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Climate conditions during the migration of Homo sapiens out of Africa reconstructed

Science Daily - Mon, 06/14/2021 - 14:39
Climate reconstruction of the last 200,000 years from East Africa illustrates the living conditions of Homo sapiens when they migrated out of Africa / Homo sapiens was mobile across regions during wet phases and retreated to high altitudes during dry phases.

Edge of Pine Island Glacier's ice shelf is ripping apart, causing key Antarctic glacier to gain speed

Science Daily - Fri, 06/11/2021 - 16:40
Pine Island Glacier's ice shelf lost about one-fifth of its total area between 2017 and 2020, in three dramatic collapses. Meanwhile the glacier sped up by 12 percent. The rest of the ice shelf, the authors say, could disappear much sooner than previous studies had suggested.

Cause, scope determined for deadly winter debris flow in Uttarakhand, India

Science Daily - Thu, 06/10/2021 - 14:01
The Uttarakhand region of India experienced a humanitarian tragedy on Feb. 7, 2021, when a wall of debris and water barreled down the Ronti Gad, Rishiganga and Dhauliganga river valleys. This debris flow destroyed two hydropower facilities and left more than 200 people dead or missing. A self-organized coalition of 53 scientists came together in the days following the disaster to investigate the cause, scope and impacts.

Indigenous mortality following Spanish colonization did not always lead to forest regrowth, study finds

Science Daily - Thu, 06/10/2021 - 12:57
New research shows that disruptions to Indigenous land management following Iberian colonization did not always result in widespread forest regrowth in the Americas and Asia-Pacific, as has been recently argued.

The rocky road to accurate sea-level predictions

Science Daily - Thu, 06/10/2021 - 12:56
The type of material present under glaciers has a big impact on how fast they slide towards the ocean. Scientists face a challenging task to acquire data of this under-ice landscape. Choosing the wrong equations for the under-ice landscape can have the same effect on the predicted contribution to sea-level rise as a warming of several degrees, according to researchers.

Arctic rotifer lives after 24,000 years in a frozen state

Science Daily - Mon, 06/07/2021 - 15:11
Bdelloid rotifers are multicellular animals so small you need a microscope to see them. Despite their size, they're known for being tough, capable of surviving through drying, freezing, starvation, and low oxygen. Now, researchers have found that not only can they withstand being frozen, but they can also persist for at least 24,000 years in the Siberian permafrost and survive.

Study of past South Asian monsoons suggests stronger monsoon rainfall in the future

Science Daily - Fri, 06/04/2021 - 20:36
New research finds that increases in monsoon rainfall over the past million years were linked with increases in atmospheric CO2 and the import of moisture from the southern hemisphere, which suggests stronger rains in the future as CO2 levels rise.

Corals tell Arabian Sea story of global warming

Science Daily - Fri, 06/04/2021 - 11:24
Coral insights into 1,000 years of seasonal changes in the Arabian Sea warn of significant impacts caused by global warming.

Scientists establish new records of Singapore's sea-level history

Science Daily - Fri, 06/04/2021 - 07:38
Climate scientists have extended the known record of Singapore's sea-level to almost 10,000 years ago, providing a more robust dataset to aid future predictions of sea-level rise.

Arctic sea ice thinning faster than expected

Science Daily - Thu, 06/03/2021 - 19:10
Sea ice thickness is inferred by measuring the height of the ice above the water, and this measurement is distorted by snow weighing the ice floe down. Scientists adjust for this using a map of snow depth in the Arctic that is decades out of date. In the new study, researchers swapped this map for the results of a new computer model designed to estimate snow depth as it varies year to year.

South Pole and East Antarctica warmer than previously thought during last ice age, two studies show

Science Daily - Thu, 06/03/2021 - 16:11
Glaciologists analyzed Antarctic ice cores to understand the continent's air temperatures during the most recent glacial period. The results help understand how the region behaves during a major climate transition.

Tipping elements can destabilize each other, leading to climate domino effects

Science Daily - Thu, 06/03/2021 - 16:03
Under global warming, tipping elements in the Earth system can destabilize each other and eventually lead to climate domino effects. The ice sheets on Greenland and West Antarctica are potential starting points for tipping cascades, a novel network analysis reveals. The Atlantic overturning circulation would then act as a transmitter, and eventually elements like the Amazon rainforest would be impacted. The consequences for people would reach from sea-level rise to biosphere degradation.

Five million years of climate change preserved in one place

Science Daily - Thu, 06/03/2021 - 10:19
An international team of researchers has now succeeded in reconstructing changes in rainfall in Central Asia over the past five million years. The information preserved within the sedimentary succession provides the missing link for understanding land-water feedbacks for global climate.

Dead zones formed repeatedly in North Pacific during warm climates

Science Daily - Wed, 06/02/2021 - 14:34
An analysis of sediment cores from the Bering Sea has revealed a recurring relationship between warmer climates and abrupt episodes of low-oxygen 'dead zones' in the subarctic North Pacific Ocean over the past 1.2 million years. The findings provide crucial information for understanding the causes of low oxygen or 'hypoxia' in the North Pacific and for predicting the occurrence of hypoxic conditions in the future.

Salps fertilize the Southern Ocean more effectively than krill

Science Daily - Wed, 06/02/2021 - 12:03
Experts have experimentally measured the release of iron from the fecal pellets of krill and salps under natural conditions and tested its bioavailability using a natural community of microalgae in the Southern Ocean.

Less aviation during the global lockdown had a positive impact on the climate, study finds

Science Daily - Wed, 06/02/2021 - 12:03
High levels of aviation drive global warming, not only through greenhouse gas emissions, but also through additional clouds, researchers conclude in a new study.

New evidence may change timeline for when people first arrived in North America

Science Daily - Tue, 06/01/2021 - 15:50
An unexpected discovery suggests that the first humans may have arrived in North America more than 30,000 years ago - nearly 20,000 years earlier than originally thought.

Precise data for improved coastline protection

Science Daily - Tue, 06/01/2021 - 12:58
Researchers have conducted the first precise and comprehensive measurements of sea level rises in the Baltic Sea and the North Sea. A new method now makes it possible to determine sea level changes with millimeter accuracy even in coastal areas and in case of sea ice coverage. This is of vital importance for planning protective measures.

Extreme CO2 greenhouse effect heated up the young Earth

Science Daily - Mon, 05/31/2021 - 14:32
Although sun radiation was relatively low, the temperature on the young Earth was warm. An international team of geoscientists has found important clues that high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere were responsible for these high temperatures. It only got cooler with the beginning of plate tectonics, as the CO2 was gradually captured and stored on the emerging continents.

Newly discovered African 'climate seesaw' drove human evolution

Science Daily - Mon, 05/31/2021 - 14:32
A scientific consortium has found that ancient El Niño-like weather patterns were the primary drivers of environmental change in sub-Saharan Africa over the last 620 thousand years - the critical time-frame for the evolution of our species. The group found that these ancient weather patterns had more profound impacts in sub-Saharan Africa than glacial-interglacial cycles more commonly linked to human evolution.

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