According to a new study that combined GPS, satellite data, and numerical modelling, ice loss from northeast Greenland could be six times greater by the end of the century than previously thought. Ice is continuously streaming off Greenland’s melting glaciers at an accelerating rate, dramatically increasing global sea levels. New results published [DATE] in Nature indicate that existing models have underestimated how much ice will be lost during the 21st century. Hence, its contribution to sea-level rise will be significantly…
Early crust on Mars may be more complex than previously thought—and it may even be similar to our own planet’s original crust. The Martian surface is uniformly basaltic, a product of billions of years of volcanism and flowing lava on the surface that eventually cooled. Because Mars did not undergo full-scale surface remodeling like the shifting of continents on Earth, scientists had thought Mars’ crustal history was a relatively simple tale. But in a new study, researchers found locations in…
Using images captured by satellites, researchers in the University of Oxford’s Department of Physics and RAL Space have confirmed that the January 2022 eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano produced the highest-ever recorded plume. The colossal eruption is also the first to have been directly observed to have broken through to the mesosphere layer of the atmosphere. The results have been published today in the journal Science. On 15 January 2022, Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai, a submarine volcano in the…
A peculiar property of the Earth’s magnetic field could help us to work out how our planet was created 4.5 billion years ago, according to a new scientific assessment. There are several theories about how the Earth and the Moon were formed, most involving a giant impact. They vary from a model where the impacting object strikes the newly formed Earth a glancing blow and then escapes, through to one where the collision is so energetic that both the impactor…
– NASA and NOAA scientists say. The annual Antarctic ozone hole reached an average area of 8.9 million square miles (23.2 million square kilometers) between Sept. 7 and Oct. 13, 2022. This depleted area of the ozone layer over the South Pole was slightly smaller than last year and generally continued the overall shrinking trend of recent years. “Over time, steady progress is being made, and the hole is getting smaller,” said Paul Newman, chief scientist for Earth sciences at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight…
A KIT team has analyzed the extraction of lithium from thermal water resources in Germany – feasible extraction volumes and time horizon limit the potential. Pumping up thermal water, separating lithium, and using it to produce batteries for electric mobility – the idea of lithium as an environmentally compatible and regionally available by-product of geothermal energy plants appears highly promising. However, it has not been clear so far whether domestic lithium extraction is really worthwhile. A team of researchers from…
Climate models without the lightness of water vapor risk uncertainty in cloud simulations. Clouds are notoriously hard to pin down, especially in climate science. A study from the University of California, Davis, and published in the journal Nature Geoscience shows that air temperature and cloud cover are strongly influenced by the buoyancy effect of water vapor, an effect currently neglected in some leading global climate models. Global climate models are the primary tools used to study Earth’s climate, predict its…
A new study led by Prof. CHEN Yi from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IGGCAS) provides an answer to the question of how young volcanism occurred on the Moon. The researchers found that mantle melting-point depression due to the presence of fusible, easily melted components could generate young lunar volcanism. Their findings were published in Science Advances on Oct. 21. Lunar samples returned by the Apollo and Luna missions are all older than…
Deep valleys buried under the seafloor of the North Sea record how the ancient ice sheets that used to cover the UK and Europe expelled water to stop themselves from collapsing. A new study published this week has surprised the research team, who discovered that the valleys took just hundreds of years to form as they transported vast amounts of meltwater away from under the ice and out into the sea. This new understanding of when the vast ice sheets…
Forecasters are predicting a “three-peat La Niña” this year. This will be the third winter in a row that the Pacific Ocean has been in a La Niña cycle, something that’s happened only twice before in records going back to 1950. New research led by the University of Washington offers a possible explanation. The study, recently published in Geophysical Research Letters, suggests that climate change is, in the short term, favoring La Niñas. “The Pacific Ocean naturally cycles between El…
Accurate predictions of regional sea-level change are essential in understanding the impact of climate change on coastal areas. Rising sea levels from melting glaciers and ice sheets pose an increasing threat to coastal communities worldwide. A new analysis of high-resolution satellite observations takes a major step forward in assessing this risk by confirming theoretical predictions and computational models of sea-level changes used to forecast climate-change-driven impacts. “Using sea-surface-height observations from satellites in the way we have independently verifies observations of Arctic and…
The transition zone between the Earth’s upper and lower mantle contains considerable quantities of water, according to an international study involving the Institute for Geosciences at Goethe University in Frankfurt. The German-Italian-American research team analysed a rare diamond formed 660 metres below the Earth’s surface using techniques including Raman spectroscopy and FTIR spectrometry. The study confirmed something that for a long time was only a theory, namely that ocean water accompanies subducting slabs and thus enters the transition zone. This…
… could cause large tsunamis. Due to a lack of data, the studies available so far underestimated the seismic and tsunami risk of these large faults. A new study led by the Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM-CSIC) in Barcelona and the Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA) has revealed the exact location of the boundary between the European and African tectonic plates, located in the Alboran Sea region. The work also evaluates its potential capacity to produce…
… causes changes in both fast and slow cloud responses. Extreme climate warming has shown to change how cloud cover behaves throughout East Asia (EA). Recent research suggests that in a warmer climate with greater amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere, slow cloud responses to meteorological mechanisms can cause a cooling effect over certain regions of EA. However, in some areas within Asia, fast cloud responses may have the opposite effect. This new dynamic is concerning to climatologists who are…
NASA’s DART space probe, launched last year, will test whether the course of an asteroid can be changed at a distance of eleven million kilometres from Earth on 27 September 2022 at 1.14 a.m. CEST. DART will make a targeted impact on the 170-metre asteroid Dimorphos. It is the first time in the history of spaceflight that an attempt will be made to influence the orbit of a celestial body by a man-made body. The German Aerospace Center (DLR) and…
Scientists who drilled deeper into an undersea earthquake fault than ever before have found that the tectonic stress in Japan’s Nankai subduction zone is less than expected, according to a study from researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and University of Washington. The findings, published in the journal Geology, are a puzzle because the fault produces a great earthquake almost every century and was thought to be building for another big one. “This is the heart of the…
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