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A University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) study on children’s health has found that fourth and fifth graders who are exposed to toxic air pollutants at home are more likely to have lower GPAs.

La carrera por encontrar fuentes de energía menos contaminantes ha impulsado en gran medida la fracturación hidráulica ("fracking") en busca de gas natural. Productos químicos a alta presión y el agua se bombean a gran profundidad para romper esquisto y liberar el gas natural. Los residentes y los ecologistas por largo tiempo se han opuesto al proceso, que ha visto un aumento de los problemas de salud debido al agua contaminada. En la sequía soleada de California, también hay preocupación por la cantidad de agua que se utiliza en las operaciones de fracking, así como lo que se hace con las aguas residuales.

A new international study is the first to use a high-resolution, large-scale computer model to estimate how much ice the West Antarctic Ice Sheet could lose over the next couple of centuries, and how much that could add to sea-level rise. The results paint a clearer picture of West Antarctica’s future than was previously possible. The study has been published in The Cryosphere, an open access journal of the European Geosciences Union (EGU).

“The IPCC’s [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] 4th and 5th Assessment Reports both note that the acceleration of West Antarctic ice streams in response to ocean warming could result in a major contribution to sea-level rise, but that models were unable to satisfactorily quantify that response,” says Stephen Cornford, a research assistant at the University of Bristol, UK and lead-author of the study.

Global sea levels have risen nearly 3 inches in less than 25 years, with some locations around the world rising more than 9 inches, according to NASA’s latest satellite data. An intensive research effort now underway, aided by NASA observations and analysis, points to an unavoidable rise of several feet in the future.

Each spring, powerful dust storms in the deserts of Mongolia and northern China send thick clouds of particles into the atmosphere. Eastward winds sweep these particles as far as the Pacific, where dust ultimately settles in the open ocean. This desert dust contains, among other minerals, iron — an essential nutrient for hundreds of species of phytoplankton that make up the ocean’s food base.