destabilize

The earth beneath our major cities is heating up, morphing in ways that could damage buildings, bridges, and transport systems.Just ask any passenger sweltering on the London Underground or New York City subway, and they'll perspire telling you about how underground transport systems are spewing heat.As that heat diffuses into the ground, it's raising ground temperatures, which new research shows has shifted soils underneath one US city ever so slightly – but more than most buildings are built to withstand.Using the…

Biologist Steeve Côté has seen forest fires engulf parts of the province of Quebec before and he knew it would happen again. He just didn't expect it so soon.Not long after the biology professor at Université Laval and its centre for northern studies began his career, he witnessed the 1991 fires that destroyed parts of Quebec near Baie-Comeau on the North Shore.Back then, Environment Canada reported that upward of 350,000 hectares of forest had been destroyed. Côté says it has since recovered.Côté says fires of that…

Measurements being performed on the Maludam, a tropical peat-draining river in Malaysia. The typically dark color of the water indicates a high levels of dissolved carbon, which is why peat-draining rivers are also known as blackwater rivers. Credit: Alexandra Klemme, University of Bremen The Earth is warming up at an increasing rate. A contributing factor is carbon dioxide (CO2), a greenhouse gas, prompting researchers to…

Researchers at the University of Toronto in Canada have created simulations to observe how changes to a planet’s orbit could cause a chain reaction throughout the solar system. The researchers published their findings on the preprint server arXiv. The study shows that even an 0.1 percent change to Neptune’s orbit could completely destabilize our solar system. Luckily, it won’t happen in our lifetime. Even the smallest change to Neptune’s orbit could destabilize our solar system Image source:…