Spy satellites reveal early start to Antarctic ice shelf collapse

 Science News, June 2016

The biggest ice shelf collapse on record was set in motion years earlier than previously thought, new research reveals. Analyzing declassified images from spy satellites, researchers discovered that the downhill flow of ice on Antarctica’s Larsen B ice shelf was already accelerating as early as the 1960s and ’70s. By the late 1980s, the average ice velocity at the front of the shelf was around 20 percent faster than in the preceding decades, the researchers report in a paper to be published in Geophysical Research Letters.

U.S. weather has gotten more pleasant, but will soon worsen

 Science News, June 2016

Americans have climate change to thank for a decades-long spate of milder winters. Around 80 percent of U.S. residents live in counties where the weather has become more pleasant over the last four decades (see map). That trend won’t last, however: Researchers predict in the April 21 Nature that 88 percent of Americans will experience noticeably worse weather by 2100 than they do today.

Pioneering geophysicist’s theory of peak oil still debated

 Science News, May 2016

In the 1950s, long before the climate change debate began, geophysicist Marion King Hubbert presented research that made the oil industry queasy. Society needed to quickly wean itself off its dependence on oil, he concluded, or face dire consequences. Hubbert’s argument wasn’t motivated by the global climate impacts of fossil fuel burning, but rather by a bold prediction that U.S. oil production would soon peak and quickly taper off.

Climate-cooling aerosols can form from tree vapors

 Science News, May 2016

The cooling effect of pollution may have been exaggerated. Fossil fuel burning spews sulfuric acid into the air, where it can form airborne particles that seed clouds and cool Earth’s climate. But that’s not the only way these airborne particles can form, three new studies suggest. Tree vapors can turn into cooling airborne particles, too.

Young sun’s super solar flares helped set early Earth up for life

 Science News, May 2016

Solar outbursts may have supplied early Earth with the right stuff for life. Based on telescope observations of young sunlike stars, researchers estimate that “super” solar flares bombarded Earth with energetic particles at least once a day around 4 billion years ago. Collisions between the particles and molecules in Earth’s atmosphere produced nitrous oxide, a planet-warming greenhouse gas, and hydrogen cyanide, a crucial component for building DNA, the researchers propose May 23 in Nature Geoscience.

Ancient tsunamis reshaped Mars’ landscape

 Science News, May 2016

Massive meteor impacts may have once made waves on the Red Planet. The resulting tsunamis towered nearly as tall as the Great Pyramid of Giza and reshaped the coastline of an ancient Mars’ ocean, researchers propose.

The Arctic Ocean is about to get spicier

 Science News, May 2016

Relative temperature and salinity variations within seawater of the same density. Warmer, saltier ocean water is considered spicy while cooler, fresher water is minty. Climate change will spice up the Arctic Ocean, researchers report in the April Journal of Physical Oceanography.