An increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations helped end the last ice age. But what caused the carbon dioxide increase in the first place? A team of scientists used the fossilized skeletons of deep-sea corals to find out. Amanda SemlerI’m a PhD candidate in Earth System Science at Stanford University, and I study how microbes […]
Changes in the Southern Ocean can affect global climate, and understanding the Southern Ocean’s response to climate change helps us better predict future climate. A team of researchers have looked into this question to predict how human impact on Earth’s climate will affect the Southern Ocean and its ecosystem in the near future. Jiwoon ParkI […]
Since 2000, atmospheric CO2 hasn’t been rising as quickly as we expected. It may be because plants on land have been taking up more CO2 than before – but why the change? A group of terrestrial biogeochemists show that recent deforestation rates may hold the answer. Julia DohnerJulia is a PhD student at Scripps Institution […]
Ocean CO2 levels vary depending on the time of year. Landschützer and his colleagues are the first to show that human-emitted CO2 is making these seasonal swings more severe, potentially to the detriment of many marine organisms. Julia DohnerJulia is a PhD student at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. Her focus is […]
Thanks to NASA’s new Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 satellite, we now know when and where CO2 levels change during El Niño, and can pinpoint the culprit of rising CO¬2 levels during El Niño events. Julia DohnerJulia is a PhD student at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. Her focus is on biogeochemistry, which, as […]
Ice cover on earth extends and recedes over thousands of years. But what drives these fluctuations? Moreover, what guarantees that our planet never settles into a single permanent state? Using samples of water from glaciers, Torres and his colleagues show that chemical reactions occurring on rocks might hold part of the answer. Julia DohnerJulia is […]
The bad news: coastal frozen sediments in the Arctic are melting and emitting methane, a potent greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. But there is good news: this methane release is accompanied by significant carbon dioxide absorption by seawater, enough to result in a net cooling effect for the atmosphere. Find out how these methane seeps […]
The ocean is acidifying in response to carbon dioxide emissions, but we are just beginning to learn how this effects the ocean’s most abundant lifeforms – microbes. Michael GrawI’m a 5th year PhD student at Oregon State University researching the microbial ecology of marine sediments – why do we find microbes where they are in […]
Our world relies heavily on the burning of biological materials such as wood or fossil fuels to harness energy. While we all know that carbon dioxide (CO2) is a harmful byproduct of burning fuel, it’s not the only chemical formed during this process. These chemical byproducts may play a bigger and more complex role in […]
The increase in global atmospheric CO2 concentrations may be causing major food crops, like wheat, to have lower amounts of the nutrients zinc and iron, causing a potential decrease in human health. Kari St.LaurentI received a Ph.D. in oceanography in 2014 from the Graduate School of Oceanography (URI) and am finishing up a post-doc at […]