Scientists using satellite data have now created the most detailed maps ever produced of the vast snow-covered Antarctic continent. The maps reveal unprecedented views of surface features that provide clues to how and why the continent’s massive ice sheets and glaciers are changing.
Researchers can now decipher the intricate history of ice movements in the just-released “Mosaic of Antarctica,” which uses images from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer onboard NASA’s Te
If humans continue to use fossil fuels in a business as usual manner for the next several centuries, the polar ice caps will be depleted, ocean sea levels will rise by seven meters and median air temperatures will soar 14.5 degrees warmer than current day.
These are the stunning results of climate and carbon cycle model simulations conducted by scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. By using a coupled climate and carbon cycle model to look at global climate and carbon
Planting trees across the United States and Europe to absorb some of the carbon dioxide emitted by the burning of fossil fuels may just outweigh the positive effects of sequestering that CO².
New climate modeling research from LLNL and the Carnegie Institution shows that northern temperate forests (top) may contribute to global warming, while tropical forests (bottom) can help keep global temperatures cool. (Click here to download a high-resolution image.)
In theory, gro
NASA researchers, using data from the agency’s AURA satellite, determined the seasonal ozone hole that developed over Antarctica this year is smaller than in previous years.
NASA’s 2005 assessment of the size and thickness of the ozone layer was the first based on observations from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument on the agency’s Aura spacecraft. Aura was launched in 2004.
This year’s ozone hole measured 9.4 million square miles at its peak between
Glacier has shrunk by nine miles, now at midpoint of retreat
Alaska’s rapidly disintegrating Columbia Glacier, which has shrunk in length by 9 miles since 1980, has reached the mid-point of its projected retreat, according to a new University of Colorado at Boulder study.
Tad Pfeffer, associate director of CU-Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, said the glacier is now discharging nearly 2 cubic miles of ice annually into the Prince William Sound,
Ohio State University scientists have used minute fluctuations in gravity to produce the best map yet of ocean tides that flow beneath two large Antarctic ice shelves.
They did it using the twin satellites of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), a joint project of NASA and the German Aerospace Center.
Large tides flow along the ocean floor beneath the Larsen and Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelves. Though scientists have long known of these tides, they have not
Almost a century after the 1906 earthquake, Stanford geophysicists have revisited San Francisco’s ’’Big One’’ and now paint a new picture of a fault that was ready to go and that ruptured farther and faster than previously supposed.
“Our understanding of seismic hazard in Northern California, including the Bay Area, relies on a thorough understanding of this earthquake and the San Andreas Fault,” said Professor Gregory C. Beroza, who with graduate student
By soaking up moisture with their roots and later releasing it from their leaves, plants play an active role in regulating the climate. In fact, in vegetated ecosystems, plants are the primary channels that connect the soil to the atmosphere, with plant roots controlling the below-ground dynamics.
“Most climate models assume that roots are shallow — usually within 6 feet of the surface — and that only the soil moisture near the surface can significantly impact the climate,” said Pr
Recent evidence from the Huygens Probe of the Cassini Mission suggests that Titan, the largest moon orbiting Saturn, is a world where rivers of liquid methane sculpt channels in continents of ice. Surface images even show gravel-sized pieces of water ice that resemble rounded stones lying in a dry riverbed on Earth.
But with a surface temperature of minus 179 degrees Celsius and an atmospheric pressure 1-1/2 times that of Earth, could fluvial processes on Titan be anything lik
Russian researchers suggest that diamond deposits should be explored by smell of soil. Kimberlite pipes deeply hidden under the sedimentary rock cover are given away by the composition of adsorbed gases in superstrata. Specialists of the All-Russian Research Institute of Geological, Geophysical and Geochemical Systems, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Open Joint Stock Company “Arkhangelskgeoldobycha” (Stock company “ALROSA”) have compared the composition of gases adsorbed in the rock of already
What would the Earth be like if one fine day all the snow melted away?
Obviously, it would be a much warmer place. But what’s interesting is how much warmer, says Stephen Vavrus, an associate scientist at the Center for Climatic Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Working with computer-generated simulations, Vavrus found that in the absence of snow cover, global temperatures would likely spike by about eight-tenths of a degree Celsius. That increase represent
All through the ages, humans have dreamily gazed at those shape-shifting cotton-balls floating gently across the sky-the clouds.
Atmospheric scientists-Earth’s professional cloud-gazers–have learned a great deal about clouds over the decades, particularly with the advent of satellites during the 1960s and 70s. But despite years of research and the emergence of increasingly sophisticated tools, scientists are still at odds over one of the most basic issues of all: how t
Two images from a radar satellite are often a lot better than one. These orbiting sensors see through wind, rain and darkness and have another unique strength: combine two or more radar images of the same site together and a new dimension of information becomes accessible, including signs of otherwise invisible millimetre-scale ground motion.
This technique is called radar interferometry, known as InSAR for short. ESA has been at the forefront of its development because the Agency has
The catastrophic tsunami that struck Indonesia and East Asia almost a year ago has done much to heighten the interest, research programs and preparations in the United States for events of this type, but experts say there are areas that need more attention and challenges yet to be met.
Dec. 26 will mark the first anniversary of the tsunami that claimed the lives of about 275,000 people and struck with waves up to 100 feet high, one of the deadliest disasters in modern history.
Against the backdrop of the Montreal Summit on global climate being held this week, an article on African droughts and monsoons, by a University of California, Santa Barbara scientist and others, which appears in the December issue of the journal Geology, underlines concern about the effects of global climate change.
Tropical ocean temperatures and land vegetation have an important effect on African monsoon systems, explains first author Syee Weldeab, a post-doctoral fellow in
The magnitude 9.2 earthquake that triggered a devastating tsunami in the Indian Ocean in December of 2004 originated just off the coast of northern Sumatra, but an “energy pulse” – an area where slip on the fault was much greater – created the largest waves, some 100 miles from the epicenter. Seismologists have mapped these energy pulses for Sumatra and are trying to learn more about them to predict better when and where tsunamis may occur. They also hope these pulses will help them gain a more co
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