articles

Climate change-induced changes in snowfall patterns could imperil two billion people who rely on melting snow for their water supply — and developing countries must work to protect citizens from these variations, researchers say.

Scientists have long known that birds are feeling the heat due to climate change. However, a new study of a dozen affected species in the Western Cape suggests their decline is more complex than previously thought -- and in some cases more serious.

According to the study, published in Conservation Physiology, by scientists from the Percy Fitzpatrick Institute at the University of Cape Town and Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, there could be several reasons why birds are being negatively affected by human-made climate change.

It's big. It's cold. And it's melting into the world's ocean.

It's Zachariae Isstrom, the latest in a string of Greenland glaciers to undergo rapid change in our warming world. A new NASA-funded study published today in the journal Science finds that Zachariae Isstrom broke loose from a glaciologically stable position in 2012 and entered a phase of accelerated retreat. The consequences will be felt for decades to come.

The reason? Zachariae Isstrom is big. It drains ice from an area of 35,440 square miles (91,780 square kilometers). That's about 5 percent of the Greenland Ice Sheet. All by itself, it holds enough water to raise global sea level by more than 18 inches (46 centimeters) if it were to melt completely. And now it's on a crash diet, losing 5 billion tons of mass every year. All that ice is crumbling into the North Atlantic Ocean.

"Hemos encontrado que el nivel al que una persona está en forma, tiene una relación más fuerte con la actividad física, seguido por el género y la temporada. Esto significa que los adultos mayores que están en forma, son más activos que los que no lo están, las mujeres fueron más activas que los hombres y la actividad física fue mayor en los meses más cálidos del año. Además, se encontró que la educación superior se asoció con una mayor actividad física para los hombres, pero no para las mujeres. Entre otros resultados interesantes, encontramos que las correlaciones ambientales y sociales, como el apoyo social y la situación de vida, no se asociaron con la actividad física entre los ancianos ", dicen los dos primeros autores del estudio, Hallgeir Viken y Nils Petter ASPVIK, candidatos de doctorado en la Universidad Noruega de Ciencia y Tecnología (NTNU por sus siglas en inglés).

Even the most accomplished naturalist can find it difficult to tell one species of plant from another or accurately decide which genus a small insect belongs to. So when a new specimen arrives at a museum, finding the right name from existing records can sometimes prove difficult. In turn, that can lead to specimens being given the wrong name – which can prove problematic for biologists.