Climate of Our Future

Looking For Life In And Under Antarctic Ice

Science Daily — Antarctica is home to the largest body of ice on Earth. Prior to approximately 10 years ago, no one thought that life could exist beneath the Antarctic ice sheets, which can be more than two miles thick in places, because conditions were believed to be too extreme. However, Brent Christner, assistant professor of biological sciences at LSU, has spent a great deal of time in one of the world’s most hostile environments conducting research that proves otherwise.

Brent Christner and colleagues have been tunneling
for glacier microbes at Taylor Glacier, McMurdo Dry
Valleys in Antarctica.
(Credit: Image courtesy of Louisiana State University)

Christner’s discoveries of viable microbes in ancient ice cores and subglacial environments coupled with the realization that large quantities of liquid water exist beneath the Antarctic ice sheet have changed the way biologists view life in Antarctica. Read more

Faster Climate Change Means Bigger Problems

Science Daily — The debate about what constitutes “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate” has almost exclusively focused on how much the temperature can be allowed to increase. But we have perhaps just as much reason to be concerned about how quickly these changes take place.

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) aims to avoid what is called “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.”However, there is no guarantee that the level of climate change – how much the temperature increases in the future – is the only thing we should be worried about. How quickly the changes take place can also mean a lot for how serious the consequences will be. This was already acknowledged when the UNFCCC was signed in 1992. It says that we must stabilize the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere within a time period that allows ecosystems to adapt and economic development to continue, and that ensures that food production will not be threatened. This focus on rate of change has, however, not been reflected to any noticeable degree among either scientists or politicians. Read More

Secrets Of Red Tide Revealed

Science Daily — In work that could one day help prevent millions of dollars in economic losses for seaside communities, MIT chemists have demonstrated how tiny marine organisms likely produce the red tide toxin that periodically shuts down U.S. beaches and shellfish beds.

The dramatic appearance of a red tide algal bloom
at Leigh, near Cape Rodney, New Zealand.
(Credit: NIWA; photo by M. Godfrey)

In the Aug. 31 cover story of Science, the MIT team describes an elegant method for synthesizing the lethal components of red tides. The researchers believe their method approximates the synthesis used by algae, a reaction that chemists have tried for decades to replicate, without success. Read More