While glaciers around the world are shrinking and disappearing, presumably due to global warming, two small glaciers in the Trinity Alps of Northern California are holding their own.
Richard Heermance, a doctoral student in geological sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara, presented findings of his research on the glaciers at the western meeting of the Geological Society of America in San Jose last weekend.
Heermance first became familiar with the Trinity
Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Australian National University have found new evidence that environmental conditions on early Earth, within 200 million years of solar system formation, were characterized by liquid-water oceans and continental crust similar to those of the present day. The researchers developed a new thermometer that made the discovery possible.
“Our data support recent theories that Earth began a pattern of crust formation, erosion, and sediment
Earth’s climate is being changed substantially by a buildup of atmospheric greenhouse gases, but a group of leading climate scientists contends the overall impact is not understood as well as it should be because data are too scarce on how much energy the planet reflects into space.
Reflectivity, or albedo, is largely governed by clouds and atmospheric particles called aerosols, but it is one of Earth’s least-understood properties, said Robert Charlson, a University of W
After 30 years of dimming, the planet’s surface is brightening, an international collaboration concludes this week in Science magazine
Earth’s surface has been getting brighter for more than a decade, a reversal from a dimming trend that may accelerate warming at the surface and unmask the full effect of greenhouse warming, according to an exhaustive new study of the solar energy that reaches land. Ever since a report in the late 1980s uncovered a 4 to 6 percent decline of sunlig
Scientists have discovered a mass graveyard of bird-like feathered dinosaurs in Utah. The previously unknown species provides clues about how vicious meat-eaters related to Velociraptor ultimately evolved into plant-munching vegetarians.
Discovery of the bizarre new species, Falcarius utahensis, is reported in the Thursday May 5 issue of the journal Nature by paleontologists from the Utah Geological Survey and the Utah Museum of Natural History at the University of Utah.
“CSI-like” techniques, used on minerals, are revealing the steps that led to evolution of the atmosphere on Earth. President of the Mineralogical Society of America, Douglas Rumble, III, of the Carnegie Institution’s Geophysical Laboratory, describes the suite of techniques and studies over the last five years that have led to a growing consensus by the scientific community of what happened to produce the protective ozone layer and atmosphere on our planet. His landmark paper on the subject
A new era for ocean and earth science research began this week as the Southampton Oceanography Centre changed its name to the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton. The name change coincides with the arrival of the Centre’s new Director, Professor Ed Hill, who took up the post on 1 May.
Said Professor Hill, “The formal designation as a National Centre, with the accompanying change of name, is a natural progression for the Centre. It reinforces its position and reflects the expectatio
Duke University engineers have led the most detailed analyses of links between some lightning events and mysterious gamma ray emissions that emanate from earth’s own atmosphere. Their study suggests that this gamma radiation fountains upward from starting points surprisingly low in thunderclouds. Counter-intuitively, these strong gamma outbursts also seem to precede associated lightning discharges by a split second.
“All of this comes as a huge surprise,” said Steven Cummer, an as
In 2002-2003, three expeditions involving specialists of the Institutes of Geochemistry, of Solar-Terrestrial Geophysics, and of the Earth’s Crust, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences (Irkutsk) looked for traces of meteoroid that had fallen down in the north-east of the Irkutsk Province, in the Mamsko-Chuisk region. None of the expeditions found either craters or meteoroid fragments. Only fallen trees and minor particles of meteorite substance mark the direction of celestial body fa
Scientists have concluded more energy is being absorbed from the sun than is emitted back to space, throwing the Earth’s energy “out of balance” and warming the globe.
Scientists from NASA, Columbia University, New York, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, Calif. used satellites, data from buoys and computer models to study the Earth’s oceans. They confirmed the energy imbalance by using precise measurements of increasing ocean heat content over the past 10 yea
Layers of salty ocean water mix with layers of fresher water, creating a salty staircase or layering driven by small-scale convection known as salt fingers. Although scientists have known about salt fingers since 1960, when they were discovered at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, they have not understood their role in ocean mixing and the ability of the ocean to absorb heat, carbon dioxide and pollutants from the atmosphere. Results of a new experiment, sponsored by the National Sci
The final stretch of the Scott Dunn Polar Challenge is approaching: 44 competitors on 16 teams from all over Britain and Ireland are racing on skis, pulling sledges to the 500-kilometre-distant Magnetic North Pole. In this extreme environment, radar ice images from ESA’s Envisat help ensure competitors keep safe.
After a year in training, participants set up from Resolute Bay in Canada on Saturday 23 April – the start having been delayed a day by a blizzard. Expected to tak
Using satellites, data from buoys and computer models to study the Earth’s oceans, scientists have concluded that more energy is being absorbed from the Sun than is emitted back to space, throwing the Earth’s energy “out of balance” and warming the planet.
Scientists from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) (Washington, D.C.), The Earth Institute at Columbia University (New York), and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (California) have confi
A group of international researchers plans to use studies by land and by sea to determine the size and shape of an underground magma chamber beneath an active volcano, which will help improve the ability to assess hazards and forecast volcanic events.
“We can look at changes on the surface and infer what is happening at depth, but we don’t know the physical dimensions,” said Glen Mattioli, professor of geosciences at the University of Arkansas.
Mattioli and colleagues fr
Researchers from the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) have drilled into sections of the Earth’s crust for the first time ever, and their findings could provide new insights about how Earth was formed.
Scientists aboard the research vessel JOIDES Resolution, of which Texas A&M University serves as the chief contractor, took almost three months to drill the hole, which penetrates more than 4,600 feet below the ocean floor. It is in an area called the Atlantis Massif
The tsunami that devastated south Asia coastlines and killed more than 200,000 people last December is a powerful reminder of just how dangerous those waves can be to humans.
Such reminders have been delivered periodically, sometimes several decades apart, during the last half-century. But the lessons have been largely ignored or forgotten by most people who didn’t suffer direct consequences, said Jody Bourgeois, a University of Washington Earth and space sciences professor w
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