University of Southampton archaeologists Professor David Peacock and Dr Lucy Blue have just returned from a pioneering expedition investigating Roman sites in the East African country of Eritrea alongside colleagues from the University of Asmara. The University group is the first from the UK to work in the country since it won its independence more than a decade ago. They are already planning to return to this remote area on the shores of the Red Sea, previously part of Ethiopia.
Investigati
Scientists working in the stormy and inhospitable waters off the Antarctic Peninsula have found what they believe is an active and previously unknown volcano on the sea bottom. The international science team from the United States and Canada mapped and sampled the ocean floor and collected video and data that indicate a major volcano exists on the Antarctic ontinental shelf, they announced on May 5 in a dispatch from the research vessel Laurence M. Gould, which is operated by the National Sc
Earth’s climate system is more sensitive to perturbations now than it was in the distant past, according to a study published this week in the journal Nature. The findings suggest a previously unrecognized role for tropical and subtropical regions in controlling the sensitivity of the climate to change. Christina Ravelo, an ocean scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) , and her coauthors at UCSC and Boise State University, Idaho, focused on the Pliocene epoch, from
the last four decades, scientists have observed a 1.3% per decade decline in the amount of sun reaching the Earth’s surface. This phenomenon, coined “solar dimming” or “global dimming,” is due to changes in clouds and air pollution that are impeding the suns ability to penetrate. Scientists believe that the combination of growing quantities of man-made aerosol particles in the atmosphere and more moisture are causing the cloud cover to thicken.
Despite this decline in solar radiation, the E
The 150-kilometre-per-hour winds of Typhoon Nida brought destruction and death to the Philippines this week. At least 31 people were killed and hundreds more were made homeless as the storm passed across the eastern part of the country on Wednesday.
Envisat acquired this image of the eye of the Typhoon on Tuesday 18 May, using its Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) in reduced resolution mode. The 1200-metre resolution image is some 1150 km wide.
The storm caused floods
On June 19, NASA will launch Aura, a next generation Earth-observing satellite. Aura will supply the best information yet about the health of Earth’s atmosphere.
Aura will help scientists understand how atmospheric composition affects and responds to Earth’s changing climate. The satellite will help reveal the processes that connect local and global air quality. It will also track the extent Earth’s protective ozone layer is recovering.
Aura will carry four in
NASA and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) are teaming up to create one of the most complete databases of magnetic properties of Earth’s rocks ever assembled. The partnership demonstrates ongoing interagency collaboration.
Satellite data of Earth’s magnetic field combined with rock magnetic data collected on the ground will provide more complete insight into Earth’s geology, gravity and magnetism.
Satellites, including NASA’s Magsat, have detected magnetic signals in the
The floods of 1997 and 2002 devastated much of Europe. But can we learn and be better prepared to cope with future extreme weather? The IST project OSIRIS has developed some practical solutions to help address the challenge.
The so-called ’Flood of the Century’ in 1997, caused havoc the length of the Oder valley, flooding swathes of land in Poland, Germany and the Czech Republic. The death toll was 55; the cost of damages estimated at some 3.5 billion euro; and the human cost, in t
Neither massive volcanic eruptions nor extraterrestrial impacts are sufficiently powerful on their own to cause mass extinctions of life on Earth, research by University of Leicester geologists suggests.
Instead, both events coincidentally occurring together may be required to cause the worst mass extinctions.
In the last 300 million years, life on Earth has suffered three major mass extinctions: those of the end-Permian, end-Triassic and end-Cretaceous periods.
The thir
The most northerly active volcano on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula is once again erupting, dusting the surrounding snow-white landscape with a wide expanse of dark ash that is visible from 800 km away in space.
This image of the Kamchatka Peninsula on Russia’s East Coast was acquired on 11 May 2004 by the Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) instrument on ESA’s Envisat satellite in reduced resolution mode.
Two thirds of the way up the Peninsula can be seen
Evidence is mounting that 251 million years ago, long before the dinosaurs dominated the Earth, a meteor the size of Mount Everest smashed into what is now northern Australia, heaving rock halfway around the globe, triggering mass volcanic eruptions, and wiping out all but about ten percent of the species on the planet. The “Great Dying,” as it’s called, was by far the most cataclysmic extinction event in Earth’s history, yet scientists have been unable to finger a culprit as they have with
People in the central and eastern United States and Canada are used to the idea that the land they live on — its variety of hills, lakes and rivers — are left over from the great mile-thick ice sheets that covered the area 18,000 years ago.
They may, however, be surprised to learn that today, long after the glaciers melted, an international research team led by Northwestern University geologists using the Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites can “see” the land moving — up to half a
July 2003 saw a significant discovery in Ecuador by IRD archaeologists: 4000-year-old structures indicating the presence of one of the first great Andean civilizations in the upper Amazon Basin, where their presence had not been suspected. The site is at Santa Ana- La Florida in the south of Ecuador. Subsequent systematic excavations of other parts of the site led to the discovery of sophisticated architectural complexes. Among these are a tomb and a range of diverse vestiges: ceramic bottles, plain
Through the cycads and gingkoes of the floodplains, not far from the Sundance Sea, strode the 50-foot-long Suuwassea, a plant-eating dinosaur with a whip-like tail and an anomalous second hole in its skull destined to puzzle paleontologists in 150 million years. According to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, Suuwassea emilieae (pronounced SOO-oo-WAH-see-uh eh-MEE-LEE-aye) is a smaller relative of Diplodocus and Apatosaurus and is the first named sauropod dinosaur from the Jurassic of s
Ohio State University geologists and their colleagues have used two water-testing methods together for the first time to help a Gulf Coast tourist community manage its water supply.
The two methods could prove useful for gauging how rising sea levels — one of the possible effects of global climate change — might cause salt water to infiltrate drinking water along coastal areas in the future.
Anne Carey, assistant professor of geological sciences at Ohio State, likened Baldwin Cou
Scientists will soon be extracting the deepest Arctic sedimentary cores ever drilled from the Lomonosov Ridge, in the deep oceans more than 2,000 km off the coast of Norway. They will core to a depth of about 500 metres under the seabed. From studying these cores the researchers expect to answer questions such as ’what caused the ice-age?’ So far the deepest oceanic sediment core extracted from the Arctic is only from a depth of 16 metres.
Seafloor sediments conceal a rich history
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