For thousands of years, a large percentage of the world’s carbon stores have been safely locked in permafrost, the frozen layer of soil and organic matter that covers much of the planet’s northernmost latitudes.

But as temperatures rise and some permafrost melts, that carbon is being released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide at an alarming rate.

For some ancient permafrost, about half its carbon could decompose in just one week after a thaw, according to a new study by the US Geological Survey, which analyzed 35,000-year-old permafrost soils found in Alaska and Siberia known as yedoma.

“It had previously been assumed that permafrost soil carbon this old was already degraded and not susceptible to rapid decomposition upon thaw,” Kim Wickland, the USGS scientist who led the team said in a University of Colorado release. 

But that was not the case. 

As soon as the yedoma permafrost dissolves, hungry microbes begin to break down the organic carbon and produce carbon dioxide, a potent greenhouse gas.

“What this study adds is that we show what makes permafrost so biodegradable,” said study lead author and Florida State University doctoral student, Travis Drake, in a an FSU release. “Immediately upon thaw, microbes start using the carbon and then it is sent back into the atmosphere.”

And those microbes are voracious. “It’s like feeding them chocolate,” study co-author and FSU professor Robert Spencer said. “You are giving them a food source that they really enjoy and is high in energy.”

With global temperatures climbing, this thaw could have devastating effects. 

As more carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere it will trigger even greater global warming in a hot chain of events.

“Many scientists worldwide are now investigating the complicated potential end results of thawing permafrost,” said study co-author and USGS scientist Rob Striegl in the University of Colorado statement. “There are critical questions to consider, such as: How much of the stored permafrost carbon might thaw in a future climate? Where will it go? And, what are the consequences for our climate and our aquatic ecosystems?”

Some researchers have even put a price on permafrost melt: $43 trillion.

That price tag includes direct and indirect economic impacts of increased warming from these additional greenhouse gas emissions.

“The impacts will be felt around the world,” study co-author Chris Hope told The Christian Science Monitor then. “Thawing permafrost is likely to be one of the major consequences of the changes in the Arctic climate.” 

The new USGS study was published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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NOW WATCH: Animated map of what Earth would look like if all the ice melted

Large earthquakes can be incredibly serious, like the one that struck Afghanistan on Monday.

But not all earthquakes are devastating, earth-shattering monsters. Sometimes, they're just ... there.

Over the past two weeks, over 408 earthquakes have rattled the town of San Ramon, California.

That's a little over an earthquake every hour, and sets a record for the area, beating out a 2003 swarm which lasted for a month and had 120 earthquakes.

It's an impressive accomplishment, but San Ramon has a long way to go if it wants to beat seismic heavyweights like Yellowstone National Park, which recorded 3,000 earthquakes over 3 months in 1985.

The largest earthquake in the swarm was a magnitude 3.6 on October 19. Magnitude is a measure of how large an earthquake is.

A 3.6 magnitude earthquake is a fairly moderate-size earthquake that is unlikely to cause damage. Many of the other earthquakes in the swarm were so small that they weren't felt by residents.

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) says that the swarm could last for "several more weeks". But that isn't a reason to panic.

As unsettling as the shaking is, the USGS says that the chance of these smaller earthquakes presaging a larger earthquake is very small, and the chance of a damaging earthquake (larger than a magnitude 6.7) happening along the fault causing the shaking is only about 8 percent.

This article originally appeared on Popular Science.

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The little fawn in this video is lucky to be alive. It was born in Wyoming with an injured leg. Because it could only limp and was not able to keep up with its mother and sibling, it was abandoned by its family. Darius Sasnauskas saw the fawn in his garden and knew that if he didn’t rescue the animal, it would become a predator’s next meal, according to Reuters.

Sasnauskas brought the fawn into his home and cared for it. He fed it and built it a leg brace out of an oatmeal box. Slowly, the fawn’s leg started to heal. It began to make progress walking properly, and it even made friends with some of Sasnauskas’ pets. Eventually, the fawn was strong enough to return to the wild. Sasnauskas hoped to return the fawn to its original mother, and after some searching, he found her, and reunited the little fawn with its family.

Story by Sarah Schmalbruch and editing by Carl Mueller. 

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Nearly 60 people will die prematurely from the excess air pollution caused by Volkswagen cheating emissions tests in the US, according to a new study.

The first peer-reviewed estimate of the public health impacts of VW’s rigging of tests for 482,000 diesel cars in the US found that if the company recalls all the affected cars by the end of 2016, more than 130 further early deaths could be avoided.

The study, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters on Thursday, concluded that most of the 59 premature deaths were caused by particulate pollution (87%) with the rest caused by ozone exposure (13%).

Most of the deaths were estimated to have occurred on the east and west coasts of the US.

The number of deaths was reached by looking at the amount of extra pollution emitted between 2008 and 2015 by the VW cars fitted with the defeat devices.

Particulate and ozone air pollution in the US was estimated by the Environmental Protection Agency to cause around 164,300 premature deaths in 2010. Diesels still make up a relatively small share of the US car fleet.

This article originally appeared on guardian.co.uk

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The highest temperature ever recorded was 134.06 degrees Fahrenheit in Death Valley, California.

