climate change tagged posts

Heat-related Cardiovascular Deaths in the U.S. may more than Double within Decades

Graphic showing an excessive heat warning with the temperature at 101 and says it feels likes 110 with the heat index.
copyright American Heart Association 2023

In nationwide projections, elderly and Black adults are most at risk for cardiovascular death due to extreme heat, finds a new study. Cardiovascular deaths from extreme heat in the U.S. may more than double by the middle of the century. Without reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, that number could even triple, according to new research published today in the American Heart Association’s flagship journal Circulation.

“Climate change and its many manifestations will play an increasingly important role on the health of communities around the world in the coming decades, ” said lead study author Sameed Khatana, M.D., M.P.H...

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Why the day is 24 hours long: Astrophysicists reveal why Earth’s Day was a Constant 19.5 hours for over a Billion Years

The earth with a thermometer beside it - temps rising!
The rise in temperature of our atmosphere due to global warming has the potential to increase the atmospheric solar tides and slow the Earth’s rotation. Image: Â© iStock | narith_2527.

Result sheds new light on how climate change will affect the length of the day and validity of climate modelling tools. A team of astrophysicists at the University of Toronto (U of T) has revealed how the slow and steady lengthening of Earth’s day caused by the tidal pull of the moon was halted for over a billion years.

They show that from approximately two billion years ago until 600 million years ago, an atmospheric tide driven by the sun countered the effect of the moon, keeping Earth’s rotational rate steady and the length of day at a constant 19.5 hours.

Without this billion-year pause in th...

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This AI Tool lets you visualize how Climate Change could affect your Home

climate change
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

A new tool with cutting-edge image recognition AI lets you visualize the future effects of climate change on any place in the world—including your own home.

The project, titled “This Climate Does Not Exist,” lets you enter the address of your current home or your favorite travel destination and see what it could look like years later once climate change has taken its toll.

You can see how Disneyland will look like covered in smog, the way extreme smog blanketed Beijing in 2014. You can see what your childhood home will look like after it is flooded by rising sea levels, the way floods devastated Indonesia in 2020 after widespread deforestation.

Extreme weather events due to climate change are already impacting corners of the globe.

In a separate ...

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Carbon Dioxide Reactor makes ‘Martian Fuel’

Chemical engineering equipment on a lab bench.

A gas station on Mars? Chemical engineers envision the possibilities.

Engineers at the University of Cincinnati are developing new ways to convert greenhouse gases to fuel to address climate change and get astronauts home from Mars.

UC College of Engineering and Applied Science assistant professor Jingjie Wu and his students used a carbon catalyst in a reactor to convert carbon dioxide into methane. Known as the “Sabatier reaction” from the late French chemist Paul Sabatier, it’s a process the International Space Station uses to scrub the carbon dioxide from air the astronauts breathe and generate rocket fuel to keep the station in high orbit.

But Wu is thinking much bigger.

The Martian atmosphere is composed almost entirely of carbon dioxide...

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