Australia's Great Barrier Reef struggles to survive
Australia's famed Great Barrier Reef is suffering one of the most severe coral bleaching events on record, leaving scientists fearful for its survival as the impact of climate change worsens.
Australia's famed Great Barrier Reef is suffering one of the most severe coral bleaching events on record, leaving scientists fearful for its survival as the impact of climate change worsens.
Ecology
3 hours ago
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1
Black carbon (BC) is the result of incomplete combustion of fossil fuels and biomass, with strong light absorption. It is second only to carbon dioxide as a climate-forcing factor for atmospheric warming. Deposition of BC ...
Earth Sciences
18 hours ago
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14
New research finds that modern weather models can accurately predict satellite movements due to the energy emitted and reflected by the Earth. In addition to weather prediction, weather models can also help understand and ...
Earth Sciences
19 hours ago
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112
Finding water on distant planets and moons in our solar system is a challenge, especially when the instrument is thousands of kilometers away from the surface, but scientists presenting at the European Geosciences Union General ...
Astrobiology
Apr 19, 2024
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52
Remember #BabyShark? And no, this was not the very catchy song for kids that took the internet by storm. Earlier this year, social media was abuzz with stunning footage of a newborn great white shark, captured by a flying ...
Plants & Animals
Apr 19, 2024
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1
In California's 2022-2023 winter season, the state faced nine atmospheric rivers (ARs) that led to extreme flooding, landslides, and power outages—the longest duration of continuous AR conditions in the past 70 years. Scientists ...
Earth Sciences
Apr 18, 2024
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A new study from Charles Darwin University (CDU), Monash University and The University of Newcastle has presented almost 100,000 estimates of groundwater recharge rates across Australia, by far the largest known database ...
Earth Sciences
Apr 18, 2024
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11
Scientists on NASA's Juno mission to Jupiter have transformed data collected during two recent flybys of Io into animations that highlight two of the Jovian moon's most dramatic features: a mountain and an almost glass-smooth ...
Planetary Sciences
Apr 18, 2024
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323
Researchers have discovered new white shark behaviors by attaching smart tags and cameras to their fins, revealing never-before-seen details of the lives of the elusive creatures.
Plants & Animals
Apr 18, 2024
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12
A new theory suggests that Titan's majestic dune fields may have come from outer space. Researchers had always assumed that the sand making up Titan's dunes was locally made, through erosion or condensed from atmospheric ...
Planetary Sciences
Apr 18, 2024
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Water is a ubiquitous chemical substance, composed of hydrogen and oxygen, that is essential for the survival of many known forms of life. In typical usage, water refers only to its liquid form or state, but the substance also has a solid state, ice, and a gaseous state, water vapor or steam. Water covers 71% of the Earth's surface. On Earth, it is found mostly in oceans and other large water bodies, with 1.6% of water below ground in aquifers and 0.001% in the air as vapor, clouds (formed of solid and liquid water particles suspended in air), and precipitation. Saltwater oceans hold 97% of surface water, glaciers and polar ice caps 2.4%, and other land surface water such as rivers, lakes and ponds 0.6%. A very small amount of the Earth's water is contained within biological bodies and manufactured products. Other water is trapped in ice caps, glaciers, aquifers, or in lakes, sometimes providing fresh water for life on land.
Water moves continually through a cycle of evaporation or transpiration (evapotranspiration), precipitation, and runoff, usually reaching the sea. Winds carry water vapor over land at the same rate as runoff into the sea. Over land, evaporation and transpiration contribute to the precipitation over land.
Clean, fresh drinking water is essential to human and other lifeforms. Access to safe drinking water has improved steadily and substantially over the last decades in almost every part of the world. There is a clear correlation between access to safe water and GDP per capita. However, some observers have estimated that by 2025 more than half of the world population will be facing water-based vulnerability. Water plays an important role in the world economy, as it functions as a solvent for a wide variety of chemical substances and facilitates industrial cooling and transportation. Approximately 70 percent of freshwater is consumed by agriculture.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA