News - Earth and near-space system and environmental change

Snow melt runoff and groundwater abstraction are the most used form of fresh water globally, but the supply is diminishing throughout the world. The problem is expected to worsen with ongoing climate change. Professor Björn Klöve, Director of the Water Resources and Environmental Engineering unit at the University of Oulu, offers a scientific take on the issue.

Rivers in Arctic areas constitute a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions, and especially of carbon dioxide emissions. An international research project has found that the amount of carbon being released from rivers into the atmosphere is larger than previously estimated in the world’s most extensive peat regions in Western Siberia. As the climate warms up, the melting permafrost exposes the huge peat areas in the region, and the organic carbon within this peat can then escape into the atmosphere and accelerate climate change.

Researchers at the Universities of Oulu and Jyväskylä, together with their collaborators in the US and France, have shown that wild animals living in areas contaminated by radioactive material have a different community of bacteria within their digestive system (the gut microbiome) compared with animals that do not live in areas affected by an increase in radiation.

The spacecraft Cassini has identified complex organic substances in material that comes from Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus. This finding supports the idea that the water beneath the ice of this moon harbors conditions that might be suitable for life.

The 2018 Julius Bartels Medal is awarded to Ilya G. Usoskin, Professor of space physics at the University of Oulu, for his key contributions to long-term changes of cosmic rays and solar activity. Julius Bartels Medal is awarded by the European Geosciences Union EGU, which is the Europe’s premier geosciences union. It describes Usoskin as a founder of the space climate discipline.

Professor Ilya Usoskin’s article titled A history of solar activity over the millennia has become the most read Springer online publication in astronomy.  Published in March 2017, the article has been downloaded more than 7600 times.

An exceptional solar particle storm, the strongest during the last ten thousands of years, is able to perturb the polar stratosphere for at least one year and lead to winter temperature rises up to several degrees centigrade in the Northern Hemisphere. Knowing the effects of a worst-case scenario of such a hazardous event will help in risk evaluation for solar particle storms.