By 2100, climate change could make that extreme a typical hot summer day in the Persian Gulf.

And the worst heat could be in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, according to a study published Oct. 26 in Nature Climate Change.

With 1.6 million people living in the metropolitan area, Dhahran hosts the headquarters of the Saudi Arabian Oil Company, a.k.a. Aramco, which owns the largest oil reserves in the world.

Right now, typical summer days in the city crest at 104 degrees Fahrenheit, and the humid air blowing off the coast of the Persian Gulf can make daytime activities difficult without the aid of air conditioning.

Dhahran isn't alone. If climate change continues on the path it's on today, the study found, maximum temperatures in Kuwait City and Al Ain, United Arab Emirates are expected to climb above 140 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century.

The researchers, from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, used climate models to predict what regional temperatures would look like on the Arabian Peninsula by 2100 if the world doesn't start cutting carbon emissions.

Dhahran had the highest maximum "wet-bulb temperature" reported in the study at 91.94 degrees Fahrenheit. This projection could become the new normal for extreme summer days by the end of the century.

The study analyzed both dry-bulb temperature we normally hear in a weather report, like the 140 degree figure above, and the wet-bulb temperature, which accounts for both heat and humidity. If the wet-bulb reading gets above 95 degrees Fahrenheit, the human body can no longer cool itself off, even when fully drenched with sweat. This is when health problems like heat stroke can set in, even for young and healthy people.

Areas near the sea have higher wet-bulb temperatures because of the humid air, the authors explain, compared to drier desert regions further inland. This is why the most intolerably hot cities they identified are located near the water.

Dhahran already holds the unofficial record for the highest heat index ever recorded, according to the Washington Post. In July 2003, the temperature in the city reached 108 degrees Fahrenheit with a dew point of 95, making the heat index— which is what it "feels like" outside in the shade — 178 degrees Fahrenheit.

All these measurements (wet-bulb temperature, humidity, dew point, heat index, etc.) are really just different ways of expressing how hot it feels to us outside, since just the air temperature alone often can't express how humidity can make the heat unbearable and even deadly.

Here's what our extremely-heated future looks like on a map — the color shows the projected extreme wet-bulb temperatures in the Persian Gulf by 2100. The purple areas show temperatures the human body can no longer handle. Dhahran, Saudi Arabia had the highest extreme heat values reported in the study.

In extreme heat, manmade objects start to fail us, too.

"When [the dry-bulb temperature] approaches such extremes, much machinery designed for the current climate may malfunction," the authors wrote in the study. "For example, aircraft may not operate properly during takeoff and landing, and rail lines can buckle at extreme temperatures, even at temperatures around 40 [degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit)]."

The Gulf has already started experiencing heat waves like the ones predicted to become average in the study. This July, some of the highest wet-bulb temperatures ever recorded swept across the Arabian Peninsula.

Christoph Schär from the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science at ETH Zurich wrote an essay accompanying the study explaining just how bad the heat wave was this summer.

Sea surface wet-bulb temperatures crept above 93 degrees Fahrenheit in the Gulf, he wrote, with the dry-bulb temp on land peaking at 115 degrees Fahrenheit in Bandar-e Mahshahr, Iran on July 31. The humidity was at 49%, resulting in an insufferable mix of heat and mugginess.

The worst of the worst projected temperatures can be mitigated by cutting carbon emissions now, the study found. But these decisions to cut down on greenhouse gas pollution — which have to be agreed upon by big governments followed through by corporations and individuals — have been slow in coming.

The United Nations Conference on Climate Change coming up in Paris this December, however, could be the place to make stopping climate change a reality, and hopefully prevent these intolerable temps.

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Delhi is the world's most polluted city because it is a "toxic pollutant punchbowl" with a wide variety of factors giving it its notorious title, a study has found.

By assessing the megacity's landscape, weather, growing population and energy consumption, scientists were able to work out how and why Delhi is so polluted.

The team, from the University of Surrey, found a combination of factors combined to cause elevated levels of air pollutants – leading to the death of thousands of people every year.

Study author Prashant Kumar said: "Whilst it might be easy to blame this on increased use of vehicles, industrial production or a growing population, the truth is that Delhi is a toxic pollutant punchbowl with myriad ingredients, all which need addressing in the round."

"Air pollution has been placed in the top ten health risks faced by human beings globally. Delhi has the dubious accolade of being regularly cited as the most polluted city in the world, with air pollution causing thousands of excess deaths in a year in this growing megacity."

In the study, which has been accepted for publication in the journal Atmospheric Environment, the researchers note that Delhi has a population of around 25.8 million – a figure that is continuing to grow. Energy consumption in the city rose by 57% between 2001 and 2011.

The growing population is expected to bring with it an increase in road vehicles – experts are predicting it will rise from 4.7 million seen in 2010 to 26 million in the next 15 years.

But it is not just cars that is causing the rise. Chennai has 10-times more cars, but pollution rates are 10-times lower. Other factors at play cause the extreme pollution, the authors say.

