Phys.org April 11, 2024 Marine cloud brightening is a proposed method to tackle warming through injecting aerosols into marine clouds. However, it is unclear how aerosols influence clouds. An international team of researchers (USA – University of Birmingham, NASA GSFC, Greenbelt, MD, University of Maryland Baltimore County, UK, Switzerland) used satellite observations of volcanic eruptions in Hawaii to quantify the aerosol fingerprint on tropical marine clouds. They observed a large enhancement in reflected sunlight, mainly due to an aerosol-induced increase in cloud cover. This suggested that the current level of global warming is driven by a weaker net radiative forcing […]
Tag Archives: global warming
China’s ‘Great Green Wall’ boosts carbon sink, study finds
Phys.org October 20, 2023 Three-North Afforestation Program (TNAP) in China is the largest ecological restoration project on Earth (ongoing from 1978 to 2050), harboring a huge area of newly planted forests, which provides a wealth of goods and ecosystem services that benefit society in East Asia. This project-induced carbon sink has been expected to be large, but its size and location remain uncertain. An international team of researchers (China, USA – Clemson University) investigated the changes in the C stocks of biomass, soil C and the C accumulation benefited from the ecological effects in the project areas from 1978 to […]
Novel titanium dioxide catalyst shows promise for electrocatalytic carbon dioxide reduction
Phys.org September 5, 2023 CO2 can be selectively reduced by gold, lead, etc. supported on conductive carbon. However, the high pH in the vicinity of the electrode raises concerns about the catalyst and catalyst support degradation. Researchers in Japan used chemically stable titanium dioxide (TiO2) powder as an alternative to carbon. TiO2 maintained its particle shape and crystalline structure after in-liquid plasma treatment was used to improve its electrochemical properties. When its electrochemical properties were evaluated, they observed the disappearance of Ti4+ and Ti3+ redox peaks derived from TiO2 and a decrease in hydrogen overvoltage. The hydrogen overvoltage relationship suggested […]
Using our oceans to fight climate change
Science Daily July 24, 2023 Membrane carbon capture can play a role in negative emissions technology, such as direct air capture and direct ocean capture. Direct ocean capture has a few potential advantages over direct air capture, such as avoiding land use and coupling with offshore wind and offshore storage. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh assessed the use and feasibility of hollow fiber membrane contactors (HFMCs) for direct ocean carbon capture with benign aqueous basic carbon dioxide solvents through a multifaceted approach. A 1D HFMC model incorporated fluid dynamics and the chemical kinetics of both ocean water and aqueous […]
New catalyst transforms carbon dioxide into sustainable byproduct
Science Daily May 3, 2023 About 90% of the acetic acid market is for feedstock in the manufacture of paints, coatings, adhesives, and other products. Production at this scale is primarily derived from methanol, which comes from fossil fuels. An international team of researchers (China, Canada, New Zealand, USA – Northwestern University) has created acetic acid out of carbon monoxide derived from captured carbon. Their process consisted of capturing CO2 and passing it through an electrolyzer where it reacted with water and electrons to form carbon monoxide. Gaseous CO was then passed through a second electrolyzer, where another catalyst transformed […]
Third pole darkening affects local and remote climates, finds study
Phys.org March 28, 2023 Despite knowledge of the presence of the Tibetan Plateau (TP) in reorganizing large-scale atmospheric circulation, it remains unclear how surface albedo darkening over TP will impact local glaciers and remote Asian monsoon systems. An international team of researchers (USA – Columbia University, Austria, Germany, France) used a coupled land-atmosphere global climate model and a glacier model to address these questions. According to their model, under a high-emission scenario, TP surface albedo darkening would increase local temperature by 0.24 K by the end of this century. This warming would strengthen the elevated heat pump of TP, increasing South […]
Can clay capture carbon dioxide?
Phys.org February 9, 2023 Although numerous investigations have studied the formation of H2CO3 in water from CO2, the conversion of CO2 to H2CO3 in nanopores, and how it differs from that in bulk water, has not been understood. Researchers at Sandia National Laboratory used ReaxFF metadynamics molecular simulations to demonstrate striking differences in the free energy of CO2 conversion to H2CO3 in bulk and nanoconfined aqueous environments. They found that nanoconfinement not only reduces the energy barrier but also reverses the reaction from endothermic in bulk water to exothermic in nanoconfined water. Charged intermediates are observed more often under nanoconfinement […]
How to pull carbon dioxide out of seawater
MIT News February 16, 2023 In recent years, the ocean has come to be recognized as a global-scale reservoir for atmospheric CO2. Researchers at MIT have developed and demonstrated an effective asymmetric electrochemical system to capture oceanic CO2 using bismuth and silver electrodes that could capture and release chloride ions by Faradaic reactions upon application of appropriate cell voltages. The difference in reaction stoichiometry between the two electrodes enabled an electrochemical system architecture for a chloride-mediated electrochemical pH swing, which could be leveraged for effective removal of CO2 from oceanwater without costly bipolar membranes. With two silver-bismuth systems operating in […]
Ice cores show even dormant volcanoes leak abundant sulfur into the atmosphere
Phys.org February 3, 2023 Sulfate aerosols are particles in the atmosphere that have a net cooling effect on the climate. One of the most uncertain aspects of climate modeling is the abundance of sulfate aerosols during the preindustrial era. Without knowing the amount of sulfate aerosols during the preindustrial times, it is difficult to estimate how much anthropogenic sulfate aerosols have offset warming from anthropogenic greenhouse gases. A team of researchers in the US (University of Washington, South Dakota State University, University of New Mexico, Michigan Technological University) examined preindustrial sulfate aerosols in a Greenland ice core. They found that […]
Models show Tonga eruption increases chances of global temperature rising temporarily above 1.5 C
Phys.org January 25, 2023 On 15 January 2022, the Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha’apai (HTHH) eruption injected 146 MtH2O and 0.42 MtSO2 into the stratosphere. This large water vapour perturbation means that HTHH will probably increase. An international team of researchers (UK, Austria) estimated the radiative response to the HTHH eruption and derived the increased risk that the global mean surface temperature anomaly shortly exceeds 1.5 °C following the eruption. They showed that HTHH has a tangible impact of the chance of imminent 1.5 °C exceedance (increasing the chance of at least one of the next 5 years exceeding 1.5 °C by 7%), but the level of climate […]