Research News
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Energy advances open the door to more aggressive climate policies
An international research team has called for a more sober discourse around climate change prospects, following an extensive reassessment of climate change’s progress and its mitigation. They argue that climate change models have understated potential warming’s speed and runaway potential, while the models that relate climate science to consequences, choices and policies have understated the […]
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Increase in cannabis cultivation or residential development could impact water resources, study shows
Cannabis cultivation could have a significant effect on groundwater and surface water resources when combined with residential use, evidence from a new study suggests. Researchers in Canada and the US investigated potential reductions in streamflow, caused by groundwater pumping for cannabis irrigation, in the Navarro River in Mendocino County, California, and contextualized it by comparing […]
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Superconducting wind turbine chalks up first test success
A superconducting rotor has been successfully tested on an active wind turbine for the first time. The EcoSwing consortium designed, developed, manufactured a full-size superconducting generator for a 3.6 megawatt wind turbine, and field-tested it in Thyborøn, Denmark. They report their results in the IOP Publishing journal Superconductor Science and Technology. Corresponding author Anne Bergen, […]
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Aviation emissions’ impacts on air quality larger than on climate, study finds
New research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has quantified the climate and air quality impacts of aviation, broken down by emission type, altitude and location. The MIT team found that growth in aviation causes twice as much damage to air quality as to the climate. Writing today in IOP Publishing’s Environmental Research Letters, […]
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Million-mile battery unveiled by ground-breaking research
Elon Musk promised—and Jeff Dahn delivered. With the publishing of a ground-breaking paper in the Journal of The Electrochemical Society (JES), Dahn announced to the world that Tesla may soon have a battery that makes their robot taxis and long-haul electric trucks viable. Dahn and his research group are Tesla’s battery research partner. Dahn said: […]
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New study investigates the important role of Tambora eruption in the 1816 ‘year without a summer’
A new study has estimated for the first time how the eruption of Mount Tambora changed the probability of the cold and wet European ‘year without a summer’ of 1816. It found that the observed cold conditions were almost impossible without the eruption, and the wet conditions would have been less likely. 1816 recorded exceptionally […]
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Study offers verdict for China’s efforts on coal emissions
Researchers from China, France and the USA have evaluated China’s success in stemming emissions from its coal-fired power plants (CPPs). CPPs are one of the main contributors to air pollution in China, and their proliferation over the last 20 years has had significant impacts on air quality and public health. These impacts led authorities to […]
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Paris Agreement hampered by inconsistent pledges, new research finds
Some countries’ Paris Climate Agreement pledges may not be as ambitious as they appear, a new study has found. The Paris Agreement takes a bottom-up approach to tackling climate change, with countries submitting pledges in the form of nationally determined contributions (NDCs) to greenhouse gas emissions. However, writing today in Environmental Research Letters, researchers from […]