Because the city is landlocked, there are few ways to get rid of polluted air. For example, coastal cities like Mumbai are refreshed by sea breezes. But Delhi's surrounding industrial regions are often more polluted by the city itself.

Its densely packed architecture, varying building heights and weather conditions also affect its ability to get fresh air – decreasing temperatures draws outside polluted air into the city, while hot windy and dusty summer conditions worsen the problem. Add to this the use of low-quality fuels like raw wood, diesel generators and cow dung, air pollution becomes inevitable.

"The picture of Delhi's pollution problem is complicated and is aggravated by some factors that are out of human control," Kumar said. "However, in this growing city it is important that the population is protected in whatever ways they can be from health-endangering pollutants."

He said putting artificial or natural grass on unpaved roadsides might help to limit the course of dust particles during windy seasons, while investment in wetlands and trees would also go some way to limiting pollution.

Indian prime minister Narendra Modi has made a number of commitments to tackle air pollution in the country. In April he launched the country's first air quality index and environment minister Prakash Javadekar said the move "may prove to be a major impetus to improving air quality in urban areas, as it will improve public awareness in cities to take steps for air pollution mitigation".

Kumar said the cultural context is vital to reduce air pollution: "Even the best science and technology will not succeed in reducing emissions and improving air quality if it is not considered in a broader framework of economic development of the country, rising awareness of public health risks and a change in attitudes and regulation towards poor quality fuels.

It is a complicated, pick-and-mix of problems that will prove difficult to combat without innovative, encompassing and quick action."

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NOW WATCH: 4,000 people in China die every day from air pollution

For more than 60 years, scientists have dreamed of a clean, inexhaustible energy source in the form of nuclear fusion.

And they're still dreaming.

But thanks to the efforts of the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, experts hope that might soon change.

Last year, after 1.1 million construction hours, the institute completed the world's largest nuclear-fusion machine of its kind, called a stellarator.

The machine, which has a diameter of 52 feet, is called the W7-X.

And after more than a year of tests, engineers are finally ready to fire up the $1.1 billion machine for the first time. It could happen before the end of this month, Science reported.

The black horse of nuclear reactors

Known in the plasma physics community as the "black horse" of reactors that use nuclear fusion, stellarators are notoriously difficult to build.

The GIF below shows the many different layers of W7-X, which took 19 years to complete:

From 2003 to 2007, as the project was being built, it suffered some major construction setbacks — including one of its contracted manufacturers going out of business — that nearly canceled the whole endeavor.

Only a handful of stellarators have been attempted, and even fewer have been completed.

By comparison, the more popular cousin to the stellarator, called a tokamak, is in wider use. Over three dozen tokamaks are operational around the world, and more than 200 have been built throughout history. These machines are easier to construct and, in the past, have performed better as a nuclear reactor than stellarators.

But tokamaks have a major flaw that W7-X is reportedly immune to, suggesting that Germany's latest monster machine could be a game changer.

How a nuclear-fusion reactor works

The key to a successful nuclear-fusion reactor of any kind is to generate, confine, and control a blob of gas, called a plasma, that has been heated to temperatures of more than 180 million degrees Fahrenheit.

At these blazing temperatures, the electrons are ripped from their atoms, forming ions. Under these extreme conditions the repulsive forces, which normally make ions bounce off one another like bumper cars, are overcome.

The ions are therefore able to collide and fuse together, which generates energy, and you have accomplished nuclear fusion. Nuclear fusion is different from what fuels today's nuclear reactors, which operate with energy from atoms that decay, or break apart, instead of fusing together.

Nuclear fusion is the process that has been fueling our sun for about 4.5 billion years and will continue to do so for another estimated 4 billion years.

Once engineers have heated the gas in the reactor to the right temperature, they use super-chilled magnetic coils to generate powerful magnetic fields that contain and control the plasma.

The W7-X, for example, houses 50 six-ton magnetic coils, shown in purple in the GIF below. The plasma is contained within the red coil:

The difference between tokamaks and stellarators

For years, tokamaks have been considered the most promising machine for producing energy in the way the sun does because the configuration of their magnetic coils contains a plasma that is better than that of currently operational stellarators.

But there's a problem: Tokamaks can control the plasma only in short bursts that last for no more than seven minutes. And the energy necessary to generate that plasma is more than the energy engineers get from these periodic bursts.

Tokamaks thus consume more energy than they produce, which is not what you want from nuclear-fusion reactors, which have been touted as the "most important energy source over the next millennium."

Because of the stellarators' design, experts suspect it could sustain a plasma for at least 30 minutes at a time, which is significantly longer than any tokamak. The French tokamak "Tore Supra" holds the record: Six minutes 30 seconds.

If W7-X succeeds, it could turn the nuclear-fusion community on its head and launch stellarators into the limelight.

"The world is waiting to see if we get the confinement time and then hold it for a long pulse," David Gates, the head of stellarator physics at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, told Science.

Check out this awesome time-lapse video of the construction of W7-X on YouTube, or below:

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A storm in the Arabian Sea is headed toward the deserts of Yemen and Oman on the Arabian Peninsula, bringing historic levels of rain to the region. 

