Feed aggregator

Fabrice Monteiro travelled to the most polluted places in Africa and created terrifying characters who roamed their midst dressed in eerie debris. They are spirits, he says, on a mission to make humans change their ways

Continue reading...

Bleaklow, Derbyshire So sleek, quick and nimble, with butter-gold speckles on its back, this bird is a shy jewel of the moors

The sombre northern flank of Bleaklow has three Black Cloughs, differentiated with admirable directness as Near, Middle and Far. Clough is a northern word, likely Old Norse in origin, for a cleft in a hill.

The overall effect is familiar enough – bleak, desolate, country. But look more closely and the contrasts are spectacular.

Continue reading...

Report finds 5kW-plus rooftop solar systems offer best bang for buck, no matter household energy profile – even if all generation exported to grid.

It'll be a tough journey - previous robots sent in to the ruined nuclear reactor didn't make it back.

The Threatened Species Scientific Committee is seeking comments on the eligibility of Trachystoma petardi (pinkeye mullet) for inclusion on the EPBC Act threatened species list. Comments close 4 August 2017.

The Threatened Species Scientific Committee is seeking comments on the eligibility of Pseudocheirus occidentalis (western ringtail possum) for inclusion on the EPBC Act threatened species list. Comments close 31 July 2017.

Tesla to deploy multiple 250kW/500kWh Powerpack systems for NSW network operator TransGrid, to help store and smooth solar supply.

Climate Council report says “clean coal” won't meet Australia's most basic climate obligations – and would need electricity prices to rise four-fold to earn sufficient revenue to be viable.

AEMO report shows rooftop solar reducing and shifting peaks, and likely to gather pace as costs fall and grid prices rise.

Regional and remote Australia’s leading advisory and technical consultancy firm, CAT Projects, announced that from today the company will be trading as Ekistica.

The Threatened Species Scientific Committee is seeking comments on the proposal to list the Assemblage of species associated with open-coast salt-wedge estuaries of western and central Victoria ecological community as an endangered ecological...

SPOOKY ACTION: Scientists have used satellite technology for the first time to generate and transmit entangled photons - particles of light - across a record distance of 1,200 kilometres on Earth.

Carnegie gets development approval for 10MW solar farm, with CEO saying Australia "should have lots of these."

New analysis shows clean energy target as modelled by Finkel Review will deliver less large scale renewable energy than current state-based targets.

Furious winds keep the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Anarctica free of snow and ice. Calcites found in the valleys have revealed the secrets of ancient subglacial volcanoes. Stuart Rankin/Flickr, CC BY-NC

Iron is not commonly famous for its role as a micronutrient for tiny organisms dwelling in the cold waters of polar oceans. But iron feeds plankton, which in turn hold carbon dioxide in their bodies. When they die, the creatures sink to the bottom of the sea, safely storing that carbon.

How exactly the iron gets to the Southern Ocean is hotly debated, but we do know that during the last ice age huge amounts of carbon were stored at the bottom of the Southern Ocean. Understanding how carbon comes to be stored in the depth of the oceans could help abate CO2 in the atmosphere, and Antarctica has a powerful role.

Icebergs and atmospheric dust are believed to have been the major sources of this micronutrient in the past. However, in research published in Nature Communications, my colleagues and I examined calcite crusts from Antarctica, and found that volcanoes under its glaciers were vital in delivering iron to the ocean during the last ice age.

Today, glacial meltwaters from Greenland and the Antarctic peninsula supply iron both in solution and as tiny particles (less than 0.0001mm in diameter), which are readily consumed by plankton. Where glaciers meet bedrock, minute organisms can live in pockets of relatively warm water. They are able to extract “food” from the rock, and in doing so release iron, which then can be carried by underwater rivers to the sea.

Volcanic eruptions under the ice can create underwater subglacial lakes, which, at times, discharge downstream large masses of water that travel to the ice margin and beyond, carrying with them iron in particle and in solution.

The role of melting ice in climate change is as yet poorly understood. It’s particularly pertinent as scientists predict the imminent collapse of part of the Larsen C ice shelf.

Researchers are also investigating how to reproduce natural iron fertilisation in the Southern Ocean and induce algal blooms. By interrogating the volcanic archive, we learn more about the effect that iron fertilisation from meltwater has on global temperatures.

