News by Subject Atmospheric Science

New international research by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) warns that green energy projects can be as socially and environmentally conflictive as fossil fuel projects. While renewable energies are often portrayed as being environmentally sustainable, this new study cautions about the risks associated with the green energy transition, arguing for an integrated approach that redesigns energy systems in favor of social equity and environmental sustainability.

More frequent exposure to air pollution spikes were associated with reduced test scores for third graders in Salt Lake County. Schools with a higher proportion of students of color and from households experiencing poverty were exposed to more peak pollution days than were schools serving middle- to upper- class and predominately white students. The results stress the need for legislators to enact policies to reduce the number of peak pollution days.

Portland State University researchers and their collaborators at the Quinault Indian Nation and Oregon State University found microplastics in Pacific razor clams on Washington's sparsely populated Olympic Coast -- proof, they say, that even in more remote regions, coastal organisms can't escape plastic contamination.

Innovative molecular techniques explain how corals on the east coast of Australia survived previous tough conditions--enabling the Great Barrier Reef to become the vast reef it is today. Scientists mapped the rise and fall of two coral populations on the reef, tracking which genes rapidly evolved to endure changing conditions, while measuring the flow of genes between locations.

The proliferation of pits and ponds created in recent years by miners digging for gold in Peru's Amazon has altered the landscape and amplified the risk of mercury poisoning, a new study shows. In some watersheds, there's been a 670% increase in land area covered by abandoned mining pits that have filled in with water. Low-oxygen conditions in these ponds accelerate the conversion of submerged mercury, a leftover from the mining, into highly toxic methylmercury.