Earth Sciences

Breakthrough could help resolve serious problems in oceanography and climate research

Scientists at Johns Hopkins University and the University of California-Irvine have finally been able to field-test theories about how wind transfers energy to ocean waves, a topic of debate since the 19th century that had previously proved impossible to settle experimentally.

The new results may help lead the way to the resolution of a longstanding problem in scientists’ understanding

The relatively powerful earthquake that hit eastern France last Saturday confirms the findings of the postgraduate research currently being conducted by Gideon Lopes Cardozo at the Université Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg and the Faculty of Earth and Life Sciences at the VU Amsterdam. Lopes Cardozo is investigating the causes of earthquakes in the southern part of the Rhine Graben. His research is sponsored by the European Union and has shown that the movements in the earth’s crust in the area around t

Warming land and ocean surfaces, melting glaciers, rising sea levels, and other recent evidence strongly suggest that Earth’s climate is already changing rapidly because of the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, according to Warren Washington, senior scientist and head of the Climate Change Research Group at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). Computer models of Earth’s climate support these observations, he says, and indicate more severe changes yet to come.

Powerful computer models predict that winter temperatures in the polar regions of the world could rise as much as 10 degrees centigrade in the next hundred years, if no efforts are made to control production of carbon dioxide, methane and other gasses.

“With projections to the year 2100, we can show what will happen if we continue with business as usual—if we don’t do anything to curb emissions of greenhouse gasses,” said Warren M. Washington, senior research scientist for the National Cent

How will global warming affect life on Earth? Uncertainties about future climate change and the impact of human activity make it difficult to predict exactly what lies ahead. But the past offers clues, say scientists who are studying a period of warming that occurred about 55 million years ago.

In a joint project of the University of Michigan, the University of New Hampshire and the Smithsonian Institution, researchers have been analyzing fossils from the badlands of Wyoming found in a dist

Highlights, including authors and their institutions

The following highlights summarize research papers in Geophysical Research Letters (GL), Journal of Geophysical Research – Solid Earth (JB), Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres (JD), and Journal of Geophysical Research – Planets (JE). The papers related to these Highlights are printed in the next paper issue of the journal following their electronic publication.

1. Another Great Salinity Anomaly?