February 27, 2009, 6:11 AM CT

Soybean oil reduces carbon footprint

One of agriculture's most versatile crops could one day play a role in combating climate change, Purdue University research shows.

In addition to using soybeans in beverages, biofuel, lip balm, crayons, candles and a host of other products, Purdue agricultural engineers Al Heber and Jiqin Ni observed that soybean oil reduces greenhouse gas emissions when sprayed inside swine finishing barns.

Heber and Ni led a team of Purdue and University of Missouri scientists in the yearlong project, which monitored the effectiveness of soybean oil on dust and odor within hog facilities. Additional research is needed to address problems with oil spraying and substantiate the study's findings, the scientists said.

"This project provided baseline measurements of the greenhouse gas contributions of swine finishing barns," Heber said. "In addition to the baseline measurements, we now have some data on an abatement technology to reduce the carbon footprint contribution of a pound of pork".

Greenhouse gases are chemical compounds that contribute to the greenhouse effect, a condition in which heat is trapped in the lower atmosphere, producing global warming. In 2005, agricultural practices were responsible for 7.4 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, as per the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source

February 26, 2009, 11:05 PM CT

Rockets To Test Atmospheric Conditions

Clemson University space physicists have traveled around the world to launch rockets to test atmospheric conditions.

Researchers most recently launched a salvo of four rockets over Alaska to study turbulence in the upper atmosphere. The launches took place at Poker Flat Research Range north of Fairbanks as part of a NASA sounding rocket campaign.

Associate professor of physics and astronomy Gerald Lehmacher is the principal investigator for the experiment and was assisted by graduate students Shelton Simmons and Liyu Guo.

"After six days of cloudy and snowy weather, we had perfect conditions with a clear, moonless night sky over interior Alaska," said Lehmacher. "We needed excellent viewing conditions from three camera sites to photograph the luminescent trails the payloads produced in the upper atmosphere".

The rockets were 35-foot, two-stage Terrier Orions. They released trimethyl aluminum that creates a glowing vapor trail nearly 87 miles up. Sensitive cameras on the ground track the trails. From that Lehmacher and his team can analyze upper-atmospheric winds by tracking how the vapor trails form, billow, disperse and diffuse. Two of the rockets had an additional deployable payload with instrumentation to measure electron density and neutral temperature and turbulence......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source

February 25, 2009, 4:45 AM CT

Role of Equatorial Pacific Ocean in Global Climate System

In early March, an international team of researchers will set sail aboard the drill ship JOIDES Resolution on the first of two Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) expeditions to the equatorial Pacific Ocean.

The second expedition will follow immediately afterward in May. Both are grouped into one science program, known as the Pacific Equatorial Age Transect (PEAT).

The results will lead to a clearer understanding of Earth's climate over the past 55 million years--a vital component to knowing what future course the planet's climate will take, researchers believe.

"These expeditions focused on climate change come at a critical time," said Julie Morris, director of the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s Division of Ocean Sciences, which supports IODP. "During the next year, sea-floor drilling correlation to climate change will happen from pole to pole".

The PEAT expeditions aim to recover a continuous Cenozoic record (from 65.5 million years ago to the present) of sediments beneath the equatorial Pacific Ocean. Geologists will drill into the crust on the Pacific tectonic plate along the equator.

The first research effort, Expedition 320, is planned for March 5 through May 5, 2009; Expedition 321 will take place from May 5 through July 5, 2009......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source

February 25, 2009, 4:42 AM CT

Alps-like Mountain Range under East Antarctic Ice Sheet

Flying twin-engine light aircraft the equivalent of several trips around the globe and establishing a network of seismic instruments across an area the size of Texas, a U.S.-led, international team of researchers has not only verified the existence of a mountain range that is suspected to have caused the massive East Antarctic Ice Sheet to form, but also has created a detailed picture of the rugged landscape buried under more than four kilometers (2.5 miles) of ice.

