warming

In China, glaciers have become a tourist attraction. So you’re protecting them from global warming with XL blankets

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Located in the province of Sichuan, just 300 kilometers from Chengdu, the Dagu glacier offers such fabulous landscapes that every year it receives several hundred thousand tourists. They come from other parts of the country or the planet to enjoy the snow and the views from their cable car. For scientists, however, Dagu is more than just a white paradise. In his opinion it looks more like a “terminally ill”a patient they must care for to avoid (or at least delay) the fatal outcome: the slow and unstoppable loss of ice due to climate change. For this purpose, a group of Chinese researchers has had a curious idea, to say the least: ‘covering’ part of the glacier with a gigantic blanket. A threatened paradise. Dagu is more than a glacier the tibetan plateau full of landscapes instagrammable. It is also a fundamental piece in the region’s economy. The enormous mass of ice attracts more than 200,000 tourists per year, which keeps an industry that employs thousands of people, and its melting supplies the populations with drinking water and even energy thanks to hydroelectric generation. Neither one nor the other has stopped scientists from referring to Dagu as a “dying glacier” or “a terminal patient.” Thus, in such a heartbreaking way, he defined it a few months ago Wang Feiteng, glacier expert and member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Is your condition that serious? The data are certainly not encouraging. In an article published in 2025, the Chinese organization recalls that since the 1960s its ice has “fragmented into scattered remains” and the frozen surface of the glacier has been reduced more than noticeably. And the trend does not seem to ease. “During the last four years the terminal end retreated another 20 meters,” warn from the academy, which insists that if nothing stops the process the situation of the glacier will be critical and irreversible at the end of this same decade. “Without urgent intervention, the Dagu glacier will disappear by 2029.” Beyond Dagu. The Chinese academy is not the only one to warn of the degradation of the environment. In 2003 Bloomberg dedicated him a chronicle in which he already pointed out that in the last half century alone the glacier has lost more than 70% of its ice. Regarding the reason, researchers have few doubts: The retreat of the ice mass is explained by the climate and the increase in temperatures. The problem is actually much bigger. Dagu may be one of the most vulnerable, but China has many other glaciers spread across its vast geography. Many. It is estimated that about 69,000, the tenth part of the glacial mass of every planet. And only between 2008 and 2020 its frozen surface receded by about 6%. If we broaden the perspective, since the 60s it has shrunk 26%. A blanket for the sick. Dagu’s situation may be critical, but… “As a doctor, can one just walk away?” he wonders Wang Feiteng. Convinced that the answer is ‘no’, a few years ago he and his colleagues decided to apply a striking strategy on the Tibetan glacier. They are dedicated to covering part of their frozen surface with a blanket that protects it (at least in part) from the effects of global warming, slowing down the loss of ice. It may sound strange, but the key is in the physical properties of that ‘protective quilt’. What they use are “glacial blankets”layers that stand out for their reflective capacity and provide thermal insulation, minimize the absorption of shortwave radiation and improve the albedo of the glacier, that is, the proportion of reflected solar radiation. The result? Less ice loss. The technique is not exactly new. It is inspired by what they already wear decades doing the ski resorts of Austria or Switzerland to protect the snow, although the approach does change. The idea was put into practice in Dagu in 2020 with six rolls of white cloth covering a selected area of around 500 m2. And does it work? It seems so. The program has been attractive enough to attract the attention of UNESCO, which a year ago published an article by professors Kang Shichang and Du Wentao, both linked to the CAS, in which some results of the experiment are described. To begin with, experts have found that the melting rate in the area covered by the glacial blanket was reduced by 34% between 2020 and 2021. “Even a year after removing the fabric, the area melted 15% slower due to the extra ice,” clarify from the CAS. The scientists were not limited to Dagu. In an attempt to go further, they used “more advanced nanomaterials” to cover a section of the Urumqi glacierin the Tian Shan Mountains. Thanks to the use of nanofibers, the researchers claim that they have managed to reduce the melting rate up to 70% in summer. The key is in a new material that, according to a team from Nanjing University, is capable of reflecting more than 93% of sunlight and dissipates the heat to which glaciers are exposed, reducing ice loss. Not everything is advantages. The results They are hopeful, but they leave some questions raised and also have limitations, such as recognize Kang Schichang and Du Wentao: “Covering glaciers with blankets has been mostly applied to small, tourism-focused glaciers on the brink of disappearance. While it has been proven effective in slowing their retreat, it poses environmental risks, high costs, and can only be applied in small environments. Large-scale retreat of glaciers cannot be addressed using nanomaterials alone.” The Chinese Academy itself recognize that Dagu is “an atypical case”, since unlike most of the glaciers in China, which are remote and difficult to access, this one “is located in the center of an urbanized tourist destination, which has electricity and access to water all year round.” That’s important for several reasons. First, because it has generated an infrastructure that makes it easier to deploy programs such as blankets or the … Read more

