Cosmetic Microbeads Impact Oceans

This past summer, filmmakers captured copepods, a type of zooplankton, feeding on small pieces of plastic. Under a microscope at the U.K.’s Plymouth Marine Laboratory, the zooplankton fed on polystyrene beads between seven and 30 micrometers in diameter.

According to researchers, humans discard more than 4.8 million metric tons of plastic waste into the world’s oceans each year. The plastics are carried by currents throughout the world’s oceans, causing problems for marine life. “And plastics underwater are known to accumulate toxic chemicals over time, so ingesting this trash can be extremely hazardous for the health of sea creatures,” according to Popular Science.  

But microplastics, defined by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as particles ranging in size from 1 nm to 5 mm, are of particular concern. “Microplastics have been found in the stomachs of many marine organisms from plankton species to whales,” according to the NOAA.

Around 700 marine organisms encounter debris in their natural environment, 90% of which is plastic, according to researchers from Plymouth Univ.

Manna from Heaven: Converting CO2 to Carbon Nanofiber

During World War II, copper, aluminum, steel and zinc became metals appropriated for military use. Around the same time, manufacturers began exploring plastics, such as acrylic, nylon, phenolic and polyethylene. Production increased, and the plastic industry flourished.

Stuart Licht, of George Washington Univ.’s Dept. of Chemistry, likened the carbon nanofiber industry to the plastics market at the beginning of World War II.

At the 250th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, Licht presented a method for converting atmospheric carbon dioxide into a stable, useful, compact and valuable carbon nanofiber, a substance with strength greater than steel.

“One of the great threats facing our planet is climate change,” he said. “Rather than attempt to survive the climate change consequences of flooding, wild fires, starvation, economic disruption, human death and species extinction, we must mitigate the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.”

Previous methods of reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere include sequestration of the gas. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), sequestration involves capturing carbon dioxide and storing it in underground rock formations. “These formations are often a mile or more beneath the surface and consist of porous rock that holds the CO2. Overlying these formations are impermeable, non-porous layers of rock that trap the (gas) and prevent it from migrating upward,” according to the EPA.

China’s carbon emissions less than previously thought

China's carbon emissions have been substantially over estimated by international agencies for more than 10 years, according to research co-led by the Univ. of East Anglia.

From 2000 to 2013 China produced 2.9 gigatons less carbon than previous estimates of its cumulative emissions. The findings suggest that overestimates of China's emissions during this period may be larger than China's estimated total forest sink—a natural carbon store—in 1990 to 2007 (2.66 gigatons of carbon) or China's land carbon sink in 2000-2009 (2.6 gigatons of carbon).

Published in Nature, the revised estimates of China's carbon emissions were produced by an international team of researchers, led by Harvard Univ., UEA, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Tsinghua Univ., in collaboration with 15 other international research institutions.

The team re-evaluated emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and cement production from 1950 to 2013. They used independently assessed activity data on the amounts of fuels burned and new measurements of emissions factors—the amount of carbon oxidised per unit of fuel consumed—for Chinese coal.

Most comprehensive projects for West Antarctica’s future revealed

A new international study is the first to use a high-resolution, large-scale computer model to estimate how much ice the West Antarctic Ice Sheet could lose over the next couple of centuries, and how much that could add to sea-level rise. The results paint a clearer picture of West Antarctica’s future than was previously possible. The study is published in The Cryosphere.

“The novel aspect of our work is the use of a high-resolution ice-sheet model over a larger area and longer time-scale than previously attempted. Much like a higher-resolution digital camera transforms a blur into a flock of birds, higher resolution in a computer model often helps to capture details of the physics involved which may be crucial to the broad picture,” says co-author Daniel Martin from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).

West Antarctica is one of the fastest warming regions on Earth and its ice sheet has been stage to dramatic thinning in recent years. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is out of balance because it is losing significant amounts of ice to the ocean, with the losses not being offset by snowfall.

“The IPCC’s [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] 4th and 5th Assessment Reports both note that the acceleration of West Antarctic ice streams in response to ocean warming could result in a major contribution to sea-level rise, but that models were unable to satisfactorily quantify that response,” says Stephen Cornford from Univ. of Bristol, U.K., and lead-author of the study.

Reducing human health impacts on electric power generation

By combining information about power plant operation with real-time air quality predictions, researchers have created a new capability to minimize the human health effects of air pollution resulting from electric power generating facilities.

The Air Pollutant Optimization Model, described in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provides a new approach for reducing the health effects of ozone and fine particulate pollution. By helping to minimize both health impacts and generating costs, the hybrid model may provide a new tool for utility companies seeking to meet air quality standards, complementing traditional capital-intensive emission controls.

In a test case based on data for the state of Georgia for selected months from 2004 to 2011, the new model suggests that health impacts could have been reduced by $176 million, while increasing generating costs by $84 million—a net savings of approximately $92 million in health costs. For power systems elsewhere, costs and savings would vary by the types of fuel used, the locations of generating facilities and the amount of flexibility available in regional power systems.

The test case evaluated sulfate emissions in Georgia prior to installation of flue gas desulfurization units, which have since reduced emission of that pollutant by as much as 97%. Sulfates are a major source of fine particulate matter.

Sunlight Releases Pollutant from Urban Grime

Found caked on buildings, statues and other outdoor surfaces in cities, urban grime is the result of chemical compounds discharged from automobiles, factories and other sources.

At the 250th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, James Donaldson, of the Univ. of Toronto, presented his research, which found natural sunlight triggers the release of nitrogen oxide compounds from grime.

“In Toronto, first, we collected urban grime onto a substrate on which we could actually measure the infrared spectrum of the grime so we could analyze to some extent what it was composed of,” said Donaldson at a press conference held in Boston. “We exposed this substrate to artificial sunlight and we saw the nitrate component go away very, very quickly.”

The researchers found nitrate disappeared from grime 10,000 times faster than from a water-based solution, which was also exposed to artificial sunlight.

Afterwards, Donaldson set up a six-week field study in Leipzig, Germany, to test the effects of natural sunlight on the grime.

Equatorial regions prone to disruptive space weather

Extreme space weather has long been seen as a threat to electrical grids in high-latitude regions of the northern and southern hemispheres. But a new study finds that smaller scale space weather events are amplified near the equator, putting power grids at risk in regions previously considered safe.

Massive space weather events have crashed power grids across North America and Europe, but the new report warns that smaller events strike—often with little warning—in equatorial regions with greater frequency than previously known, according to Brett A. Carter, lead author of the report and a visiting scholar at Boston College's Institute for Scientific Research.

These equatorial electrical disruptions—fueled by geomagnetically induced currents—pose a threat to power grids in countries where shielding electricity infrastructure from space shocks has not been a recognized priority. The findings appear in the online edition of Geophysical Research Letters.