A polished wafer of the subglacial calcites. The translucent, crystalline layers formed while in pockets of water, providing nourishment to microbes. The opaque calcite with rock fragments documents a period when waters discharged from a subglacial lake formed by a volcanic eruption, carrying away both iron in solution and particles of iron. Supplied The Last Glacial Maximum

During the Last Glacial Maximum, a period 27,000 to 17,000 years ago when glaciers were at their greatest extent worldwide, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere was lowered to 180 parts per million (ppm) relative to pre-industrial levels (280 ppm).

Today we are at 400 ppm and, if current warming trends continue, a point of no return will be reached. The global temperature system will return to the age of the dinosaurs, when there was little difference in temperature from the equator to the tropics.

If we are interested in providing a habitable planet for our descendants, we need to mitigate the quantity of carbon in the atmosphere. Blooms of plankton in the Southern Ocean boosted by iron fertilisation were one important ingredient in lowering CO2 in the Last Glacial Maximum, and they could help us today.

The Last Glacial Maximum had winds that spread dust from deserts and icebergs carrying small particles into the Southern Ocean, providing the necessary iron for algal blooms. These extreme conditions don’t exist today.

Hidden volcanoes

Neither dust nor icebergs alone, however, explain bursts of productivity recorded in ocean sediments in the Last Glacial Maximum. There was another ingredient, only discovered in rare archives of subglacial processes that could be precisely dated to the Last Glacial Maximum.

Loss of ice in Antartica’s Dry Valleys uncovered rusty-red crusts of calcite plastered on glacially polished rocks. The calcites have tiny layers that can be precisely dated by radiometric techniques.

A piece of subglacial calcite coating pebbles. This suggests that the current transporting the pebbles was quite fast, like a mountain stream. The pebbles were deposited at the same time as the opaque layer in the calcite formed. Supplied

Each layer preserves in its chemistry and DNA a record of processes that contributed to delivering iron to the Southern Ocean. For example, fluorine-rich spherules indicate that underwater vents created by volcanic activity injected a rich mixture of minerals into the subglacial environment. This was confirmed by DNA data, revealing a thriving community of thermophiles – microorganisms that live in very hot water only.

Then, it became plausible to hypothesise that volcanic eruptions occurred subglacially and formed a subglacial lake, whose waters ran into an interconnected system of channels, ultimately reaching the ice margin. Meltwater drained iron from pockets created where ice met bedrock, which then reached the ocean – thus inducing algal blooms.

We dated this drainage activity to a period when dust flux does not match ocean productivity. Thus, our study indicates that volcanoes in Antarctica had a role in delivering iron to the Southern Ocean, and potentially contributed to lowering CO2 levels in the atmosphere.

Our research helps explain how volcanoes act on climate change. But it also uncovers more about iron fertilisation as a possible way to mitigate global warming.

Silvia Frisia receives funding from ARC.

Chinese scientists say their experimental Micius spacecraft paves the way for a new kind of internet.

BNEF report suggests wind and solar will fall further than Finkel Review expects, undermining case for even refurbished coal generators. The cost falls mean that Australia's current Paris targets will be met even without a clean energy target mechanism.

The international community must show Trump, and any other leaders that may follow suit, that other core diplomatic goals – such as Nato funding – will depend on honouring their climate commitments

World leaders’ response to Donald Trump’s announcement that he would withdraw the US from the Paris agreement was strong and unified. But did it sting the president and his administration? To deter other potential backsliders and maintain the integrity of the Paris agreement, the perpetrator of a defection of this magnitude should be made to feel the pain. But how?

Continue reading...

Solving air pollution is a national not a local issue, says the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health.

Almost 700 of the endangered rodents, immortalised in Wind in the Willows, will be released in Northumberland – and it’s all thanks really to the otter

The biggest reintroduction of water voles in the UK began this week, with 325 voles released into Kielder Forest in Northumberland, and 350 more to follow later in the summer.

Water voles hold a special place in Britain’s natural history, providing the model for Ratty, the much-loved character in The Wind in the Willows. But the species has suffered catastrophic declines over several decades, driven by loss of habitat, the pollution of waterways, increased urbanisation, and rampant populations of American mink, originally farmed for their fur but which escaped into the wild and proved a voracious predator on the native vole.

Continue reading...