ScienceDaily

A new type of soil property maps for Africa has been launched by ISRIC − World Soil Information in Wageningen, Netherlands. The maps are freely accessible.

In the last thirty years, vegetation has changed significantly the world over. Until recently, the extent to which the climate or humankind was responsible remained unclear.

Projections of rainfall changes from global warming have been very uncertain because scientists could not determine how two different mechanisms will impact rainfall. The two mechanisms turn out to complement each other and together shape the spatial distribution of seasonal rainfall in the tropics, according to a new study.

As anyone who has ever been caught in a sudden and unexpected downpour knows, gaps still exist in our knowledge about the behavior and movement of precipitation, clouds and storms. An upcoming satellite mission from NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) aims to fill in those gaps both in coverage and in scientists' understanding of precipitation.

Marine scientists have long understood the detrimental effect of fossil fuel emissions on marine ecosystems. But a group has found a point of resilience in a microscopic shelled plant with a massive environmental impact, which suggests the future of ocean life may not be so bleak.

A new 1,000-year Antarctic Peninsula climate reconstruction shows that summer ice melting has intensified almost 10-fold, and mostly since the mid-20th century. Summer ice melt affects the stability of Antarctic ice shelves and glaciers.

In the last few decades, glaciers at the edge of the icy continent of Antarctica have been thinning, and research has shown the rate of thinning has accelerated and contributed significantly to sea level rise. New ice core research suggests that, while the changes are dramatic, they cannot be attributed with confidence to human-caused global warming.

With coastal areas bracing for rising sea levels, new research indicates that cutting emissions of certain pollutants can greatly slow down sea level rise. Reductions in the four pollutants that cycle comparatively quickly through the atmosphere could forestall the rate of sea level rise by roughly 25 to 50 percent.

For scientists studying summer sea ice in the Arctic, it's not a question of "if" there will be nearly ice-free summers, but "when." And two scientists say that "when" is sooner than many thought -- before 2050 and possibly within the next decade or two.

Directly removing carbon dioxide from the air has the potential to alter the costs of climate change mitigation. It could allow prolonging greenhouse-gas emissions from sectors like transport that are difficult, thus expensive, to turn away from using fossil fuels. And it may help to constrain the financial burden on future generations, a new study shows.