It turns out that record-breaking weather systems aren’t the only threats to northern ice sheets: researchers measuring the temperature of the water at the face of Greenland’s Helheim Glacier found that the water was abnormally warm, not just near the surface, but all the way down to the seafloor 760read more
One might assume that anything that might reflect sunlight back into space, like bright aircraft contrails, would be good for decreasing the effects of global warming, but a new study predicts that the atmospheric heat trapped by the water vapor in the ‘trails will triple by the middle of theread more
Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory has reported that worldwide carbon dioxide levels reached a new record high in April, hitting 410.31 parts per million (ppm). This is the highest concentration of this greenhouse gas seen over the course of human history–and prehistory, for that matter–as the Earth’s atmosphere hasn’t seen CO2 levels this high in well over 800,000 years, and possibly as long as 20 million years.
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In science’s quest to develop less polluting sources of energy, hydrogen gas has often been used as an example as a potential replacement for fossil fuels: aside from being the most abundant substance in the universe, it is also the most combustible natural substance known, and only produces pure water when burned with oxygen. Unfortunately, the chemical instability of its gaseous form means that storing it is inherently hazardous, and the extraction of the gas from hydrogen’s more stable forms, such as water or petroleum products, can be highly energy inefficient, or produce a disproportionate amount of waste pollutants.
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