News Archives

Penn State scientists join Pacific field campaign to study extreme rainfall

— posted on Sep 01, 2022 04:51 PM

The researchers are participating in the Prediction of Rainfall Extremes Campaign in the Pacific (PRECIP), a $6 million field campaign in Taiwan and Japan funded by the National Science Foundation to improve our understanding of the processes that produce extreme precipitation.

Carbon flow through inland and coastal waterways, implications for climate

— posted on Apr 07, 2022 11:11 AM

A recent study by an international team of scientists including Raymond Najjar, professor of oceanography at Penn State, found that the flows of carbon through the complex network of water bodies that connect land and ocean has often been overlooked and that ignoring these flows overestimates the carbon storage in terrestrial ecosystems and underestimates sedimentary and oceanic carbon storage.

Increased storminess may give rise to North Atlantic’s ‘cold blob.’

— posted on Feb 01, 2022 11:14 AM

While climate change is making much of the world warmer, temperatures in a subpolar region of the North Atlantic are getting cooler. A team of researchers report that changes in the wind pattern, among other factors, may be contributing to this “cold blob.”

The Chesapeake Bay is a ‘sink’ for plastic pollution

— posted on Oct 15, 2021 09:44 AM

The vast majority of plastic pollution that makes its way into the rivers of the Chesapeake Bay stays in and along local waters and is not, as researchers put it, “exported” to the ocean.

Ethane proxies for methane in oil and gas emissions

— posted on Jun 24, 2021 12:10 PM

Measuring ethane in the atmosphere shows that the amounts of methane going into the atmosphere from oil and gas wells and contributing to greenhouse warming is higher than suggested by the U.S. EPA.