Starting With The 3rd Of July, All Single-use Plastic Items That Can Be Replaced With Sustainable Alternatives

Yikes. “The fate of the glacier and the west Antarctic ice sheet could be sealed in the next two to five years.”

Grist: 3 expert tips on how to spot bullshit. Very fitting for April Fool’s Day

Alkanes, an important component of fuels for combustion engines and an important class of urban trace gases, react via another reaction pathways than previously thought. These hydrocarbons, formerly called paraffins, thus produce large amounts of highly oxygenated compounds that can contribute to organic aerosol and thus to air pollution in cities. An international research team has now been able to prove this through laboratory experiments with state-of-the-art measurement technology at the University of Helsinki and the Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research (TROPOS) in Leipzig.

The results of this interdisciplinary work provide crucial information about oxidation processes both in combustion engines and in the atmosphere – with direct implications for engine efficiency and the formation of aerosols, especially in cities, the research team writes in the journal Communications Chemistry, an open-access journal published by the Springer-Nature publishing group.

Oxidation processes play a major role both in the atmosphere and in combustion. A chain reaction called autoxidation is enabled by high engine temperatures. But it also acts as an important source of highly oxygenated compounds in the atmosphere that form organic aerosol, as researchers from Finland, Germany and the USA demonstrated in 2014. Autoxidation is one reason for ageing processes of organic compounds by oxygen from the air. It contributes to the spoilage of food and wine.

Read more.

i don’t know what else to do

Global Warming

Glaciers are Shrinking

Earth’s glaciers are shrinking, and in the past 20 years, the rate of shrinkage has steadily sped up, according to a new study of nearly every glacier on the planet.

Glaciers mostly lose mass through ice melt, but they also shrink due to other processes, such as sublimation, where water evaporates directly from the ice, and calving, where large chunks of ice break off the edge of a glacier, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). By tracking how quickly glaciers are shrinking, scientists can better predict how quickly sea levels may rise, particularly as climate change drives up average global temperatures.

The team found that, between 2000 and 2019, glaciers collectively lost an average of 293.7 billion tons (267 billion metric tonnes) of mass per year, give or take 17.6 billion tons (16 billion metric tonnes); this accounts for about 21% of the observed sea-level rise in that time frame.

Please call / write your congresspeople to support this important bill.

We’ve been talking about plastic pollution on this blog for years, and it just keeps getting worse. Let’s finally do something about it.

The bill “ would force producers to handle waste, ban some single-use plastic products and pause permits of new plastics plants, among other measures. “

Polar Vortex spills Arctic weather into North America

What in the world is a polar vortex? On Earth, it’s a large area of low pressure and extremely cold air that usually swirls over the Arctic, with strong counter-clockwise winds that trap the cold around the Pole. But disturbances in the jet stream and the intrusion of warmer mid-latitude air masses can disturb this polar vortex and make it unstable, sending Arctic air south into middle latitudes.

That has been the case in late January 2019 as frigid weather moves across the Midwest and Northern Plains of the United States, as well as interior Canada. Forecasters are predicting that air temperatures in parts of the continental United States will drop to their lowest levels since at least 1994, with the potential to break all-time record lows for January 30 and 31. With clear skies, steady winds, and snow cover on the ground, as many as 90 million Americans could experience temperatures at or below 0 degrees Fahrenheit (-18° Celsius), according to the National Weather Service (NWS).

The Goddard Earth Observing System Model above shows this air temperature movement at 2 meters (around 6.5 feet above the ground) from January 23-29. You can see some portions of the Arctic are close to the freezing point—significantly warmer than usual for the dark of mid-winter—while masses of cooler air plunge toward the interior of North America.

Science Behind the Polar Vortex / Credit: NOAA

Meteorologists predicted that steady northwest winds (10 to 20 miles per hour) were likely to add to the misery, causing dangerous wind chills below -40°F (-40°C) in portions of 12 states. A wind chill of -20°F can cause frostbite in as little as 30 minutes, according to the weather service.

Not sure how cold that is? Check out the low temperatures on January 30, 2019 in some of the coldest places on Earth—and a planetary neighbor:

 -46°F (-43°C) – Chesterfield, Newfoundland

-36°F (-33°C) – Yukon Territory, Canada

-33°F (-27°C) – Fargo, North Dakota (Within the Polar Vortex)

-28°F (-18°C) – Minneapolis, Minnesota (Within the Polar Vortex)

-27°F (-33°C) – Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, Antarctica

-24°F (-31°C) – Chicago, Illinois (Within the Polar Vortex)

-15°F (5°C) – Barrow, Alaska 

-99°F (-73°C) – Mars

Learn more about the science behind the polar vortex and how NASA is modeling it here: https://go.nasa.gov/2Wtmb43.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

This is Greta Thunberg’s full opening statement at today’s congressional climate change hearing: 

“My name is Greta Thunberg … I don’t want you to listen to me. I want you to listen to the scientists … And then I want you to take real action.”

For more: See our reporting on climate issues around the world, as part of our series Climate in Crisis.

Coffee Pulp Boosts Forest Recovery Threefold

Coffee pulp, a coffee production byproduct, can speed up tropical forest recovery on land that had been clear cut for agricultural use. A new study by the University of Hawaii and ETH-Zurich researchers found the widely available waste material boosts plant growth substantially – 80% of the forest grew back…