"Working cooperatively in some of the harshest conditions imaginable, all the while working in temperatures that averaged -30 degrees Celsius, our seven-nation team has produced detailed images of last unexplored mountain range on Earth," said Michael Studinger, of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, the co-leader of the U.S. portion of the Antarctica's Gamburstev Province (AGAP) project. "As our two survey aircraft flew over the flat white ice sheet, the instrumentation revealed a remarkably rugged terrain with deeply etched valleys and very steep mountain peaks".

The National Science Foundation (NSF), in its role as manager of the U.S. Antarctic Program, provided much of the complex logistical support that made the discoveries possible. NSF also supported U.S. scientists from Columbia University, Washington University in St. Louis, Pennsylvania State University, the Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets (CReSIS) at the University of Kansas, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the Incorporated Research Institutions in Seismology (IRIS)......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source

February 20, 2009, 6:02 AM CT

Global warming and respiratory problems

High summer temperatures, pushed higher by global climate change, may bring with them a spike in hospitalizations for respiratory problems, according to an analysis of data from twelve European cities, from Dublin to Valencia. The data comes from the "Assessment and Prevention of Acute Health Effects of Weather Conditions in Europe" (PHEWE), a multi-center, three-year collaboration between epidemiologists, meteorologists and experts in public health collaboration that investigated the short-term effects of weather in Europe.

As climate change has gone from a scientific theory to an accepted and encroaching reality, more extreme weather, including hotter summers, is anticipated around the planet. But the secondary effects of climate change are also coming into sharper focus.

The PHEWE project evaluated the effects of higher temperatures on hospitalizations for a number of different conditions in Europe. They found that for every degree increase over a temperature threshold, there was a four percent average increase in respiratory-related hospitalizations, but not for cardiovascular or neurovascular- related problems.

The results were published in the first issue for March of the American Thoracic Society's American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine........ Posted by: Sean      Read more         Source

February 16, 2009, 10:19 PM CT

Greenland and Antarctic ice sheet melting

The Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets are melting, but the amounts that will melt and the time it will take are still unknown, as per Richard Alley, Evan Pugh professor of geosciences, Penn State.

In the past, the Greenland ice sheet has grown when its surroundings cooled, shrunk when its surroundings warmed and even disappeared completely when the temperatures became warm enough. If the ice sheet on Greenland melts, sea level will rise about 23 feet, which will inundate portions of nearly all continental shores. However, Antarctica, containing much more water, could add up to another 190 feet to sea level.

"We do not believe that we will lose all, or even most, of Antarctica's ice sheet," said Alley. "But important losses may have already started and could raise sea level as much or more than melting of Greenland's ice over hundreds or thousands of years," Alley told attendees today (Feb 16) at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Warming is expected to cause more precipitation on Greenland and Antarctica, adding snow. Previously, a number of researchers suggested that this would offset increasing melting. However, recent studies show that the ice sheets on both Greenland and in Antarctica are melting faster than the snow is replacing the mass......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source

February 16, 2009, 10:13 PM CT

State of the steric sea level rise

Based on a detailed analysis of ocean vertical temperature profiles for the 1955-2008 period, Sydney Levitus, main author, talks about the change of global average sea level induced by the observed warming of the world ocean during the past 53 years. The warming of the world ocean is consistent with the amount of warming expected as a result of the observed increase in greenhouse gases in earth's atmosphere.

The observed ocean warming has contributed approximately 20 mm to global average sea level during this time period. This is simply the phenomenon of salt water expanding when it is warmed. This expansion effect (or contraction if cooling occurs) is known as the "thermosteric component of sea level change".

This estimate is similar to prior estimates even after recently identified instrumentals errors are corrected for and additional historical data has been added to the scientists' database. The thermosteric component of sea level change is only one of several phenomena affecting sea level. Others include the melting of glaciers, the transfer of liquid water between the continents and oceans, and the impoundment of water by dams.

