The environment encountered when the first people emigrated into the New World was variable and ever-changing, according to a Penn State geologist.
“The New World was not a nice quiet place when humans came,” says Dr. Russell Graham, associate professor of geology and director of the Earth & Mineral Sciences Museum.
Archaeologists agree that by 11,000 years ago, people were spread across North and South America, but evidence is building for an earlier entry into the Ne
Antarctic ice sheets
SYMPOSIUM TITLE: Vital Organs in the Earth System: What Is the Prognosis?
PRESENTATION TITLE: West Antarctic Ice Sheet: Waking the Sleeping Giant?
SYMPOSIUM DATE: 19 Feb 2006, 08.30-11.30 am
SYMPOSIUM ORGANISER: International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, IGBP
The contribution that key regions of the Antarctic ice sheet are making to global sea-level rise is a cause for concern according to Director of British Antarctic Survey (BAS),
We’re on the brink of the era of deep ocean mining, says a global pioneer in the study of sea floor mineral deposits. Dr. Steven Scott, a geologist at the University of Toronto, in Toronto, Canada says that advances in marine geology and deep ocean technology have combined to make it realistic to go more than two kilometres underwater for gold and other mineral treasures.
It’s a transformation that he says has evoked a knee-jerk reaction over the possible environmental impacts
This image of Mt. Fuji is the first data to be acquired by Japan’s recently launched Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) on 24 January 2006. ESA is supporting ALOS as a ’Third Party Mission’, which means the Agency will utilise its multi-mission ground systems of existing national and industrial facilities and expertise to acquire, process and distribute data from the satellite to users.
Mt. Fuji – Japan’s highest mountain (3 776 metres) – is a volcano that has been
Researchers at Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering have captured the best images ever produced of “sprites” — mysterious flashes of light resembling giant undulating jellyfish that can occur above strong thunderstorms — using a high-speed camera that recorded thousands of video frames a second.
The researchers said their findings could lead to a better understanding of the physics and chemistry of this fleeting, still-unexplained lightning phenomenon. They recor
The majority of tiny marine plants weathered the abrupt climate changes that occurred in Earth’s past and bounced back, according to a Penn State geoscientist.
“Populations of plankton are pretty resilient,” says Dr. Timothy J. Bralower, head and professor of geoscience.
Bralower looked at cores of marine sediments related to thousands of years of deposition, to locate populations of these plankton during three periods of abrupt climate change. These abrupt changes wer
Large amounts of a chemical that boosts ozone production are being transported to North America from across the Pacific Ocean in May, according to a new report by researchers from Georgia Tech. These higher levels of nitrogen oxides (NOx), arriving in late spring, could be contributing to significant increases in ozone levels over North America. The research appeared in volume 33 of the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
“It’s well-known that pollutants don’t always stay in
According to Dutch researcher Michiel Helsen, annual and seasonal temperature fluctuations are not accurately recorded in the composition of the snow of Antarctica. His research into the isotopic composition of the Antarctic snow has exposed the complexity of climate reconstructions.
Polar ice caps contain valuable information about the earth’s climate. Helsen investigated the extent to which meteorological data are stored in the composition of snow in order to improve the i
German and British scientists have studied the ocean off south-western Africa and have discovered that particles are transported to the deep ocean over thousands of years before being deposited on the seabed. This discovery may increase our understanding of how the oceans act as carbon dioxide sinks and how oil deposits form.
Areas of extremely high marine productivity are confined to small sections of modern continental margins. Despite their limited size, these areas are co
Five years after warning that the famed ice fields on Tanzania ’s Mount Kilimanjaro may melt, Ohio State University researchers have sadly found that their prediction is coming true.
And the impact of the loss of that ice atop Africa ’s highest peak – disregarding the loss of tourism that will follow the vanishing ice – could add to the heavy drought burden already facing those living near that mountain.
For Lonnie Thompson, professor of geological scie
A landslide expert at Durham University, UK, is warning that further disasters are waiting to happen in North Pakistan because of the unstable ground conditions created by last October’s earthquake.
Professor Dave Petley, of the International Landslide Centre in Durham’s top-rated Geography Department, has returned from the earthquake zone after a reconnaissance mission with an US colleague. They have sent an urgent report to the Pakistan authorities with warnings and a
A Chinese astronomer from the University of St Andrews has fine-tuned Einstein’s groundbreaking theory of gravity, creating a ‘simple’ theory which could solve a dark mystery that has baffled astrophysicists for three-quarters of a century.
A new law for gravity, developed by Dr. Hong Sheng Zhao and his Belgian collaborator Dr. Benoit Famaey of the Free University of Brussels (ULB), aims to prove whether Einstein’s theory was in fact correct and whether the astronomical mystery
Ocean temperatures might have risen even higher during the last century if it weren’t for volcanoes that spewed ashes and aerosols into the upper atmosphere, researchers have found. The eruptions also offset a large percentage of sea level rise caused by human activity.
Using 12 new state-of-the-art climate models, the researchers found that ocean warming and sea level rise in the 20th century were substantially reduced by the 1883 eruption of the Krakatoa volcano in Indones
Icy chunks of frozen methane and water are not responsible for the periodic increases in atmospheric methane recorded in Greenland ice cores, according to a Penn State geoscientist.
The ice core samples from the Greenland Ice Sheet Project II cover the last 40,000 years and present a picture of the Earth’s climate over that time span.
“There are two hypotheses for the cause of the rapid increase in methane seen in the ice core records,” says Dr. Todd Sowers, resear
Tree rings and ice cores also help scientists build up picture of global warming
The temperature of the northern hemisphere has increased over a larger area in the last century than at any time in the past millennium a report published in Science reveals this week.
The study finds that the number of ’hot spots’ has increased dramatically in the Northern Hemisphere in the last century compared to the past 1200 years ¨C adding to the growing evidence of wide-scale
Geologists have learned that the height of the Tibetan Plateau, a vast, elevated region of central Asia sometimes called “the roof of the world,” has remained remarkably constant for at least 35 million years.
David Rowley from the University of Chicago and Brian Currie of Miami University in Ohio report their finding in the Feb. 9 issue of the journal Nature.
Before their last expedition to Tibet, the geologists expected to find evidence that the plateau was rising
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