The world’s largest mass extinction was probably caused by poisonous volcanic gas, according to research published today.
The research, published in the journal Geology, reveals vital clues about the mass extinction at the end of the Permian period, 250 million years ago, when mammal-like reptiles known as synapsids roamed the earth.
Many scientists had previously thought that an asteroid hitting the earth or a deep-sea methane release had caused the extinction, whi
Unique results from the Aerosol Collector and Pyrolyser (ACP) and the Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer (GCMS) have given scientists their first in situ chemical data on Titan’s atmosphere, including aerosols, chemical composition and isotopes.
Two of Titan’s key unknowns are the origin of the molecular nitrogen and methane in the atmosphere, and the mechanisms by which methane is maintained in the face of rapid destruction by photochemistry (chemical processes that are
The world’s largest mass extinction was probably caused by poisonous volcanic gas, according to research published today.
The research, published in the journal Geology, reveals vital clues about the mass extinction at the end of the Permian period, 250 million years ago, when mammal-like reptiles known as synapsids roamed the earth.
Many scientists had previously thought that an asteroid hitting the earth or a deep-sea methane release had caused the extinction,
Rutgers-led team shows rising ocean levels tied to human-induced climate change
Global ocean levels are rising twice as fast today as they were 150 years ago, and human-induced warming appears to be the culprit, say scientists at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and collaborating institutions.
While the speed at which the ocean is rising – almost two millimeters per year today compared to one millimeter annually for the past several thousand years – may
Media is invited to a press concerence on board on December 6, 2005.
This second multi-disciplinary research cruise (CIESM SUB-2) will be launched from Messina, Italy on December 6th with scientists from 14 marine Institutes and five different countries (France, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Italy) onboard. They will embark on the Italian R/V Urania to monitor changes taking place in the Tyrrhenian Sea through December 22nd. The SUB-2 cruise will also include an area of the Sicily Ch
New article in Geophysical Research Letters:
During periods of sustained northward interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) movement and high solar wind pressure, the IMF can reconnect with the Earth’s magnetosphere, merging field lines and forming a bright, long-lived, ultraviolet auroral spot, called a cusp aurora. On 18 September 2000, such cusp aurorae were simultaneously viewed for 15 minutes by the Polar and IMAGE satellites in northern and southern hemispheres, respectively.
T
Today’s atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are highest in 650,000 years, Science studies say
With the first in-depth analysis of the air bubbles trapped in the “EPICA Dome C” ice core from East Antarctica, European researchers have extended the greenhouse gas record back to 650,000 years before the present.
This 210,000-year extension of atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane records — encompassing two full glacial cycles — should help scientists better underst
Two new studies of gases trapped in Antarctic ice cores have extended the record of Earth’s past climate almost 50 percent further, adding another 210,000 years of definitive data about the makeup of the Earth’s atmosphere and providing more evidence of current atmospheric change.
The research is being published in the journal Science by participants in the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica. It’s “an amazing accomplishment we would not have thought pos
A rare volcanic eruption is expanding the size of an island in British Overseas Territory. Spectacular new satellite images show that Montagu Island, an erupting volcano in the South Sandwich Islands, South Atlantic has grown by 50 acres (0.2 km2), equivalent to 40 football pitches in the last month.
Researchers from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology (HIGP) were alerted to satellite data showing a large and fast flowing lava flow th
What caused the end of a warm climate phase and an expansion of the Antarctic ice sheet 14 million years ago? This is the question addressed by Kiel and Bremen palaeoclimatologists in an article for the latest issue of Nature (24/11/05). Their research uncovered a temporal link between a reduction in carbon dioxide (CO²) levels on earth, ice sheet formation and global cooling. The “global cooling” that took place 14 million years ago is attributed by Dr. Ann Holbourn, Professor Wolfgang Kuhnt, Pr
A UK e-Science project is revealing new scientific insights into earthquakes. Technologies developed under the Discovery Net project are enabling geophysicists to combine two different methods of studying earthquakes and so discover new knowledge that would not have been revealed using one method alone.
A previously unsuspected secondary fault associated with an earthquake in the Kunlun Mountains in South-West China has already come to light. Discovery Net was one of six final
Envisat ASAR Global Monitoring Mode rapid-revisit images employed as part of ESA’s Dragon Programme have charted the hydrological cycle of China’s largest freshwater body, Poyang Lake, whose area fluctuates more than threefold annually.
Poyang Lake is situated in Jiangxi Province, around 50 kilometres north of the city of Nanchang. The Lake’s basin is one of the People’s Republic of China’s most important rice-producing regions, but local inhabitants must
It is common to see banks or inclines on the roadside or at the side of railway cuttings. They are formed when a side of a mountain or other earth feature is cut through for the construction of various infrastructure. As they are unstable zones, many problems are created and, in the case of the Basque Country, the problems are aggravated by a number of factors: the complex orographic terrain, the high rainfall and the area being abundant in sedimentary material.
Risk and consequences
The successful launch of Ariane 5 Flight 167 leaves the launch campaign of Europe’s newest meteorological satellite on track to meet its new target date of 21 December.
After 117 days of storage in French Guiana, work began on de-storing and preparing the second Meteosat Second Generation (MSG-2) spacecraft for flight on 31 October. MSG-2 launch campaign activities were officially re-started on 10 November.
MSG-2 had been shipped to Europe’s spaceport on 21 June
NASA’s Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) fired its one billionth laser shot earthward on Nov. 18, to obtain elevations from objects on the land, sea and in the air.
ICESat measures the Earth’s polar ice sheets, clouds, mountains and forests with three lasers. Crisscrossing the globe at nearly 17,000 miles per hour, ICESat provides unprecedented accuracy in mapping Earth’s vertical characteristics, enabling scientists to see objects on Earth in three
More than 100 of Europes’s leading ocean researchers meet at Amsterdam, The Netherlands, during 22-24 November 2005 in order to assess the ocean’s role in taking up anthropogenic carbon dioxide – the major driving agent for a human induced climate change. This assessment is carried out through the largest European funded research project on marine carbon research ever: the Integrated Project CARBOOCEAN.
The ocean is considered as the major ultimate sink for the atmospheric greenho
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