Shipboard marine scientists from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, will release a nontoxic red dye into the Atlantic Ocean off New Jersey during the week of May 2 to help reveal the contents and fate of Hudson River water after it joins the Atlantic.
The dye release is the first of three experiments in Rutgers’ ongoing study of the Hudson River Plume – the mix of river water and substances that flow into the ocean at a rate of 500 billion gallons per day. Preliminary studies indi
Representatives from 47 countries and more than two dozen international organisations met in Tokyo last week, coming a significant step closer to achieving the goal of an integrated Earth monitoring network.
The Japanese capital was the location of the fourth Group on Earth Observations (GEO) summit. GEO is an intergovernmental working group charged with developing a plan for a co-ordinated global Earth Observation network providing data on environmental factors for both scientific and human
The National Center for Atmospheric Research will fly a C-130 research aircraft over Colorado’s Front Range this May and July to measure how much carbon dioxide mountain forests remove from the air as spring turns into summer. NCAR scientists and their university colleagues are developing new methods for assessing carbon uptake over complex terrain on regional scales. Accurate assessments could help show to what extent carbon dioxide storage in Western mountain forests– a potentially important “sink
Fossilized organic molecules of green sulfur bacteria are helping to unlock secrets of what may have been a period of helter-skelter climate change and mass kills of sea life during the Jurassic Period some 150-160 million years ago.
The fossils were found in sedimentary rock commonly used to make house bricks in England, quarried from what is called the Oxford Clay Formation.
The findings are reported in the May issue of the journal Geology (now online to subscribers.) Fabien Ken
A new study strengthens evidence that the oceans and climate are linked in an intricate dance, and that rapid climate change may be related to how vigorously ocean currents transport heat from low to high latitudes.
A new study, reported April 22 in the journal Nature, suggests that when the rate of the Atlantic Ocean’s north-south overturning circulation slowed dramatically following an iceberg outburst during the last deglaciation, the climate in the North Atlantic region became cold
Freshwater from melting ice sheets set the stage several thousand years ago for production of natural gas along the margins of sedimentary basins.
Now researchers at the University of Michigan and Amherst College are reading chemical signatures of water in those areas to pinpoint places where gas is most likely to be found. Their most recent work is described in a paper published in the May/June issue of the Geological Society of America Bulletin.
Natural gas forms when organic ma
On hearing the word, “radar”, we usually think of speed controls or air traffic control systems. In fact, there are many kinds of radar and applications thereof.
At Punta Galea in Getxo the Climatology and Meteorology Office of the Basque Government has installed a very special kind of radar: a radar that indicates the patterns of winds; wind patterns at up to 3,000 metres altitude indicating its direction and speed. This is what is special about the radar at Punta Galea.
In normal
Like thermometers in space, satellites are taking the temperature of the Earth’s surface or skin. According to scientists, the satellite data confirm the Earth has had an increasing “fever” for decades.
For the first time, satellites have been used to develop an 18- year record (1981-1998) of global land surface temperatures. The record provides additional proof that Earth’s snow-free land surfaces have, on average, warmed during this time period, according to a NASA study appearin
About 75,000 years ago, some scientists say, the last truly colossal volcanic eruption on Earth came close to wiping out all the primates, including humans. That eruption occurred when the Toba volcano in Indonesia exploded in an almost unbelievably shattering display.
Other people with a flare for the dramatic warn that a supervolcano underlying Yellowstone National Park could erupt in the not-so-distant future and push humanity to the verge of extinction. University of North Carolina at C
Glaciers reached Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in the most recent ice age about 20,000 years ago. But much harsher ice ages hit the Earth in an ancient geological interval known as “the Cryogenian Period” between 750 and 600 million years ago. A team of geologists from China and the United States now report evidence of at least three ice ages during that ancient time.
“The Cryogenian Period is characterized by some of the worst glaciations in earth history. But the available age constraints are s
The Arctic Ocean receives about 10 percent of Earth’s river water and with it some 25 teragrams [28 million tons] per year of dissolved organic carbon that had been held in far northern bogs and other soils.
Now an international team of U.S. and German scientists, including some funded by the National Science Foundation, have used carbon-14 dating techniques to determine that most of that carbon is fairly young and not likely to affect the balance of global climate.
They report
Researchers have found perforated shells that appear to be beads dating back 76,000 years ago, causing the development of language and symbolic communication to be older than previously thought by 30,000 years.
The 41 tick shells, punctured with holes of roughly one centimetre across in the same place, were found at Blombos Cave site, 300 km east of Cape Town, South Africa, by Christopher Henshilwood, a professor at the Centre for Development Studies of the University of Bergen in Norway,
Dumping iron in the ocean is known to spur the growth of plankton that remove carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, from the atmosphere, but a new study indicates iron fertilization may not be the quick fix to climate problems that some had hoped.
Scientists have quantified the transport of carbon from surface waters to the deep ocean in response to fertilizing the ocean with iron, an essential nutrient for marine plants, or phytoplankton. Prior work suggested that in some ocean regions
A remarkable expedition to the waters of Antarctica reveals that iron supply to the Southern Ocean may have controlled Earth’s climate during past ice ages. A multi-institutional group of scientists, led by Dr. Kenneth Coale of Moss Landing Marine Laboratories (MLML) and Dr. Ken Johnson of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), fertilized two key areas of the Southern Ocean with trace amounts of iron. Their goal was to observe the growth and fate of microscopic marine plants (phytopla
A North Atlantic Ocean circulation system weakened considerably in the late 1990s, compared to the 1970s and 1980s, according to a NASA study.
Sirpa Hakkinen, lead author and researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. and co-author Peter Rhines, an oceanographer at the University of Washington, Seattle, believe slowing of this ocean current is an indication of dramatic changes in the North Atlantic Ocean climate. The study’s results about the system tha
Polar clouds are known to play a major role in the destruction of Earth’s protective ozone layer, creating the springtime “ozone hole” above Antarctica. Now, scientists have found that polar clouds also play a significant role in removing meteoric iron from Earth’s mesosphere. The discovery could help researchers refine their models of atmospheric chemistry and global warming.
Using a sensitive laser radar (lidar) system, laboratory experiments and computer modeling, researchers from the Uni
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