According to scientists, global warming will most likely lead to an Ice Age

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We usually imagine the climate change like an endless ascending line: more heat, melted glaciers and more acidic oceans. However, science has just put on the table a hypothesis that is not very intuitive: under certain extreme conditions, global warming does not end in hell, but in a real freezer. And the plankton, which seems harmless, has a lot to say in this regard. The identified. A team of researchers from the University of California, Riverside (UCR) and the University of Bremen has identified an instability in the carbon cyclea “glitch” in Earth’s climate operating system, suggesting that an ocean that is too warm and depleted of oxygen can trigger massive global cooling. The geological thermostat. To understand this finding, we must first look at how the Earth regulates its temperature in the long term. The classic mechanism is silicate weathering. Which basically means that when there is a lot of CO₂ in the atmosphere along with heat, it rains more and this rain dissolves the silicate rocks, dragging the carbon and the nutrients it stores to the sea, such as phosphorus. That’s where plankton uses that carbon to build their shells and, when they die, they sink, trapping CO₂ on the seabed. And although it may seem like good news that they store this gas that is seen as a great enemy on the seabed, the fact of reducing its concentration It means that the temperature drops. A paradigm shift. Until now, scientists saw this as a stable “thermostat”: if it is hot, the system works to cool the environment, and if it is cold it works less intensely. But now something radical arises: the thermostat has a catastrophic failure mode. According to their simulation models, when the system is coupled to the cycle of marine nutrients and biological productivity, the regulation can be unstable. And this is where the ideas of a future ice age begin. The plankton trap. For researchers, if we continue with extreme warming on our planet, erosion will increase to bring nutrients to the ocean. Something that will undoubtedly be appreciated by the phytoplankton and the algae that will accumulate it and when it dies, it will create an area in the water where there is not a hint of oxygen. In an ocean without oxygen, phosphorus once again dominates sea water which will create a vicious cycle where the algae They will consume large amounts of oxygen. The result is that the ocean floor begins to ‘suck’ CO₂ from the atmosphere at breakneck speedwhich is much faster than volcanoes or human activities can replenish it. The result is clear: a thermal collapse that can lead to a severe glaciation similar to what the Earth has experienced in the past. We had other fears. Right now on the table we had the suspicion that the collapse of the AMOCthe ocean currents that move water between various locations, will lead us to this situation. And they have a very important function: moving warm water from the tropics towards the north through the surface and cold, dense water towards the south through the depths. Something that a priori regulates global temperature. Global warming. A priori, anyone might think that continuing to emit greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is the solution to this. But the authors issue a warning: geological times are not human times. We are talking about a mechanism that operates on scales of hundreds of thousands of years, and that is why it will not cool the planet either in this century or the next. In fact, researchers suggest that if this mechanism were activated today, it would be an excessive correction that will occur long after we have suffered the consequences of global warming. The fragility of the system. The carbon cycle is not a simple scale that stays in balance, but is quite dynamic and complex. This is somewhat difficult, since it can easily become unbalanced. The idea that the planet can “overreact” to heat by causing extreme cold reminds us that the Earth has regulatory mechanisms that are indifferent to the survival of human civilization. Images | Javier Miranda Alberto Restifo In Xataka | The Earth is entering climate collapse with its first point of no return. Our only salvation is technology

The Earth is headed for a new ice age, according to a Science study. And it is precisely because of global warming

