Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Australian National University have found new evidence that environmental conditions on early Earth, within 200 million years of solar system formation, were characterized by liquid-water oceans and continental crust similar to those of the present day. The researchers developed a new thermometer that made the discovery possible.

“Our data support recent theories that Earth began a pattern of crust formation, erosion, and sediment

Earth’s climate is being changed substantially by a buildup of atmospheric greenhouse gases, but a group of leading climate scientists contends the overall impact is not understood as well as it should be because data are too scarce on how much energy the planet reflects into space.

Reflectivity, or albedo, is largely governed by clouds and atmospheric particles called aerosols, but it is one of Earth’s least-understood properties, said Robert Charlson, a University of W

After 30 years of dimming, the planet’s surface is brightening, an international collaboration concludes this week in Science magazine

Earth’s surface has been getting brighter for more than a decade, a reversal from a dimming trend that may accelerate warming at the surface and unmask the full effect of greenhouse warming, according to an exhaustive new study of the solar energy that reaches land. Ever since a report in the late 1980s uncovered a 4 to 6 percent decline of sunlig

Scientists have discovered a mass graveyard of bird-like feathered dinosaurs in Utah. The previously unknown species provides clues about how vicious meat-eaters related to Velociraptor ultimately evolved into plant-munching vegetarians.

Discovery of the bizarre new species, Falcarius utahensis, is reported in the Thursday May 5 issue of the journal Nature by paleontologists from the Utah Geological Survey and the Utah Museum of Natural History at the University of Utah.

An international team of scientists from Israel, the United States and Germany, led by Prof. Amatzia Genin of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Interuniversity Institute for Marine Sciences in Eilat, has provided, for the first time, evidence of the remarkable dynamics responsible for the formation of large aggregations of microscopic animals in the ocean.

From the surface, the ocean appears to be vast and uniform. But beneath the surface, countless number of tiny, nearly

Increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will make global temperatures rise. By studying soil cores from the Arctic, scientists have discovered that this rise in temperature stimulates the growth of microorganisms that can break down long-term stores of carbon, releasing them into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. This will lead to further increases in global temperatures.

Carbon is held in soil either in material that is easily degraded by chemical and bact

The most detailed portrait ever of the Earth’s land surface is being created with ESA’s Envisat environmental satellite. The GLOBCOVER project aims at producing a global land cover map to a resolution three times sharper than any previous satellite map.

It will be a unique depiction of the face of our planet in 2005, broken down into more than 20 separate land cover classes. The completed GLOBCOVER map will have numerous uses, including plotting worldwide land use tren

NASA is set to launch the new National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite (POES), another critical link in the development of a global Earth-observation program.

The spacecraft, NOAA-N, will lift off at 6:22 a.m. EDT, May 11, 2005, from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. “The NOAA-N satellite is key to establishing a strong Global Earth Observation System of Systems, because it will strengthen our understanding about

Getting resistance to the latest biotype of greenbug or rust in wheat may require some bridge building.

Dr. Jackie Rudd, associate professor at the Texas A&M University System Agricultural Research and Extension Center and state wheat breeder, is looking at wild grass species and synthetic wheats for possible solutions.

“We’re looking for new unique sources of resistance to various biotic and abiotic stresses,” Rudd said. “I’m being forced to find broader gen

“CSI-like” techniques, used on minerals, are revealing the steps that led to evolution of the atmosphere on Earth. President of the Mineralogical Society of America, Douglas Rumble, III, of the Carnegie Institution’s Geophysical Laboratory, describes the suite of techniques and studies over the last five years that have led to a growing consensus by the scientific community of what happened to produce the protective ozone layer and atmosphere on our planet. His landmark paper on the subject

A new era for ocean and earth science research began this week as the Southampton Oceanography Centre changed its name to the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton. The name change coincides with the arrival of the Centre’s new Director, Professor Ed Hill, who took up the post on 1 May.

Said Professor Hill, “The formal designation as a National Centre, with the accompanying change of name, is a natural progression for the Centre. It reinforces its position and reflects the expectatio

Coyotes tend to avoid human contact. But recently, coyotes have been getting increasingly aggressive in the eastern United States, including southeastern New York state, attacking neighborhood pets on the fringe of urban and suburban areas.

“This kind of aggressive behavior is usually the last stage before coyotes actually start attacking humans — such as small children that are perceived by the coyotes as a potential food source,” says Paul Curtis, associate professor of natura

Duke University engineers have led the most detailed analyses of links between some lightning events and mysterious gamma ray emissions that emanate from earth’s own atmosphere. Their study suggests that this gamma radiation fountains upward from starting points surprisingly low in thunderclouds. Counter-intuitively, these strong gamma outbursts also seem to precede associated lightning discharges by a split second.

“All of this comes as a huge surprise,” said Steven Cummer, an as

Specialists of the Institute of Taxonomy and Ecology of Animals (Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences) investigate peculiarities of struggle against Asian populations of Gipsy moth – one of the most widespread and economically significant forest pests. The methods applied in the North America and Europe do not work with Asian populations of the vermin. In Siberia, the climate is different, other tree species grow in the region and Gipsy moth is slightly different.

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In 2002-2003, three expeditions involving specialists of the Institutes of Geochemistry, of Solar-Terrestrial Geophysics, and of the Earth’s Crust, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences (Irkutsk) looked for traces of meteoroid that had fallen down in the north-east of the Irkutsk Province, in the Mamsko-Chuisk region. None of the expeditions found either craters or meteoroid fragments. Only fallen trees and minor particles of meteorite substance mark the direction of celestial body fa

Scientists have concluded more energy is being absorbed from the sun than is emitted back to space, throwing the Earth’s energy “out of balance” and warming the globe.

Scientists from NASA, Columbia University, New York, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, Calif. used satellites, data from buoys and computer models to study the Earth’s oceans. They confirmed the energy imbalance by using precise measurements of increasing ocean heat content over the past 10 yea