Oil residues can travel over 5,000 miles on ocean debris, study finds

Petroleum residues can survive long-distance transport by adhering to floating debris, dramatically extending how far oil pollution can travel in the marine environment.
Photo Credit: Diane Buhler, Friends of Palm Beach

When oily plastic, glass, and rubber washed ashore on Florida beaches in 2020, it appeared at first to be a local mystery. But through a collaboration that paired community observations with world-leading oceanographic and chemical expertise, scientists traced the contamination across more than 5,200 miles of ocean.

In a new study published in ACS Environmental Science & Technology, researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and Northeastern University, in collaboration with community scientists from Friends of Palm Beach, show that petroleum residues can survive long-distance transport by adhering to floating debris, dramatically extending how far oil pollution can travel in the marine environment.

Using advanced ocean current modeling and chemical fingerprinting developed at WHOI, the team linked the Florida debris to a massive oil spill that occurred along Brazil’s coastline in 2019.

“This study demonstrates how plastic pollution fundamentally changes the fate of oil in the ocean,” said Chris Reddy, chemical oceanographer at WHOI and a global authority on oil spill forensics. “By hitchhiking on debris, petroleum residues can persist and move far beyond what we previously believed possible.”

Recovering reef fish populations could nourish millions of additional people each year

A new study led by King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) Assistant Professor Jessica Zamborain-Mason shows that rebuilding depleted coral reef fish populations could significantly increase sustainable food supplies for millions of people worldwide. Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the work provides the first global quantification of how much food is currently being lost due to degraded reef fish stocks and how much can be regained if reefs are restored to sustainable levels.

Drawing on one of the largest coral reef datasets assembled to date, the study analyzes more than 1,200 reef sites across 23 tropical jurisdictions. The findings come at a critical moment: reef ecosystems are experiencing widespread climate-driven impacts, and if reef fisheries are overexploited, ecosystem resilience and tropical food systems are at risk.  

“Our study provides clear, quantitative evidence of how much food tropical coastal communities are losing — and could regain — through sustainably managed reef fisheries,” said Zamborain-Mason. “These insights give governments the scientific foundation needed to strengthen food security and ecosystem resilience through effective fisheries management.” 

How a persistent chemical enters our surface waters

Image Credit: Scientific Frontline / stock image

PFAS, short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are not called “forever chemicals” for nothing. These fluorine-containing organic molecules are difficult to break down and are likely to remain in the environment for decades or even centuries, where they can accumulate in humans and animals and may have harmful effects on health. This is a compelling reason to take precautionary measures. 

The PFAS class of substances comprises thousands of chemical compounds. Not all of them have been thoroughly studied. The release, spread, accumulation, and effects of numerous PFAS are the subject of ongoing research. Among other things, researchers are focusing on TFA, short for trifluoroacetic acid. The smallest molecule in the PFAS family is formed as a degradation product of various other substances, such as many fluorinated refrigerants and propellants. Once formed, TFA is hardly degraded in the environment. “TFA formed in the atmosphere quickly enters precipitation, and from there it travels into surface waters and then into groundwater,” says Empa researcher Stefan Reimann from the Air Pollutants / Environmental Technology laboratory. 

Scientists discover what drives California's worst fire years

Two natural resource specialists walk through an area of Redwood Mountain Grove burned in the KNP Complex Fire in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains to evaluate fire effects.
Photo Credit: National Park Service

What makes one fire season worse than another in fire-prone parts of the world like California is poorly understood, but in a new study, scientists at the University of California, Irvine reveal how clusters of lightning-ignited fires called fire complexes are the chief drivers of the most destructive fire years. It’s a finding that could help agencies better manage such fires when they occur.

“Nobody has ever looked into these kinds of fires before,” said Rebecca Scholten, a postdoctoral fellow in Earth system science and lead author of the Science Advances study. “We theorized that when two or more fires in a fire complex merge, they would just burn themselves out. But we found the opposite – the fires grow worse.”

What Is: The Anthropocene

Image Credit: Scientific Frontline / stock image

The Definition of a New Reality

The term "Anthropocene" has transcended its origins in the quiet corridors of stratigraphy to become the defining cultural, philosophical, and scientific concept of the twenty-first century. It proposes a fundamental rupture in Earth history; the moment when human activity ceased to be a mere biological presence on the surface of the planet and became a geological force capable of determining the trajectory of the Earth system itself. This concept suggests that the Holocene—the geological epoch that began approximately 11,700 years ago at the end of the last Ice Age and provided the stable climatic conditions necessary for the development of agriculture and human civilization—has ended. In its place, we have entered a new, volatile interval characterized by the pervasive alteration of the atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, and biosphere by a single species.  

While the term implies a new geological "epoch" following the Holocene, its formal status remains a subject of intense scientific adjudication and controversy. In March 2024, the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) officially rejected the proposal to formalize the Anthropocene as a chronostratigraphic unit within the Geological Time Scale. However, this rejection has not diminished the concept's utility or its permeation into global discourse; rather, it has reoriented the scientific community toward viewing the Anthropocene as a diachronous, unfolding geological "Event" rather than a strictly defined epoch with a singular start date. This distinction is profound, shifting the focus from a search for a "golden spike" on a timeline to a broader recognition of a transformation comparable to the Great Oxidation Event of deep time.  

Study finds exposure to common air pollutants alters adolescent brain development

For the first time, researchers at OHSU evaluated the long-term impact of air pollution on adolescent brain health and development.
Image Credit: Scientific Frontline / AI generated

Physician-scientists at Oregon Health & Science University warn that exposure to air pollution may have serious implications for a child’s developing brain.

In a recent study published in the journal Environmental Research, researchers in OHSU’s Developmental Brain Imaging Lab found that air pollution is associated with structural changes in the adolescent brain, specifically in the frontal and temporal regions — the areas responsible for executive function, language, mood regulation and socioemotional processing.

Air pollution causes harmful contaminants, such as particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide and ozone, to circulate in the environment. It has been exacerbated over the past two centuries by industrialization, vehicle emissions, and, more recently, wildfires.

Exposure to PFAS and PCBs linked to higher odds of MS

Aina Vaivade and Kim Kultima have measured the levels of common environmental pollutants in the blood of people with MS using a mass spectrometer (pictured).
Photo Credit: Tobias Sterner/Uppsala University

People who have been exposed to both PFAS and PCBs are more likely to be diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS). These new research findings are based on analyses of blood samples from more than 1,800 individuals in Sweden, one of the most comprehensive studies to date on the influence of chemical environmental exposure on the development of MS. 

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune disease in which both genetic and environmental factors can contribute to the risk of the disease. In the current study, researchers analyzed blood from individuals who had recently been diagnosed with MS to investigate concentrations of the common environmental contaminants PFAS and PCBs. 

Storms in the Southern Ocean mitigates global warming

Visible satellite image showing storms sweeping across the Southern Ocean on 4 January 2019.
Photo Credit: NASA Worldview Snapshot

Intense storms that sweep over the Southern Ocean enable the ocean to absorb more heat from the atmosphere. New research from the University of Gothenburg shows that today’s climate models underestimate how storms mix the ocean and thereby give less reliable future projections of our climate. 

The Southern Ocean is a vast expanse of ocean encircling the Antarctic continent, regulating Earth’s climate by moving heat, carbon, and nutrients out in the world’s oceans. 

It provides a critical climate service by absorbing over 75 per cent of the excess heat generated by humans globally. The Southern Ocean’s capacity to reduce climate warming depends on how efficiently it can absorb heat from our atmosphere.  

Biodegradable wet wipes remain in rivers for more than five weeks

Photo Credit: Christine Sandu

Scientists have tested, for the first time, how biodegradable wet wipes break down when flushed rather than composted discovering that most wipes remain after five weeks – a finding the research team says challenges the marketing of these products. 

Researchers from Cardiff University’s Schools of Biosciences, Chemistry and Engineering tested two widely available brands of wipes labelled as ‘biodegradable’ in ten urban rivers and streams in Cardiff, UK 

For five weeks, the team tracked the degradation of the wet wipes in these locations by testing their tensile strength loss, and recording environmental factors such as microbial biomass, water chemistry, temperature, and river-level fluctuations. 

Fine particles in pollution are associated with early signs of autoimmune disease

Photo Credit: Chris LeBoutillier

A new study has linked air pollution exposure and immune-system changes that often precede the onset of autoimmune diseases. 

McGill University researchers analyzing Ontario data found that fine particles in air pollution are associated with higher levels of a biomarker linked with autoimmune diseases, such as systemic lupus. 

“These results point us in a new direction for understanding how air pollution might trigger immune system changes that are associated with autoimmune disease,” said Dr. Sasha Bernatsky, a James McGill Professor of Medicine and member of the McGill Centre for Climate Change and Health, the Division of Rheumatology and the Centre for Outcome Research and Evaluation. “We know some genetic factors play a role in autoimmune disease, but they don’t tell the whole story.” 

SoMAS Study: Microplastics in Oceans Distort Carbon Cycle Understanding

Plastic items, such as this part of a swimming float (blue), are often seen at ocean shorelines. These products eventually break down into microplastics, which permeate the oceans and add to the distribution of carbon along with organic matter.
Photo Credit: Luis Medina.

A study by researchers in Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS) shows that when microplastics are accidentally collected and measured with natural ocean organic particles, the carbon released by plastics during combustion appears as if it came from natural organic matter, which distorts scientists’ understanding of the ocean’s carbon cycle.

The carbon cycle in our oceans is critical to the balance of life in ocean waters and for reducing carbon in the atmosphere, a significant process to curbing climate change or global warming.

Microplastics are everywhere in the oceans. These small plastic fragments come from the breakdown of larger plastic items polluting the seas. Once they reach the sea through rivers, wastewater or runoff, they spread through coastal and open-ocean waters.

Temporary carbon removals can compensate warming from methane emissions

Photo Credit: Marita Kavelashvili

Carbon removal projects could prove vital in offsetting methane emissions – the second largest contributor to global warming. 

Nature-based schemes that aim to remove CO2 through methods such as afforestation and reforestation are criticized for being temporary – the carbon removed is often re-released once projects end – as well as fraught with risk.  

But climate change researchers have shown they can play an important role in neutralizing the environmental impact of methane. 

Methane and carbon dioxide behave differently over time: methane warms the planet much more rapidly than carbon dioxide, causing more damage in the short to medium term, but methane has little long-term impact on global temperatures as it dissipates over time.  

Heat and drought change what forests breathe out

Qingyuan County forest research site
Photo Credit: Kai Huang/UCR

Scientists have long warned that rising global temperatures would force forest soils to leak more nitrogen gas into the air, further increasing both pollution and warming while robbing trees of an essential growth factor. But a new study challenges these assumptions. 

After six years of UC Riverside-led research in a temperate Chinese forest, researchers have found that warming may be reducing nitrogen emissions, at least in places where rainfall is scarce.

The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are the result of UCR’s collaboration with a large team of graduate students and postdoctoral researchers stationed in China’s Shenyang City. These researchers maintained the infrastructure used to take more than 200,000 gas measurements from forest soil over six years.

The mystery of the missing deep ocean carbon fixers

Alyson Santoro Associate Professor Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology
Alyson Santoro's research focuses on microbes involved in nutrient cycling in the ocean, especially of the element nitrogen. This research combines laboratory experiments with field observations, and to date has used genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and stable isotope geochemistry as tools to uncover the activity of microbes in the mesopelagic ocean.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of University of California, Santa Barbara

In a step toward better understanding how the ocean sequesters carbon, new findings from UC Santa Barbara researchers and collaborators challenge the current view of how carbon dioxide is “fixed” in the sunless ocean depths. UCSB microbial oceanographer Alyson Santoro and colleagues, publishing in the journal Nature Geoscience, present results that help to reconcile discrepancies in accounting for nitrogen supply and dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) fixation at depth.

“Something that we’ve been trying to get a better handle on is how much of the carbon in the ocean is getting fixed,” Santoro said. “The numbers work out now, which is great.”  

Rising levels of banned toxic chemicals in otters from Wales

Photo Credit: Lilian Dibbern

New research has found that the levels of toxic industrial chemicals, which were banned over 40 years ago, are rising in otters in Wales. 

The Cardiff University Otter Project, in collaboration with Natural Resources Wales analyzed liver samples from Eurasian otters (Lutralutra) collected across Wales between 2010 and 2019. The team found Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in every otter they tested. Of the otters sampled, 16% exceeded a toxic threshold, which is known to impair reproduction. 

PCBs were once widely used in electrical equipment, paints, and plastics due to their stability and heat resistance. Although banned in the 1980s, their environmental persistence means they continue to accumulate in wildlife and can be found in high concentrations in top predators. 

Counting salmon is a breeze with airborne eDNA

A male Coho salmon, featuring the characteristic hooked nose, returns to spawn from the Oregon Coast.
Photo Credit: NOAA Fisheries

During the annual salmon run last fall, University of Washington researchers pulled salmon DNA out of thin air and used it to estimate the number of fish that passed through the adjacent river. Aden Yincheong Ip, a UW research scientist of marine and environmental affairs, began formulating the driving hypothesis for the study while hiking on the Olympic Peninsula.