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Science is largely in agreement when it suggests that the Earth’s temperature it increases more and moreand logic could lead us to think that the world is going to become in a real desert like the one in Almería. But to everyone’s surprise, what can happen is a great ice agethat is, everything ends up covered in ice. And although it may seem illogical, science wanted to give light about this topic. They have been new models from the University of Bremen and the University of California Riverside, published in Sciencewho have located right there one of the great unexpected dangers of terrestrial geochemistry: under certain conditions, excess heat can activate “biological accelerators” that then cool the planet beyond its original state. Even to reach an ice age. Beyond the rocks. Something that may be unknown to many is that the Earth has a temperature control system like the thermostat in our home. The most accepted was regulation by the slow wear of silicate rocks. However, geological records show episodes in which this natural “thermostat” fails: the Earth freezes from pole to pole, as during the Precambrian glaciations. What is missing from the equation? The new study points to the decisive influence of marine biology and nutrient cycles, especially phosphorus and oxygen. An unexpected loop. When CO₂ emissions and global temperatures rise, the arrival of phosphorus into the oceans also increases, fertilizing the proliferation of algae. These remove CO₂ thanks to photosynthesis in the water, and when they die, they transport that carbon to marine sediments, where it can be trapped for millions of years. As if it were a dumping ground for carbon dioxide on the seabed.. But the key to the loop is oxygen: the explosion of algal productivity consumes the oxygen in the water, meaning that almost no living being can live here. Under these conditions, phosphorus stops being buried and instead of being eliminated it is recycled from the sediment. This fuels new “super blooms” and closes a vicious cycle: ‘More nutrients → more algae → less oxygen → more nutrient recycling → extreme cooling’. The result is that the biological thermostat goes crazy, sequestering carbon at a frenetic pace that the rocks’ slow thermostat cannot compensate for. The new model. The new model integrate these quick feedbacksadding sedimentary chemistry, the phosphorus cycle and the oxygenation state to the traditional silicate weathering models. Surprisingly, when predicting the effect of the “great human experiment” of releasing CO₂, he finds that the system does not always smoothly return to the previous statebut it can overcompensate and take the planet to colder times, in deep glaciations, for tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of years.​​ This only occurs when the atmosphere is less rich in oxygen, something common in Earth’s past, which may explain why ice ages coincide with intermediate periods of planetary oxygenation. Today, that same loop would make the “reward” much smoother, although there would still be the risk of long-term cooldown. If we continue burning fossils. In this way, other scientific studies already suggest that large inputs of phosphorus, whether due to massive mining or increased weathering induced by climate change, can increase the risk of anoxia and abrupt cooling events, although this scenario would take centuries or millennia to develop. This is why the acceleration of the phosphorus cycle together with the increase in CO₂ concentrations is conditioning us to the climate changes that we will see in a few million years. And although the Earth system may have the mission of stabilizing, the reality is that this system cannot always be trusted. Images | Denise Schuld In Xataka | We have just identified the oldest glaciers in the world. Where: under South Africa’s big gold mines

This is how they are using oysters to stop global warming

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A few days ago we said that 55,000 oysters were about to invade the Mar Menor and, as strange as it may seem, it is good news. It is about the first step of a project of the Spanish Institute of Oceanography to recover the flat oyster in the largest lagoon in the country and, at the same time, introduce a natural biofilter that contributes to solving the dead end in which that area is. And this is just one example of something really curious: for years, oyster farming has been claimed as (perhaps) the (only) “agricultural” industry that is good for the global environment. And it’s not a ’boutade’: we have data. A few days ago, Nature magazine published a very interesting analysis of life cycle in Irish oyster farms. From there we can extract numerous data on its ability to reduce “environmental and climate pollution”: for every ton of oysters, 3.05 kilos of nitrogen, 0.35 kilos of phosphorus and about 70 kilos of carbon are fixed. All aquaculturists they know that oysters are “ecosystem engineers.” They filter water, reduce turbidity, eliminate problematic components and facilitate the robustness of habitats and boost biodiversity. That is to say, there is no doubt about the local benefits of this type of exploitation. The news is, in any case, that this contribution also goes beyond the local. And is it? Compared to terrestrial livestock farming, bivalves usually have a low carbon footprint in relation to their protein density. In fact, according to the analysis we were talking about, the footprint per ton is very manageable and a good part of it is offset by the mineralized carbon of the shells. If they manage well, of course. Because, if we look at the raw data, as a global climate solution, oysters are a modest strategy. In the end, carbon balances depend of the specific site, the management of the bivalves, the reuse of shells and, of course, the energy used throughout the production chain. Therefore, when we talk about “potential to fight climate change” we must keep two things in mind. The first is its ability to show that we can build another food industry. The second is to show that the impact of the things we do goes beyond what we are able to see directly. In the case of oysters, we have to take into account that their impact on water quality and biodiversity is not only powerful and cost-effective; but rather contributes to stopping climate change indirectly. Good news beyond the specific data. That’s the summary: if oysters can change the playing field; If they can push us, even an inch in the right direction… welcome. Image | Visual Animation In Xataka | The Mar Menor is so bad that scientists only see one solution: put 60 million oysters in there

