Tuesday, December 6th, 2016
Every northern fall and winter, cooling ocean and air temperatures cause the floating cap of Arctic sea ice to grow from its annual minimum extent toward a maximum between February and April. So far in 2016, however, the Arctic Ocean and neighboring seas have been slow to freeze, setting both daily and monthly record lows.
Wednesday, November 9th, 2016
For the first time, the United States will host the international Volcano Observatory Best Practices workshop, previously held only in Italy. The workshop will take place this month in Vancouver, Washington. It is designed specifically for volcano observatories around the world and their staff to exchange ideas and best practices with each other. “In order
Wednesday, November 2nd, 2016
Scientists produced the first global maps of human emissions of carbon dioxide ever made solely from satellite observations. The maps, based on data from NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) satellite and generated with a new data-processing technique, agree well with inventories of known carbon dioxide emissions. No satellite before OCO-2 was capable of measuring carbon
Thursday, October 6th, 2016
Brisbane – On 10 October 2016 in Brisbane, Australia, 200 leaders from the public and private sector, including government ministers, business and civil society leaders, and leading scientists will take part in a historic summit on water scarcity and drought. Driven both by climate change and poor water management, droughts are becoming more frequent and water
Wednesday, October 5th, 2016
USGS has completed a comprehensive assessment and inventory of potential mineral resources covering approximately 10 million acres of Federal and adjacent lands in Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming. The assessment, conducted at the request of the Bureau of Land Management, ranked the mineral potential in select areas of these states along a gradient of no
Tuesday, August 2nd, 2016
NASA scientists and engineers are field testing the CO2 Sounder LiDAR, an instrument powerful and accurate enough to gather around-the-clock global atmospheric carbon-dioxide (CO2) measurements from space. The instrument is a strong contender for a potential next-generation carbon-monitoring mission, the Active Sensing of CO2 Emissions over Nights, Days and Seasons (ASCENDS). The LiDAR operates by
Monday, July 25th, 2016
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today finalized a determination under the Clean Air Act that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from certain types of aircraft engines contribute to the pollution that causes climate change and endangers Americans’ health and the environment. The findings are for carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs),
Monday, July 25th, 2016
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – A geospatial science expert at the University of Arkansas will help refine international guidelines for greenhouse gas inventories that will be considered for adoption by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The panel, known as IPCC, was created to provide policymakers with regular assessments of the scientific basis of climate change, its
Wednesday, July 13th, 2016
Washington, D.C.—Urban centers lie at the root of an important—and often neglected—source of emissions: deforestation. According to Senior Researcher Tom Prugh in Can a City Be Sustainable?, the latest edition of the annual State of the World series from the Worldwatch Institute, deforestation caused by growing urban consumption is contributing to massive emissions globally, despite increasing sustainability efforts
Tuesday, July 12th, 2016
The phrase “tipping point” passed its own tipping point and caught fire after author Malcolm Gladwell’s so-named 2000 book. It’s now frequently used in discussions about climate change, but what are “climate tipping points”? And what do they mean for society and the economy? Scientists at Rutgers University and Harvard University tackle the terminology and