Cyclone Chapala intensified from a tropical storm to a hurricane with 150 mph winds (making it a Category 4 of 5 storm on the Saffir-Simpson Scale) in just 24 hours, The Weather Channel reports.

Here's what the storm looked like on October 29 as the storm started picking up steam. Chapala is expected to reach Category 5 storm level before it makes landfall. Some estimates expect at least a year's worth of rain (on average the area gets about four inches) as a result of this single storm.

Chapala is expected to make landfall in Yemen and southwest Oman on Monday. Typically, cyclones die down before making landfall, and in this case experts estimate Chapala will dissippate as it approaches the arid desert.

This storm is being called a cyclone rather than a hurricane or typhoon because of its location. Storms of this kind that happen in the Indian Ocean (where the Arabian Sea is) are called cyclones; they're called hurricanes in the Atlantic and Northeast Pacific and typhoons in the Northwest Pacific.

Chapala is one of the strongest storms ever to form in the Arabian Sea, after Cyclone Gonu, which reached winds of 165 mph.

Here's the storm's trajectory, as of October 30, according to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center:

In order for a hurricane, cyclone, or typhoon to form, there must be some type of pre-existing weather disturbance, the presence of warm tropical oceans, plus moisture and some light wind. If these conditions stick around for long enough, they can combine to produce these storms.

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NOW WATCH: Experience what it’s like to be in the center of a powerful storm in this time-lapse video

When nature devastates, it often also brings life.

Historic rainfall in Chile this year killed 28 people and left thousands homeless, the news agency EFE reported.

In Antofagasta, Chile, it rained 0.9 inches in 12 hours — which is about what the area gets on average in an entire year, according to the Weather Channel.

But the historic rainfall has turned the Atacama Desert, which is the driest place on Earth, into a flowering oasis.

"The Atacama region was punished, but also blessed by the phenomenon of a flourishing desert, something that happens only after the rains, this time brought about by El Niño and climate change," Atacama National Tourism Service Director Daniel Diaz told EFE.

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The Atacama Desert, surrounded by the Andes Mountains in Chile, is the driest place on Earth.

Its wide expanses of sky have some of the best vistas for stargazing.

The desert's terrain is so much like Mars that the European Space Agency has even tested rovers there bound for the Red Planet.

Governments' emissions-cutting pledges ahead of a global conference in December are a good step toward achieving an international global warming goal, but they aren't yet enough, the U.N. climate chief said Friday.

The plans submitted by 146 countries for the climate conference in Paris could cut average global emissions per capita of greenhouse gases by up to 8 percent by 2025 and 9 percent by 2030 compared with 1990 levels, a U.N. assessment found.

U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres' office didn't directly assess the pledges' impact on the goal of keeping the rise in global temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of this century compared with pre-industrial times.

Figueres, however, pointed to an International Energy Agency assessment that they would result in a 2.7-degree increase, compared with 4 to 5 degrees with no action.

"It is a very good step, it is actually a remarkable step, but it is not enough," she told reporters, making clear that she doesn't consider the pledges the last word.

"Many countries have been healthily conservative in what they have put on the table, and that's very understandable because they do not want to expose themselves prematurely internationally," Figueres said. "We may get more from some corners and less from others."

Scientists say a temperature rise of more than 2 degrees Celsius could result in profound and irreversible impact on the climate, including flooding of coastal cities and island nations and disruptions to agriculture and drinking water.

Li Shuo, a Greenpeace climate expert, said the U.N. assessment highlights a "clear shortfall" in efforts to limit global warning but added that "it's very likely that China, for example, can and will move faster than it's offered, as it's already rapidly getting out of coal and into renewables."

The U.N. examined pledges submitted by Oct. 1, which came from all the industrialized countries and three-quarters of developing countries — accounting together for 86 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. Afurther 10 plans have been submitted since then.

The Paris conference is a crucial test for the diplomatic process, which failed to deliver a strong deal six years ago in Copenhagen. Figueres said she's confident there won't be a repeat of that.

"There will be an agreement because, from where I stand, I see only increasing political will on the part of all governments," she said.

The Paris deal needs to add to the national pledges "a path of continuous improvement" that would lead to the 2-degree target, she added.

Figueres said she's optimistic about governments delivering their pledges because "they all stem out of the national interest of these countries, and hence stand a much better chance of being implemented than anything that is external and punitive."

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Dying isn't always an Earth-friendly business.

Decomposing bodies in coffins buried in the ground emit large amounts of methane, a harmful greenhouse gas.

That, along with the formaldehyde that's used to get the body preserved for burial makes for not-so-sustainable burial practices.

And while the vast majority of people opt for either traditional burial or cremation, there are other ways to be memorialized that do less damage to the planet.

1. Turn your body into a tree

Developed by Italian designers, this sustainable burial practice will turn your remains into tree food. Anna Citelli and Raoul Bretzel, the creators of Capsula Mundi (pictured here) want to change the way Italy buries its loved ones with their pod-like design using eco-friendly materials.

You're buried inside a biodegradable egg-shaped pod while in the fetal position. When you're buried, a tree gets planted on top. Then the idea is that as the pod begins to decompose, the body can turn into minerals that feed the tree. Bretzel and Mundi hope to change the traditional cemetery into a "sacred forest."

