Maddie Stone

EartherEarth Science

Researchers Discover Antarctic Ice Shelf ‘Alive’ With Tiny Icequakes

For about six to 12 hours as the sun dips low on the horizon in the late spring and early summer, an Antarctic ice shelf comes alive. Tiny quakes rattle the ice by the hundreds of thousands—and their existence could help scientists track how glaciers are melting across the frozen continent. These quakes, documented in … Continued

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These Scientists Ground an iPhone to Dust to Figure Out What’s Inside

You probably don’t spend a lot of time pondering what your smartphone is made of. But maybe you should, because the average phone is a dizzyingly complex compendium of metals and minerals sourced from all over the Earth. Now, a team of scientists at the University of Plymouth is attempting to demystify the ingredient list, … Continued

EartherConservation

Dirty Diapers, Used Needles, and More: The Worst Things Americans Try to Recycle

Recycling is in trouble. There are many reasons for this, chief among them a string of new bans and restrictions on recycled goods set forth by China. But there’s another, related reason why so much of what Americans try to recycle is now winding up at an incinerator or a landfill. We toss a lot … Continued

EartherEarth Science

Scientists Might Finally Know Why Some Icebergs Are Bright Green

In the 18th-century English ballad The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a storm drives a sailor’s ship toward the South Pole, where he encounters all manner of fantastical sights, including floating icebergs “as green as emerald.” It may sound like author Samuel Coleridge was taking some poetic license, but emerald-colored icebergs are a real thing—and … Continued

EartherConservation

Behind the Hype of Apple’s Plan to End Mining

There are 118 elements on the periodic table. An iPhone contains about 75 of them. We don’t have an exact number because Apple wouldn’t provide one, which is going to be a theme of this story. And while some of those elements, like aluminum and lithium, are familiar in both name and function, others, like … Continued

EartherConservation

Recycling Is Broken

In Philadelphia, people like to recycle. Together, all 1.6 million of us generate about 400 tons of recyclable material each day. But since last fall, roughly half of the bottles and cans my neighbors and I have placed dutifully curbside in our blue bins every week haven’t made their way to a sorting facility. They’ve … Continued

EartherClimate Change

Australia Just Sweated Through Its Hottest Summer Ever

In case you haven’t heard, it’s been hot in Australia. So it comes as no great shock that the Australian government has officially declared the summer of 2018-19 the country’s hottest on record. “It won’t come as a surprise to many that this summer will be our warmest on record,” Andrew Watkins, manager of long-range … Continued

EartherEarth Science

New Map of Hawaii Shows Where Kilauea’s Lava Piled Up Over 900 Feet High

Kilauea’s largest eruption in at least 200 years may be over, but scientists are still learning about how it reshaped Hawaii’s Big Island. Case in point: We now have a map showing just how high the lava piled up. Last week, scientists with the USGS Hawaii Volcano Observatory (HVO) released a preliminary map showing the … Continued

EartherEarth Science

An Iceberg 30 Times the Size of Manhattan Is About to Break Off Antarctica

An Antarctic ice shelf that’s been cracking up for years is now very close to giving birth to an iceberg roughly 30 times the size of Manhattan. With a long-term scientific research station right in the neighborhood, the far-flung event is being watched closely, and with some trepidation. On Wednesday, NASA released a new image … Continued

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Political Group Launches ‘Aggressive Targeting Strategy’ to Get More Scientists Elected in 2020

2018 was a banner year for scientists getting elected to public office. Now, a group that pushed hard to send some of those technically-minded folks to Capitol Hill is redoubling its efforts ahead of the 2020 election. Last week, 314 Action, a political action committee that focuses on getting scientists and other STEM professionals elected … Continued

EartherClimate Change

Why America’s Northernmost City Is Having a Weird, Hot Winter

Something strange is happening to the northernmost city in the United States. It’s the dead of winter, and temperatures in Utqiaġvik (formerly Barrow) should be well below zero. Late last week, they soared into the 20s and 30s—practically beach weather for Arctic Alaska. On February 7, temperatures in Utqiaġvik flirted with the freezing mark, possibly … Continued

Earther

A Giant Atmospheric River Is About to Dump Loads of Rain on California’s Snowpack, Threatening Floods

California gets most of its rain during the winter, but this wet season has proven especially juicy so far. The moisture parade continued on Wednesday with a major atmospheric river descended on the Golden State, raising concerns of flooding and mudslides as it dumps heavy rain and snow across a wide region through Thursday evening. … Continued

EartherEarth Science

Earth’s ‘Third Pole’ Contains Less Ice Than We Thought

The glaciers blanketing the high mountains of central Asia are smaller than we thought, according to a new analysis published Monday in Nature Geoscience. Given that they’re also facing a rapid meltdown, this is pretty bad for the hundreds of millions of people who use their water. Last week, a major analysis concluded that most … Continued

EartherEarth Science

Melting Ice Sheets Could Throw Earth’s Climate Into Disarray, Alarming Models Predict

It’s no secret that Earth’s ice sheets are shrinking as temperatures rise. But this planetary meltdown isn’t just a problem for coastal residents dealing with rising sea levels. New research suggests it could be a problem for all of us as the effects of ice loss ripple through the oceans and atmosphere. Models published Wednesday … Continued

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America Had a Wet, Hot 2018

On Tuesday, NOAA and NASA released their much-anticipated analyses of global climate trends for 2018. As we expected, the agencies confirmed it was the fourth-warmest year on record for planet Earth. But the reports also highlighted just how striking a year it was for the U.S. specifically, with most of the country feeling the heat … Continued

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Scientists Will Once Again Try to Explore Alien Ecosystem Exposed by Giant Antarctic Iceberg

Last year, a team of scientists embarked on a mission to explore the seafloor exposed when a Delaware-sized iceberg popped off the Antarctic Peninsula in 2017. Frustratingly, their ship had to turn around mid-voyage thanks to impenetrable sea ice. This year, amidst near-record low Antarctic sea ice levels, another team of scientists will make an … Continued

Earther

Alarming Number of Americans Think Climate-Change Deniers Deserve to Get Hit by Natural Disasters, Survey Finds

When Hurricane Michael flattened entire communities in the Florida Panhandle last fall, most Americans and media outlets responded with an appropriate level of horror and empathy. A few, however, engaged in a pretty ugly form of victim-blaming; observing that the conservative districts that suffered damage voted for politicians who deny climate science—the implication being these … Continued

Earther

Bummer: Global Warming Won’t Make Giant Winter Snow Storms Go Away

Climate change is going to have a lot of unpleasant consequences. But at least those of us on the East Coast won’t face as many nasty winter snowstorms, right? Well… a new study is throwing a bit of cold water on that silver lining. Residents of the Northeast are all too familiar with nor’easters, cold-weather … Continued

Earther

Key Data For NASA’s Ice-Monitoring Satellite in Trouble Thanks to Shutdown

Last month, NASA researchers were gleefully sharing the early returns from their recently launched ice-monitoring satellite, ICESat-2, at the world’s largest annual meeting of Earth scientists. This month, many of those same researchers are furloughed as a vital airborne campaign needed to calibrate the satellite faces mounting delays due to the U.S. government shutdown. Science … Continued

EartherClimate Change

Greenland’s Ice Can No Longer Handle Hot Summers

A team of scientists is warning that the double whammy of a naturally recurring weather pattern and rising temperatures is triggering dramatic melting on the Greenland ice sheet—a problem the researchers liken to recent global coral bleaching events, which have been fueled by the one-two punch of El Niño and climate change. The research, published … Continued