Articles by Hannah Bird
Phys.org / Microplastic hotspots forming in offshore UK North Sea, researchers find
Microplastic pollution in the world's oceans is often illustrated through evocative images of wildlife caught within large items floating on the surface, or microplastics blending in among the sand on otherwise pristine beaches.
Phys.org / Marine dust identifies 1.5 million year Oldest Ice near South America
Earth's climate has experienced major shifts over its billions of years of history, including numerous periods where ice proliferated across the planet. Today, ice cores can be a valuable resource for understanding these ...
Phys.org / Tropical cyclone intensity exacerbated by increasing depth of ocean mixed layer, finds study
Tropical cyclones can have severe consequences for both the marine and terrestrial environments, as well as the organisms and communities who inhabit them. In the oceans, there can be alterations in sea surface temperature ...
Phys.org / Volcanoes and wine: Eruptions reduced historical Moselle Valley vineyard production
Climate has an important role to play in viticulture (wine production) due to the impacts on grape harvest from variability in parameters such as temperature, precipitation and aridity. Warmer and drier climates with long ...
Phys.org / New York's Long Island Sound acidifies during droughts
New York's Long Island Sound (LIS) is an important inlet and estuary in the North Atlantic Ocean, which is highly urbanized due to its proximity to the city. This daily activity of passenger transport, fishing and cargo ships ...
Phys.org / Canadian wildfire smoke dispersal worsened by coincident cyclones, study suggests
Wildfires are unplanned and unpredictable threats to Earth; while we may intuitively relate them to extreme heat at lower latitudes, they are known to occur in Arctic regions, such as those recently ravaging Russia.
Phys.org / New incompletely rifted microcontinent identified between Greenland and Canada
Plate tectonics are the driving force behind Earth's continental configurations, with the lithosphere (oceanic and continental crusts and upper mantle) moving due to convection processes occurring in the softer underlying ...
Phys.org / High elevation regions may become wildlife refuges through climate change
As climate change advances, its impacts are not universally equal, with temperature rising differently by latitude and elevation. Climate heterogeneity is the study of this diversity in Earth's climate patterns, and the focus ...
Phys.org / Polar warming may be underestimated by climate models, ~50 million year old climate variability suggests
Polar regions are known to be warming at an enhanced rate compared to lower latitudes, with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change citing a ~5 °C increase in air temperature over Arctic land masses during the 20th ...
Phys.org / The year 1740 was the coldest in Central Europe in 600 years: Study seeks to answer why
Europe experienced its coldest winter in 600 years during 1739–1740, ~4 °C cooler than the present average, also coinciding with negative temperature anomalies across North America and Eurasia. Indeed, for northern midlatitudes ...
Phys.org / Study finds Arctic warming three-fold compared to global patterns
Global warming is an omnipresent issue, with widespread initiatives to draw down emissions and mitigate against the International Panel on Climate Change's worse-case scenario predictions of 3.2°C of warming by 2100 (relative ...
Phys.org / Siberia's 'mammoth graveyard' reveals 800-year human interactions with woolly beasts
Woolly mammoths are evocative of a bygone era, when Earth was gripped within an Ice Age. Current knowledge places early mammoth ancestors in the Pliocene (2.58–5.33 million years ago, Ma) before their populations expanded ...
Phys.org / Lunar landforms indicate geologically recent seismic activity on the moon
The moon's steadfast illumination of our night sky has been a source of wonder and inspiration for millennia. Since the first satellite images of its surface were taken in the 1960s, our understanding of Earth's companion ...
Phys.org / Mangrove blue carbon at higher risk of microplastic pollution
Earth's oceans and coastal ecosystems are a major sink for carbon storage, known as blue carbon. Sequestration of carbon is vitally important in the fight against climate change as it 'locks away' this molecule, alleviating ...
Phys.org / Earthquakes may not be primary driver of glacial lake outburst floods
Glacial lakes form when meltwater is trapped behind a dam, usually glacial ice, bedrock or a type of moraine (terminal types being an unconsolidated pile of debris at the maximum extent of the glacier). When a dam fails, ...
