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.

Here’s where 17,000 ocean research buoys ended up

 Science News, May 2016

Garbage in, garbage out. But where does all that garbage go? In the oceans, floating bits of debris — everything from plastic bags to Legos — tend to ride along ocean currents to a common destination: one of five major whirling ocean gyres, also known as the ocean garbage patches. Researchers recently got a new look at these gyres thanks to a visualization that combined 35 years’ worth of data on another thing humans drop into the oceans: scientific buoys. The visualization was a finalist in the Data Stories competition sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The winners were announced May 5.

When measuring lead in water, check the temperature

 Science News, May 2016

Lead contamination in drinking water can change with the seasons. Tracking lead levels in water pipes over several months, researchers discovered three times as much dissolved lead and six times as much undissolved lead in summer than in winter. The finding could help improve water testing, says study coauthor Sheldon Masters, an environmental engineer at Virginia Tech and Corona Environmental Consulting in Philadelphia.

U.S. oil and gas boom behind rising ethane levels

 Science News, May 2016

A single oil and gas field centered in North Dakota spews 1 to 3 percent of all global ethane emissions, about 230,000 metric tons annually. Based on that snapshot, researchers argue that the recent U.S. oil and gas boom is chiefly to blame for rising levels of ethane, a component of natural gas that can damage air quality and warm the climate.