2. Use dry ice 

Traditionally, families buring their loved ones will have them embalmed, so that the decomposing process doesn't start right away. Usually, this is done with formaldehyde, a known human carcinogen (which, of course doesn't affect those being embalmed, but rather those doing the embalming).

Instead, some people are turing to dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide) as a way to keep bodies preserved until they are interred. This keeps the body from decomposing without needing embalming, though you do have to change out the ice every day. Though carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, the amount released from the dry ice used in body preservation is a pretty small percentage of overall CO2 emissions.

3. Furnish your home with a shelf that doubles as a coffin

Instead of using your wooden coffin only as your final resting place, William Warren had the idea of making a set of shelves that can be converted to a coffin when the time is right. This upcycled version makes the wood useful for longer, and as Warren remarks on his website, "the wood will colour, the surfaces will mark and stain and over the years and the furniture will become a part of you." Warren designed the shelves and debuted them at the 2005 London Design Festival, though you can ask him for directions on how to may your own set of shelves-turned-coffin.

Plus, you get the added fun of telling all your guests about it while giving them a tour of your house and seeing their bewildered expressions.

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A massive gash across the southern foothills of Wyoming's Bighorn Mountains has taken social media by storm.

This came after Richard Fink, a guide with Wyoming hunting company SNS Outfitters and Guides, first noticed a large fissure in a Wyoming ranch in early October, Candace Crew, a marketing specialist at Peak Outfitter Marketing told Tech Insider via Facebook messenger.

After an engineer, whose name and affiliation has not been released, took a closer look a few weeks later, he estimated that the newly-formed canyon measured a staggering 750 yards long by 50 yards wide. The company posted photos of the crack to its Facebook account the weekend of Oct. 24.

"We don't really know what caused it, or if it's done falling," Sy Gilliland, founder and owner of SNS Outfitter & Guides told Colorado's 9 News. "One of my hunters stumbled on it when he was hunting there Oct. 1."

The gash has sparked a flurry of speculation about what may be going on, including fears that this is the sign of the Apocalypse. But according to the engineer, this could just be normal geology at work.

Seth Wittke, the Wyoming Geological Survey’s manager of groundwater and geologic hazards and mapping, told the Powell Tribune that the large-scale movement was likely due to a giant landslide.

The engineer who first sized up the fissure agrees, noting that multiple springs may have lubricated the sand and rock, causing a massive slide to the north.

But while water likely set off this landslide, Dave Petley, an environmental geologist wrote in a blog post for the American Geophysical Union, it more likely changed the "effective stress" on the formation, rather than by providing lubrication.

The US Geological Survey says that there haven't been any earthquakes in the region, so this wasn't likely the earth cracking over a fault line.

The engineer estimates that the land may have moved up to about 11,000 miles according to a post by SNS Outfitters and Guides.

"It truly is incredible to look at, a canyon that formed almost overnight," SNS Outfitter and Guides said in the post, "a mountainside that seems to have suddenly collapsed."

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The largest offshore wind farm in the world will soon grace the Irish Sea.

DONG Energy announced it will build what they are calling the “Walney Extension Offshore Wind Farm,” which will produce 660 megawatts of electricity.

In combination with its other sites, the company will be responsible for providing power to a whopping 12.5 million Europeans.

The project is expected be be complete in 2018, at which point it will top the London Array, another DONG offshore wind farm, by 30 megawatts.

“Walney Extension will deliver clean electricity to more than 460,000 UK homes and I’m very pleased that we can now start construction of what will be the world’s biggest offshore wind farm when completed,” said Samuel Leupold, executive vice president for DONG Energy, in a statement on the company’s website. 

The site will be located about 12 miles off the west coast of Britain, nearby other DONG projects.

Two different turbines will be utilized: 47 Siemens 7-megawatt units and 40 8-megawatt turbines from MHI Vestas Offshore Wind. The power coming from these turbines will be set at a fixed price for consumers during the first 15 years.

As Bloomberg reported, Britain’s ambitious emissions goals have been at odds with its recent cuts to renewable energy, but offshore wind has been largely reprieved:

"The UK is banking on offshore wind to help meet its goals to reduce carbon emissions and boost its use of renewable power sources. It’s been largely spared from subsidy cuts that have affected other clean technologies since Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative Party won the general election in May. Since then, the government has announced plans to pare assistance to onshore wind, solar and biomass projects, while saying it’s committed to meeting Britain’s binding targets."

While wind energy is considered one of the most viable clean energy sources, it is not a solution devoid of environmental concerns. Some scientists say noise from construction and production of the sites disrupts local habitats and can even kill marine life. Moreover, turbines are known to impede bird migration routes and cause fatal collisions with the rotors.

However, as The Christian Science Monitor reported in July, offshore wind farms in the North Sea near Britain actually seem to be improving the habitat for seals:  

"When rooted in the ocean floor, a wind farm can become a sort of artificial reef, a home for invertebrate animals. These animals attract predators, which in turn attract species higher up the food chain, eventually leading to the fish that seals eat."

