If a time machine could take us back 4.6 billion years to the Earth’s birth, we’d see our sun shining 20 to 25 percent less brightly than today. Without an earthly greenhouse to trap the sun’s energy and warm the atmosphere, our world would be a spinning ball of ice. Life may never have evolved.
But life did evolve, so greenhouse gases must have been around to warm the Earth. Evidence from the geologic record indicates an abundance of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Methan
Situated between the continental shelf of the eastern United States and the north wall of the Gulf Stream flowing eastward from Cape Hatteras, the Slope Sea is a transition region between the productively rich coastal waters and the productively static open ocean.
In the current SeaWiFS special issue of Deep Sea Research II, University of Rhode Island oceanographers Stephanie E. Schollaert, Thomas Rossby, and James Yoder describe their four-year, NASA-funded study of the Slope Sea along the
ESA PR 30-2004. ESA’s Earth Observation Programme Board has just decided which of the six Earth Explorer candidate missions, presented earlier in April at the User Consultation Meeting, will be developed and launched. Swarm, an Earth Explorer Opportunity Mission, is a constellation of satellites which will study the Earth’s magnetic field.
A further selection between the Earth Explorer Core Missions EarthCARE (Earth Clouds Aerosols and Radiation Explorer) and SPECTRA (Surface Processes and
A devastating meteorite collision caused part of the Earth’s crust to flip inside out billions of years ago and left a dusting of a rare metal scattered on the top of the crater, says new U of T research.
The study, published in the June 3 issue of Nature, examines the devastating effects of meteorite impacts on the Earth’s evolution. Researchers from the University of Toronto and the Geological Survey of Canada studied the remains of a 250-kilometre wide crater in Sudbury, Ontari
Fossils support idea of lingering bridges between landmasses
The fossil skull of a wrinkle-faced, meat-eating dinosaur whose cousins lived as far away as South America and India has emerged from the African Sahara, discovered by a team led by University of Chicago paleontologist Paul Sereno. The find provides fresh information about how and when the ancient southern continents of Africa, South America and India separated.
The new species, which is 95 million years old, and a
Earthquakes not only shake up the local area but they also increase the rate of earthquake events locally and at a distance. The answer to how this happens may be in the laboratory, according to a Penn State researcher.
“We have learned a lot since the Landers earthquake in the Mojave Desert in 1992,” says Dr. Chris Marone, professor of geosciences. “We learned that earthquake triggering happens a lot more than we thought. The mechanism is not well understood.”
Marone is working wi
Since its launch in October 2001, ESA’s Proba micro-satellite has been returning remarkable imagery of some of our planet’s major landmarks with a compact instrument called the High Resolution Camera.
On display here are some notable examples, ranging from the monolithic Uluru or Ayers Rock in the Australian Outback to the tidal island of Mont St. Michel on the northern coast of France, and the Pyramids on Egypt’s Giza Plain.
Measuring just 80 x 60 x 60 cm, Proba is the size an
By summer 2005, researchers in the Fluids Research Laboratory at Virginia Tech will be able to look for evidence of water on Mars by examining submicroscopic bubbles in martian meteorites, determine whether fluids and silicate melts trapped in volcanic rock can help predict future eruptions, and locate buried mineral deposits using data from surface rocks. Robert Bodnar, University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Geosciences in the College of Science, has received equipment grants from t
Instantaneous ice ages, grapefruit-size hail and tidal waves – all courtesy of global warming – are being served up as Memorial Day weekend entertainment in movie theaters.
The side order: A little scientific food for thought.
“The Day After Tomorrow,” a star-studded movie that paints a vivid picture of global climatic catastrophe, is a simplistic look at the complex and real issue of a potential outcome of global warming, said David Skole, professor and director of MSU’s Center for
Some erupted more often, others less often after big jolt 2,000 miles distant
A powerful earthquake that rocked Alaska in 2002 not only triggered small earthquakes almost 2,000 miles away at Wyoming’s Yellowstone National Park – as was reported at the time – but also changed the timing and behavior of some of Yellowstone’s geysers and hot springs, a new study says.
“We did not expect to see these prolonged changes in the hydrothermal system,” says University of Uta
According to a new NASA-funded study, insights into Earth’s climate may come from an unlikely place: the moon.
Scientists looked at the ghostly glow of light reflected from Earth onto the moon’s dark side. During the 1980s and 1990s, Earth bounced less sunlight out to space. The trend reversed during the past three years, as the Earth appears to reflect more light toward space.
Though not fully understood, the shifts may indicate a natural variability of clouds, w
Carbon dioxide and oxygen, not methane, were prevalent in the Earth’s atmosphere more than 1.8 billion years ago as shown by the absence of siderite in ancient soils but the abundance of the mineral in ocean sediments from that time, according to a Penn State geochemist.
“The absence of siderite in some ancient soils has been linked to low carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, levels that would be too low to compensate for the cooler sun 2.2 billion years ago,” says Dr. Hiroshi Ohmot
The response of glaciers to global warming is an important element in understanding climate change, involving sea-level change and changes to the thermohaline circulation in the North Atlantic. To predict changes in the future it is vital to understand the behaviour of the sub-glacial bed. But reliable data is a prerequisite.
In the first investigation of its kind in the world the University of Southampton’s interdisciplinary GLACSWEB team is recording glacier behaviour through a network of
Across the world, rivers wash mountains into the sea. In the beautiful and rugged mountains of southeast Alaska, glaciers grind mountains down as fast as the earth’s colliding tectonic plates shove them up.
“Like an ice palace cheese grater, glaciers sweep and grind rocks off of mountains. No matter how fast the plate pushes the rock up, the glacier will erode it just as fast,” said James A. Spotila of Blacksburg, assistant professor of geosciences at Virginia Tech. The National Science
Ohio State University engineers are helping satellites form a clearer picture of water quality in the Great Lakes.
The study — the first ever to rate the effectiveness of various computer models for monitoring the Great Lakes — might also aid studies of global climate change.
As algae flourishes in the five freshwater lakes every summer, satellite images show the water changing color from blue to green, explained Carolyn Merry, professor of civil and environmental engineeri
Hollywood’s latest disaster movie, The Day After Tomorrow, is about to be released. It is a fictional account of the havoc wreaked by out-of-control climate as North America is beset by the chilling beginnings of a new Ice Age in the course of 10 days. The movie features numerous catastrophic weather events including hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and tidal waves striking New York.
“It’s a good yarn,” said Dr Tony Haymet, Chief of CSIRO Marine Research. “Like many of the catastroph
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