wire - news in brief

Capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and storing it either in recycled concrete aggregate or in geological reservoirs in Iceland is not only technically feasible, but also has a positive carbon footprint.

With increasing temperatures, more heatwaves and less snowfall, glacier melt is accelerating. Whether we will still have water reserves in the form of frozen ice by 2100 depends heavily on efforts to contain the climate crisis.

SLF biologist Christian Rixen writes about his expedition to Greenland in the footsteps of historical botanists - and climate change.

SLF biologist Christian Rixen writes about his expedition to Greenland in the footsteps of historical botanists - and climate change.

GreenFjord is a four-year research program intended to investigate how climate change is affecting ecosystems in southern Greenland.

GreenFjord is a four-year research program intended to investigate how climate change is affecting ecosystems in southern Greenland.

To prevent irreversible and damaging changes to the Earth's climate system, we need to remove excess (man-made) CO2 from the atmosphere.

Along the coast of East Greenland lie some of the most untouched fjords and glacier landscapes in the world.

Using applied mathematics, Yunan Yang finds solutions to the inverse problems that arise in seismology, weather forecasts, and machine learning.

Heavier rain, longer droughts, melting glaciers: climate change has a dramatic impact on the global water cycle.

Yesterday, Swiss President Alain Berset toured the Carbfix plant in Iceland and visited the facilities where the pilot project "DemoUpCARMA" is implemented.

ETH Zurich researcher Luca Dal Zilio offers an insightful summary of the recent earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, shedding light on the complex nature of this event.

Manuela Brunner leads the new Hydrology & Climate Impacts in Mountain Regions research group at the WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF.

To build awareness about the importance of oceans, Sailowtech, a student association, has launched a project to develop low-tech methods for collecting data at sea.

The Swiss Seismological Service at ETH Zurich has just introduced the first seismic risk model for Switzerland.

Atmospheric chemist Thomas Peter retired at the end of January. A profile of a man who taught us about the properties and processes of suspended particles and helped shape the second-largest department at ETH Zurich.

The snowfall level is rising, and the amount of snow falling - if any - is less than usual. As a result, summer and autumn droughts are becoming more frequent.

One of the greatest unknowns in climate change is the question of how particulate matter affects clouds. Yu Wang is using machine learning and satellite data to investigate the surprising role of these tiny particles in the atmosphere. In autumn 2014, Iceland's Holuhraun volcano erupted, spewing daily about 120,000 tonnes of sulphur dioxide into the air at its peak.

Christophe Girot brought landscape architecture into the digital world and taught a generation of architects how to think on a larger scale.

Life has existed on Earth for billions of years. Stabilising mechanisms have helped our planet remain habitable to this day.

The lander's team has tried to contact the spacecraft twice without response, leading them to conclude it has run out of energy. NASA's InSight mission has ended after four years of collecting unique science on Mars.

Internationally recognized atmospheric scientist and Distinguished Senior Researcher at Empa: Dominik Brunner is a scientist who has explored his subject area from many angles - with a weatherproof motivation and curiosity that drives him to this day.

Terrestrial and aquatic food webs respond differently to changes in the environment. Understanding these differences is fundamental to identifying the species most important to an ecosystem and to effectively protecting biodiversity. This is shown by a study led by the research institutes Eawag and WSL and published in the journal Nature Communications .

Belgian-born Wim Malfait is a trained geologist who once searched for gold on behalf of a mining company. Today, he heads the Building Energy Materials and Components laboratory, which develops, among other things, super-lightweight aerogel insulation materials and materials with heat exchange capabilities.

2022 was a disastrous year for Swiss glaciers: all ice melt records were smashed by the great dearth of snow in winter and continuous heatwaves in summer.

Of over a thousand lakes studied worldwide, about one in ten shows strange behaviour. In general, there is an increasing tendency for aquatic ecosystems to tip over.

In a four-year field research program led by EPFL, in association with several other Swiss institutions, scientists will aim to understand the ecosystem of Greenlandic fjords in the context of a changing climate.

A team of researchers of the University of Bern supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation drilled a borehole into the Bernese subsoil.

According to an EPFL study, if we take immediate measures to reduce CO2 emissions, we could limit the rise in the temperature of Swiss rivers to 1°C between now and 2090 without drastically affecting their discharge.

An international research team succeeded in identifying global factors that explain the diversity of form and function in plants. Led by the University of Zurich, the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena and the University of Leipzig, the researchers collected and analyzed plant data from around the world.

Scientists have studied two mechanisms that can help bring oxygen to the depths of a lake - essential for preserving the lake's ecosystem.

Switzerland may soon be facing a shortage of railway ballast. ETH geologists are heading into the wilds to track down new sources of crushed rocks.

Switzerland has considerable capacity for carbon storage and a bright future in shallow geothermal energy. These are the two main findings presented in Innosuisse's final report on the 2013-2020 Energy Funding Programme, in the chapter on geo-energy. Lyesse Laloui, a full professor in civil engineering at EPFL, is the chapter's author and the head of a research group on this topic.

Norway experiences dangerous landslides due to its clay-rich soil. For her Master's thesis in civil engineering at EPFL, Mathilde Metral outlined steps that the country's geotechnical engineers can take to improve the predictive computer model they're currently developing. The heavy rains that sweep across Europe with growing frequency can be particularly damaging in Norway, where the clay-rich soil is susceptible to landslides.

Scientists at EPFL and the WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF have issued recommendations for what type of renewable energy should be produced in Switzerland's various regions, to help achieve the country's goals of carbon neutrality and energy self-sufficiency. According to a new study, the most effective way for Switzerland to become carbon-neutral and energy self-sufficient is to install a combination of wind turbines and solar panels in its Alpine regions.

The most capable geotechnical research centrifuge in Europe is currently being built on the Hönggerberg campus.

A new simulation study shows that climate change risks significantly altering water temperature, ice cover and mixing of many Swiss lakes. Mid altitude lakes are especially under pressure, running the risk of completely losing ice cover and no longer fully mixing twice per year. Such a change would have fundamental consequences for the functioning of lake ecosystems.

Researchers from EPFL and ETH Zurich have conducted an original scientific study that puts forth a plausible explanation for the mysterious 1959 death of nine hikers in the Ural Mountains in the former Soviet Union.

Researchers from EPFL and ETH Zürich have conducted an original scientific study that puts forth a plausible explanation for the mysterious 1959 death of nine hikers in the Ural Mountains in the former Soviet Union.