carbon dioxide

From Waste to Wealth: Researchers will Transform Anaerobic Digestion

Written on October 30, 2019.

Oct. 30, 2019 – Every year, a staggering amount of organic waste including uneaten food, yard clippings and manure is dumped into landfills, occupying precious land while producing methane and other gases that pollute the atmosphere. For a multi-institutional team of engineers, this 115 million tons of waste represents not a calamity, but an opportunity – to turn that waste into wealth. The team is led by engineers at Colorado State University and includes two researchers from the...

Plant physiology will be major contributor to future river flooding, UCI study finds

Written on October 21, 2019.

By hoarding water underground, vegetation will help saturate soil, boosting rain runoff Irvine, Calif., Oct. 21, 2019 – The next time a river overflows its banks, don’t just blame the rain clouds. Earth system scientists from the University of California, Irvine have identified another culprit: leafy plants. In a study published today in Nature Climate Change, the UCI researchers describe the emerging role of ecophysiology in riparian flooding. As an adaptation to an overabundance of carbon...

UCI-led team creates first high-resolution global map of surface ocean phosphate

Written on August 28, 2019.

Researchers also find plankton more resilient to nutrient stress than previously thought Irvine, Calif., Aug. 28, 2019 – An international team of Earth system scientists and oceanographers has created the first high-resolution global map of surface ocean phosphate, a key mineral supporting the aquatic food chain. In doing so, the University of California, Irvine-led group learned that marine phytoplankton – which rely on the trace nutrient – are a lot more resilient to its scarcity than previously...

Scientists project a drier Amazon and wetter Indonesia in the future

Written on April 27, 2018.

UCI-led study examines role of plants, trees in global transfer of rainfall Irvine, Calif., April 27, 2018 – Climate models predict that an increase in greenhouse gases will dry out the Amazon rainforest in the future while causing wetter conditions in the woodlands of Africa and Indonesia. Researchers at the University of California, Irvine and other institutions have identified an unexpected but major factor in this worldwide precipitation shift: the direct response of the forests themselves...

India’s outsized coal plans would wipe out Paris climate goals

Written on April 12, 2017.

UCI, CoalSwarm: Hundreds of new dirty power plants aren’t needed Irvine, Calif., April 25, 2017 – India will not be able to meet its Paris climate agreement commitments in the coming years if it carries through with plans to construct nearly 370 coal-fired power plants, according to University of California, Irvine and CoalSwarm researchers. “India is facing a dilemma of its own making,” said UCI associate professor of Earth system science Steven Davis, co-author of a study published today...

In ocean carbon recycling, size matters

Written on November 15, 2016.

The journal Nature Geoscience published a study today from UCI Earth system scientists on the size-reactivity continuum in the ocean carbon cycle. Detrital (not living) organic matter is a very large reservoir of carbon stored in the world’s oceans; it’s roughly equal in size to the amount of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere. Marine organic matter spans a spectrum of sizes from whales measuring in tens of meters to small, dissolved molecules measuring 1 nanometer to hundreds of angstroms....

UCI-led bio sci team awarded $3 million by DOE to investigate drought impact on soil microbes

Written on November 7, 2016.

The U.S. Department of Energy recently awarded a UCI research team $3 million over three years to explore how drought affects microbes in surface soil that are vital to plant life and to the exchange of carbon dioxide – a greenhouse gas – among the Earth’s oceans, plants, soil and air. Steven Allison, associate professor of ecology & evolutionary biology, is the project leader. He and UCI colleagues and fellow investigators at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab will try to develop cutting-edge...

UCI fields airborne team for NASA atmospheric study

Written on July 22, 2016.

UCI atmospheric chemist Don Blake is about to rack up some serious air miles. As co-principal investigator, along with UCI Earth system scientist Michael Prather, on the upcoming NASA Atmospheric Tomography Mission, Blake will fly from the North Pole to New Zealand, east to the tip of South America, and then north to Greenland. He will lead a team analyzing gases and particles in the atmosphere in an airborne laboratory aboard a NASA DC-8 aircraft. Data from the mission, which runs from July...

Ocean plankton sponge up nearly twice the carbon currently assumed

Written on March 18, 2013.

Janet Wilson, UC Irvine News Irvine, Calif. – Models of carbon dioxide in the world’s oceans need to be revised, according to new work by UC Irvine and other scientists published online Sunday in Nature Geoscience. Trillions of plankton near the surface of warm waters are far more carbon-rich than has long been thought, they found. Global marine temperature fluctuations could mean that tiny Prochlorococcus and other microbes digest double the carbon previously calculated. Carbon dioxide...

Global Warming Threat Seen in Fertile Soil of Northeastern US Forests

Written on June 11, 2012.

In ‘vicious cycle,’ heat may boost carbon release into atmosphere, UCI-led study finds. Janet Wilson, UC Irvine TODAY Vast stores of carbon in U.S. forest soils could be released by rising global temperatures, according to a study by UC Irvine and other researchers in today’s online Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. The scientists found that heating soil in Wisconsin and North Carolina woodlands by 10 and 20 degrees increased the release of carbon dioxide...

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