ScienceDaily: Earth & Climate News

Labelling of plastic products needs a drastic overhaul including a new 'sustainability scale' to help consumers, researchers say.

A new, highly sensitive system for detecting the production of hydrogen gas may play an important role in the quest to develop hydrogen as an environmentally friendly and economical alternative to fossil fuels.

An unnoticed network of channels is cutting across the coastal plain landscape along the Gulf Coast and influencing how water flows, according to new research that could help predict flooding from major storms in the future.

Human-induced climate change is causing dangerous and widespread disruption in nature and affecting the lives of billions of people around the world, despite efforts to reduce the risks. People and ecosystems least able to cope are being hardest hit, said scientists in the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.

Hydrogels have an astonishing ability to swell and take on water. In daily life, they are used in dressings, nappies, and more to lock moisture away. A team of researchers has now found another use: quickly extracting large amounts of freshwater from air using a specially developed hydrogel containing a hygroscopic salt. The study shows that the salt enhances the moisture uptake of the gel, making it suitable for water harvesting in dry regions.

Each year, pregnant female elephant seals take an approximately 240-day trek over 10,000 kilometers across the Eastern North Pacific Ocean before returning to their breeding beaches to give birth within five days of their arrival. Now, a study finds that this impressive navigation ability depends on an internal map sense, which functions much like a built-in GPS.

Researchers have developed an efficient concept to turn carbon dioxide into clean, sustainable fuels, without any unwanted by-products or waste.

Engineers suggest that flaring of natural gas at oil and gas fields in the United States, primarily in North Dakota and Texas, contributed to dozens of premature deaths in 2019.

The almost 11 cm high figurine from Willendorf is one of the most important examples of early art in Europe. It is made of a rock called 'oolite' which is not found in or around Willendorf. Anthropologist, geologists and prehistorians have now found out, with the help of high-resolution tomographic images, that the material from which the Venus was carved likely comes from northern Italy. This sheds new light on the remarkable mobility of the first modern humans south and north of the Alps.

Geologists have discovered a link between recent ice mass loss, rapid rock uplift and a gap between tectonic plates that underlie Patagonia.

The central section of the great fault spanning California, thought to be creeping along harmlessly at the moment, has experienced big quakes in the past, says a new study.

Lava domes form at the top of many volcanoes when viscous lava erupts. When they become unstable, they can collapse and cause a hazard. An international team of researchers has analyzed summit dome instabilities at Merapi Volcano, Indonesia. The researchers hope that by understanding the inner processes, volcano collapses can be better forecasted.