As millions of holidaymakers will testify, the Mediterranean is uniquely clear – and blue – unlike the cloudy grey of many coastal waters. But how many of its grateful bathers realise that the Med is so crystal clear because it’s the ocean equivalent of the Sahara desert?
A Leeds-led team of international scientists studying the fragile marine ecosystem of the Eastern Mediterranean has found that the reason the waters are so transparent is an acute shortage of phosphates – vital el
A new interpretation for temperature data from satellites, published earlier this year, raised controversy when its authors claimed it eliminated doubt that, on average, the lower atmosphere is getting warmer as fast as the Earth’s surface.
Now, in another study headed by the same researcher to be published Dec. 15 in the Journal of Climate, direct temperature data from other scientists has validated the satellite interpretation. A team headed by Qiang Fu, a University of Washing
Holy Grail of geology found: Measuring elevation over geological eras
A Field Museum scientist has developed a novel way to determine land elevation as continents moved around the Earth through geological ages. Knowing how high mountains and plateaus were in the past will help scientists to study how our climate system evolved. “Understanding the past elevation of land surfaces, also known as paleoelevation, has been one of geology’s Holy Grails,” said Jennifer McElwain, Ph
University of Arizona scientists have discovered why Eros, the largest near-Earth asteroid, has so few small craters. When the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) mission orbited Eros from February 2000 to February 2001, it revealed an asteroid covered with regolith — a loose layer of rocks, gravel and dust — and embedded with numerous large boulders. The spacecraft also found places where the regolith apparently had slumped, or flowed downhill, exposing fresh surface underneat
A paper published in today’s Nature suggests that global warming could rapidly accelerate due to a positive feedback mechanism caused by water vapour or rainfall. The paper, which examines a period of rapid climate change 55 million years ago, during the Paleocene and Eocene, offers a clear indication of how gradual global warming can rapidly speed up, causing catastrophic effects.
Until recently, the prevailing view was that the temperature rise during the Paleocene/Eocene,
Research cruise provides new information on tsunami during survey of remote area
A summer voyage to investigate the causes of one of the most devastating tsunamis in United States history has uncovered new mysteries about biological and geological processes off Alaska. Probing the depths below one of the world’s most important fisheries, scientists with Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, as well as Indiana State University and their
An academic from the University of Sheffield has produced the first glacial map of Britain, which could allow us to better predict climate change in the future. The map is published in the latest edition of the journal Boreas.
Dr Chris Clark, of the University’s Department of Geography, along with colleagues, has compiled over 150 years of scientific discovery to create the Glacial Map, which itself is the result of over ten years’ work. The map identifies over 20,000 geographical
It was not that cold in subarctic areas of Russia during the epoch of the latest glaciation. This has been proved by the remains of animals found there – not only remains of such frost-resisting animals as mammoths and reindeers, but also those of horses.
During the latest ice age, i.e. 25-15,000 years ago, it was not that cold in the subarctic part of the trans-Ural region as it had been considered earlier. The territory was not covered by glacial wilderness, but by dry and low-sn
The invasive sea squirt that federal and university researchers discovered on Georges Bank a year ago is flourishing in U.S. waters near the U.S.-Canada boundary, a joint research team announced today following a research cruise that concluded last week.
Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the University of Rhode Island estimate that mats made of thousands of individual squirts infest a 40 square mi
A place so barren that NASA uses it as a model for the Martian environment, Chile’s Atacama desert gets rain maybe once a decade. In 2003, scientists reported that the driest Atacama soils were sterile.
Not so, reports a team of Arizona scientists. Bleak though it may be, microbial life lurks beneath the arid surface of the Atacama’s absolute desert. “We found life, we can culture it, and we can extract and look at its DNA,” said Raina Maier, a professor of soil, water a
Scientists funded by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), used Landsat 5 satellite data to look at changes in wetlands areas in south Florida, particularly south and west of Lake Okeechobee.
Using satellite data, land-cover change history, computer models, and weather records, the researchers found a link between the losses of wetlands and more severe freezes in some agricultural areas of south Florida. In other areas of the state, changes in land use resulted in slightl
Drifting buoys & floats weather hurricanes for better storm prediction
While some are still cleaning up from the series of hurricanes that plowed through the Caribbean and southern United States this season, scientists supported by the Office of Naval Research are busily cleaning up valuable data collected during the storms. The rapid-fire hurricanes barely gave researchers time to rest between flights that took them into the hearts of Hurricanes Frances, Ivan, and Jeanne. As pa
The severe droughts and forest fires of recent years underline Mediterranean Europe’s continuing vulnerability to desertification – 300 000 square kilometres of territory are currently affected, threatening the livelihoods of 16.5 million Europeans. A new satellite-based service is set to provide a continuous monitoring of regions most at risk.
ESA’s DesertWatch project involves the development of a desertification monitoring system for the northern shores of the Medit
Understanding how the air and sea interact and affect each other during hurricane conditions is crucial in predicting the storm track, its intensity, storm surges, and ocean wave fields. When scientists create computer models to help them assess the parameters of a hurricane, they must take into account not only the atmospheric conditions of the storm, but also the conditions in the ocean, including the age and the frequency of waves.
In the current issue of the Journal of the
Research refutes long-held belief that diversity was declining
When dinosaurs became extinct from the effects of a massive asteroid hitting Earth 65 million years ago, there were more varieties of the reptiles living than ever before, according to a new analysis of global fossil records by a team of researchers led by a University of Rhode Island paleontologist. “Our analysis finally lays to rest the old, utterly unsupported idea that dinosaurs were declining in diversity during t
The spectacular rift valleys of the Tibetan plateau don’t all run north-south as previously thought, according to new research.
The rift valleys actually curve away — some to the east, some to the west — from the point where India is punching into the gut of Tibet. “Everyone looked at the rifts and said they went north-south,” said Paul Kapp, assistant professor of geosciences at the University of Arizona in Tucson. “I looked and said — they’re not.” His work contrad
Feedback
