Taxonomy term

carbon dioxide

Coal formation nearly froze Earth

Burning coal releases carbon dioxide, which warms the planet when the gas escapes into the air. On the flip side, coal formation sequesters carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere by plants, which contributes to global cooling as the planet’s greenhouse gas blanket thins. According to new research, so much carbon was removed from the atmosphere in the Carboniferous Period, when most of Earth’s coal reserves formed, that the planet became almost completely covered in ice.

21 Feb 2018

Red Planet Roundup: June 2017

With two rovers patrolling the surface of Mars, six spacecraft orbiting above it, and scientists here on Earth studying the Red Planet from afar, new findings are announced often. Here are a few of the latest updates.

08 Jun 2017

Burying the sky: Turning carbon dioxide into rock

At an Icelandic geothermal power plant, researchers are capturing carbon dioxide and burying it in basalt to keep the greenhouse gas out of the sky. But can this method be scaled up, and work elsewhere, to help meet global climate goals? 

02 Jun 2017

Red Planet Roundup: May 2016

With two rovers patrolling the surface of Mars, five spacecraft orbiting above it, and scientists here on Earth studying the Red Planet from afar, new findings are announced often. Here are a few of the latest updates.

10 May 2016

Comment: How long have humans been altering Earth's climate?

The early anthropogenic hypothesis holds that greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, as early as 7,000 years ago, kept the Holocene climate warmer than it otherwise would have been.

08 Apr 2016

Opalescent pools shimmer beneath Santorini

With its bright blue waters and dramatic cliffside villas, Santorini, Greece, is an idyllic vacation destination, but lurking beneath the Aegean waves lay the remains of one of the most active volcanoes in human history. Because of its eruptive past and proximity to population centers, the Santorini Caldera is closely monitored, but a recent expedition revealed something never before seen there or anywhere else: shimmering opalescent pools of carbon dioxide sequestered on the seafloor.
 
15 Nov 2015

New satellite maps carbon dioxide sources and sinks in high definition

A recently launched satellite is now measuring atmospheric carbon dioxide with greater precision than ever before. Launched on July 2, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) is already mapping levels of carbon dioxide, the presence of which in the air constantly varies by region and over time. It has also validated a new technique of analysis that was not even contemplated when the mission was planned, according to scientists who discussed the mission at a press conference during the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco.

23 Dec 2014

Removing predators increases carbon emissions

Habitat loss, overfishing and invasive species can damage ecosystems, but the loss of predators in particular may have worse consequences than previously thought. In a new study, scientists show that the absence of freshwater predators sharply influences an ecosystem’s carbon dioxide emissions.

12 Jun 2013

Scripps launches Twitter carbon dioxide-meter

Back in January 2013, it became clear to Ralph Keeling, a scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography who studies carbon dioxide, that sometime in the not-too-distant future, the concentration of this potent greenhouse gas in Earth’s atmosphere would creep above 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time in human history.

17 May 2013

Carbon and the city: Tracking emissions from megacities

Sometime in the first century A.D., Rome’s population passed 1 million. It took more than 18 centuries for a city to surpass the 10 million mark, which both New York City and Tokyo did by 1950. Just six decades later, the world now has about 20 such “megacities” with populations of 10 million or more, including the largest, Tokyo, with a population of 35 million.

22 May 2012

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