Over the past 150 years, global warming has more than undone the global cooling that occurred over the past six millennia, according to a major study published June 30 in Nature Research’s Scientific Data, “Holocene global mean surface temperature, a multi-method reconstruction approach.” The findings show that the millennial-scale global cooling began approximately 6,500 years ago when the long-term average global… Read more
Given the tremendous ability of forests to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, some governments are counting on planted forests as offsets for greenhouse gas emissions—a sort of climate investment. As with any investment, however, it’s important to understand the risks. If a forest goes bust—through severe droughts or wildfires, researchers say—much of that stored carbon could go up in smoke.
Professor Scott Goetz of Northern Arizona University’s
New research from a team including scientists of the Center for Ecosystem Science and Society (Ecoss) at Northern Arizona University suggests that subsidence—gradually sinking terrain caused by the loss of ice and soil mass in permafrost—is causing deeper thaw than previously thought and making vulnerable twice as much carbon as estimates that don’t account for this shifting ground. These findings, published this week in the Journal of Geophysical Research:… Read more
Study findings take a dramatic step towards a greenhouse gas information system that can fundamentally change the way cities, states and the nation tackle the climate change problem
Results from Northern Arizona University’s Vulcan Project estimating carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuel combustion for the entire U.S. show very close agreement to a new atmospheric-based approach for estimating these same emissions, as reported in a paper published… Read more
As climate change and drought cause increasingly severe wildfires and degrade forest health throughout the Southwest, researchers at Northern Arizona University’s Ecological Restoration Institute (ERI) are working on sustainable solutions that support forest restoration as well as the long-term economic health of the region.
NAU professor Han-Sup Han, ERI director of forest operations and biomass utilization, recently received a $260,000 award from the… Read more
As the demand for transportation fuels has plummeted at an unprecedented rate in the last month due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a Northern Arizona University scientist says the dramatic decrease in local air pollution and carbon dioxide (CO2) levels above cities is significant, measurable and could be historic, depending on how long commuters and other drivers stay… Read more