Climate change is making lakes less blue

If global warming persists, blue lakes worldwide are at risk of turning green-brown, according to a new study which presents the first global inventory of lake color. Shifts in lake water color can indicate a loss of ecosystem ...

How we're reshaping global water storage

Globally, humans use about 4 trillion cubic meters of fresh water each year for everything from crop irrigation to cooling manufacturing equipment to generating electricity. In a recent study published in Earth's Future, ...

Capturing ocean turbulence at the underbelly of sea ice

Turbulence in the sea plays a key role in mixing ocean waters and transporting nutrients, heat, and dissolved gases. Sources of ocean turbulence are highly varied and include wind, currents, heating and cooling cycles, and ...

Tropical wetlands emit more methane than previously thought

Since 2007, the world's atmospheric methane concentration has risen at an accelerated rate, but scientists aren't exactly sure why. This is a problem, because methane is a particularly potent greenhouse gas. It has more than ...

Urban overheating risks are personal, study finds

Global warming and urbanization are expected to increase heat hazards in cities around the world, but higher temperatures may not always lead to higher health risks, according to a new study in Earth's Future.

The fate of a lake after a dramatic mining disaster

On August 4, 2014, Mount Polley Mine in British Columbia, Canada, made international news when a dam failure released millions of cubic meters of tailings—hazardous by-products of mining operations—into the watershed. ...

Models oversimplify how melting glaciers deform land

Around 21,000 years ago, ice sheets retreated from the Northern Hemisphere, and great swaths of land were unburdened by the weight of glaciers. Even today, Earth's shape is still changing as the land rebounds, causing effects ...

Glaciers flowed on ancient Mars, but slowly

The weight and grinding movement of glaciers has carved distinctive valleys and fjords into Earth's surface. Because Mars lacks similar landscapes, researchers believed ancient ice masses on the Red Planet must have been ...

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