FLORIDA Earth Sciences -The Swedish permafrost is caught in an escalating cycle of warming climate and greenhouse gas emission. As the climate warms the permafrost melts releasing CO2 and methane into the atmosphere, which causes climate warming. “There are 1,672 gigatons of carbon stored in the permafrost as soil and peat organic matter,” warns Florida State University oceanographer Jeff Chanton, part of an international team studying the decomposition of arctic permafrost in Sweden.
“To put that quantity in perspective, it is three times the amount of carbon found in our atmosphere, which contains 550 gigatons in the form of carbon dioxide. What will happen if all the permafrost thaws, releasing its gigantic store of carbon into the atmosphere? Will the respiration of that decomposing organic matter by bacteria produce not only carbon dioxide but also methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent?” Chanton asks.
For more information visit: www.innovations-report.com
FLORIDA Palaeontology – Gregory Erickson of Florida State University is among a host of co-authors and researchers from colleges, universities and museums that have published a new paper on the icon of the pre-historic world, Tyrannosaurus Rex. Stephen Brusatte, a graduate student affiliated with American Museum of Natural History and first author of the paper says, “We know more about tyrannosaurs than any other group of dinosaurs—even more than some groups of living organisms. Over the past year, five new species of tyrannosaurs have been described, and over the last ten years we have found the oldest and smallest members of the group. Now we can understand the family tree of tyrannosaurs in unprecedented detail.”
For more information visit: www.esciencenews.com
FLORIDA Astronomy – University of Florida astronomers have determined that the atmosphere of the giant planet HD 80606 b contains the element potassium. The team used a silhouetting technique called narrow-band transit spectrophotometry, which measures light absorbed by the atoms and molecules in a planet’s atmosphere.
For more information visit: www.ccnmag.com
Florida, Ecology – Researchers at Florida State University are researching how quickly microbial life in beach sand is being destroyed and how effective oil eating bacteria are at reducing the problem. The study will also help clarify when the oil from the spill will be gone and should also show ways to increase the speed of oil degradation. For more information visit: www.beforeitsnews.com
Florida Biology – According to scientists from the University of Florida, after their invasion of the state last year, Burmese pythons are very unlikely to spread further. Cold weather last winter caused a great decrease in their number due to their inability to thermo-regulate in cold temperatures. For more information visit: www.news.bbc.co.uk
RSS