Scientists at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have ended a nine-year debate over whether the Earth’s inner core is undergoing changes that can be detected on a human timescale. Their work, which appears in the August 26 issue of the journal Science, measured differences in the time it took seismic waves generated by nearly identical earthquakes up to 35 years apart to travel through the Earth’s inner core.
The American Geological Institute (AGI), in conjunction with the American Geophysical Union (AGU), released an analysis of employment patterns and demographics of 2003 PhD recipients in the earth and space sciences.
Results from the survey show that employment opportunities remain stable for geoscientists going into the workforce, with 87 percent of respondents finding work directly related to their field. Starting salaries also remained steady or increased slightly in 2003, com
New images suggest that the Earth’s lower oceanic crust is generated from multiple magma sources
Some of the highest quality images ever taken of the Earth’s lower crust reveal that the upper and lower crust form in two distinctly different ways. A team led by researchers from Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory will publish the results of their work in the August 25 issue of the journal Nature.
The Earth’s oceanic crust is formed from magma bodies lo
New databases give researchers a look into processes inside the Earth’s mantle
Researchers at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory recently resolved a long-standing contradiction about the workings of the deep Earth. For years, many geochemists have argued that parts of the deep mantle remain unchanged since the formation of the Earth, whereas many geophysicists and geodynamicists have held that the entire mantle has been convecting (moving and mixing) over geo
The current warming trends in the Arctic may shove the Arctic system into a seasonally ice-free state not seen for more than one million years, according to a new report. The melting is accelerating, and a team of researchers was unable to identify any natural processes that might slow the de-icing of the Arctic. Such substantial additional melting of Arctic glaciers and ice sheets will raise sea level worldwide, flooding the coastal areas where many of the world’s people live.
From order to disorder: A monkey wrench in solar system evolution?
A U of T scientist has found unexpectedly ‘young’ material in meteorites – a discovery that breaks open current theory on the earliest events of the solar system.
A paper published today in the August issue of Nature reports that the youngest known chondrules – the small grains of mineral that make up certain meteorites – have been identified in the meteorites known as Gujba and Hammadah al Hamra.
A team of American and British scientists have identified and digitally reconstructed the first example of a fossilized brachiopod complete with its pedicle, the stalk attaching it to the sea floor, and its lophophore or feeding organ, according to a report in the journal Nature.
Brachiopods, the so called “lamp shells,” are rare today, but are some of the best known fossils from the Paleozoic era — 542 to 251 million years ago. Our knowledge of these extinct forms was previousl
A new NASA-funded study finds that predicted increases in precipitation due to warmer air temperatures from greenhouse gas emissions may actually increase sea ice volume in the Antarctic’s Southern Ocean. This adds new evidence of potential asymmetry between the two poles, and may be an indication that climate change processes may have different impact on different areas of the globe.
“Most people have heard of climate change and how rising air temperatures are melting glaciers an
There are four wings to the Earth Science building of the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Greenbelt, MD. But on August 8, “we added a virtual fifth wing,” says NASA Emeritus Scientist Milton Halem. That new wing used experimental OptIPuter software to create a ’high-performance collaboratory’ with the University of California, San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, which allowed scientists to establish high-definition telepresence while also collaborating in real
The illegal mining of corals off the southwest coast of Sri Lanka permitted far more onshore destruction from the 26 December2004 tsunami than occurred in nearby areas whose coral reefs were intact. This is the principal finding of a team of researchers from the United States and Sri Lanka who studied the area earlier this year. Their report is published in the 16 August issue of Eos, the newspaper of the American Geophysical Union.
Some of the differences were startling. Lead aut
Heavy rainfall and flooding from Typhoon Matsa killed at least 12 people and caused millions of euros worth of damage in China. In Matsa’s aftermath, unique data from ESA’s ERS-2 spacecraft reveal the interior wind fields powering it at its height.
China’s ninth typhoon this year, Matsa first came ashore at Yuhan County in Zhejiang Province on 6 August, with reported winds up to 250 kilometres per hour. Matsa brought heavy rains and serious damage to several coast
The effect of the sun’s heat on weather balloons largely accounts for a data discrepancy that has long contributed to a dispute over the existence of global warming, according to a report by scientists at Yale University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The report, to be published in the journal Science, says that direct heat of the sun on temperature probes of the weather balloon (radiosonde) probably explains the discrepancy between reports showing
When a volcano erupts, it does more than just create an ash cloud that darkens and cools a region for a few days. Instead, the most dramatic effect is actually high above us, where spewed volcanic material is not quickly washed out by rain.
If the volcanic eruption is strong enough it will inject material into the stratosphere, more than 10 miles above the Earth’s surface. Here, tiny particles called aerosols form when the volcano’s sulfur dioxide combines with water va
For the first time, new climate observations and computer models provide a consistent picture of recent warming of the tropical atmosphere.
Over the past decade, scientific evidence from a variety of sources has implicated human-caused increases in greenhouse gases as a major driver of recent climate change. A key argument used to rebut such findings relates to satellite records of temperature change in the troposphere – the lowest layer of Earth’s atmosphere.
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Thanks to measurements by ESA’s Cluster mission, a team of European scientists have identified ‘micro’-vortices in Earth’s magnetosphere.
Such small-scale vortex turbulence, whose existence was predicted through mathematical models, has not been observed before in space. The results are not only relevant for space physics, but also for other applications like research on nuclear fusion.
On 9 March 2002, the four Cluster satellites, flying in tetrahedral formation at 10
I. Highlights, including authors and their institutions
The following highlights summarize research papers in Geophysical Research Letters (GL). The papers related to these Highlights are printed in the next paper issue of the journal following their electronic publication.
You may read the scientific abstract for any of these papers by going to www.agu.org/pubs/search_options.shtml and inserting
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