Aside from environmental factors, this latest project could have substantial economic benefits. British manufacturers and vessels will be responsible for producing and transporting turbine blades, some of the foundations and cable installation, which Leupold said will help spur local job creation.

“British offshore wind has seen phenomenal growth in recent years. A prerequisite for long term growth in the industry is, that offshore wind eventually can compete on costs with other energy technologies,” he said, adding this new project with help bring costs down and expand the supply chain in Britain.

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A massive crack that appeared on a ranch in the southern foothills of the Bighorn Mountains is generating a lot of buzz on social media.

The crack — nicknamed "the gash"— is about 50 yards wide and 750 yards long, or about the length of six football fields, according to SNS Outfitters & Guides, who first spotted it in early October and posted in on their website.

Take a look:

This is how SNS described it:

"Here's what we know so far: we have two outfitted camps on this ranch. We hunt here every year and have been doing so for decades. Our guides first noticed the giant fissure in early October. We couldn't tell what had caused so much earth to suddenly move, but it certainly had not been there long."

But there's no cause for alarm. Experts say the crack formed via normal geological processes.

According to SNS, an engineer came to take a look, and found that water from a nearby spring was lubricating the cap rock. A spring running east-to-west may have made the ground slide north, he said.

SNS says the USGS assured them no seismic activity had been detected in the area, so the crack wasn't caused by an earthquake.

An unusually wet spring could have also saturated the ground and made it easier for the rock to slide, and gravity did the rest, Wyoming state geologist Tom Drean told Colorado's 9NEWS. These kinds of slides happen regularly in Wyoming, although they're typically smaller and happen in the spring, he added.

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NOW WATCH: The most breathtaking natural wonders in the US

Alberta's oil industry has long drawn the ire of environmentalists on both sides of the US-Canadian border. 

And in light of a fresh lawsuit in Nebraska, Transcanada, the company trying to build a pipeline from Alberta to Texas, has called for the US government to delay its review of the project.

Located deep underground and evenly mixed between sandy layers, Alberta's oil is a particularly sticky mixture of heavy crude and bitumen (semi-solid oil). 

Extracting the oil is an energy intensive process that involves stripping the topsoil and pumping a noxious mixture of chemicals into the ground to separate the oil from the surrounding sand. 

These chemicals are often not disposed of properly, contaminating groundwater and leaching the surrounding land of nutrients. In the process, they can also cause the wholesale destruction of important boreal forest and muskeg habitats. 

TransCanada, a Canadian energy company, has sought to build a pipeline — the Keystone XL — that will transport the heavy oil directly from Alberta's oil sands to thirsty refineries on the Gulf coast of Texas. 

The proposed pipeline's 1,700 mile path across the American midwest will traverse important habitat for many endangered species. If there's a spill, or any sort of issue with the pipeline, the environmental costs would be dire. 

Lots of people want cheap oil, but they don't want the pipeline running through their backyard. The highly publicized back-and-forth between Transcanada, and the governments of both the US and Canada have focussed on carefully deciding the safest and most politically expedient route for the pipeline.

Recently, the Nebraskan Supreme Court approved a route for the pipeline through the state, allowing Transcanada to take private land through eminent domain. The proposed path of the pipeline crosses the Ogalla Aquifer, a large source of freshwater for the state. 

Worries over contamination have galvanized local environmentalists and landowners alike. A grassroots organization of over 70 local landowners has brought a fresh lawsuit against Transcanada in order to re-open the debate about the proposed path of the pipeline, and force state officials in Nebraska to delay the decision-making process. 

Unlikely to win this fight, Transcanada made a plea for a ceasefire on Monday, asking the Obama administration to suspend its review of the controversial infrastructure project that would bring heavy oil from Alberta to US refineries.

Calgary-based TransCanada Corp said it had sent a letter to the US State Department to suspend its application while the company goes through a state review process in Nebraska.

"We are asking State (Department) to pause its review of Keystone XL based on the fact that we have applied to the Nebraska Public Service Commission for approval of its preferred route in the state," TransCanada Chief Executive Officer Russ Girling said in a statement.

The news comes shortly after the White House on Monday said it still expects Obama will make a decision on whether to grant a permit to TransCanada Corp for the Keystone XL crude oil pipeline before he leaves office in January 2017.

Asked if TransCanada was asking for a delay because of concerns Obama may block the pipeline, TransCanada spokesman Mark Cooper said the company was not going to speculate on what the decision may be or when it may come.

The Keystone project faced headwinds both from a U.S. administration seen as favoring environmental protection over expanding oil pipelines and U.S. crude prices that have plunged to $50 a barrel from almost $150 when the project filed a federal application in 2008.

The TransCanada Corp pipeline would carry 830,000 barrels a day of mostly Canadian oil sands crude to Nebraska en route to refineries and ports along the U.S. Gulf Coast.

The pipeline has become a symbol in the larger political fight over climate change, with environmental groups arguing that stopping its construction will force producers to keep much of the heavy oil in the ground.

“TransCanada rightly sensed that the tide has turned against Keystone XL and now they’re trying to delay any decision in the hopes that they can get a Republican president to approve it,” said Valerie Love with the environmental group Center for Biological Diversity, who urged Obama to reject the appeal for more time.

