It takes seismic force to make the ground give up its secrets. Through the years, those searching for oil and gas have used varied methods to send sound energy into the ground and to record the waves reflected by the geological features beneath the surface.
Modern methods include large vibrator trucks and many thousands of surface sensors called geophones, all precisely located to obtain the most useful information with which to explore for hydrocarbons. Today, seismic surveys pl
Scientists studying satellite data have discovered an immense wintertime pool of pollution over the northern Indian state of Bihar. Blanketing around 100 million people, primarily in the Ganges Valley, the pollution levels are about five times larger than those typically found over Los Angeles.
The discovery was made by researchers analyzing four years of data collected by the Multi-angle Imaging Spectro-Radiometer (MISR) onboard the Terra satellite. Lofted into orbit on Dec. 1
An international team of scientists embarked this week on a journey to improve modeling of global-scale air quality and climate change predictions by conducting high quality measurements of the Arctic region’s atmosphere.
The Polar Aura Validation Experiment (PAVE) will gather information to validate data from NASA’s Aura satellite, launched in July 2004. PAVE is the third in a series of planned Aura validation and science missions. These missions will help understand the trans
Winter is here, snow is falling in many areas of the country, and some of us are already wishing for the return of hot summer days. But, would you believe that even on the hottest summer day the temperature inside some clouds remains icy and winter-like, producing temperature readings as cold as negative 70 degrees Celsius (negative 94 degrees Fahrenheit)? Would you also believe that the ice crystals that form at the top of big summertime clouds may help scientists predict next winter’s
European Geosciences Union, General Assembly
Vienna, Austria, 24 – 29 April 2005
For the first time, the EGU will hold its General Assembly in Vienna, Austria. A considerable attendance from the eastern European countries is expected and EGU 2005 promises to become a bigger event even than last year’s in Nice. So far, 10,000 paper and poster abstracts have been submitted, against 8,000 last year.
This will be the largest and most prominent event in the earth and pl
A special unit to assess the recent earthquakes and tsunami disasters in Asia and to harvest the lessons learned from the international relief effort has been launched by Cranfield University’s Resilience Centre.
The Resilience Centre, a partnership between Cranfield University at Shrivenham and the Defence Academy of the UK, was founded in July 2004 to maximise the extensive defence and security management and technology expertise available at both Cranfield and the Defence Acade
Critics who dismiss the importance of greenhouse gases as a cause of climate change lost one piece of ammunition this week. In a new study, scientists found further evidence of the role that greenhouse gases have played in Earth’s climate.
In Thursday’s issue of the journal Geology, Ohio State University scientists report that a long-ago ice age occurred 10 million years earlier than once thought. The new date clears up an inconsistency that has dogged climate change research fo
Mission controllers cross their fingers whenever the Sun is stormy and their spacecraft have to fly over the South Atlantic. There, even satellites in low orbits suffer many hits by atomic bullets from the Sun. Troublesome faults occur in electronic systems and astronauts see flashes in their eyes. The Earth’s magnetic field, which shields our planet against charged atomic particles coming from outer space, is curiously weak in that region.
The South Atlantic Anomaly, as the ex
For the last three years evidence has been building that the impact of a comet or asteroid triggered the biggest mass extinction in Earth history, but new research from a team headed by a University of Washington scientist disputes that notion.
In a paper published Jan. 20 by Science Express, the online version of the journal Science, the researchers say they have found no evidence for an impact at the time of “the Great Dying” 250 million years ago. Instead, their research indi
Newly published North Carolina State University research into the evolution of birds shows the first definitive fossil proof linking close relatives of living birds to a time when dinosaurs roamed the earth.
Research by paleontologist Dr. Julia A. Clarke, an assistant professor in the marine, earth and atmospheric sciences department at NC State, and colleagues provides unprecedented fossil proof that some close cousins to living bird species coexisted with dinosaurs more than
Some massive earthquakes like the one that generated the recent tsunami in South Asia are preceded by slight sinking along nearby coastlines two to five years before the rupture, according to a new study by scientists from Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, the University of California, Berkeley, and the Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys.
If coastal subsidence is common before subduction zone quakes, areas such as those ringing the Pacific Rim could be on th
Livermore researchers have determined the Karakorum fault in Tibet, a feature formed by the same tectonic “collision” that caused the recent tsunami, has slipped 10 millimeters per year during the last 140,000 years.
Earlier research by outside scientists using satellite radar interferometry (InSAR) conducted over a decadal time scale indicated that the Karakorum fault and the Karakax segment of the Altyn Tagh fault in western Tibet are essentially inactive.
But Live
Scientists from Indiana University Bloomington and seven other institutions have unearthed skeletal fossils of a human ancestor believed to have lived about 4.5 million years ago. The fossils, described in this week’s Nature (Jan. 20), will help scientists piece together the mysterious transformation of primitive chimp-like hominids into more human forms.
The fossils were retrieved from the Gona Study Area in northern Ethiopia, only one of two sites to yield fossil remains o
New research suggests that climate warming may be occurring even faster than previously recognised
A long standing puzzle that has haunted climate researchers looking at the fate of carbon stored in the world’s soils, has now been resolved. The research suggests that climate warming may be occurring even faster than previously recognised.
The international team of researchers, led by Bristol University and reporting in Nature [20 January 2005], show that an apparent
Some anticipated the ’collision of the century’: the vast, drifting B15-A iceberg was apparently on collision course with the floating pier of ice known as the Drygalski ice tongue. Whatever actually happens from here, Envisat’s radar vision will pierce through Antarctic clouds to give researchers a ringside seat.
A collision was predicted to have already occurred by now by some authorities, but B-15A’s drift appears to have slowed markedly in recent days,
Far northern rivers are discharging increasing amounts of freshwater into the Arctic Ocean, due to intensified precipitation caused by global warming, say researchers at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in the United Kingdom.
Water exchange between the ocean, atmosphere, and land is called the global hydrological cycle. As Earth’s climate warms, the rate of this exchange is expected to increase. As part of this process, high-latitude precipitation and, c
Feedback