Levitus will also describe the changes in global sea level, resulting from changes in the distribution of temperature and freshwater in the world ocean during the same 1955 2008 time scale......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more

February 10, 2009, 6:21 AM CT

Carbon Acts Like Rustoleum

The cycling of iron throughout the oceans has been an area of intense research for the last two decades. Oceanographers have spent a lot of time studying what has been affectionately labeled the Geritol effect ever since discovering that the lack of iron is a reason why phytoplankton grow lackadaisically in some of the most nutrient-rich surface waters. Just like humans, sometimes the ocean needs a dose of iron to function more effectively.

It is well known that the hydrothermal vents lining the mid-ocean ridges are a major source of iron to the ocean. Vent fluids contain about one million times more iron than regular ocean water. But the iron pumped out of hydrothermal vents has always been thought to immediately form mineralized particles when it mixes with seawater. This form of iron has as much value for the ocean as chewing a rusty nail would have for a patient with anemia.

In a new paper published in Nature Geoscience, Brandy Toner and her colleagues report on the unexpected discovery that some of the iron spit out of hydrothermal vents remains in a form that organisms in the ocean crave. Toner was a NASA Post Doctoral Fellow at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution when the work began but has since taken a position as Assistant Professor of Environmental Chemistry at the University of Minnesota. Toner says, "Iron doesn't behave as we had expected in hydrothermal plumes. Part of the iron from the hydrothermal fluid sticks to particulate organic matter and seems to be protected from oxidation processes." In other words, the interaction between iron and carbon in vent fluid acts like Rustoleum stopping corrosion......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source

February 10, 2009, 6:19 AM CT

Dramatic Rise in Sea Level and Its Broad Ramifications

Researchers have found proof in Bermuda that the planet's sea level was once more than 21 meters (70 feet) higher about 400,000 years ago than it is now. Their findings were reported in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews Wednesday, Feb. 4.

Storrs Olson, research zoologist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, and geologist Paul Hearty of the Bald Head Island Conservancy discovered sedimentary and fossil evidence in the walls of a limestone quarry in Bermuda that documents a rise in sea level during an interglacial period of the Middle Pleistocene in excess of 21 meters above its current level. Hearty and his colleagues had published preliminary evidence of such a sea-level rise nearly a decade ago, which was met with skepticism among geologists. This marine fossil evidence now provides unequivocal evidence of the timing and extent of this event.

The nature of the sediments and fossil accumulation found by Olson and Hearty was not compatible with the deposits left by a tsunami but rather with the gradual, yet relatively rapid, increase in the volume of the planet's ocean caused by melting ice sheets.

A rise in sea level to such a height would have ramifications well beyond geology and climate modeling. For the organisms of coastal areas, and especially for low islands and archipelagos, such a rise would have been catastrophic. The Florida peninsula, for example, would have been reduced to a relatively small archipelago along the higher parts of its central ridge......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source

February 10, 2009, 6:16 AM CT

How an Antarctic worm contributes to climate change

Two BYU scientists who just returned from Antarctica are reporting a hardy worm that withstands its cold climate by cranking out antifreeze. And when its notoriously dry home runs out of water, it just dries itself out and goes into suspended animation until liquid water brings it back to life.

Identifying the genes the worm uses to kick in its antifreeze system can be useful information - similar genes found in other Antarctic organisms are currently being used to engineer frost-resistant crops.

But BYU's Byron Adams, associate professor of molecular biology, and his Ph.D. student Bishwo Adhikari, are carrying on their love affair with microscopic nematode worms for a different reason.

They spent Christmas near the South Pole to help determine how the fate of a half-millimeter worm can actually impact an entire ecosystem, and how that information can serve as an important baseline for understanding climate change's impact on more complex systems, such as a farmer's field in the United States.

Their latest study, published Monday in the journal BMC Genomics, used samples Adams gathered during prior trips to the world's most inhospitable continent. He's lived at McMurdo Station seven times and hitched helicopter rides to gather soil from Antarctica's freezing, bone-dry valleys, where only a handful of microscopic animals can survive. The ones that do make for a convenient laboratory for observing how minor changes in the environment can have a big impact on an ecosystem......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source