News by Subject Earth Science

A nuclear war could trigger an unprecedented El Niño-like warming episode in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, slashing algal populations by 40 percent and likely lowering the fish catch, according to a Rutgers-led study. The research, published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, shows that turning to the oceans for food if land-based farming fails after a nuclear war is unlikely to be a successful strategy - at least in the equatorial Pacific.

Scientists have identified a key nutrient source used by algae living on melting ice surfaces linked to rising sea levels. They discovered that phosphorus containing minerals may be driving ever-larger algal blooms on the Greenland Ice Sheet.

The rate at which ice is disappearing across the planet is speeding up, according to new research. And the findings also reveal that the Earth lost 28 trillion tonnes of ice between 1994 and 2017 - equivalent to a sheet of ice 100 metres thick covering the whole of the UK.

In a study published today in Science Advances, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa oceanographers fully reconciled climate and carbon cycle trends of the past 50 million years--solving a controversy debated in the scientific literature for decades.

A comparison of chemical and climate weathering of sedimentary rock in Mars' Gale Crater indicate the region's mean temperature billions of years ago was akin to current conditions on Iceland.

European eels spawn in the subtropical Sargasso Sea but spend most of their adult life in a range of fresh- and brackish waters, across Europe and Northern Africa. Using whole-genome analysis, a team of scientists led from Uppsala University provides conclusive evidence that all European eels belong to a single panmictic population irrespective of where they spend their adult life, an extraordinary finding for a species living under such variable environmental conditions. The study is published in the PNAS.

Changes in climate that occur over short periods of time influence biodiversity. For a realistic assessment of these effects, it is necessary to also consider previous temperature trends going far back into Earth's history. Researchers from the University of Bayreuth and the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg show this in a paper for "Nature Ecology and Evolution".