Earth scientists identify pivotal step in the Earth’s later climate development. Approximately 700,000 years ago, a “warm ice age” permanently changed the climate cycles on Earth. Contemporaneous with this exceptionally warm and moist period, the polar glaciers greatly expanded. A European research team including Earth scientists from Heidelberg University used recently acquired geological data in combination with computer simulations to identify this seemingly paradoxical connection. According to the researchers, this profound change in the Earth’s climate was responsible for the…
Leipzig University presents LexCube 3D visualisation. Researchers from Leipzig University will present an interactive digital cube that can visualise climate data from anywhere in the world in space and time at the Building Bridges for the Next Generations conference on 16 May. As a freely accessible website, LexCube makes terabytes of data available to everyone. The programming and implementation of the data cube is the PhD project of Maximilian Söchting, supervised by Professors Gerik Scheuermann and Miguel Mahecha. Climate change…
An international team including Simon Steidle from the Quaternary Research Group at the Department of Geology at the University of Innsbruck has reconstructed the evolution of groundwater in the Great Basin, USA – one of the driest regions on Earth – up to 350,000 years into the past with unprecedented accuracy. The results shed new light on the effects of climate change on water supply and provide important insights for the sustainable use of groundwater resources. The study was published…
… which could be precursor to huge freshwater release. A new study provides the first observational evidence of the stabilization of the anti-cyclonic Beaufort Gyre, which is the dominant circulation of the Canada Basin and the largest freshwater reservoir in the Arctic Ocean. The study uses a newly extended record of “dynamic ocean topography” satellite data from 2011-2019 provided by two of the co-authors, along with an extensive hydrographic dataset from 2003-2019, to quantify the changing sea surface height of…
Surprising results from historic study suggest the shrinking West Antarctic Ice Sheet, a major threat to global sea level rise, was smaller and more dynamic in recent geologic past than previously thought. Subglacial lakes that never see the light of day are among the least accessible frontiers of science, brimming with more tales yet untold than even the planets of our solar system. One thing seems certain: where there is water, there is life — even if said water is…
With the help of neural networks, the complexity of the layer around the Earth can be reconstructed much better than before. This is important for satellite navigation, among other things. The ionosphere – the region of geospace spanning from 60 to 1000 kilometres above the Earth – impairs the propagation of radio signals from global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) with its electrically charged particles. This is a problem for the ever higher precision required by these systems – both in…
New NASA InSight research reveals that Mars has a liquid core rich in sulfur and oxygen, leading to new clues about how terrestrial planets form, evolve and potentially sustain life. Scientists observed seismic waves traveling through Mars’ core for the first time and confirmed model predictions of the core’s composition. An international research team—which included University of Maryland seismologists—used seismic data acquired by the NASA InSight lander to directly measure properties of Mars’s core, finding a completely liquid iron-alloy core…
Through global-scale seismic imaging of Earth’s interior, research led by The University of Alabama revealed a layer between the core and the mantle that is likely a dense, yet thin, sunk ocean floor, according to results published today in Science Advances. Seen only in isolated patches previously, the latest data suggests this layer of ancient ocean floor may cover the core-mantle boundary. Subducted underground long ago as the Earth’s plates shifted, this ultra-low velocity zone, or ULVZ, is denser than…
Can nuclear physics improve the prediction of earthquakes? That is the goal of the European research project artEmis, in which the GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung is participating together with twelve other institutes. Within the framework of artEmis, which is supported by an EU grant (Euratom) of two million euros until 2027, the foundation for a reliable early warning system for earthquakes is to be laid. A network of sensors measuring radon levels and other parameters in selected water sources in…
Lunar surface water has attracted much attention due to its potential for in-situ resource utilization by future lunar exploration missions and other space missions. Now, a research group led by Prof. HU Sen from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics (IGG) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has found that impact glass beads in Chang’e-5 (CE5) lunar soils contain some water. Detailed studies show that these glass beads are likely a new water reservoir on the Moon, recording the dynamic…
Institute of Geosciences at Kiel University hosts the 15th International Conference on Archaeological Prospecting (ICAP2023) Spades, trowels and brushes are the classic tools of archaeology. To this day, they are indispensable for excavations. But in the meantime, high-precision prospection technologies such as georadar, magnetic field measurements, seismics or lidar lasers have become at least as important for the study of past epochs. Not only do they help to prepare excavations, but with additional data they themselves considerably expand our knowledge…
Volcanic relics scattered throughout the Australian landscape are a map of the northward movement of the continent over a ‘hotspot’ inside the Earth, during the last 35 million years. University of Queensland researchers Dr Tamini Tapu, Associate Professor Teresa Ubide and Professor Paulo Vasconcelos discovered how these relics reveal the inner structure of the Australian volcanoes became increasingly complex as the hotspot’s magma output decreased. Dr Al-Tamini Tapu, whose PhD project at UQ’s School of Earth and Environmental Sciences formed the basis of this study, said the…
The first study into the biological response of the upper ocean in the wake of South Pacific cyclones could help predict the impact of warming ocean temperatures, New Zealand researchers believe. Dr Pete Russell, of the University of Otago’s Department of Marine Science, and Dr Christopher Horvat, of the University of Auckland’s Department of Physics, have published a study on the oceanic biological effect of Cyclone Oma which passed near Vanuatu in 2019. “While Oma was a relatively benign cyclone,…
Underwater waves deep below the ocean’s surface – some as tall as 500 metres – play an important role in how the ocean stores heat and carbon, according to new research. An international team of researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford, and the University of California San Diego, quantified the effect of these waves and other forms of underwater turbulence in the Atlantic Ocean and found that their importance is not being accurately reflected in…
Not melted meteorites, according to scientists. WHOI is part of a collaborative study, offering new insight into the extraterrestrial origins of our lakes, rivers and oceans. Water makes up 71% of Earth’s surface, but no one knows how or when such massive quantities of water arrived on Earth. A new study published today in the journal Nature brings scientists one step closer to answering that question. Sune Nielsen, associate scientist, Geology & Geophysics at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) co-authored the study,…
– and avert a global supply crisis. Helium – essential for many medical and industrial processes – is in critically short supply worldwide. Production is also associated with significant carbon emissions, contributing to climate change. This study provides a new concept in gas field formation to explain why, in rare places, helium accumulates naturally in high concentrations just beneath the Earth’s surface. The findings could help locate new reservoirs of carbon-free helium – and potentially also hydrogen. Research led by…
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