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MIT analysis improves estimates of global mercury pollution
Posted by Environmental News Network: Mit News on August 23rd, 2015
Environmental News Network: Once mercury is emitted into the atmosphere from the smokestacks of power plants, the pollutant has a complicated trajectory; even after it settles onto land and sinks into oceans, mercury can be re-emitted back into the atmosphere repeatedly. This so-called “grasshopper effect” keeps the highly toxic substance circulating as “legacy emissions” that, combined with new smokestack emissions, can extend the environmental effects of mercury for decades. Now an international team led by MIT researchers...
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New MIT study on the historical climate of the American West
Posted by Environmental News Network: Mit News on July 28th, 2015
Environmental News Network: All around the deserts of Utah, Nevada, southern Oregon, and eastern California, ancient shorelines line the hillsides above dry valley floors, like bathtub rings — remnants of the lakes once found throughout the region. Even as the ice sheets retreated at the end of the last ice age, 12,000 years ago, the region remained much wetter than it is today. The earliest settlers of the region are likely to have encountered a verdant landscape of springs and wetlands.
So just when and why did today’s...