news 2013

An international team of researchers led by Ralf Tappert, University of Innsbruck, reconstructed the composition of the Earth's atmosphere of the last 220 million years by analyzing modern and fossil plant resins. The results suggest that atmospheric oxygen was considerably lower in the Earth's geological past than previously assumed.

As an international team of researchers under major cooperation of the Universitiy of Innsbruck reports, extreme weather events play an important part in the global carbon balance. Their They resume a self-reinforcing effect between extreme weather events and climate change. Photo: Michael Bahn and his research group carry out field experiments in the Tyrolean Stubaital: They simulate drought periods on defined areas.

Greenhouse gases emitted today will cause sea level to rise for centuries to come. Each degree of global warming is likely to raise sea level by more than 2 meters in the future, a study now published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows. While thermal expansion of the ocean and melting mountain glaciers are the most important factors causing sea-level change today, the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets will be the dominant contributors within the next two millennia, according to the findings.