Large-scale carbon sequestration involves capturing carbon dioxide emitted from power plants and injecting it into underground reservoirs for long-term storage. Leakage from these storage reservoirs could lead to groundwater contamination, requiring that the spread of CO2 be monitored during and...
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...