Visible from ESA’s Proba spacecraft 600 kilometres away in space are the largest of the many Nasca Lines; ancient desert markings now at risk from human encroachment as well as flood events feared to be increasing in frequency.
Designated a World Heritage Site in 1994, the Lines are a mixture of animal figures and long straight lines etched across an area of about 70 km by 30 km on the Nasca plain, between the Andes and Pacific Coast at the southern end of Peru. The oldest lines date from a
Slow-moving ground water slows down water-quality improvements in Chesapeake Bay Ground water supplies about half of the water and nitrogen to streams in the Chesapeake Bay watershed and is therefore an important pathway for nitrogen to reach the bay, according to a recent U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) study. Too many nutrients, most of all nitrogen, are the principal cause for poor water-quality conditions in the Chesapeake Bay.
The ground water moving to streams in the Bay watershed has a
In a few decades, it’s likely that scientists will look back at the early part of the 21st century and regard it as a fundamental stage in understanding the importance of the effects of aerosols on Earth’s climate. In fact, it was in this time period, they may say, that aerosols were first found to be as climatologically significant as greenhouse gases.
Aerosols, tiny atmospheric particles made up of various elements and produced by a range of sources, have become a prominent conc
Fossilized bones found in Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, are likely those of the earliest known South American penguin, which probably lived 20 million years earlier than scientists had supposed. The new find doubles the known fossil record of penguins in South America.
That’s the conclusion of Dr. Julia A. Clarke, assistant professor of marine, earth and atmospheric sciences at North Carolina State University, and her colleagues from Argentina, who published their findings in the December 200
ESA’s new Weather Today website allows you to access data from space relied upon by weather forecasters across Europe.
Perched in geostationary orbit 36,000 km above Africa’s Gulf of Guinea, the seventh ESA-developed Meteosat satellite maintains a constant weather eye on the European continent and its neighbours. Day and night every 30 minutes it routinely acquires a new image combining visual, infrared and water vapour channels.
Meteosat operator Eumetsat – the intergove
British scientists set sail today from Glasgow to begin work aimed at discovering if Britain is indeed in danger of entering the next ice age.
Scientists on the Royal Research Ship Discovery are on their way to deploy oceanographic instruments across the Atlantic Ocean from the Canary Islands to the Bahamas. The instruments will spend the next four years measuring the temperature, salinity and speed of currents.
The work is part of a research programme called Rapid Climate Change, f
As the tropical oceans continue to heat up, following a 20-year trend, warm rains in the tropics are likely to become more frequent, according to NASA scientists.
In a study by William Lau and Huey-Tzu Jenny Wu, of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., the authors offer early proof of a long-held theory that patterns of evaporation and precipitation, known as the water cycle, may accelerate in some areas due to warming temperatures. The research appears in the current iss
Excavation of what is believed to be remains of the first-dated mammoth discovered on the Texas Gulf Coast is in its initial phases but living up to the expectations of its researchers, a team of students and archaeologists from Texas A&M University’s Center for the Study of the First Americans.
The mammoth was found buried in a sand pit just outside Lake Jackson, Texas in the town of Clute by a backhoe operator for Vernor Material & Equipment Co. who uncovered a pair of tusks. Further
500 or more dinosaurs possible yet to be discovered
A graduate student in earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis has combed the dinosaur fossil record from T. Rex to songbirds and has compiled the first quantitative analysis of the quality and congruence of that record.
Julia Heathcote, whose advisor is Josh Smith, Ph.D., Washington University assistant professor of earth and planetary sciences, examined data of more than 250 di
Some of the world’s finest rock paintings are more than three times older than previously believed, according to researchers from British and Australian universities who used the latest radio-carbon dating technology.
Previous work of the age of the rock art in South Africa’s uKhahlamba-Drakensberg, a World Heritage Site, concluded it is less than 1,000 years old. But the new study, by archaeologists from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, and Australian National University in Canbe
The planets of the solar system, including the Earth, formed about four and a half billion years ago from a swirling disk of gas and dust that was left over from the newly formed Sun. However, we do not understand, why the Earth ended up being different from other Earth-like or «terrestrial» planets and how the earliest features, like the metallic core, developed. Research at ETH Zurich by Professor Alex Halliday, to be published in this week’s edition of Nature, claims to have found some answers.
NASA scientists have the first evidence more regional pollution lurks in clouds than in clear skies off the Asian coastline. This finding has implications for space-based attempts to monitor global pollution and for other populated regions around the world.
Scientists estimate that roughly two-thirds of Asian pollution from the Pacific Rim flows to the western, North Pacific Ocean under cloudy conditions. They based the study on direct measurements taken in and around clouds by aircraft ins
Ruby deposits are the primary gem source in Central and South-East Asia. They are highly prized and have a special character: the rubies always occur as inclusions in marble. Geologists from the IRD and CRPG/CNRS (1) have investigated the tectonic and geochemical mechanisms involved in their formation and established a new model of how they generated. It involves feeder fluids resulting from solution of layers of salts present in the marble formations. These hot fluids were brought into circulation a
The deep layers of the Earth’s crust and the upper part of its mantle have been the target for investigation by a number of research groups at the EHU/UPV. This deep zone, and the processes that have taken place there in the past, can be investigated by means of studying those rocks which today are lying on the surface but which in past geological periods were at great depths.
On the Iberian Peninsula there are few places where one can find rocks which have been submerged at such depths (gr
For years, scientists theorized that a molecule called ClOOCl in the stratosphere played a key role in destroying ozone. Now, using measurements from a NASA aircraft laboratory flying over the Arctic, Harvard scientist Rick Stimpfle and colleagues observed the molecule for the first time. They report their discovery in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres, published by the American Geophysical Union.
“We knew from observations dating from 1987, that the high ozone loss was link
The highest layers of the Earth’s atmosphere are cooling and contracting, most likely in response to increasing levels of greenhouse gases, according to a new study by scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). This contraction could result in longer orbital lifetimes for both satellites and hazardous space debris. In a paper to be published February 5 in the Journal of Geophysical Research – Space Physics, John Emmert, Michael Picone, Judith Lean, and Stephen Knowles report tha
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