An enormous iceberg, C-16, rammed into the well-known Drygalski Ice Tongue, a large sheet of glacial ice and snow in the Central Ross Sea in Antarctica, on 30 March 2006, breaking off the tongue’s easternmost tip and forming a new iceberg.
This animation, comprised of images acquired by Envisat’s Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR), shows the iceberg and the ice tongue before and after the collision. On 26 March, C-16 was pinned at the southern edge of the ice tongue but had s
Brown University geologists have created the longest continuous record of ocean surface temperatures, dating back 5 million years. The record shows slow, steady cooling in the eastern equatorial Pacific, a finding that challenges the notion that the Ice Ages alone sparked a global cooling trend. Results are published in Science.
Using chemical clues mined from ocean mud, Brown University researchers have generated the longest continuous record of ocean temperatures on Earth.
Cracks and fins in the sand in an American desert look very similar to features seen on Mars and may indicate the recent presence of water at the surface, according to a new study by researcher Greg Chavdarian and Dawn Sumner, associate professor of geology at UC Davis.
“Recent, as in ongoing now,” Sumner said.
Images from the Mars rover “Opportunity” show patterns of cracks across the surface of boulders and outcrops. Some of these cracks are associated with long, thin fins tha
A new study of melted rock ejected far from the Yucatan’s Chicxulub impact crater bolsters the idea that the famed impact was too early to have caused the mass extinction that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
A careful geochemical fingerprinting of glass spherules found in multiple layers of sediments from northeast Mexico, Texas, Guatemala, Belize and Haiti all point back to Chicxulub as their source. But the analysis places the impact at about 300,000 years
The risks of Sumatra-style mega-quakes around the world have been sorely misjudged, say earth scientists who are re-examining some of the pre-December 2004 assumptions scientists made about such rare events.
For more than two decades geologists had thought that the largest quakes, of magnitude 9 and greater, happen when a young tectonic plate is subducted, or shoved quickly, under another plate. But the Great Sumatra-Andaman earthquake of 26 December 2004 didn’t match that
North America isn’t the only continent that’s experienced super-colossal volcanic eruptions in the recent geologic past. The massive explosion of the almost unknown Vilama Caldera in Argentina appears to have matched Yellowstone’s last continent-blanketing blast. It may, in fact, be just one of several unappreciated supervolcanoes hidden in a veritable mega-volcano nursery called the Eduardo Avaroa Caldera Complex, located in the inhospitable Puna-Altiplano region near the tri-sec
Researchers in Switzerland report that extreme rains in Europe may grow stronger and more frequent in the near future and have significant effects on the region’s infrastructure and natural systems. They aggregated a number of regional European climate models to produce more refined estimates of increases in precipitation extremes over most of the continent by the late 21st century than were previously available. Their research was published on 24 March in the Journal of Geophysical Research-A
A new study of a meteorite that originated from Mars has revealed a series of microscopic tunnels that are similar in size, shape and distribution to tracks left on Earth rocks by feeding bacteria.
And though researchers were unable to extract DNA from the Martian rocks, the finding nonetheless adds intrigue to the search for life beyond Earth.
Results of the study were published in the latest edition of the journal Astrobiology.
Martin Fisk, a professor of
Glaciers and ice sheets around the world have a big problem: warmer waters.
According to a NASA scientist, the pieces to a years-old scientific puzzle have come together to confirm warmer water temperatures are creeping into the Earth’s colder areas. Those warm waters are increasing melting and accelerating ice flow in polar areas.
This conclusion appears in an article by Robert Bindschadler, a glaciologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. His arti
Farmers who plant more crops, increase irrigation coverage and till the land less can have a profound effect on climate.
Climate scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory found that models that included recent changes in agricultural practices, such as more irrigation, higher yielding crops, and less tillage, predicted lower temperatures than models that ignored these factors.
“Nearly all models used to predict climate changes either ignore agriculture alt
Scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) have found evidence in eastern North America that the snow is melting and running off into rivers earlier than it did in the first half of the 20th century. According to a USGS study published in the most recent issue of Geophysical Research Letters, winter-spring flows in many rivers in the northern United States and Canada are occurring earlier by 5-10 days.
“We studied rural, unregulated rivers with more than 50 years of USGS and Envir
The one place in water-short Israel where natural groundwater is available and not being fully exploited is – of all places – in the mostly uninhabited Judean desert.
This surprising conclusion arises from a thorough hydrological mapping study done as an M.Sc. thesis at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem by Leehee Laronne Ben-Itzhak, under the supervision of Prof. Haim Gvirtzman of the university’s Institute of Earth Sciences. The study provides detailed information regarding
Since the mid-1990s a great debate has raged over whether organic compounds and tiny globules of carbonate minerals imbedded in the Martian meteorite Allan Hills 84001 were processed by living creatures from the Red Planet. The materials have been under intense scrutiny ever since. Scientists at the Carnegie Institution’s Geophysical Laboratory, with colleagues,1 have taken a fresh look at how material associated with carbonate globules was created using sophisticated instrumentation and they co
The Earth’s warming temperatures are on track to melt the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets sooner than previously thought and ultimately lead to a global sea level rise of at least 20 feet, according to new research.
If the current warming trends continue, by 2100 the Earth will likely be at least 4 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than present, with the Arctic at least as warm as it was nearly 130,000 years ago. At that time, significant portions of the Greenland and Antarctic Ic
Newfound temblors, most common in summer months, have proliferated in recent years
Seismologists at Harvard University and Columbia University have found an unexpected offshoot of global warming: “glacial earthquakes” in which Manhattan-sized glaciers lurch unexpectedly, yielding temblors up to magnitude 5.1 on the moment-magnitude scale, which is similar to the Richter scale. Glacial earthquakes in Greenland, the researchers found, are most common in July and August, and have mo
Rise of seismic activity linked to the movement of glaciers may be a response to global warming
Seismologists at Columbia University and Harvard University have found a new indicator that the Earth is warming: “glacial earthquakes” caused when the rivers of ice lurch unexpectedly and produce temblors as strong as magnitude 5.1 on the moment-magnitude scale, which is similar to the Richter scale. Glacial earthquakes in Greenland, the researchers found, are most common in July a
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