Earthquakes are not unusual in the San Francisco Bay Area, but a team of Penn State geoscientists believes that the hazard may be greater than previously thought because of a hidden fault under Marin County.
“We think we have evidence that there is an additional earthquake hazard in the San Francisco area due to a blind thrust fault,” says Dr. Kevin P. Furlong, professor of geosciences. “Blind thrust faults are notorious because they are hard to find until an earthquake occurs on t
A vision for the future of Southampton Oceanography Centre (SOC) is revealed today by the Director designate, Professor Edward Hill.
Professor Hill’s vision is for the Centre to be recognised internationally as the focus for oceanography in the UK. It will be renamed the ‘National Oceanography Centre, Southampton’ from 1 May 2005, when Professor Hill takes up his appointment, heralding the start of a new era for oceanographic and earth science research and education in this country
It won’t quite be a white Christmas for Professor Nick Petford, but the Kingston University geologist will see in the New Year in sub-zero temperatures. Professor Petford, from the Centre for Earth and Environmental Science Research, flies out to Antarctica on December 27 to investigate the ancient interiors of volcanoes. He has been selected as one of only 25 participants from around the world to take part in a month-long expedition to the remote McMurdo Dry Valleys region.
Although vo
This ultra high-resolution sea surface temperature map of the Mediterranean could only have been made with satellites. Any equivalent ground-based map would need almost a million and a half thermometers placed into the water simultaneously, one for every two square kilometres of sea.
This most detailed ever heat map of all 2 965 500 square kilometres of the Mediterranean, the world’s largest inland sea is being updated on a daily basis as part of ESA’s Medspiration proje
Team discovers large, new class of airborne particles unaccounted for in climate models
Dry dust reacts with air pollutants to form dewy particles whose sunlight-reflecting and cloud-altering properties are unaccounted for in atmospheric models. “Calcite-containing dust particles blow into the air and encounter gaseous nitric acid in polluted air from factories to form an entirely new particle of calcium nitrate,” said Alexander Laskin, a senior research scientist at the Departme
One anticipated component missing from an ice core drilled through a high-mountain, Alaskan ice field may force researchers to rethink the geologic history of that region.
Ohio State University scientists had expected to find a thick layer of volcanic tephra – evidence of a massive historic eruption – near the bottom of core they drilled between Mount Bona and Mount Churchill, both ancient volcanoes, in southeast Alaska’s St. Elias Mountain Range. That tephra layer would provide
A new NASA Internet tool called “Giovanni” allows high school and college students and researchers to access and analyze satellite-derived ocean color data. Ocean color data provides students with information about ocean biology by looking at phytoplankton through changes in the color of the ocean surface.
“Ocean color” refers primarily to the measurement of the green pigment called chlorophyll, which is contained in phytoplankton. Phytoplankton are free-floating plants that are
The Earth is a dynamic entity, and scientists are trying to understand it. Various things in nature grow and shrink, such as ice sheets, glaciers, forests, rivers, clouds and atmospheric pollutants, serving as the pulse of the planet and affecting many people in many walks of life. Scientists using NASA’s Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) are measuring the height of these dynamic features from space with unprecedented accuracy, providing a new way of understanding our changing
Essential Air
Take a deep breath. On Earth the air is easy to take for granted. It’s everywhere. But if you take a rocket into space the Earth’s atmosphere falls away. Astronauts understand this at an instinctive level. Unlike just about every other career in the world, astronauts must bring their own atmosphere to work. It is this essential nature about the atmosphere that generated such high expectations for NASA’s Aura satellite. Launched in July of 2004, this powerful resear
At 32 degrees Fahrenheit, or 0 Celsius, ice changes to water. This simple, unique fact dominates the climate in Earth’s polar regions. Using satellites to detect changes over time, NASA researchers and NASA-funded university scientists have found that Earth’s ice cover is changing rapidly near its poles. Recent studies point to new evidence of relationships between climate warming, ice changes and sea level rise.
Two researchers from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Green
A University of Colorado at Boulder research team has discovered evidence of microbial activity in a rock glacier high above tree line in the Rocky Mountains, a barren environment previously thought to be devoid of life.
Found in an intermittent stream draining from the glacier, the evidence includes traces of dissolved organic material and high levels of nitrates, said Mark Williams, a fellow at CU-Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research. The high nitrate levels
Engineers who were studying beach erosion got more than they bargained for recently when they discovered unexpected wave behavior in the water along an east coast shoreline.
The finding could ultimately cause researchers to re-examine ideas about beach erosion and the repair of beaches that are damaged by tropical storms. “It could just be that the physics of the system is a little different than we thought,” said Thomas Lippmann, a research scientist in the Department of Civil and
Ice dams across the deepest gorge on Earth created some of the highest-elevation lakes in history. New research shows the most recent of these lakes, in the Himalaya Mountains of Tibet, broke through its ice barrier somewhere between 600 and 900 AD, causing massive torrents of water to pour through the Himalayas into India.
Geological evidence points to the existence of at least three lakes, and probably four, at various times in history when glacial ice from the Himalayas blocked
Following are summaries of a few of the papers being presented at the AGU meeting by scientists affiliated with the Earth Institute at Columbia University.
Global Poverty
Mapping Poverty: The Geographical And Biophysical Correlates Of Hunger And Infant Mortality
It is difficult to design programs to reduce poverty unless you understand where and why that poverty occurs. De Sherbinin and colleagues present recent efforts to integrate global spatial dat
A team of University of Minnesota scientists has discovered how iron- and chromium-rich rocks can generate natural gas (methane) and related hydrocarbons when reacted with superheated fluids circulating deep beneath the floor of the Atlantic Ocean.
Because the process is completely nonbiological, the hydrocarbons could have been a source of “food” for some of the first organisms to inhabit the Earth. Also, methane is a potent greenhouse gas, and this process may have contributed t
Engineers constructing a new railroad across the vast, high-altitude Tibetan Plateau are using a surprisingly simple idea to fortify shifting frozen soils affected by climate warming, according to a University of Colorado at Boulder permafrost expert.
“The Qinghai-Xizang railroad is the most ambitious construction project in a permafrost region since the Trans-Alaska Pipeline,” said CU-Boulder and National Snow and Ice Data Center researcher Tingjun Zhang. Zhang is working closely
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