What is global warming, what are its causes and how we are trying to fight it

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The concept “global warming” seems to have fallen into disuse. Today we often speak of concepts such as “climate change” or even “anthropogenic climate change.” Are synonyms? Two expressions with which we can refer to the same phenomenon? Not quite. We could say that global warming is a single Appearance of climate changealthough perhaps it is the central aspect of this. The difference between one concept and another can be subtle but understanding it can help us better understand the phenomenon as a whole. What is global warming Let’s start with the basic question: what is global warming. We call global warming to a phenomenon observed in recent decades: a Increase in the global average temperature Atmospheric This increase in temperatures is not uniform or constant, but the records indicate that it has been producing, at least, Since the beginning of the 20th century. It is impossible to give a concrete measure of this increase since it can vary depending on the reference period we use. For example, According to the data of the surveillance system Copernicuswe can ensure that the temperature of the year 2024 was 1.65º Celsius higher than the pre -industrial average temperature, understood as the average temperatures between 1850 and 1900. It was the first year in which we exceed the imaginary figure of 1.5º, a key figure for climate experts. The figure must be taken with caution: the natural variability of global temperatures, including factors such as the oscillation of the southern El Niño could have contributed to an extremely warm year. That is why the trend is in this case more important than the data itself. Difference between global warming and climate change We indicated at the beginning that global warming It is one of the aspects of a more general phenomenon, Climate change; also called anthropogenic climate change to distinguish it from the numerous climate changes that have occurred throughout the geological history of our planet. We generally see the weather as something static, in contrast to the weather, changing. However, the weather varies not only depending on our location but also over time. What makes special climate change are two factors: the rapid speed at which the climate and its anthropogenic origin change. He Average increase in global temperatures It is the key characteristic of climate change, but not the only one, so the distinction between both concept is important. Climate change includes changes in the evolution of rain patterns or extreme weathering phenomena, changes in atmospheric and oceanic circulations, or even Located atmospheric cooling. Causes of global warming Something that have in common climate change and global warming is their origin, the accumulation of Greenhouse gases. Although we continue studying the details, the scientific community keeps a general consensus in regards to the triggers of this phenomenon. The industrial era has seen a rapid increase in atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide and other gases greenhouse effect like methane. Under normal conditions, part of the solar energy that our planet reaches is reflected back to space. These gases favor the retention of an important portion of this energy. This generates an imbalance that causes the Earth’s atmosphere to accumulate energy in the form of heat, thus causing the so -called global warming and thus unleashing changes in the climate that go beyond the simple increase in temperature. How global warming affects us We have been studying the consequences of this accumulation for decades in the atmosphere and the possible impacts planned in two dimensions: its severity and the certainty we have about its appearance. The increase in temperatures has direct consequences. More heatFor example, It implies health riskssuch as heat blows or cardiovascular problems, but also implies a greater energy expenditure when it comes to refreshing households, workplaces or vehicles. Also can affect agricultureto the Habitats of many animals and implies greater evaporation of water which increases the risk of drought. Not all impacts in the planet’s heating are negative: in some areas, an increase in temperatures can have positive effects for agriculture or for the health of those who inhabit these areas. The problem is that it does not seem that these advantages will compensate for the negative impacts we expect. Periodic reports of the Intergovernmental Panel against Climate Change of the UN (IPCC), dedicate part of their attention to the impact evaluation, taking into account the aforementioned dimensions: severity of the impact and the degree of certainty that we have regarding these impacts. The last iteration of this report, the sixth evaluation report, was published in 2022. How can we reduce global warming Strategies to dodge the impacts of global warming (and climate change in general) are divided into two groups: adaptation strategies and mitigation strategies. Those that lead us to reduce warming in itself are what we call mitigation. Mitigation strategies seek accelerating speed with which these gases are extracted from the atmosphere. For now the efforts to stop this increase in concentrations have served little, but at least we have managed to reduce the rhythm at which concentrations increase, According to the latest IPCC report. How can we adapt to heating The strategies that are based on assuming that a certain degree of heating is, at least, very likely so We must adapt To this they are classified, as its name suggests, as adaptation strategies. Although we left today of emitting greenhouse gases, the concentrations of this would take years to reduce to a “pre -industrial” level, so a certain degree of heating is inevitable. Adaptation strategies are varied and depend on the different impacts that climate change can imply. We know, for example, that the increase in temperatures puts cities at greater risk due to heat island effectso that adapting the architecture, the green spaces or the urban framework of these are possible strategies with which to face the change. Another example is in Adapt the coastal lines at a somewhat higher sea level, also in introducing new mechanisms to reduce the risk of floods in … Read more

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