(Reporting by Bruce Wallace; Additional reporting by; Nia Williams and Euan Rocha; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

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NOW WATCH: Stunning drone video captures the beauty of Canada's oil province

The science team at Tech Insider is looking for paid editorial interns to join our ranks starting this winter.

Our interns don't spend their days making coffee runs or organizing closets.

Tech Insider interns are a vital part of our team and do meaningful work: researching, writing, pitching, and producing posts. They also help us tackle breaking news and get to cover events if the opportunity is right.

We prize self-starters who can find their own stories, pitch them, and write quickly, cleanly, and concisely.

Our style is smart, conversational, exciting, and geared toward non-scientists. Attention to detail and efficiency in a quick-turnaround environment are required. We also prize agility in and enthusiasm for tackling wildly divergent topics, an eye for strong visuals, and a knack for framing stories in enticing ways.

Our aim is to help readers appreciate, understand, and use science and innovations that surround us — be they in everyday life, a cryptic study, or trending news.

Internships are only available at our New York City headquarters (150 Fifth Avenue) and run for six months. Interns are encouraged to work up to 40 hours a week. Many of our current full-time staff started out as interns here.

Consider applying if:

• You have excellent writing and copy editing skills.
• You can decipher complex or esoteric developments and make science exciting and surprising for a general audience.
• You generate more story ideas than you know what to do with, and find yourself writing day-two stories for the web on day one.
• You can bring unique context to trending news and make those stories your own.
• Multitasking is your middle name, and you thrive in a fast-paced, collaborative setting.
• You're interminably wowed by human ingenuity and obsessed with the future.

After-hours duties may also include helping retain our Science Friday trivia champion title over rival publications.

Apply here with a one-page resume, three relevant clips, and a one-page cover letter telling us what excites you about working for Tech Insider.

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NOW WATCH: Here's Exactly What A Hiring Manager Scans For When Reviewing Resumes

A surprising new NASA study actually has some positive news for Antarctica: The continent is gaining ice. 

The new study directly contradicts a 2013 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report that concluded that the Antarctic ice sheet was shrinking and contributing to global sea level rise.

Though this study is great news, it's not quite the bombshell that climate change deniers may have hoped to find.

Here's the bad news: The process may reverse in a few decades, the scientists say. Plus, the finding means that the rise in sea level that scientists once attributed to Antarctic shrinking must be coming from somewhere else. 

To conduct their study, the scientists, led by Jay Zwally, a glaciologist with the NASA Goddard Space Flight center in Maryland, measured small changes in the height of the pack ice over large areas using satellite-based laser altimeters.

In areas where snowfall accumulation is greater than the ice flow downward and outward to the ocean, the surface height increases and thus the ice sheet mass grows. 

Using this increase in height as a proxy for mass gain, they found that the ice pack in the East and the interior of West Antarctica is actually increasing, rather than decreasing as previous studies reported.

The ice is increasing at a rate faster than glacial melt and discharge is occuring in other, warmer parts of Antarctica, for an overall net gain in ice mass.

But Zwally cautions that the process could reverse in a few decades.

"If the losses of the Antarctic Peninsula and parts of West Antarctica continue to increase at the same rate they’ve been increasing for the last two decades," Zwally noted in a NASA press release, "the losses will catch up with the long-term gain in East Antarctica in 20 or 30 years — I don’t think there will be enough snowfall increase to offset these losses."

At the moment, the rate at which accumulated snowfall is boosting ice mass in East Antarctica is exceeding the rate at which ice is melting on other parts of the continent. But if the snowfall accumulation rate slows down and the climate keeps warming, Antarctica will quickly tip into a situation where it’s losing ice more rapidly than it’s gaining it.

Here's a map showing the rates of mass changes from 2003-2008 over Antarctica:

In order to distinguish whether the Antarctic ice mass gain was a long-term trend, or just the result of recent snowfall, Zwally and his team compared historical data with their more recent altimetry data.

The data show that a long, 10,000-year process of snowfall accumulation that began at the end of the last Ice Age has been consistently thickening the ice by an average of 1.7 centimeters per year. Over the course of their study period, from 1992 to 2008, the team calculated the mass gain remained steady at 200 billion tons per year, offsetting the 65 billion tons per year lost due to glacial melt.

This increase in ice is actually contributing to a reduction in sea level by 0.23 milimeters per year. But, that doesn't mean that the sea level rise attributed to Antarctica in the 2013 IPCC report doesn't exist — it's just coming from somewhere else. 

NASA is planning to continue monitoring the mass balance of the Antarctic ice sheet with a new project set to commence in 2018, so scientists can further understand how the ice is changing and what factors control these processes. 

SEE ALSO: Animated map of what Earth would look like if all the ice melted

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NOW WATCH: NASA says Antarctica is gaining ice

As humans warm the planet through the emission of heat-trapping gases, we expect weather to change.

Some ways it has changed are clear and measurable. For instance, heat waves and droughts are setting in faster and are more severe. We are also seeing more intense precipitation events that lead to more flooding.

But what about storms?

