The percentage of Earth’s land area stricken by serious drought more than doubled from the 1970s to the early 2000s, according to a new analysis by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). Widespread drying occurred over much of Europe and Asia, Canada, western and southern Africa, and eastern Australia. Rising global temperatures appear to be a major factor, says NCAR’s Aiguo Dai, lead author of the study.
Dai will present the new findings on
A new discovery by a team of Queen’s University scientists suggests that ancient earth was much colder than previously thought – a discovery that has broad implications for those studying the earth’s climate.
Queen’s researchers have discovered the mineral ikaite in 700-million-year-old marine sedimentary rocks in the Mackenzie Mountains of the Northwest Territories and eastern Yukon. This discovery proves that the ancient ocean was much colder than previously believed, says Noel Ja
Scientists using NASA satellite data found the shape of the Earth appears to be influenced by big climate events that cause changes in the mass of water stored in oceans, continents and atmosphere.
The study’s principal researchers are Minkang Cheng and Byron D. Tapley, of the Center for Space Research, University of Texas at Austin. They reviewed climate events like El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) that affect the amount of water moving in
The combined Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory/University of Rhode Island coupled hurricane-ocean model has helped to improve intensity predictions during tropical storms. However, scientists have found that the model consistently under-predicts maximum wind speed in very strong hurricanes.
In the current issue of the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, University of Rhode Island physical oceanographer Dr. Isaac Ginis describes how he and a team of scientists are refining the
Erupting volcanoes are among the most destructive forces in Mother Nature’s arsenal. But where many people live on or near the flanks of such mountains, the real disaster often doesn’t start until the eruption has subsided and the world has stopped paying attention. It is then that rain-swollen rivers emanating from volcanic peaks can send massive lahars – large waves of mud made up of water, ash and volcanic rock – careening down the mountainsides, often burying everything in their
The position of the earth’s tectonic plates is key, says Lehigh University seismologist
The location of the recent earthquake that triggered a deadly tsunami in the Indian Ocean came as no surprise to geologists, says Anne Meltzer, a world-renowned seismologist at Lehigh University. “Earthquakes like this one happen only once every 50 to 100 years and they happen in very specific locations,” says Meltzer, who has supervised two major international seismology research project
Philip Liu, Cornell University professor of civil and environmental engineering, will lead a delegation of American scientists from the National Science Foundation’s Tsunami Research Group and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) into the tsunami-ravaged areas of Sri Lanka, Jan. 9-16.
The scientists will examine inundation areas, estimate wave heights, determine the precise arrival time of the tsunami, scour the area for geological evidence and sediment deposits and examine
A week after the tsunami that hit Asia on 26 December the death toll is still rising. Nearly 140 000 people are confirmed dead, more than 1.8 million people need food aid and an estimated five million are homeless.
The tsunami formed when an earthquake of 9.0 magnitude vertically jolted the seabed by several metres, displacing hundreds of cubic kilometres of water. The epicentre was 320 km west of Medan, just off the west coast of the Indonesia island of Sumatra. The people of Ind
The newest studies on the Cascadia Subduction Zone off the coast of the Pacific Northwest have identified a “clustering” of great earthquakes of the type that would cause a major tsunami, yielding a historical record with two distinct implications – one that’s good, the other not.
According to scientists at Oregon State University, this subduction zone has just experienced a cluster of four massive earthquakes during the past 1600 years, and if historical trends continue, this cl
Records show an equivalent event on the Oregon coast occurred in 1700
Earthquake-caused tsunamis as severe as those that swept southeast Asia on Sunday have happened in the past off the Oregon coast, according to a University of Oregon geoscientist.
In fact, a tsunami caused by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake occurred on Jan. 26, 1700, wiping out Oregon tribal villages in low-lying coastal estuaries and causing damage as far away as Japan. Ray Weldon, who researches and teac
The type of devastating tsunami that struck the southern coast of Asia is entirely possible in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, but might not cause as much loss of life there because of better warning systems, according to experts at Oregon State University.
OSU is home to the Tsunami Wave Basin at the Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory, one of the world’s leading research facilities to study tsunamis and understand their behavior, catastrophic effects and possibl
A longstanding theory that provides much of the basis for our understanding of climate change – that the mile-thick ice sheet covering Antarctica developed because of a shift in ocean currents millions of years ago – has been challenged by Purdue University scientists.
Though climate scientists have theorized for decades that the circulation of warm ocean currents was responsible for keeping Antarctica largely ice-free during the Eocene epoch prior to 35 million years ago, a s
Researchers at TU Delft have made progress in the theoretical foundation of a special subsoil imaging technique. This technique could be used to chart underground mineral resources, it is called “acoustic daylight imaging”. The method uses natural acoustic signals, already present in the earth, to create an image of the subsurface layers. This week, Professor Kees Wapenaar will publish an article in the renowned scientific magazine “Physical Review Letters”.
Usually, the compositi
People in earthquake-prone California often talk about the “Big One,” a devastating quake that many experts say will surely strike the region sometime in the future.
A research team is now working to predict when the big one – and even little ones – might occur. Termed SAFOD (San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth), the project involves more than 20 researchers from several major universities, labs and government agencies, including the husband-wife team of Fred and Judi Chester
Imagine a lake three times the size of the present-day Lake Ontario breaking through a dam and flooding down the Hudson River Valley past New York City and into the North Atlantic. The results would be catastrophic if it happened today, but it did happen some 13,400 years ago during the retreat of glaciers over North America and may have triggered a brief cooling known as the Intra-Allerod Cold Period.
Assistant Scientist Jeffrey Donnelly of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
A unique monitoring system in place on the island of Montserrat can record the everyday changes beneath the Soufriere Hills volcano and throughout the island, according to an international team of volcanologists.
The CALIPSO project (Caribbean Andesite Lava Island Precision Seismo-geodetic Observatory) is the first volcano monitoring system of its type installed at an andesitic volcano. Andesite volcanoes are the most important volcano type making up the Earth’s Ring of Fire, and h
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