Earth Sciences

University at Buffalo scientists working with ice cores have solved a mystery surrounding sunspots and their effect on climate that has puzzled scientists since they began studying the phenomenon.

The research, published in a paper in the May 15 issue of Geophysical Research Letters, provides striking evidence that sunspots — blemishes on the sun’s surface indicating strong solar activity — do influence global climate change, but that explosive volcanic eruptions on Earth can complet

A study of the ancient Mediterranean Sea will help to produce more accurate predictions of climate change.

A team led by Royal Holloway geologist Dr Michal Kucera will map sea-surface temperature of the Mediterranean over past millennia. The data will provide a new target to test the computer models on which our predictions of climate change are based.

We currently make climate change predictions using mathematical models developed using climate records of the last two centuries. T

New measurements show that the flow of ice in the Greenland ice sheet has been accelerating since 1996 during the summer melt season. The results suggest that the ice sheet may be responding more quickly to the warming climate than previously thought.

In an article published in Science magazine’s online Sciencexpress June 7, Jay Zwally, an ICESat Project scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., Waleed Abdalati, a Polar Program scientist at NASA Headquarters, W

While industrial products like chlorofluorocarbons are largely responsible for current ozone depletion, a NASA study finds that by the 2030s climate change may surpass chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) as the main driver of overall ozone loss.

Drew Shindell, an atmospheric scientist from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and Columbia University, N.Y., finds that greenhouse gases like methane and carbon dioxide are changing the climate in many ways. Some of those effects include wat

The catastrophic flooding in Jakarta in February this year could have been predicted nearly 3 weeks in advance with a new technique being developed by Dr Matt Wheeler and colleagues at the Bureau of Meteorology Research Centre in Australia.

The flooding was caused by large waves of air and clouds, so called Madden-Julian Oscillations (MJOs). Using satellite data Dr Wheeler and co-workers are able to predict the occurrence of MJOs, which take about one month to move across the Indian basin a

A shower of matter from space millions of years ago could have led to drastic changes in the Earth’s climate, followed by the extinction of life on a massive scale, which also killed off the dinosaurs. This at least is a theory put forward by scientists from the University of Bonn. Normally, the solar wind acts as a shield against showers of cosmic particles, which prevents too many energy-rich particles from raining down on our atmosphere. Since 1997 scientists from Bonn, funded by the German Resea