ScienceDaily: Earth & Climate News

A team of researchers is using one of the most powerful chemical analysis tools in the world to unravel the complexities of PFAS. They are working to characterize and catalog the thousands upon thousands of chemical compounds in the PFAS family, so future studies can find solutions to health and environmental impacts.

A person's appreciation of nature and their tendency to visit natural spaces are heritable characteristics, according to a large-scale study of UK twins.

For the first time ever on a global scale, using satellite imagery, scientists have quantified volumes of massive methane emissions due to fossil-fuel extraction activities and their impact on the climate. Their findings partly explain why official inventories generally underestimate the volume of these emissions. Stopping these releases, be they accidental or deliberate, would save those countries responsible billions of dollars.

Engineers have demonstrated a way to effectively capture 99% of carbon dioxide from air using a novel electrochemical system powered by hydrogen.

Given the sheer number of potential enemies, plants are resistant to most pests, even if they can cause damage to other plants. Researchers describe a newly discovered mechanism that protects a wild tobacco species from plant sap-sucking leafhoppers. By combining different genetic screening methods with the study of chemical changes in tobacco leaves, they identified a previously unknown defense substance important for the tobacco's resistance to leafhoppers and characterized the genes for its biosynthesis.

Winters are warming faster than summers in North America, impacting everything from ecosystems to the economy. Global climate models indicate that this trend will continue in future winters but there is a level of uncertainty around the magnitude of warming. Researchers focused on the role of carbon dioxide emissions in this equation -- looking at the effects of both high and low levels of carbon dioxide emissions on future climate warming scenarios -- and found that a reduction in emissions could preserve almost three weeks of snow cover and below freezing temperatures.

Researchers have detected at least four 'cryptic' variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, in samples of wastewater from New York City's public sewer system.

Chemists discovered how cyanide could have enabled chemical reactions that metabolize carbon dioxide without the complex proteins used by living organisms today.

The Sanriku Coast - which includes present day Iwate and parts of Aomori and Miyagi - has been prone to tsunamis throughout its history. Analyses of tsunami deposits along the coast, however, haven't always provided conclusive findings. Now, a research team has utilized a new radiocarbon dating method to clarify the region's tsunami history and better understand the frequency at which these disasters occur.

Wastewater-based epidemiological tracking of COVID-19 in the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic village showed that SARS-CoV-2 was present in areas without diagnosed individuals.

The 'Ebola virus of the amphibian world' is as unpleasant as it sounds, but a species of salamander that lives in Arizona found a way to live with the endemic disease. As the climate changes, viruses change along with it, and this unpredictable virus could have a more severe effect on different species in the future.

Melting and sublimation on Mount Everest's highest glacier due to human-induced climate change have reached the point that several decades of accumulation are being lost annually now that ice has been exposed, according to a research team that analyzed data from the world's highest ice core and highest automatic weather stations.

Researchers have chased the source of cacao's cadmium contamination for years, but an array of distinct sampling methods and sites led to mixed results. In a new analysis, scientists consider the soil factors influencing cadmium's ride into cacao beans, with the aim of recommending feasible and cost-effective ways farmers can minimize uptake.

Implementing roadside technology to detect high-emitting vehicles improves urban air quality.

International tourism can facilitate the dispersal of exotic species. A new analysis of data from tourism accommodations and exotic organism detections in New Zealand shows that levels of detection significantly correlated to international and domestic tourist movement, even with population levels taken into account. There was no detectable difference between the risk from international and domestic tourists, indicating that tourism as an activity correlates with the introduction and spread of exotic species.

Researchers found that the occurrence of red snow algal blooms is associated with the occurrence of new snowfall and the duration of snow melt. A revised snow algae model incorporated into a land surface model was used to simulate global snow algal abundance. The model can be used to predict the location and timing of red snow algal blooms, and their effects on global snow cover.