You are browsing the archive for pollution Archives - Page 2 of 4 - GeoSpace.
22 April 2019
Microbes hitch a ride on high-flying dust
High-altitude dust may disperse bacterial and fungal pathogens for thousands of miles, seeding far-flung ecosystems and potentially impacting human health
21 March 2019
Chemical tracers untangle natural gas from agricultural methane emissions
With natural gas booming across the Front Range, drilling rigs may operate within feet from cattle farms. That shared land use can confound attempts to understand trends in methane, a greenhouse gas and air pollutant—the gases emitted from these different sources blend together.
26 October 2018
Study finds unexpected levels of bromine in power plant exhaust
Some coal-fired power plants in the United States emit gases that may produce harmful compounds in drinking water and can have significant effects on the atmosphere, according to new research. A new study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, finds unexpectedly high levels of reactive bromine-containing chemicals in plumes emitted by coal-fired power plants not using a particular type of exhaust-cleaning technology.
8 February 2018
Urban heating punches city-shaped holes in fog over India
Scientists have observed discrete holes in widespread fog directly above cities in India, other regions of Asia and Europe. The fog holes increase in size as city populations increase, and the researchers suspect the urban heat island effect is likely to blame for the striking phenomenon.
4 December 2017
Stronger storms hamper ability of streams and rivers to clean up pollution
Freshwater streams and rivers naturally clean up some forms of pollution originating from urban and agricultural areas, but increased storm intensity reduces this ability.
1 November 2017
Polluted groundwater eroding Hawaiian coral reefs, study shows
Local land-based pollution makes coral reefs more vulnerable to ocean acidification and could trigger coastal coral reef ecosystem collapses sooner than projected, according to new research.
25 January 2017
Weather patterns, trans-Pacific pollution cause spring ozone spikes in SW US
Late spring and early summer is when the air quality is generally good across most of the United States. But newly published research details how a common springtime weather pattern and pollution transported from Asia often conspire to create unhealthy ozone levels for the desert southwest. The new study adds to a growing body of work that explores how ozone can occasionally push some areas of the desert southwest above federal air quality standards.
5 January 2017
People aren’t the only beneficiaries of power plant carbon standards
Research has shown that carbon emission standards for the power sector benefit human health. But new research shows they would also benefit crops and trees.
2 November 2016
Vehicle emission control strategies differ in U.S. and Europe
The United States and the European Union take markedly different approaches to vehicle emissions controls, and the evidence is in the air, according to a new study. The work shows distinct differences in vehicle pollution trends in U.S. megacities, where regulations tend to target air quality, and European ones, where the target tends to be greenhouse gases.
19 September 2016
New study “reels in” data on Utah’s winter ozone problem
A deep sea fishing rod is probably not the first tool that comes to mind when thinking about how to study air pollution in a remote inland desert, but it’s the heart of a new system that has given scientists a minute-by-minute look at how quickly the sun can convert oil and gas emissions to harmful ground-level ozone.