Science News
Headlines
. Climate change over Antarctica: Antarctica is warming as well
. Biochar helps keep carbon in soil
. Either Martians or Mars has gas
. New creatures in an age of extinctions
Climate change over Antarctica
Since the 1950s, some portions of Antarctica have cooled (as denoted in faint blue tones), but many areas, including West Antarctica, have warmed substantially (red tones). The stronger the tone, the larger the warming or cooling.
Scientists studying climate change knew some coastal areas of Antarctica were warming. But data from weather stations inland at the South Pole and Lake Vostok indicated these sites were actually getting colder.  Researchers suspected that the whipping winds and freezing temperatures that grip these interior regions were keeping the rest of the continent cool, as well.
To check that out, the team combined meteorological records from 42 weather stations in Antarctica together with data collected from satellites. Some of the data went back 50 years. The scientists then devised a new estimate of temperature trends in Antarctica.
It shows that much of this continent -- particularly the West Antarctic Ice Sheet -- had been warming in recent decades. This region makes up about one-quarter of the continent and has a lower average elevation than does East Antarctica. The new analysis showed that, overall, West Antarctica is warming about 0.17 degrees Celsius per decade, a rate comparable to the average elsewhere in the world.
Just as the scientists suspected, parts of East Antarctica had cooled slightly between 1957 and 2006. But overall, warming in the western part of the continent -- a far larger area -- more than offset the cooling noted at the South Pole and Lake Vostok.
The new results indicate that there's warming related to greenhouse gases on all seven of Earth's continents.
The rise in temperature was most likely spurred by various dramatic changes. For example, vast areas of sea ice off the Antarctic coast have shrunken over the past 25 years. The loss of that sea ice has, in turn, helped open West Antarctica to storms carrying warm, moist air and snow.
Emperor penguins could be on their way to extinction if climate change affects sea ice around Antarctica as expected. This is because studies have shown that the penguin population increases with drops in temperature (and vice versa).
Biochar helps keep carbon in soil
As part of the carbon cycle, leaves decompose and the carbon in their bodies is broken down and recycled. Some of it is released into the air as carbon dioxide, or CO2. The rest moves into the soil.
Fungi and bacteria on the ground are decomposers, organisms that feed on dead matter. They go to work breaking down leaves to create energy-filled food for themselves. In the process, decomposers also make nutrients available for other organisms.
Carbon isn't found only in living matter. It's also found inside the Earth's mantle, the layer between the crust and the core, and in seawater, air, rocks and soil. The planet's carbon is constantly flowing from one of these to another, creating what is known as the carbon cycle.
Soil is a great place for carbon. There, it may remain locked up for hundreds, thousands or even millions of years, adding nutrients needed for growing food. Keeping carbon locked up in the soil also provides a way to keep it out of the atmosphere.
Concern over the rapid buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has prompted scientists to look at ways to sequester, or contain, carbon in the soil and plants. The key to doing this is plant production.
One way to store the carbon dioxide is to keep it trapped in forests.  That's why plants are called carbon sinks.
Another way that is being studied is to making biochar. In this process, instead of letting plant wastes degrade on their own, they are collected and put into a large container. These scraps are then burned slowly at a low temperature to create biochar. The slow burn prevents much of the carbon from being released back into the air.
This smoldering process produces a substance called biochar that resembles the char left by a campfire. More importantly, the slow burn prevents much of the carbon from getting released back into the air. The char can then be tilled right into the soil, where the carbon stays locked for years.
It turna out that Amazonian natives have used this technique for centuries to fertilize their soil.
Biochar isn't ready for large-scale agriculture yet, but community efforts can provide a way for ordinary citizens to help the planet. And that has benefits for all.
Either Martians or Mars has gas
The Red Planet has been spewing clouds of methane, scientists recently discovered. There's a possibility that tiny living organisms on Mars are the source of the gas. Or it could be coming from freezing and thawing processes on the planet.
Cows and Mars have at least one thing in common -- methane.
The Red Planet releases clouds of methane, according to a recent study. Researchers wonder whether colonies of bacteria hidden beneath Mars' red surface could be the cause.
The gas comes from three different areas of the planet, according to a NASA study. At each location, the amount of methane fluctuated throughout the year. The biggest plumes were in the Martian summer and the smallest during the planet's winter.
Other research teams have claimed to find Martian methane, but this was the first time that anyone could say so for sure.
Detecting the methane clouds was no easy task. The scientists measured Mars' methane levels for three Martian years (equivalent to seven Earth years) using three special telescopes on Earth. These instruments can detect an invisible kind of light called infrared light. Scientists use these infrared telescopes to measure gases in space. But since the telescopes were on Earth, they also measured gases in our atmosphere. So the scientists had to use some tricks to figure out which gases came from Earth and which came from Mars.
Methane is an unstable compound. Unless there is a constant source of the gas, the methane on Mars would eventually disappear. Spotting the methane over several years means that it is replenished regularly.
The scientists don't know for sure what is causing methane to spew from Mars' rocky floor. It could be that the gas is trapped in ice-covered rocks. In the summer, the planet warms, and the ice melts. Then the gas could slip out of cracks in the rock. When winter rolls around again, the ice reforms and plugs up the leaks. That could explain why there is more methane in the summer than in the
winter.
But  no one knows what creates the methane in the first place. About 90 percent of the methane in Earth's atmosphere comes from livestock and rotting plants, but bacteria also create the gas. It's possible that Mars' methane could be coming from bacteria too. But it's too soon to say.
New Creatures in an Age of Extinctions
The Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History has thousands of metal cabinets stacked against the walls. Inside, on trays, are a dozen dried rodents, bats, and a host of exotic animals.
The animals came from New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Kenya, Sulawesi, but they all had one trait in common: they were new to science, some of them so new they had yet to be named. And the Smithsonian specimens are just part of a much wider trend. The discovery of a new tamarin monkey in the Brazilian Amazon, new primate species in Bolivia, India and Tanzania, all are recent discoveries of new species.
Since the last summary of the world's mammals was published in 2005, tallying the roughly 5,400 mammalian species then known, an astounding 400 or so new species have been added to the list.
But we are also in the middle of a great species extinctions as well.  As a result of habitat destruction, climate volatility, pesticide runoff, ocean dumping, and other "anthropogenic" effects (caused by humans) on the environment, the extinction rate is many times above nature's chronic winnowing.
In sum, the number of new species that researchers are finding is increasing by the day on one hand; and on the other, many creatures are fast disappearing, some without even having been identified or studied.
One reason scientists are discovering more new species now than they were a couple of decades ago is that places that were hard to reach have been opened to varying degrees of development, allowing researchers to rush in and sample the abundance before it disappears.  The "gulp and go" style of the global market can also deliver taxonomic novelty right to the scientists' door.
Yet if it is through habitat disturbance that many new species are brought to light, scientists argue that formal recognition of a new species or variety can in turn prove to be its salvation: its existence can be used to enhance conservation efforts in the area.