A research team from Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory introduced a new, eco-friendly method to transform carbon dioxide (CO₂, a major greenhouse gas) into useful high-performance plastics using a simple copper-based catalyst. Conducted under mild conditions at room temperature and ambient pressure, this process efficiently incorporates CO₂ into polymer materials that can be used in packaging, sensors, biomedical devices and more. The developed polymers are highly soluble, customizable, and can be quickly modified to create multifunctional materials. This innovative approach not only offers a sustainable way to recycle CO₂ but also opens new possibilities for producing advanced materials that support environmentally friendly manufacturing and help combat climate change. 

AI Predicts More "Super Floods" and "Extreme Droughts" for Pakistan.

For the first time, research led by scientists at the University of São Paulo quantifies the impact of forest loss and global climate change on the biome. 

Too little snowfall is now also shaking the foundations of some of the world’s most resilient 'water towers', a new study led by the Pellicciotti group at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) shows. After establishing a monitoring network on a new benchmark glacier in central Tajikistan, the international team of researchers was able to model the entire catchment’s behavior from 1999 to 2023. The results, showing decreasing glacier health, were published in Communications Earth & Environment.

When it comes to clouds, the region in the far south of New Zealand (Aotearoa) is unique in the world: it is one of the most pristine, cleanest but yet accessible regions on the planet. An international consortium with participation of the Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research (TROPOS) and the University of Leipzig will therefore study the clouds in this region in detail for one and a half years during the "goSouth-2" campaign. Embedded in goSouth-2, the Project ACADIA, funded by the German Research Community, will investigate in particular the influence of small changes in air quality on cloud formation. The remote sensing observations from the ground are an important link between the "HALO-South" aircraft mission of the German research aircraft HALO in September-October 2025 and the expeditions of the German research vessels Sonne and Polarstern planned for 2027/28, all of which will investigate the atmosphere of the Southern Ocean at the edge of Antarctica. New Zealand’s MetService and the University of Canterbury in Christchurch (Ōtautahi) are also significantly involved in the projects.