A simple thermodynamic argument suggests that as the water vapor content of the atmosphere increases with global warming dry regions may become drier and wet regions wetter. This enhanced hydrological contrast with global warming can be attributed to changes in the atmospheric water vapor...
Soils contain two-thirds of the world’s terrestrial carbon (3,000 Pg C). The total annual soil CO2 efflux yearly exceeds the current rate of anthropogenic CO2 emissions from deforestation and burning of fossil fuels by a factor of 10. Subtle changes in soil organic carbon (SOC) processing (...
In their recent Science article, Marcott and colleagues present a reconstruction of Earth’s mean surface temperature over the last 11,300 years – the Holocene. Why is this important? It is the most comprehensive and inclusive reconstruction to date from which to assess how novel our current...
The Antarctic Peninsula is one the regions of the world that has experienced the highest impacts of climate change. In the last 40 years the mean annual air temperature has increased 2.8 degrees C causing massive ice shelves to disintegrate, declines in sea ice extent and a strong impact on all...
Solar panels on the market today are almost universally limited to less than 20% efficiency at converting sunlight to electricity, and generally get more expensive as efficiency goes up. Numerous reasons exist for this low photovoltaic efficiency, but one of the most fundamental is the Shockley-...
Biodiversity is an extremely important component of the Earth System that is both difficult to quantify and vital to understand. In a recent special issue of Remote Sensing, several articles describe the progress we have made in quantifying various aspects of biodiversity using novel imaging...
Either organic substances or the salt content of water could be turned into energy, with the help of membranes. This review paper presents several state-of-the-art membrane technologies: pressure-retarded osmosis and reverse electrodialysis, as well as microbial fuel-cell technology, all of which...