Researchers at Oregon State University, NASA and other institutions announced today the discovery of a method to determine from outer space the productivity of marine phytoplankton – a breakthrough that may provide a new understanding of life in the world’s oceans.
Phytoplankton are the incredibly abundant microscopic plant forms that provide the basis for most of the marine food chain, half the oxygen in our atmosphere and ultimately much of the life on Earth. They have
Study in Science may help change the broad understanding of how they are formed
Researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, have produced new findings that may help alter commonly held beliefs about how chains of undersea mountains formed by volcanoes, or “seamounts,” are created. Such mountains can rise thousands of feet off the ocean floor in chains that span thousands of miles across the ocean.
Since the mid-20th centu
In order to understand the dynamics of glaciers and ice sheets as well as their interactions with climate, we need fundamental detailed knowledge about the way in which glaciers and ice sheets move. The way water is routed through glaciers is highly significant for their movement since the water pressure at the base of the glacier directly influences its speed. The water pressure acts as a hydraulic jack and pushes that glacier forwards during high water pressure events. This may increase the
A new study of climate in the Northern Hemisphere for the past 2000 years shows that natural climate change may be larger than generally thought. This is displayed in results from scientists at the Stockholm University, made in cooperation with Russian scientists, which are published in Nature on 10 Feb 2005.
The most widespread picture of climate variability in the last millennium suggests that only small changes occurred before the year 1900, and then a pronounced warming set in
Evolution as driving force in Earth’s development
A geomicrobiologist at Washington University in St. Louis has proposed that evolution is the primary driving force in the early Earth’s development rather than physical processes, such as plate tectonics.
Carrine Blank, Ph.D., Washington University assistant professor of geomicrobiology in the Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences in Arts & Sciences, studying Cyanobacteria – bacteria that use light, water,
’At a snail’s pace’
Earth and planetary scientists at Washington University in St. Louis are studying snail fossils to understand the climate of northern Africa 130,000 years ago.
While that might sound a bit like relying on wooly bear caterpillars to predict the severity of winter, the snails actually reveal clues about the climate and environment of western Egypt, lo those many years ago. They also could shed light on the possible role weather and climate played in
Last year was the fourth warmest year on average for our planet since the late 1800s, according to NASA scientists.
To determine if the Earth is warming or cooling, scientists look at average temperatures. To get an “average” temperature, scientists take the warmest and the coolest temperatures in a day, and calculate the temperature that is exactly in the middle of those high and low values. This provides an average temperature for a day. These average temperatures are then ca
While nothing can undo the devastation from the massive tsunami that recently struck in Southeast Asia, lives can be saved in the future if scientists can rapidly characterize the earthquakes that cause tsunami. The quick response of the Global Seismographic Network to the 26 December 2004 Sumatra- Andaman earthquake offers clear opportunities to reduce the amount of time before an emergency response and assistance could be dispatched to a similarly afflicted area in the future.
Northwestern University seismologists have determined that the Dec. 26 Sumatra earthquake that set off a deadly tsunami throughout the Indian Ocean was three times larger than originally thought, making it the second largest earthquake ever instrumentally recorded and explaining why the tsunami was so destructive.
By analyzing seismograms from the earthquake, Seth Stein and Emile Okal, both professors of geological sciences in Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Science
See the face of Europe from space – with the entire continent covered in consistent detail. This set of true-colour Envisat satellite mosaics depicts the ten newest members of the European Union as well as ESA’s 15 current member states and two pending accessions of Greece and Luxembourg.
The crowning mosaic in the series represents approximately 1.6 million square kilometres of European territory at 300-metre resolution. All the mosaics were produced using the Medium Reso
Injecting synthetic “super” greenhouse gases into the Martian atmosphere could raise the planet’s temperature enough to melt its polar ice caps and create conditions suitable for sustaining biological life. In fact, a team of researchers suggests that introducing global warming on the Red Planet may be the best approach for warming the planet’s frozen landscape and turning it into a habitable world in the future.
Margarita Marinova, then at the NASA Ames Research Center, a
The British Geological Survey (BGS) announced today that they will start sending scientists to the affected regions next Monday. The scientists will help with the rebuilding process and address immediate problems such as contaminated freshwater supplies.
Following a symposium in Thailand (31 January –1 February), David Ovadia, head of the BGS international team, said, ‘What we got out of the conference was a consolidated, agreed list of scientific activities that the affected countr
Physicists in the US have proven that wax is a perfect model of the ocean floors. Using a tub of wax, geophysicists at Cornell and Columbia have produced a predictive model of tectonic microplates – one of the most important and poorly understood features of plate tectonics – for the first time. This research is reported today in the New Journal of Physics (www.njp.org) published jointly by the Institute of Physics and the German Physical Society (Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft).
The February issue of GEOLOGY covers a wide variety of potentially newsworthy subjects. Topics include: earthquakes in the central Indian Ocean and possible break-up of the Indo-Australian tectonic plate; dynamics of the Chicxulub impact tsunami; sea-level rise and the future of reef islands; evidence for abrupt climate change triggered by meltwater from glacial Lake Iroquois; new evidence from the Late Ordovician of CO2 as driver of climate change; and new support for a causal relationship bet
European scientists confirmed that Arctic high atmosphere is reaching the lowest ever temperatures this winter, warning that destruction of the protective ozone layer is substantially increased under very cold conditions. First signs of ozone loss have already been detected. The ozone layer is located in the so called stratosphere, the lowest layer of the atmosphere, at an altitude of about 8 km in the Poles, and its function is to protect the earth’s surface from harmful solar UV radiation.
Scientists will be able to view the sea bed in incredible 3-D detail following new investment and collaboration in the School of Earth, Ocean and Planetary Science at Cardiff University, UK.
The new CodaOctopus laboratory will map extensive areas of the sea bed to create a virtual reality image, allowing scientists to walk the sea bed from the laboratory. It features novel 3-D methods to map the seabed, addressing risks in terms of marine security, the environment and health and s
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