A 178-year-old mystery surrounding one of the earliest recorded examples of space weather affecting technology has been solved by an international team led by Lancaster University.

The first practical electric telegraph networks were deployed during the 1840s, and as solar activity increased during the following years, Victorian telegraph operators began to experience unexplained electrical effects caused by geomagnetic disturbances.

Professor Jim Wild from Lancaster University with scientists from the British Geological Survey, Natural Resources Canada, Baylor University, RMIT University, and STFC RAL Space, re-examined a widely cited account of a train delay in Exeter that was reportedly caused by geomagnetic disturbance from the sun interfering with railway’s telegraph systems.

The event has previously been cited as potentially the earliest recorded example of space weather affecting human technology but the team’s research published in the American Geophysical Union journal Space Weather contradicts this assumption.

A latest study published in National Science Review has resolved inconsistencies in the responses of Western Pacific Subtropical High (WPSH) to greenhouse warming that arise from earlier definitions. The study reports a robust increase in WPSH’s area and intensity, its northwestward expansion, as well as in occurrence of stronger, longer-lasting record-breaking WPSH events under the past and future climate change scenario. These changes imply increasing risk exposure to monsoon rainfall extremes and heatwaves beyond historical experience for human society and communities.

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology and the Institut de Biologie Structurale have determined the structure and molecular characteristics of a remarkably heat-stable enzyme which turns nitrogen gas into ammonia. Their findings, published in Nature Communications, highlight new insights on how nature breaks the exceptionally strong N₂ triple bond to generate this important fertiliser and biofuel.

Heat waves and severe air pollution are increasingly occurring together across northern India, exposing millions of people to multiple environmental hazards at the same time. A new study finds that this growing threat is driven not only by local pollution sources, but also by climate-related changes in large-scale atmospheric circulation that favor both extreme heat and intensified particle pollution.

Irrigating U.S. crops prevents higher greenhouse gas emissions by avoiding land conversion, groundbreaking new research by Colorado State University shows.