news 2021

Planting trees and suppressing wildfires do not necessarily maximise the carbon storage of natural ecosystems. A new study has found that prescribed burning can actually lock in or increase carbon in the soils of temperate forests, savannahs and grasslands. When managed properly, fire can be good - both for maintaining biodiversity and for carbon storage Adam Pellegrini The finding points to a new method of manipulating the world's natural capacity for carbon capture and storage, which can also help to maintain natural ecosystem processes.

Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels have increased significantly over the last 50 years, resulting in higher global temperatures and abrupt changes to Earth's climate. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is one of the new technologies that scientists hope will play an important role in tackling the climate crisis.

Scientists have proposed a new theory which suggests that possible lifeforms in the clouds of Venus could be setting off a cascade of chemical reactions that is making the environment much more habitable. This self-sustaining chain of events could also explain many of the strange anomalies present in the planet's upper atmosphere that have been puzzling scientists for decades.

Retreating glaciers in the Pacific mountains of western North America could produce around 6,150 kilometers of new Pacific salmon habitat by the year 2100, according to a new study. Scientists have 'peeled back the ice' from 46,000 glaciers between southern British Columbia and south-central Alaska to look at how much potential salmon habitat would be created when underlying bedrock is exposed and new streams flow over the landscape.

Most of the methane gas emitted from Amazon wetlands regions is vented into the atmosphere via tree root systems - with significant emissions occurring even when the ground is not flooded, say researchers at the University of Birmingham. In a study published in the Royal Society journal, Philosophical Transactions A , the researchers have found evidence that far more methane is emitted by trees growing on floodplains in the Amazon basin than by soil or surface water and this occurs in both wet and dry conditions.

A reliable early warning system to detect tsunamis could be a step closer thanks to research from Cardiff University. Researchers say their analysis of ocean soundwaves triggered by underwater earthquakes has enabled them to develop artificial intelligence (AI) that allow prediction of when a tsunami might occur.

The capabilities of a UCL-led panoramic camera system that will guide the search for life on Mars atop the European Space Agency's Rosalind Franklin rover are being tested ahead of the rover's launch next year. A replica of the rover and the Panoramic Camera suite known as PanCam are being used to test the wide range of photo settings - from panoramas to close-ups, from 3D maps to wheel selfies - that will deliver the greatest science possible during the ExoMars mission on the Red Planet.

Rising global temperatures will impact major river basins differently around the world, with rivers in South America, southern Africa and Australia among those most at risk of extreme ecological changes, a new study led by UCL has found. For the first time, researchers from UCL Geography, the University of Nottingham and the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology combined large datasets with an environmental flow approach to predict how changes of between 1-3°C in the Earth's temperature would impact 321 of the world's biggest river basins.

The Universities of Birmingham and Surrey have developed a new technique to improve understanding of how acid damages teeth. The scientists' research focused on analysing the impact of acid on dentine, a hard tissue which forms the main bulk of human teeth and supports the enamel which covers the surface helping to make teeth strong and resilient.

Researchers at The University of Manchester, have been involved in an international collaboration to analyse the age and history of some of the Moon's youngest lava flows. The rock samples were collected by the Chinese National Space Agency during the robotic Chang'e-5 mission, which marked the first time any nation had collected rocks from the Moon since 1976.

The rise of dinosaurs coincided with environmental changes driven by major volcanic eruptions over 230 million years ago, a new study reveals. The Late Triassic Carnian Pluvial Episode (CPE) saw an increase in global temperature and humidity - creating a major impact on the development of animal and plant life, coinciding with the establishment of modern conifers.

A 170 m record of marine sediment cores extracted from Adélie Land in Antarctica by the Integrated Ocean Drilling Programme is yielding new insights into the complicated relationship between sea ice and climate change. In a new study published , researchers at the University of Birmingham, have collaborated in an international project to identify how fluctuations in sea ice levels have interconnected with both algae blooms and weather events linked to El Nino over the past 12,000 years.

A new class of exoplanet very different to our own, but which could support life, has been identified by astronomers, which could greatly accelerate the search for life outside our Solar System. Hycean planets open a whole new avenue in our search for life elsewhere Nikku Madhusudhan In the search for life elsewhere, astronomers have mostly looked for planets of a similar size, mass, temperature and atmospheric composition to Earth.

A new class of exoplanet very different to our own, but which could support life, has been identified by astronomers, which could greatly accelerate the search for life outside our Solar System. Hycean planets open a whole new avenue in our search for life elsewhere Nikku Madhusudhan In the search for life elsewhere, astronomers have mostly looked for planets of a similar size, mass, temperature and atmospheric composition to Earth.

Climate change is already widespread, rapid, and intensifying, according to a new report released today by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), involving contributions from UCL academics. The report, which assesses the physical science behind climate change, highlights that changes in the Earth's climate have already been observed in every region of the globe and across the whole climate system - including the atmosphere, oceans, rivers and lakes, and land - many of which are unprecedented.

Scientists from Cambridge University and NTU Singapore have found that slow-motion collisions of tectonic plates drag more carbon into Earth's interior than previously thought.

The arrival of plants on land about 400 million years ago may have changed the way the Earth naturally regulates its own climate, according to a new study led by researchers at UCL and Yale. The carbon cycle, the process through which carbon moves between rocks, oceans, living organisms and the atmosphere, acts as Earth's natural thermostat, regulating its temperature over long time periods.

Researchers from the , Mpala Research Center and Save the Elephants, have used a combination of acoustic microphones and seismometers to locate elephants. In this novel study, published today in The Journal of the Royal Society Interface , researchers managed to accurately determine elephant locations by measuring the vibration of the ground caused by their rumbles, which are low frequency calls.

Microscopic imperfections in rock crystals deep beneath Earth's surface play a deciding factor in how the ground slowly moves and resets in the aftermath of major earthquakes, says new research involving the University of Cambridge. The stresses resulting from these defects - which are small enough to disrupt the atomic building blocks of a crystal - can transform how hot rocks beneath Earth's crust move and in turn transfer stress back to Earth's surface, starting the countdown to the next earthquake.

New research into one of the most volatile periods in Earth's geological history has narrowed down the precise age of a meteorite impact in the Ukraine around 65 million years ago, ruling out the chance that it contributed to the extinction of the dinosaurs but offering new insight into the planet's climate history.