Scientists from Rutgers University-New Brunswick and Atmospheric and Environmental Research (AER) have linked the frequency of extreme winter weather in the United States to Arctic temperatures. Their research was published today in Nature Communications. “Basically, this confirms the story I’ve been telling for a couple of years now,” said study co-author Jennifer Francis, research professor of marine and coastal […]
New economic developments in the Arctic, such as trans-Arctic shipping and oil exploitation, will bring along unprecedented risks of marine oil spills. The world is therefore calling for a thorough understanding of the resilience and “self-cleaning” capacity of Arctic ecosystems to recover from oil spills. Although numerous efforts are put into cleaning up large oil […]
Spring is arriving earlier, but how much earlier? The answer depends on where on Earth you find yourself, according to a study led by the University of California, Davis. The study, published in Nature’s online journal Scientific Reports, found that for every 10 degrees north from the equator you move, spring arrives about four days […]
Researchers have discovered that thawing permafrost in the Northern Hemisphere stores twice as much mercury as the rest of the planet’s soils, atmosphere, and oceans. The finding has significant implications for human health and ecosystems worldwide. In a new study, scientists measured mercury concentrations in cores of frozen ground—or permafrost—from Alaska and used the data to […]