We know that hotter ocean waters add fuel to storms, particularly typhoons and hurricanes. That tends to make them stronger. Also, the added heat increases rainfall and the rising seas make us more vulnerable to storm surge. But it isn’t this straightforward.

Hurricanes need the right conditions to form and there is evidence that those conditions will become less likely. So, the general rule of thumb is, there may be fewer typhoons and hurricanes, but they will become more intense.

But that is the future, what has the past looked like? A recent paper has just been published which looks at this issue. Now, with good satellite and measurement coverage, we have a good sense of past storm trends.

Are we in a hurricane drought or are there plenty of storms occurring now? To answer this, it depends on how you define hurricanes and their strength. Currently, storms are binned to 5 knot wind speeds (grouped together). However, the wind speeds are uncertain to 10 knots. So there is a good deal of uncertainty of the actual strength of a specific storm.

If we look at landfall hurricanes in the USA, the last major hurricane was Wilma in 2005. That hurricane had winds above 96 knots. The 9-year drought for hurricanes of this strength is pretty rare.

But what if we define major hurricanes differently, using different thresholds? Then the drought becomes less significant. Furthermore, with an even better measure (pressure) the current hurricane drought disappears because Irene and Sandy made landfall in 2011 and 2012 and had very low pressures.

So, what measure do we use, wind speed or pressure? And what levels do we define as major events in our categories? It seems that using the current somewhat arbitrary wind speed is not wise. Under that scheme, both Sandy and Irene are not significant events, even though they caused almost $100 billion in damages.

The authors of the above-referenced paper write that even though both pressure and velocity differ in what they represent, both are valid metrics for the intensity of a hurricane. In fact, pressure is usually a better indicator of economic damage than is velocity.

As a further note, while the wind speed is a measure of the air velocity of a hurricane, the square of the speed gives you information about the pressure exerted on surfaces, and the cube of the speed gives you the power of the wind flow.

In fact, when I design wind turbines, I routinely use wind speed cubed to estimate available wind power. The term Accumulated Cyclone Energy is a measure of the pressure exerted by wind (velocity squared). The term Power Dissipation Index is a measure of the flow power of wind (velocity cubed).

To me, (I study wind power and fluid mechanics but I am not a hurricane expert), the best measure of a hurricane/cyclone’s strength would be the power dissipation along with measures of the size of the storm and the precipitation.

All of these factors work together to lead to economic damage. Perhaps the central pressure in the storm is the best single indicator of these multiple parameters. The authors give convincing evidence that pressure is a better yardstick than just velocity.

When we use their yardstick, we see a continuous population of land-fall storms in the USA. The so-called “drought” has disappeared.

This article originally appeared on guardian.co.uk.

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The White House said on Tuesday it would be "unusual" to pause the U.S. government's years-long review process of TransCanada Corp's proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline.

TransCanada has asked the U.S. government to suspend review of the $8 billion project that sparked a political war between environmentalists and the oil industry.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the State Department was still considering the Canadian company's request "to determine exactly what the request is, and what is motivating that request."

"But given how long it's taken ... it seems unusual to me to suggest that somehow it should be paused yet again," Earnest said at a news briefing.

The 1,200-mile (2,000-km) pipeline would help link Canada's heavy oil fields to U.S. refineries.

If granted by the U.S. State Department, the delay would likely take the decision from Democratic President Barack Obama and put it into the hands of the winner of the November 2016 presidential election.

"There's reason to believe there may be politics at play here," Earnest said.

He said Obama has tried to ensure that the eventual decision is based on the merits of the project, as determined by experts.

(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Mohammad Zargham)

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Oil giant Shell is "blatantly false" when it claims it is cleaning up spills that continue to destroy the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Nigerians, Amnesty International said Tuesday.

A new report quotes one contractor as saying his clean-up was "a cover-up" that involved simply turning over earth to let spilled oil dry for a few days, then returning the still-contaminated soil to the ground.

Shell Nigeria rejected Amnesty's charges and said it remains "committed to cleaning up all spills" including in Ogoniland, where community protests forced Shell out in 1993. Shell still has pipelines carrying oil in that part of Nigeria's southern Niger Delta.

Oil pollution that poisons fishing creeks, mangrove swamps and farmlands along with people's livelihoods and health is a decades-old scandal in Nigeria, where endemic corruption has allowed only an elite few to benefit from oil.

Shell blames most spills on rampant oil theft.

But Amnesty said one Ogoni area still is blighted from a 1970 spill and fire, though Shell said it was cleaned up 40 years ago and again after a 2011 U.N. investigation found massive contamination remained.

Amnesty said Shell Nigeria does not use the same standards as its Dutch parent company.

It also charged "the almost complete failure of the Nigerian government to regulate the oil industry and protect the rights of the people." Nigeria's government is the majority owner of Shell Nigeria.

Shell's failure "is leaving thousands of women, men and children exposed to contaminated land, water and air, in some cases for years or even decades," said Mark Dummett, an Amnesty International researcher.

Nigeria's new President Muhammadu Buhari has promised a new body will oversee cleanups and will protect the environment. Buhari also has promised to halt corruption.

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