A solar-powered airplane finished crossing the United States on Saturday, landing in New York City after flying over the Statue of Liberty during its historic bid to circle the globe, the project team said. The spindly, single-seat experimental aircraft, dubbed Solar Impulse 2, arrived at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport at about 4 a.m. local time after it took off about five hours beforehand at Lehigh Valley International Airport in Pennsylvania, the team reported on the airplane's website. Such a pleasure to land in New York! For the 14th time we celebrate sustainability," said the project's co-founder Andre Borschberg on Twitter after flying over the city and the Statue of Liberty during the 14th leg of the trip around the globe. The Swiss team flying the aircraft in a campaign to build support for clean energy technologies hopes eventually to complete its circumnavigation in Abu Dhabi, where the journey began in March 2015. The solar cr...
Populations of the most common bird species in Europe and the US are being altered by climate change
For the first time researchers showed climate to be having a similar, significant impact on bird populations in large, distant areas of the world. Their study used population-predicting models and three decades of field data, gathered by bird-watching volunteers. The findings are published in the journal Science. Led by Durham University scientists, the team developed models that related each species' habitat to long-term climate patterns. Using annual climate records - from 1980 to 2010 - these models were able to predict where a species had experienced an improvement or a decline in suitable climate."We then had this amazing data set collected by thousands of volunteers over decades - where people have gone out and counted birds across different countries in Europe and the United States," explained lead researcher Dr Stephen Willis. "We can use that to see to what extent our predictions match what people are finding on the ground." The outlook ...
