Researchers at Northern Arizona University and the Smithsonian went to the top of a Panamanian rainforest to simulate heat death in leaves and measure the effects on surrounding leaves. The results were encouraging: Tropical forests may be less sensitive to climate change than originally feared.

Research published "early online" in AMS journals discusses topics including the vulnerability of China's high-speed rail to tropical cyclones, war's impact on meteorology, how cities make each other warmer, whether trees or buildings provide better urban shade, and the discovery of "pinned" clouds over Texas industrial facilities.

Two early-career researchers from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) convinced the expert reviewers of the Carl Zeiss Foundation with their projects. They now have five years to establish their research groups at KIT through the “CZS Nexus” funding program. Each researcher will receive approximately 1.5 million euros. Boris Karanov is developing new algorithms for digital signal processing in optical communication systems, while Frank Rhein is investigating how the CO2 emissions produced by cryptocurrency mining can be reduced by means of physical processes.

In a new study, researchers show that gas bubbles can form in the rising magma not only due to a drop in pressure but also due to shear forces. If these gas bubbles grow in the volcanic vent early on and combine with one another, they can form degassing channels. This could explain why some volcanoes sometimes do not explode. With their work, the researchers provide a vital new piece of the puzzle when it comes to better understanding processes taking place inside active volcanoes and more precisely assessing how volcanoes will erupt. 

By tracking the isotopic fingerprints of iron in lunar and terrestrial rocks, researchers trying to understand the origin of the Moon’s mysterious progenitor add evidence to the idea that it came from the inner Solar System. According to the findings, Theia – the Mars-sized planetary body that collided with Earth to form the Moon – was born possibly closer to the Sun than to Earth. The Moon is believed to have formed when Theia collided with early Earth roughly a hundred million years after the formation of the Solar System. Most models of this process suggest that the Moon is mostly composed of materials derived from this ancient impactor. If Theia had a different isotopic makeup from Earth, it would be expected that the Moon would as well. Such isotopic variations can reveal where a planetary body originated in the Solar System, which could provide insight into the origin of Theia. However, analyses of lunar rock show that the Moon and Earth are nearly identical in their isotopic compositions for many elements. Although competing models have attempted to explain this similarity, the absence of clear isotopic differences and uncertainty over which processes caused this have made it challenging to determine where Theia originally formed. Here, Timo Hopp and colleagues conducted new high-precision iron isotope analyses of lunar samples, terrestrial rocks, and meteorites representing the isotopic reservoirs from which Theia and proto-Earth might have formed. According to the analysis, Earth and the Moon have indistinguishable iron isotopic compositions and both fall within that of non-carbonaceous meteorites, which are thought to represent material formed in the inner Solar System. Integrating these results with previous isotopic data for other elements and performing mass balance calculations for Theia and proto-Earth, Hopp et al. conclude that Theia likely originated in the inner Solar System and formed even closer to the Sun than proto-Earth.