Subterms
To meet the long-term goals of the Paris Agreement on climate change — keeping global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius and ideally capping it at 1.5 C — humanity will ultimately need to achieve net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) into the atmosphere. To date, emissions reduction efforts have largely focused on decarbonizing the […] More
The generation of electricity is a huge contributor to the world’s emissions of climate-altering greenhouse gases, producing some 25 percent globally. That’s because more than two-thirds of the world’s electricity is still being produced by burning fossil fuels. But progress in a variety of areas could allow for drastic reductions in those emissions, as several […] More
Resting atop Thomas Peacock’s desk is an ordinary-looking brown rock. Roughly the size of a potato, it has been at the center of decades of debate. Known as a polymetallic nodule, it spent 10 million years sitting on the deep seabed, 15,000 feet below sea level. The nodule contains nickel, cobalt, copper, and manganese — […] More
Nestled within sediments that accumulate in marine environments, fossil molecules sneakily record how climates and environments change over time. These fossils, vestiges of microbial membranes, preserve different chemical structures that reflect the changing world around them at the time the organisms lived. For almost two decades, scientists have used one class of these molecular fossils, […] More
About 2.4 billion years ago, at the end of the Archean Eon, a planet-wide increase in oxygen levels called the Great Oxidation Event (GOE) created the familiar atmosphere we all breathe today. Researchers focused on life’s origins widely agree that this transition event was caused by the global proliferation of photosynthetic microbes capable of splitting […] More
When Robert F. Scott’s Discovery expedition began exploring the Antarctic continent in 1901, they set out to geographically and scientifically characterize the regions touched by the Ross Sea. As the group of naval officers and scientists set foot upon the Ross Ice Shelf, they mapped their travels and completed surveys, collecting biological specimens for further study. Two […] More
Battling climate change and adapting communities to be ready for its effects on the world. Ensuring food and water security for an exploding population. Navigating ever-more congested urban landscapes. These global concerns and others have been outlined by the National Academies and other institutions as imminent threats. One discipline in particular — civil and environmental […] More
The carbon cycle, in which CO2 is incorporated into living organisms and later released back into the atmosphere through respiration, relies on the ability of bacteria and fungi to degrade complex organic materials such as polysaccharides. These materials represent large reservoirs of carbon and energy on the planet. By degrading them, microbes enable the recycling […] More
