Ship expedition for the first time investigates “new” pollutants in the Indian Ocean. On July 16, 2024, the German research vessel SONNE starts a three-week expedition to previously little-studied regions of the Indian Ocean between Singapore and Mauritius under the lead of the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde (IOW). The aim is to determine the extent of human-induced environmental stress and, for the first time, to enable a risk assessment for this region. Newly emerging pollutants such as…
… at depths of 3,000 meters off Svalbard. Study of the Jøtul hydrothermal field, discovered in 2022, has now been published. Hydrothermal vents can be found around the world at the junctions of drifting tectonic plates. But there are many hydrothermal fields still to be discovered. During a 2022 expedition of the MARIA S. MERIAN, the first field of hydrothermal vents on the 500-kilometer-long Knipovich Ridge off the coast of Svalbard was discovered. An international team of researchers from Bremen…
METEOR expedition M201 investigates the volcanic history of unusual volcanoes in Iceland’s Vesturdjúp Basin. With around 130 volcanoes, Iceland is the largest volcanic island in the world. Until now, researchers assumed that most volcanic activity on Iceland was limited to the flank zones and the seabed along the Kolbeinsey and Reykjanes ridges. New seabed maps indicate further underwater volcanoes to the west of Iceland, in the so-called Vesterdjúp Basin, whose conical shape seems geologically suspicious. Expedition M201 with the research…
With MoonIndex, researchers from Constructor University and the National Institute of Astrophysics in Italy have developed an open-source software that for the first time gives scientists access to a free tool that creates science-ready products from the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) to study the composition of the lunar surface. At the same time, it enables a wide range of applications. An article now published in the specialist journal ‘Earth and Space Science’ describes the research success. ‘Spectral indices are a…
UC Santa Cruz team led research using computer simulations based on Earth’s seafloor ecosystems. We’ve all seen the surreal footage in nature documentaries showing hydrothermal vents on the frigid ocean floor—bellowing black plumes of super-hot water—and the life forms that cling to them. Now, a new study by UC Santa Cruz researchers suggests that lower-temperature vents, which are common across Earth’s seafloor, may help to create life-supporting conditions on “ocean worlds” in our solar system. Ocean worlds are planets and…
Mobile measuring devices enable the research of atmospheric processes in higher air layers that have not yet been recorded by conventional measuring stations on the ground. The airborne flight systems therefore make an important contribution to research into the causes of climate change in the Arctic. A team of German researchers has combined two of these methods over Spitsbergen in recent weeks: Simultaneous measurements of meteorological parameters and minute aerosol particles were carried out using a tethered balloon system and…
KIT researchers are investigating climate change’s impact on groundwater resources and its follow-on effects. Earth’s climate system is heating up due to the atmosphere’s increased concentration of greenhouse gases, which limits the amount of heat that can be radiated away. The oceans absorb a substantial fraction of this heat, but soil and groundwater also act as heat sinks. However, little is known thus far about the effects Earth’s surface warming has on groundwater over space and time. “To close this…
Knowing how much snow there is at a location in winter is important for project planners of photovoltaic systems in mountain regions. This helps them to avoid planning errors that lead to damage to the modules and substructure. SLF experts provide detailed data, which they collect from the air. Text: Jochen Bettzieche-Keber This text was automatically translated. At the end of January 2024 on the Bernina Pass: the orange drone rises vertically into the air, then lies flat and begins…
…as a gauge of the coming sea level rise. Ice-Ocean Interactions: The History Book of West Antarctica’s Climate. Of all the polar regions, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is the most sensitive to a warming ocean due to climate change. This is already causing a long-term ice sheet melt, and the question is how fast that melting process will take place. It may be that this enormous mass of ice already passed the tipping point, with irreversibly fast melting. This…
A new USC study provides clear evidence that the Earth’s inner core began to decrease its speed around 2010. USC scientists have proven that the Earth’s inner core is backtracking — slowing down — in relation to the planet’s surface, as shown in new research published Wednesday in Nature. Movement of the inner core has been debated by the scientific community for two decades, with some research indicating that the inner core rotates faster than the planet’s surface. The new USC…
Researchers find that air turbulence in earth’s thermosphere is governed by the same principles as those in the troposphere. In a paper published in Geophysical Research Letters, researchers have discovered that the turbulence in the thermosphere exhibits the same physical laws as the wind in the lower atmosphere. Furthermore, wind in the thermosphere predominantly rotates in a cyclonic direction, in that it rotates counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere. The findings reveal a new unified…
… comes into sharper focus. Giant earthquakes and tsunamis have hit the western U.S. and Canada―and almost certainly will again. Off the coasts of southern British Columbia, Washington, Oregon and northern California lies a 600 mile-long strip where the Pacific Ocean floor is slowly diving eastward under North America. This area, called the Cascadia Subduction Zone, hosts a megathrust fault, a place where tectonic plates move against each other in a highly dangerous way. The plates can periodically lock up…
The findings should help scientists refine predictions of future sea-level rise. As they seep and calve into the sea, melting glaciers and ice sheets are raising global water levels at unprecedented rates. To predict and prepare for future sea-level rise, scientists need a better understanding of how fast glaciers melt and what influences their flow. Now, a study by MIT scientists offers a new picture of glacier flow, based on microscopic deformation in the ice. The results show that a glacier’s flow depends strongly on…
SLF researchers investigate in deep holes whether satellite data accurately show snowmelt to improve hydrological discharge forecasts. Francesca Carletti takes a hammer to the ground. She drives the water probe deeper and deeper into the snow to determine the snow water equivalent (SWE, see box). This is just one of the many data she is measuring on this sunny day in March at the Weissfluhjoch test site near Davos. Her goal: to develop a strategy that more accurately indicates the…
Not a climate tipping element, but nevertheless far-reaching impacts. AWI experts find no evidence of a global climate tipping point in connection with permafrost; rather, permafrost soils are thawing in step with global warming. Permafrost soils store large quantities of organic carbon and are often portrayed as a critical tipping element in the Earth system. Based on the scientific data currently available, the image is deceptive, as an international team led by the AWI has shown. According to their findings,…
Researchers at European XFEL in Schenefeld near Hamburg have taken a closer look at the formation of the first crystallisation of nuclei in supercooled liquids. They found: The formation starts much later than previously assumed. The findings could help to better understand the creation of ice in clouds in the future and to describe some processes inside the Earth more precisely. Every child knows that water freezes into ice when it gets icy cold. For water, this normally happens below…
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