Remote ‘marine deserts’ in the Atlantic Ocean could provide scientists with valuable clues to understanding climate change.
A research team led by the Plymouth Marine Laboratory will shortly set sail from the Falkland Islands, for the start of an expedition to study the interaction between tiny floating marine organisms (plankton) and the atmosphere. By monitoring the plankton and the influence of changing climate on its growth, they hope to discover whether the plankton act as a so
The Granada Basin, home to the Alhambra, is located in one of the most seismically active zones in the Iberian Peninsula. Historical evidence shows that the last major earthquake occurred there in 1431. New evidence indicates, however, that the topographical features of the area surrounding the Alhambra reflect recent and recurrent, though moderate, seismic activity. The research is published this week in Journal of Quaternary Science.
The Alhambra, one of the most visited monuments in Euro
When it comes to air pollution, what goes on at night can be just as important as what happens during the day, say National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists and their colleagues in a study published 10 April in Geophysical Research Letters. The scientists found that nighttime chemical processes remove nitrogen oxides (NOx) from the atmosphere in the marine boundary layer off the coast of New England. These gases are one of the two basic ingredients for making ozone po
Long-debated, a firm answer is now on the horizon
Earth’s magnetic field reverses every few thousand years at low latitudes and every 10,000 years at high latitudes, a geologist funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) has concluded. Brad Clement of Florida International University published his findings in this week’s issue of the journal Nature. The results are a major step forward in scientists’ understanding of how Earth’s magnetic field works.
Next time an asteroid or comet is on a collision course with Earth you can go to a web site to find out if you have time to finish lunch or need to jump in the car and DRIVE.
University of Arizona scientists are launching an easy-to-use, web-based program that tells you how the collision will affect your spot on the globe by calculating several environmental consequences of its impact.
Starting today, the program is online at http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects
It’s bad enough that fossils, buried deep in layers of rock for thousands or millions of years, may be damaged or missing pieces, but what really challenges paleontologists, according to University at Buffalo researchers, is the amount of deformation that most fossils exhibit.
That’s why Tammy Dunlavey, a master’s degree candidate in the Department of Geology in the UB College of Arts and Sciences, and her colleagues are working on a computational method to morph fossils back
Using a unique combination of ground-based and space-based tools, scientists have determined for the first time how drought conditions, and possibly carbon uptake, in the Amazon rainforest can be quantified over large forest areas from space. The results are published in the on-line early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, April 5-9.
“Understanding the Amazon environment is an essential puzzle piece needed to understand how the biosphere interacts with the clima
How land-living animals evolved from fish has long been a scientific puzzle. A key missing piece has been knowledge of how the fins of fish transformed into the arms and legs of our ancestors. In this week’s issue of the journal Science, paleontologists Neil Shubin and Michael Coates from the University of Chicago and Ted Daeschler from the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, describe a remarkable fossil that bridges the gap between fish and amphibian and provides a glimpse of the struc
A team of geologists can tell you more about earthquakes in “Middle Earth” than can the whole trilogy of “The Lord of the Rings.”
Specifically, how do earthquakes happen in Earth’s tightly squeezed middle layers where pressure is far too great to allow any shifting of the rock? According to a paper published in the April 1 issue of the journal Nature, breakdown of the mineral serpentine provides enough wiggle room to trigger an earthquake. The report suggests a new mechanism to explain
One of the most common groups of minerals on earth is the iron oxides, found in soils, rusting iron, and the dust of Mars.
Due to their importance in the environment, iron oxide minerals have been widely studied, providing insight into their properties and reactivities. But when the size of minerals decreases to 1 to 10 nanometers (billionths of a meter), many of their properties change. Andrew Madden of Blacksburg, a Ph.D. student in geosciences at Virginia Tech, will report on the
Under the right conditions, nanoparticles can form spontaneously in the air. Atmospheric nanoparticles are an important missing factor in understanding global climate change, because they could influence cloud formation and change how the Earth reflects or retains heat, said Anthony Wexler, professor of mechanical and aeronautical engineering at UC Davis.
They may also have health effects. Wexler’s laboratory uses and develops equipment to detect these extremely small particles. On the
CSIRO has measured above average growth in carbon dioxide levels in the global atmosphere, despite global attempts to reduce these emissions. The source of the increase is most likely from the burning of fossil fuels – coal, oil and gas.
“The results are concerning because carbon dioxide is the main driver of climate change,” says CSIRO Atmospheric Division chief research scientist Dr Paul Fraser. “I am a little bit surprised that the level is so high without input from forest wildfires.”
The French explorer, Gilles Elkaïm, who left North Cape (Norway) in May 2000, has almost completed the seventh and final stage of his 12,000 km solo trek along the rim of the Arctic Ocean, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, on foot, kayak, skis, by sled pulled by himself or by dogs… with help from ESA.
The “Arktika” expedition is nearing its conclusion. Gilles Elkaïm and his twelve sled dogs, who, last May, set up summer camp in a disused military base, close to Cape Shelagskiy (the most n
Russian scientists have discovered territories in the North that will run the greatest risk in the course of permafrost thawing, they have also calculated degree of risk for towns, industrial facilities and main lines.
Global climate warming makes attacks on permafrost. Accurate forecast is very important as the permafrost ground status would drive the future of all northern towns and industrial facilities. Researchers of the State Hydrological Institute (St. Petersburg) have undertaken such
The body size of ancient creatures, bivalves and brachiopods, could tell geoscientists a lot about the creatures’ life history and about the ecology of the times in which they lived. However, traveling the world to measure these creatures’ fossils would take several life-times and more travel funds than scientists usually have.
Since the same creatures have also become abundant in scientific literature since the mid 1800s, a team of Virginia Tech researchers is determining whether measurin
A billion years ago (the Neoproterozoic age), complex single-celled organisms, the acritarchs, began to develop, grow, and thrive. Almost a billion years later, the study of the evolutionary history of acritarchs began to bog down amid inconsistencies in the reporting of the diversity of species. Now, a Virginia Tech graduate student has devised a new way to study the ebb and flow of life in the Neoproterozoic and Early Cambrian ages, a period that includes two mass extinctions.
John Warren
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