the Environmental Change Institute (ECI) at the Oxford University Department of Geography. It has been long understood that climate change will affect some regions more severely than others.

New research from the University of Oxford and collaborators at several other institutions, including the University of Bristol, provides compelling evidence that meeting the global warming target of 1.5°C may not be enough to limit the damage caused by extreme weather. The paper, published today , demonstrates that higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations directly increase temperature and rainfall extremes, meaning there could be dangerous changes in these extremes even if the global mean temperature rise remains within 1.5°C.