Air pollution: US wildfires now lead to air pollution events affecting millions

The simultaneous occurence of extreme levels of ozone and particulate matter have increased significantly in the past decade due to wildfires in the western US Environment 5 January 2022 By Adam Vaughan Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles during the wildfire season in September 2020 Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times/Shutterstock The area of the western … Read more

‘Icemageddon’ Strikes Alaska in Record Bout of Extreme Weather

Extreme weather in Alaska that has brought record high temperatures and torrential downpours has left authorities in the far northern US state warning of “Icemageddon”. Huge sheets of ice are blocking roads and choking traffic in Fairbanks, Alaska’s second largest city, reported the state’s transportation department, which has coined the neologism – a play on … Read more

The Largest Known Flying Animal Was Even Weirder Than We Thought

The pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus northropi is the largest known flying animal to have ever existed, living on Earth more than 67 million years ago. Now new research on the creature and its newly discovered smaller relative, Quetzalcoatlus lawsoni, gives us a better idea of how Q. northropi flew and got airborne to begin with.   Our knowledge of Q. … Read more

Microplastics: Pollution in French mountain air may have crossed Atlantic Ocean

Microplastics travelled thousands of kilometres across oceans and continents in a fast-moving layer of the atmosphere before being captured on a mountain in the French Pyrenees Environment 21 December 2021 By Carissa Wong Capturing microplastics at the Pic du Midi Observatory Jeroen Sonke Microplastics found at a mountain top in the French Pyrenees may have … Read more

DNA in Air Can Catalog Hidden Insects All Around Us

A decade ago, biologists and natural historians around the world launched ambitious goals to create inventories of our planet’s biodiversity. After all, they said, you can’t save what you don’t know exists. Even some high estimates suggest that only a quarter of Earth’s species have been described by science, raising concerns about the big picture amidst rising … Read more

NASA’s Mars helicopter Ingenuity passes 30 minutes of total air time

The first Martian drone has reached the 30 minute air time mark. After a 117-second Mars sortie on Dec. 5, the total flight time for the Ingenuity helicopter is 30 minutes and 48 seconds after 17 total flights, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement on Wednesday (Dec. 15). There was a delay in … Read more

Chemical Air Pollution Morphs Into Something Even More Toxic, Study Shows

Remnants of industrial chemicals in the air can potentially transform into new substances more toxic and persistent than the original pollution, according to a global study published on Wednesday.   Using samples gathered around the world, the study published in Nature found that these previously unidentified products are present in the atmospheres of 18 big … Read more

Air pollution: Almost 8000 lives being saved as US moves to vehicles that emit fewer tiny particles known as PM2.5

Almost 8000 fewer lives are being lost to air pollution from vehicle emissions in the US per year, thanks to cleaner engines that produce fewer tiny particles   Health 13 December 2021 By Clare Wilson Cars in a traffic jam Shutterstock/LanaElcova Nearly 8000 lives are being saved in the US every year thanks to … Read more

Moving CO2 from Air to Oceans May Be Necessary to Slow Warming

Climbing concentrations of carbon dioxide make it likely that humans will have to move some gases from the atmosphere into the oceans to prevent crippling effects of climate change, the National Academies said in a major report released yesterday. It came after months of deliberation among top U.S. scientists who concluded that global efforts to … Read more