Delegations from 190 nations will attend next week’s United Nations summit in Montreal, Canada, to begin negotiating a post-Kyoto Protocol strategy to restrict emissions of heat-trapping gases that drive climate change. Joining them will be ESA, to share results from satellite-based services developed to support the Protocol.

More than 10 000 representatives of national governments, international organisations and non-governmental organisations are expected at the first

A rare volcanic eruption is expanding the size of an island in British Overseas Territory. Spectacular new satellite images show that Montagu Island, an erupting volcano in the South Sandwich Islands, South Atlantic has grown by 50 acres (0.2 km2), equivalent to 40 football pitches in the last month.

Researchers from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology (HIGP) were alerted to satellite data showing a large and fast flowing lava flow th

What caused the end of a warm climate phase and an expansion of the Antarctic ice sheet 14 million years ago? This is the question addressed by Kiel and Bremen palaeoclimatologists in an article for the latest issue of Nature (24/11/05). Their research uncovered a temporal link between a reduction in carbon dioxide (CO²) levels on earth, ice sheet formation and global cooling. The “global cooling” that took place 14 million years ago is attributed by Dr. Ann Holbourn, Professor Wolfgang Kuhnt, Pr

A UK e-Science project is revealing new scientific insights into earthquakes. Technologies developed under the Discovery Net project are enabling geophysicists to combine two different methods of studying earthquakes and so discover new knowledge that would not have been revealed using one method alone.

A previously unsuspected secondary fault associated with an earthquake in the Kunlun Mountains in South-West China has already come to light. Discovery Net was one of six final

Regions’ GDP equivalent to globe’s second largest economy

Even though the United States does not participate in the Kyoto protocol, about one-quarter of the population lives in states, counties or cities that have adopted climate change policies similar to those of the global initiative, according to a Brief Communication published in the November 17 issue of Nature.

Including regions classified as ’probable’ and ’possible’ adopters, which hav

People will soon be able to find out how vulnerable their own local area is to global warming, thanks to new techniques developed by scientists.

The STARDEX project’s seven European research teams, led by the University of East Anglia, narrowed down evidence of changing weather patterns to predict the occurrence of floods, heat waves and drought on even smaller regions across the UK and Europe.

And the new method of analysis could help governments prepare for or

Envisat ASAR Global Monitoring Mode rapid-revisit images employed as part of ESA’s Dragon Programme have charted the hydrological cycle of China’s largest freshwater body, Poyang Lake, whose area fluctuates more than threefold annually.

Poyang Lake is situated in Jiangxi Province, around 50 kilometres north of the city of Nanchang. The Lake’s basin is one of the People’s Republic of China’s most important rice-producing regions, but local inhabitants must

People will soon be able to find out how vulnerable their own local area is to global warming, thanks to new techniques developed by scientists.

The STARDEX project’s seven European research teams, led by the University of East Anglia, narrowed down evidence of changing weather patterns to predict the occurrence of floods, heat waves and drought on even smaller regions across the UK and Europe.

And the new method of analysis could help governments prepare for or even pr

The successful launch of Ariane 5 Flight 167 leaves the launch campaign of Europe’s newest meteorological satellite on track to meet its new target date of 21 December.

After 117 days of storage in French Guiana, work began on de-storing and preparing the second Meteosat Second Generation (MSG-2) spacecraft for flight on 31 October. MSG-2 launch campaign activities were officially re-started on 10 November.
MSG-2 had been shipped to Europe’s spaceport on 21 Jun

Removing an egg from the endangered whooping crane’s nest increases the species chances of survival despite governmental concerns about tampering with nature, says a University of Alberta scientist.

Dr. Mark Boyce, from the Faculty of Science, studied the policy of removing from Wood Buffalo National Park one of two whooping crane eggs laid and raising it in a “foster-parenting” program. Cranes usually rear a single chick and the other dies to siblicide or is killed by a

A nanoparticle commonly used in industry could have a damaging effect on plant life, according to a report by an environmental scientist at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT).

The report, published in a recent issue of “Toxicology Letters,” shows that nanoparticles of alumina (aluminum oxide) slowed the growth of roots in five species of plants — corn, cucumber, cabbage, carrot and soybean. Alumina nanoparticles are commonly used in scratch-resistant transparent coating

It is common to see banks or inclines on the roadside or at the side of railway cuttings. They are formed when a side of a mountain or other earth feature is cut through for the construction of various infrastructure. As they are unstable zones, many problems are created and, in the case of the Basque Country, the problems are aggravated by a number of factors: the complex orographic terrain, the high rainfall and the area being abundant in sedimentary material.

Risk and consequences

The successful launch of Ariane 5 Flight 167 leaves the launch campaign of Europe’s newest meteorological satellite on track to meet its new target date of 21 December.

After 117 days of storage in French Guiana, work began on de-storing and preparing the second Meteosat Second Generation (MSG-2) spacecraft for flight on 31 October. MSG-2 launch campaign activities were officially re-started on 10 November.

MSG-2 had been shipped to Europe’s spaceport on 21 June

A recently opened pulp mill in Chile has devastated one of South America’s most biologically outstanding wetlands, decimating its famed population of black-necked swans, along with most other bird life, a WWF-led team of investigators said Monday.

“What was probably the largest population of black necked swans in South America has been wiped out in less than a year. It is an environmental catastrophe,” said Clifton Curtis, director of World Wildlife Fund’s Global Toxic Program. “

Reports that US ‘organic’ vegetable growers could be contaminating their produce with antibiotic-laden manure raises questions over the quality of the £40m of ‘organic’ produce imported into the UK from the US every year.

Certified organic farmers in the US are allowed to use raw manure from livestock regularly treated with antibiotics and drugs. Jennifer Rohn reports in Chemistry & Industry magazine that nearly 60% of US organics growers do just that. Plants grown using this manur

NASA’s Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) fired its one billionth laser shot earthward on Nov. 18, to obtain elevations from objects on the land, sea and in the air.

ICESat measures the Earth’s polar ice sheets, clouds, mountains and forests with three lasers. Crisscrossing the globe at nearly 17,000 miles per hour, ICESat provides unprecedented accuracy in mapping Earth’s vertical characteristics, enabling scientists to see objects on Earth in three