Research at the University of Leicester Department of Geology is confirming how a plume of hot mantle rock rising beneath Africa is splitting the continental crust apart and driving a plate tectonic sequence that could eventually form a new ocean in Ethiopia.
The extending East African Rift is a 3,000 kilometre crack in the Earth’s surface, stretching from Malawi in the south, through Tanzania, Kenya and Ethiopia, connecting with the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
The c
Researchers at the University of Leicester have developed a cloud detection system which will lead to them gaining a better understanding of greenhouse gases.
The team in the Earth Observation Science Group have identified a method that eliminates inaccuracies in monitoring how dynamics, radiation and chemical processes interact and control greenhouse gas distributions, and how industrial and human activities affect them.
The UK has invested £300 million in instruments
Scientists are continually exploring different aspects of hurricanes to increase the understanding of how they behave. Recently, two NASA-funded scientists from Florida State University analyzed ozone levels surrounding hurricanes. Their work could lead to better methods of forecasting the paths of the deadly storms.
In their study, FSU meteorologists Xiaolei Zou and Yonghui Wu found that variations of ozone levels from the surface of the ocean to the upper atmosphere are close
The plan to win full United Nations backing for an International Year of Planet Earth has come a step closer as the proposal wins the backing of the Executive Board of UNESCO, the United Nations Scientific, Cultural and Educational Organization in Paris [Note 1].
The Project, already supported by the geoscience communities in most IUGS countries was introduced to the Agenda by the Permanent Delegation of the United Republic of Tanzania, led by the ambassador to UNESCO, Prof. Mo
Two Dartmouth researchers have weighed in on the debate over whether the presence of methane gas on Mars indicates life on the red planet. Mukul Sharma, Assistant Professor of Earth Sciences, and Chris Oze, a postdoctoral fellow, argue that the Martian methane could have been produced by inorganic processes just as easily as by bacteria.
In their paper published online in May in the American Geophysical Union’s journal, Geophysical Research Letters, Sharma and Oze describe
Scientists are continually exploring different aspects of hurricanes to increase the understanding of how they behave. Recently, NASA-funded scientists from Florida State University looked at ozone around hurricanes and found that ozone levels drop as a hurricane is intensifying.
In a recent study, Xiaolei Zou and Yonghui Wu, researchers at Florida State University found that variations of ozone levels from the surface to the upper atmosphere are closely related to the formation,
A submarine seismic sensor was recently set in place at 2400 m depth, off Toulon. The instrument was attached to a neutrino telescope developed by the international scientific programme Antares (1) . For the first time in Europe, this sensor, designed by a partnership between Géosciences Azur (Mixed Research Unit IRD/CNRS/UPMC/UNSA, Villefranche sur Mer)(2) and Guralp System (United Kingdom), with the financial support of INSU, Villefranche Oceanological Observatory and the Provence-Alpes-Côte d
Fairbanks, Alaska-Continued arctic warming may be causing a decrease in the number and size of Arctic lakes. The issue is the subject of a paper published in the June 3 issue of the journal “Science.” The paper, titled, “Disappearing Arctic Lakes” is the result of a comparison of satellite data taken of Siberia in the early 1970s to data from 1997-2004. Researchers, including Larry Hinzman with the Water and Environmental Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, tracked changes of
Human activities are causing ocean temperatures to rise, according to a paper published in the American journal Science on 3 June, 2005.
Tim Barnett, the lead author on the paper said: ‘The evidence, based on computer models and observations in the field, is so strong that it should put an end to any debate about whether humanity is causing global warming.’
In the paper the scientists describe how they have been able to rule out natural climate variability and solar or
Deep within Earth, researchers are finding hints of exotic materials and behaviors unrivaled anywhere else on the planet. Now a team of researchers is making connections between the dynamic activities deep inside Earth and geologic features at its surface.
The researchers, which include two seismologists from Arizona State University, have detected a relatively small and isolated patch of exotic material, called an ultra low velocity zone (ULVZ), that may in fact be a “root” for m
An international team of scientists, led by researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of Oregon and University of Sydney, has discovered an active underwater volcano near the Samoan Island chain about 2,400 miles southwest of Hawaii.
During a research cruise to study the Samoan hot spot, scientists uncovered a submarine volcano growing in the summit crater of another larger underwater volcano, Vailulu’u. Research
The great Sumatra-Andaman earthquake of December 26, 2004, was an event of stunning proportions, both in its human dimensions–nearly 300,000 lives lost–and as a geological phenomenon. The sudden rupture of a huge fault beneath the Indian Ocean unleashed a devastating tsunami. It was the largest earthquake in the past 40 years and was followed by the second largest just three months later (March 28, 2005) on an adjacent fault.
Modern monitoring technology gathered an unprece
Northern metropolitan Los Angeles is being squeezed at a rate of five millimeters [0.2 inches] a year, straining an area between two earthquake faults that serve as geologic bookends north and south of the affected region, according to NASA scientists.
The compression of the Los Angeles landscape is being monitored by a network of more than 250 precision global positioning system (GPS) receivers, known as the Southern California Integrated Global Positioning System Network
The earthquake that generated the Sumatran-Andaman Islands tsunami caused massive devastation, but exactly what happened beneath the ocean is the focus of modeling activities by an international team of geoscientists.
“The earthquake rupture ran a distance equivalent to the distance from Jacksonville, Florida to Boston, Mass.,” says Charles J. Ammon, associate professor of geosciences at Penn State. “This earthquake lasted just under 10 minutes, while most large earthquakes take o
Quake was twice as strong, but much slower than thought
The Sumatra-Andaman earthquake that generated a deadly tsunami on Dec. 26 was stronger and slower than most seismologists thought, according to scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology in India and the United States Geological Survey (U.S.G.S.).
Using data from global positioning system (GPS) stations around the Pacific and Indian oceans, including previously unav
Oscillations begun by the Sumatra-Andaman earthquake in December 2004 are providing important information about the composition of the Earth as well as the size and duration of the earthquake, according to a report in the journal Science by an international group of scientists led by Professor Jeffrey J. Park of the Department of Geology and Geophysics at Yale University.
“Just like thumping a watermelon to hear if it is ripe, after a big earthquake thumps our planet we measure the n
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