Climate action
12 Dec 2018
Purple bacteria ‘batteries’ turn sewage into clean energy
Purple bacteria could turn wastewater treatment plants into zero-carbon fuel generators, says new research; Frontiers in Energy Research
69 news posts in Climate action
Climate action
29 Aug 2018
10 years of UK climate change action: problems, progress and essential next steps
Martin Siegert looks back at action on climate change and offers ways forward to a low-carbon future
Climate action
06 Feb 2018
Key challenges for food security in the face of climate change
Meeting UN Sustainable Development Goals for food security requires a climate-smart approach: Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems
Climate action
17 Jul 2017
Does the European public understand the impacts of climate change on the ocean?
First in-depth study, published in Frontiers in Marine Science, looking at public engagement with marine climate change issues across 10 European countries.
Climate action
05 Apr 2016
Networked solutions needed for climate change adaptation
By Michelle Ponto, Science Writer The 2015 Paris Climate Conference (COP21) led to a shift in focus in climate change research towards finding solutions. The hope is that these solutions will prepare society to adapt and mitigate the consequences of a warming planet, but the research shift to finding solutions is not easy. “An important aspect that has made climate change difficult is that energy is an intrinsic component of our lives and our activities – from food production systems to transit systems, to adaptation systems,” said Carlos M. Duarte, Field Chief Editor of Frontiers in Marine Science and Tarek Ahmed Juffali Research Chair in Red Sea Ecology at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. Because energy affects so many aspects of our lives, Duarte says it’s difficult to address the issues on how to build systems that are both efficient and don’t contribute to the problem of climate change without encompassing a whole array of disciplines. An example he gives is LED technology. While these lights are saving cities money and use less energy, they create light pollution that is drastically greater than traditional light bulbs. According to research, this could disrupt the behavior patterns of nocturnal animals, the […]
Climate action
11 Jan 2016
Dire predictions and global updates at AGU 2015
Dire predictions and global updates dominated the course of two AGU 2015 press conferences on December 15 and 16. While the last year has seen increasing tension develop between Republican members of the US Congress and the NASA Earth Sciences Program over budget cuts, conferences on the polar ice sheets pulled no punches in laying out the effects of climate change in these areas. The first of these conferences was the presentation of the year’s Arctic Report Card, a now-annual event at the AGU Fall Meeting. Arctic Record Card 2015 Tuesday, 15 December Rick Spinrad, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Chief Scientist, Washington, D.C., U.S.A. Martin Jeffries, Arctic Science Advisor and Program Officer for Arctic and Global Prediction, U.S. Office of Naval Research, Arlington, Virginia, U.S.A. Jacqueline A. Richter-Menge, Research Civil Engineer, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, Hanover, New Hampshire, U.S.A. Kit M. Kovacs, Biodiversity Research Program Leader, Norwegian Polar Institute, Tromsø, Norway The Arctic is warming at an alarming rate – twice as fast as lower latitudes, according to a broad consensus in the scientific consensus of that community. In the words of Rick Spinrad, “we know this is due to climate […]
Climate action
18 Dec 2015
News from #AGU15: Heat stress in dense populations and impacts of the 2015-16 El Niño
Gearóid Ó Faoleán, Journal Manager of Frontiers in Earth Science, is representing Frontiers at the AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco, the world’s largest earth and space science meeting. Here, in the 1st of a series of posts, he reports on some of the exciting press conferences he attended at the conference. The impacts of heat stress on densely populated regions in the 21st century Monday, 14 December 2015 Ethan Coffel, PhD candidate, Center for Climate Systems Research, Columbia University, New York, New York, U.S.A Radley Horton, Associate Research Scientist, Center for Climate Systems Research, Columbia University, New York, New York, U.S.A. Noah Diffenbaugh, Associate Professor, Stanford University, and Senior Fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford, California, U.S.A. The participants spoke of global exposure to heat stress for this coming century and the effects it will have on our health and, linking to that, economic performance; as well as global infrastructure. Ethan Coffel first gave an overview of his research on global wet-bulb temperature, a combined measure of temperature and humidity. It was noted that while recent global heatwaves, in this context, were in the range of 29-31 °C, human tolerance is estimated to be 35 °C maximum. Thus, a global temperature rise could have serious repercussions for humankind. Dr Radley Horton […]
Climate action
14 Dec 2015
VIDEO: Capturing CO2 in hopes of saving the planet
By Jessica Mitchell Save the planet. This is just the motivation that ultimately drives the research of Professor Berend Smit, who says that through his research “in the long term, we may actually save the planet.” Berend Smit is currently Professor of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley and EPFL in Sion, Switzerland. He is also Director of the Energy Centre and Chair of Molecular Simulation at the EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland, as well as Field Chief Editor of Frontiers in Energy Research. A computational quest for novel nanopore materials Smit leads a team of researchers who use computational methods to screen novel nanoporous materials, known as metal organic frameworks, for their suitability for various energy-related applications- including capturing CO2 from flue gases and storing methane. These materials are the ideal playgrounds for chemist; by varying the basic chemical constituents we can make millions of different materials, each with its own specific properties. But, as Smit comments, “experimentally, however, because of practical limitations we can only synthesize a small fraction of them.” By adopting computational techniques, Smit and his team are able to explore the properties of these novel nanoporous materials in silico and assess their […]
Climate action
30 Nov 2015
‘New Frontiers in Climate Change Adaptation & Mitigation’ launched
by Nina Rothe The Frontiers Research Topic on “The Pathway to Solutions: New Frontiers in Climate Change Adaptation & Mitigation” has just launched. The 2015 Paris Climate Conference (#COP21), is poised to lead a shift in focus in climate change research from an emphasis on the scientific test of the role of human activity, already consolidated into strong evidence, to a focus on solutions to prepare society to adapt and mitigate the consequences of a warming planet, where knowledge is urgently needed. Frontiers will support this shift by collecting the latest research on climate adaptation and mitigation across multiple scientific disciplines to be published in a unique Research Topic. Business leaders are putting increasing pressure on governments to act and to achieve a legally binding and universal agreement on climate. As the biggest side event at COP21, France, in partnership with United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the European Commission’s Climate Action network, are hosting the Sustainable Innovation Forum (SIF15), convening cross-sector participants from business, government, finance, UN, NGO and civil society to bolster innovation and further accelerate international sustainable development. To provide policy makers, industry, and business leaders with the latest scientific findings, we are calling for submissions covering all […]