While volcanologists can see the dome of the Soufriere Hills Volcano on the island of Montserrat grow and collapse, it takes instrumentation to delve beneath the surface. Now, Penn State geologists, using tiltmeter measurements, have investigated a shallow area under the dome and what they found was not quite what they expected.
“The Soufriere Hills Volcano has been building a lava dome, collapsing and rebuilding a dome since 1995, when it first erupted,” says Dr. Christina W
British researchers have hit on a clever way to search for ancient ozone holes and their relationship to mass extinctions: measure the remains of ultraviolet-B absorbing pigments ancient plants left in their fossilized spores and pollen.
To develop the approach, researcher Barry Lomax and his colleagues at the University of Sheffield and other leading UK institutions analyzed spores held in the British Antarctic Survey’s collection from South Georgia Island, a UK territor
New discoveries about the timing and speed of gigantic, 6500-foot (2-km) thick lava flows that poured out of the ground 65 million years ago could shift the blame for killing the dinos.
The Deccan Traps of India are one of Earth’s largest lava flows ever, with the potential of having wreaked havoc with the climate of the Earth – if they erupted and released climate-changing gases quickly enough. French and Indian geologists have now identified a 600-meter (2000-foot) thick po
In the morning, a TV presenter assured the audience that the forecast definitely promised no rain. And in the afternoon, all credulous persons who had left umbrellas at home were caught by a heavy shower. Weather forecasting is a difficult and thankless task. Factors are multiple, it is practically impossible to take them all into account, therefore the forecast may be only probabilistic. However, people tend not to notice accurate forecasts, but discuss mistakes for a long time.
Neverthe
Meteor impacts are generally regarded as monstrous killers and one of the causes of mass extinctions throughout the history of life. But there is a chance the heavy bombardment of Earth by meteors during the planet’s youth actually spurred early life on our planet, say Canadian geologists.
A study of the Haughton Impact Crater on Devon Island, in the Canadian Arctic, has revealed some very life-friendly features at ground zero. These include hydrothermal systems, blasted rock
A number of hypotheses have been used to explain how free oxygen first accumulated in Earth’s atmosphere some 2.4 billion years ago, but a full understanding has proven elusive. Now a new model offers plausible scenarios for how oxygen came to dominate the atmosphere, and why it took at least 300 million years after bacterial photosynthesis started producing oxygen in large quantities.
The big reason for the long delay was that processes such as volcanic gas production acted a
Scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory – Stennis Space Center (NRL-SSC) measured a record-size ocean wave when the eye of Hurricane Ivan passed over NRL moorings deployed last May in the Gulf of Mexico. The possibility of a super wave is often suggested by anecdotal evidence such as damage caused by Hurricane Ivan in September of 2004 to an offshore rig in the Gulf of Mexico that was nearly 80 feet above the ocean surface. Hence, some of the destruction done by Ivan has been attributed to
LSU climatologists use historical records to put 2005 season in perspective
On Tuesday, Aug. 2, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration revised its previous hurricane forecast, predicting that there would be an additional 11-14 named storms in 2005. This brought the total projection for the year to 18-21 storms. Based on their research into hurricane season records dating back to 1851, two LSU climatologists believe that this new prediction is likely accurate and
This Proba image shows the region around Samoylov Island, located within the Lena River Delta on the Laptev Sea coast of Northern Siberia. The small pear-shaped island of Samoylov in the lower middle of the image is one of the Delta’s more than 1 500 individual islands.
The Lena Delta, covering an area of about 32 000 square kilometres, is a haven for Arctic wildlife that transforms for five months each summer from frozen tundra to fertile wetlands. The Delta is located at t
The development of bone structures in alligator eggs raised under varying oxygen concentrations creates a link to fossil records of the evolution of vertebrates and prehistoric atmospheric oxygen concentrations, according to a paper to be presented at the Earth System Processes 2 meeting in Alberta, Canada.
“Alligator eggs are an ideal self-contained unit for studying the effects of oxygen on development – they have a limited food source in the yolk and they are incubated i
The San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth (SAFOD) reached a significant goal on Aug. 2 when scientists drilled into a seismically active section of the fault approximately two miles below the surface of the Earth.
“This is a milestone for SAFOD,” says Mark Zoback, a professor of geophysics at Stanford University. “For the first time, scientists have drilled directly into the San Andreas Fault Zone at a depth that will allow us to observe earthquakes up close for decades to come.”
One in a new generation of computer climate models that include the effects of Earth’s carbon cycle indicates there are limits to the planet’s ability to absorb increased emissions of carbon dioxide.
If current production of carbon from fossil fuels continues unabated, by the end of the century the land and oceans will be less able to take up carbon than they are today, the model indicates.
“If we maintain our current course of fossil fuel emissions or accelerat
China’s rainy season has led to serious flooding in the north-east and south of the country. A joint Chinese-European team is gathering Envisat radar imagery of the developing situation to give the authorities a way to swiftly assess affected areas and plan their responses.
Summer flooding is nothing new in these regions of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), though this year it is proving particularly severe, with more than 800 casualties countrywide and 2.45 million peop
A colourful summer marine phytoplankton bloom fills much of the Baltic Sea in this Envisat image.
Phytoplankton are microscopic marine plants that drift on or near the surface of the sea, by far the most abundant type of life found in the ocean. Just like plants on land they employ green-pigmented chlorophyll for photosynthesis – the process of turning sunlight into chemical energy.
While individually microscopic, phytoplankton chlorophyll collectively tints the surrou
About one hundred years ago, S. Arrhenius brought forward a hypothesis that the atmospheric temperature of at the surface of the Earth was increasing under the influence of the glasshouse effect created by carbonic acid gas. Since that time, the researchers, when simulating the planet climate, have mainly focused on O2 and it is water vapour that comprises the largest mass of all greenhouse gases. Thanks to water vapour and clouds, the average temperature at the surface of the planet is about 1
Being seasick is not a problem for scientists on a major expedition now under way in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. That’s because most of the researchers investigating the eerie Lost City hydrothermal vent field are working “aboard” a landlocked science command center in Seattle.
Only four scientists are with University of Rhode Island oceanographer Bob Ballard aboard the Ronald H. Brown, a research vessel operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrat
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