For decades, families in communities around Johannesburg have been living close to huge gold mining waste dumps. For many residents, the dust that is released there is just part of everyday life—but it can contain natural uranium compounds that…
Category: Earth
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How mining legacy dust leaves a uranium fingerprint in children's hair
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Massive Undersea Volcanism May Explain Frequent Extinctions in Triassic Period
A team of geologists from China and Australia has found evidence that episodic eruptions from vast marine large igneous provinces (LIPs) drove repeated lower-order extinction events in the Triassic period.
Early Earth. Image credit: Peter…
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King's Trough: How a shifting plate boundary and hot mantle material shaped an Atlantic mega-canyon
The King’s Trough Complex is a several-hundred-kilometer-long, canyon-like system of trenches on the North Atlantic seafloor. Its formation was long thought to be the result of simple stretching of the oceanic crust. An international research…
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Cleaner ship fuel changed clouds, but not their climate balance
To reduce air pollution associated with ocean transport, the International Maritime Organization tightened restrictions on sulfur content in ship fuel, resulting in an 80% reduction in emissions by 2020. That shift created an inadvertent…
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Wetlands do not need to be flooded to provide the greatest climate benefit, shows study
Wetlands make up only about 6% of the land area but contain about 30% of the terrestrial organic carbon pool. Therefore, CO2 emissions from wetlands are central to the global climate balance. In Denmark, the plan is to flood 140,000 hectares of…
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Simple statistical method predicts landslide risk more accurately than classic method
A relatively simple statistical analysis method can more accurately predict the risk of landslides caused by heavy rain, according to a study coordinated by Brazilian researchers affiliated with the Institute of Mathematical and Computer Sciences…
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AI model forecasts severe thunderstorms 4 hours ahead with higher accuracy
In a critical advance for climate resilience, researchers from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) have developed an AI model that can predict dangerous convective storms—including Black Rainstorms, thunderstorms and…
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Juno spacecraft reveals thickness of Europa’s ice shell
How thick is the ice shell on Jupiter’s moon, Europa? This is what a recent study published in Nature Astronomy hopes to address as a team of scientists revealed groundbreaking insights into Europa’s ice…
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A Hidden Climate Crisis Is Unfolding in the World’s Mountains
High above the world, a rapid climate shift is unfolding with global consequences. A major global review finds that climate change is intensifying more rapidly in mountain regions than in nearby lowland areas. Scientists warn this uneven warming…
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NASA science flights venture to improve severe winter weather warnings
A team of NASA scientists deployed on an international mission designed to better understand severe winter storms. The North American Upstream Feature-Resolving and Tropopause Uncertainty Reconnaissance Experiment, or NURTURE, is an airborne…
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