Any widespread thaw in Siberia’s permanently frozen ground could have severe consequences for climate change. Permafrost covers about 24% of the land surface of the northern hemisphere, and widespread melting could eventually trigger the release of hundreds of gigatonnes of carbon dioxide and methane, which would have a massive warming effect.

Extreme weather events have been on the rise in the last few decades, and man-made climate change may be causing them by interfering with global air-flow patterns, according to new research.

The Northern Hemisphere has taken a beating from extreme weather in recent years — the 2003 European heat wave, the 2010 Pakistan flood and the 2011 heat wave in the United States, for example. These events, in a general sense, are the result of the global movement of air.

Giant waves of air in the atmosphere normally even out the climate, by bringing warm air north from the tropics and cold air south from the Arctic. But a new study suggests these colossal waves have gotten stuck in place during extreme weather events.
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Here's how the waves may be getting trapped: The burning of fossil fuels causes more warming in the Arctic than in other latitudes, because the loss of snow and ice means heat gets absorbed by the darker ground, not reflected (as it would by the white snow). This warming lessens the temperature difference between the Arctic and northern latitudes like Europe. Since these differences drive air flow, a smaller difference means less air movement. Also, land areas warm and cool more easily than oceans. The result is an unnatural pattern of air flow that prevents the air waves from circulating over land.

For the last 20 years, Calleja has focused his attentions on species of mixotropic algae, versatile little buggers that generate electricity not only from the preferred source of most plant life—sunlight—but also by absorbing CO2: “the lamps are composed of a tube containing microalgae, as well as a battery… during the day, the batteries are charged via photosynthesis of the algae, using both solar power and CO2.

Half of the tower would contain residential units while the other half would contain growing space. Martella estimated that his farm could produce 500,000 thousand pounds of food every three months. The farm doesn’t require pesticides and could reuse the residents’ excrement as fertilizer, making environmentally friendly.

“The system I would want to use is to reclaim the grey water from the residential,” he explained. “That would actually feed into the building, be pumped to the top, through a series of aerobic reactions and charcoal filters the water would be cleansed, and that would feed the plants.”