“I saw the fish jumping and the water splashing and I started thinking — could we recover their genetic material from the air?,” he said.

The researchers placed air filters at several sites on Issaquah Creek, near the Issaquah Salmon Hatchery in Washington. To their amazement, the filters captured Coho salmon DNA, even 10 to 12 feet from the river. Scientists collect environmental DNA, or eDNA, to identify species living in or passing through an area, but few have attempted to track aquatic species by sampling air.

Clean biogas – measurable everywhere

Ayush Agarwal worked on the analysis of biogas during his doctoral studies at the PSI Center for Energy and Environmental Sciences at PSI.
Photo Credit: © Paul Scherrer Institute PSI/Markus Fischer

Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have developed a new analytical method that can detect even tiny amounts of critical impurities in biogas. This procedure can be used even by small biogas plants without the need for major investment – thus facilitating the energy transition.

The market for biogas is growing. According to the Swiss Federal Office of Energy, Switzerland fed 471 gigawatt hours of this fuel into the natural gas grid last year – roughly twice the amount fed in ten years ago. This comes with an increase in the need to measure impurities in the biogas quickly and reliably, because strict quality criteria apply to this green gas.  

Researchers at PSI’s Center for Energy and Environmental Sciences have now come up with a solution to this problem. The analytical method they have developed can simultaneously detect the two most critical impurities in biogas: sulfur compounds and siloxanes. They have now presented their method in the journal Progress in Energy. 

Researchers Warn: Climate Change Could Expand Habitats for Malaria Mosquitoes

“Our climate scenarios show that we can prevent much of this by limiting climate change.," says lead author of the study, Tiem van der Deure.
Illustration Credit: University of Copenhagen

An insistent buzzing at sunset followed by itchy, spotted legs. Here in Denmark, mosquitoes are mostly an annoying – but generally harmless – nuisance. That is far from the case in many parts of the world. 

Every year, around 600,000 people die from malaria, a mosquito-borne disease – most of them in sub-Saharan Africa, and children are the most vulnerable. This makes malaria one of the deadliest infectious diseases globally. 

A new study from the University of Copenhagen, published in Global Change Biology, shows that future climate change could create more favorable conditions for malaria mosquitoes, exposing millions of people across large parts of Africa to more dangerous mosquito bites.  

Over half of global coastal settlements are retreating inland due to intensifying climate risks

Hurricane Florence moved toward the U.S. East Coast as it intensified to a Category 4 storm, with one-minute sustained winds of 130 mph Monday September 10, 2018. This image, captured by the GOES East satellite at 10:00 am ET, showed Florence in the western Atlantic, about 600 miles southeast of Bermuda, at Category 3 intensity. The storm had developed a small but well-defined eye and a symmetrical appearance typical of major hurricanes that are rapidly intensifying.
Image Credit: NOAA

For centuries, coastlines have attracted dense human settlement and economic activity. Today, more than 40 percent of the global population lives within 100 kilometers of the coast, facing accelerating sea-level rise, coastal erosion, flooding, and tropical cyclones. 

Although moving away from the coast - known as “retreat” - is often viewed as an adaptive strategy, its global extent and drivers have remained unclear. A new study published in Nature Climate Change fills this gap by providing the first global evidence that coastal retreat is driven more by social and infrastructural vulnerability than by historical exposure to hazards. 

The study was conducted by an international team led by researchers from Sichuan University and included remote sensing experts from the University of Copenhagen (Alexander Prishchepov and Shengping Ding, IGN). It maps settlement movements across 1,071 coastal regions in 155 countries. By integrating nighttime light observations with global socioeconomic datasets, the researchers found that 56% of coastal regions have retreated from the coast from 1992 to 2019, and 16% of regions, including the Copenhagen area in Denmark, have moved closer to the coast, while 28% have remained stable. 

Scientific Models Overestimate Natural Processes That Mitigate Climate Change

Silky lupine plants at Lassen National Park in California
Photo Credit: Duncan Menge

High levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide intensify climate change, but high carbon dioxide levels can also stimulate plant growth. Plant growth removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, partially mitigating the effects of climate change. However, plants only grow faster in the presence of high levels of carbon dioxide if they can also acquire enough nitrogen from the atmosphere to do so. The actual amount of nitrogen acquired from the atmosphere was reassessed in a study co-led by Columbia faculty that was released this summer; it was shown to be significantly lower than previously estimated.