Science Daily

The Southern Ocean is one of the key regions for understanding the climate system. The photosynthesis-performing plankton there contribute significantly to controlling the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. But which factors favor or limit plankton growth? Researchers have now published a study showing for the first time that, in addition to the micronutrient iron, manganese can play an important role. Among other things, the results have implications for understanding ice ages in the past.

How did rocks rust on Earth and turn red? A new study has shed new light on the important phenomenon and will help address questions about the Late Triassic climate more than 200 million years ago, when greenhouse gas levels were high enough to be a model for what our planet may be like in the future.

A professor is calling on scientists to conduct dedicated process studies and to share their data and research findings on Arctic warming. She stresses the importance of studying how aerosols and clouds interact, as these highly complex and poorly understood mechanisms play a key role in climate change, but are also strongly affected by it. According to her, the region is in rapid transition and scientists need to act to not run behind.

Chemists have helped discover that iodic acids can rapidly form aerosol particles in the atmosphere, giving scientists more knowledge of how iodine emissions can contribute to cloud formation and climate change.

To arrive at Nunavut, turn left at the Dakotas and head north. You can't miss it -- the vast tundra territory covers almost a million square miles of northern Canada. Relatively few people call this lake-scattered landscape home, but the region plays a crucial role in understanding global climate change.

Human-caused warming is responsible for increasing the risk of a glacial outburst flood from Peru's Lake Palcacocha, threatening the city below. This study is the first to directly link climate change with the risk of flooding from glacial lakes, which are growing in number and size worldwide.

The Arctic Ocean was covered by up to 900 m thick shelf ice and was filled entirely with freshwater at least twice in the last 150,000 years. This surprising finding is the result of long-term research. With a detailed analysis of the composition of marine deposits, the scientists could demonstrate that the Arctic Ocean as well as the Nordic Seas did not contain sea-salt in at least two glacial periods. Instead, these oceans were filled with large amounts of freshwater under a thick ice shield. This water could then be released into the North Atlantic in very short periods of time. Such sudden freshwater inputs could explain rapid climate oscillations for which no satisfying explanation had been previously found.

As the sea ice shrinks in the Arctic, the plankton community that produces food for the entire marine food chain is changing. New research shows that a potentially toxic species of plankton algae that lives both by doing photosynthesis and absorbing food may become an important player in the Arctic Ocean as the future sea ice becomes thinner and thinner.

There are two main elements to observe when assessing sea level rise. One is the loss of the ice on land and the other is that the sea will expand as it gets warmer. Researchers have constructed a new method of quantifying just how fast the sea will react to warming. Former predictions of sea level have been too conservative, so the sea will likely rise more and faster than previously believed.

Extensive sea ice covered the world's oceans during the last ice age, which prevented oxygen from penetrating into the deep ocean waters, complicating the relationship between oxygen and carbon.

Geologists have produced a new timeline of Earth's Paleozoic climate changes. The record shows ancient temperature variations coinciding with shifts in planet's biodiversity.

Antarctic ice is melting, contributing massive amounts of water to the world's seas and causing them to rise - but that melt is not as linear and consistent as scientists previously thought, a new analysis of 20 years' worth of satellite data indicates.

Researchers have resolved for the first time, how the environment affects the formation of nanoparticles in the Arctic. The results give additional insight into the future of melting sea ice and the Arctic atmosphere. Until recent studies, the molecular processes of particle formation in the high Arctic remained a mystery.

The analysis of sediment cores from the Mediterranean Sea combined with Earth system models tells the story of major environmental changes in North Africa over the last 160,000 years.

A team of scientists has discovered the remains of a fungi-like microfossil that emerged at the end of an ice age some 635 million years ago.

A newly discovered trace fossil of an ancient burrow has been discovered. The fossil has an important role to play in gauging how salty ancient bodies of water were, putting together a clearer picture of our planet's past.

Scientists have for the first time quantified how warming coastal waters are impacting individual glaciers in Greenland's fjords. Their work can help climate scientists better predict global sea level rise from the increased melting.

The absence of monsoon rains at the source of the Nile was the cause of migrations and the demise of entire settlements in the late Roman province of Egypt. This demographic development has been compared with environmental data for the first time by professor of ancient history, leading to a discovery of climate change and its consequences.

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 tons of ice between 1994 and 2017 - equivalent to a sheet of ice 100 meters thick covering the whole of the UK.

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.