http://www.physorg.com/space-news/earth-sciences/ en-us PhysOrg.com provides the latest news on earth science, astronomy and space exploration. NASA's Aqua and Terra satellites are keeping a close eye on Tropical Storm Ida, and both have instruments aboard that show her clouds and rains are already widespread inland over the U.S. Gulf coast states. Infrared NASA satellite imagery revealed that Ida lost the "signature shape" of a tropical cyclone, and that the storm's clouds have already spread far to the north (over land) of its center of circulation. http://www.physorg.com/news177017852.html Space & Earth - Earth Sciences Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:50:02 EST news177017852 People love to get the big picture of hurricane alleys, and thanks to the GOES Project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., they can now get real-time satellite animations of the eastern Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. http://www.physorg.com/news177001037.html Space & Earth - Earth Sciences Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:40:03 EST news177001037 NASA satellites are amazing examples of technology. The TRMM satellite peers into tropical cyclones and can tell how much rain is falling per hour and where. QuikScat uses microwave technology to measure Ida's surface wind speed. The GOES-12 satellite, operated by NOAA, produces stunning visuals that are now made into movies by NASA. Both of these satellites have provided the latest views of Tropical Storm Ida today. http://www.physorg.com/news177000924.html Space & Earth - Earth Sciences Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:20:01 EST news177000924 NASA and the Japanese Space Agency's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite flew over Ida and captured her rainfall when she passed by Nicaragua, Honduras and Belize this weekend. TRMM data revealed that most of the heaviest rainfall totals, as much as 11 inches, were just off the coasts of those countries, even though all of those areas dealt with flooding rains. http://www.physorg.com/news176999217.html Space & Earth - Earth Sciences Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:28:57 EST news176999217 Residents of the U.S. Gulf coast thought they were getting a break this hurricane season until Ida showed up. Today, November 9, Ida is a hurricane and is headed for a landfall in the western Florida Panhandle after midnight. The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, GOES-12 captured a look at Ida's extensive clouds this morning, and they stretch from Florida's west coast to eastern Texas. At 8:30 a.m. ET (7:30 CT), showers and thunderstorms had already spread into eastern Texas, Louisiana, southern Mississippi and Alabama and the Florida Panhandle. http://www.physorg.com/news176997266.html Space & Earth - Earth Sciences Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:20:05 EST news176997266 Large blooms of tiny marine plants called phytoplankton are flourishing in areas of open water left exposed by the recent and rapid melting of ice shelves and glaciers around the Antarctic Peninsula. This remarkable colonisation is having a beneficial impact on climate change. As the blooms die back phytoplankton sinks to the sea-bed where it can store carbon for thousands or millions of years. http://www.physorg.com/news176986161.html Space & Earth - Earth Sciences Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:49:50 EST news176986161 With an average of four mini-earthquakes per day, Southern California's San Jacinto fault constantly adjusts to make it a less likely candidate for a major earthquake than its quiet neighbor to the east, the Southern San Andreas fault, according to an article in the journal Nature Geoscience. http://www.physorg.com/news176908962.html Space & Earth - Earth Sciences Sun, 08 Nov 2009 13:23:32 EST news176908962 The seriousness of current global warming is underlined by a reconstruction of climate at Maxwell Bay in the South Shetland Islands of the Antarctic Peninsula over approximately the last 14,000 years, which appears to show that the current warming and widespread loss of glacial ice are unprecedented. http://www.physorg.com/news176727651.html Space & Earth - Earth Sciences Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:30:07 EST news176727651 On beautiful, sunny days with quiet weather conditions a strong wind develops in the evening at a height of about 200 metres. http://www.physorg.com/news176661740.html Space & Earth - Earth Sciences Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:30:01 EST news176661740 The impact of airborne nitrogen released from the burning of fossil fuels and wide-spread use of fertilizers in agriculture is much greater that previously recognized and even extends to remote alpine lakes, according to a study published Nov. 6 in the journal Science. http://www.physorg.com/news176655560.html Space & Earth - Earth Sciences Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:00:01 EST news176655560 The Alps are growing just as quickly in height, as they are shrinking. This paradoxical result could be proven by a group of German and Swiss geoscientists. Due to glaciers and rivers about exactly the same amount of material is eroded from the Alp slopes as is regenerated from the deep Earth's crust. The climatic cycles of the glacial period in Europe over the past 2.5 million years have accelerated this erosion process. In the latest volume of the science magazine "Tectonophysics" ( No. 474, S.236-249) the scientists prove that today's uplifting of the Alps is driven by these strong climatic variations. http://www.physorg.com/news176643920.html Space & Earth - Earth Sciences Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:00:01 EST news176643920 (PhysOrg.com) -- Samoa's tsunami detection, monitoring and warning system works well and could not have prevented the more than 100 deaths caused by the devastating tsunami that hit the region on September 29, a major international study has found. http://www.physorg.com/news176629552.html Space & Earth - Earth Sciences Thu, 05 Nov 2009 08:10:01 EST news176629552 (PhysOrg.com) -- Surging floods as powerful as the Amazon could hit parts of Europe within decades, according to new research. http://www.physorg.com/news176578177.html Space & Earth - Earth Sciences Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:40:01 EST news176578177 A team from the University of Miami, University of El Paso and University of Rochester have employed Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) images compiled over a decade to study volcanic activity in the African Rift. The study, published in the November issue of Geology, studies the section of the rift in Kenya. http://www.physorg.com/news176568453.html Space & Earth - Earth Sciences Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:20:01 EST news176568453 (PhysOrg.com) -- When small earthquakes shake the central U.S., citizens often fear the rumbles are signs a big earthquake is coming. Fortunately, new research instead shows that most of these earthquakes are aftershocks of big earthquakes (magnitude 7) in the New Madrid seismic zone that struck the Midwest almost 200 years ago. http://www.physorg.com/news176564939.html Space & Earth - Earth Sciences Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:49:32 EST news176564939 A Peruvian scientist has called on his country to help slow the melting of Andean glaciers by daubing white paint on the rock and earth left behind by receding ice so they will absorb less heat. http://www.physorg.com/news176526912.html Space & Earth - Earth Sciences Wed, 04 Nov 2009 03:15:32 EST news176526912 Volcanic activity may split the African continent in two owing to a recent geological crack in northeastern Ethiopia, researchers said on Tuesday. http://www.physorg.com/news176486243.html Space & Earth - Earth Sciences Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:30:01 EST news176486243 Large-scale distributions of two important nutrient pools - dissolved organic nitrogen and dissolved organic phosphorus (DON and DOP) have been systematically mapped for the first time over the Atlantic Ocean in a study led by Dr Sinhue Torres-Valdes of the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton. The findings have important implications for understanding nitrogen and phosphorus biogeochemical cycles and the biological carbon pump in the Atlantic Ocean. http://www.physorg.com/news176466994.html Space & Earth - Earth Sciences Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:50:02 EST news176466994 The remaining ice fields atop famed Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania could be gone within two decades and perhaps even sooner, based on the latest survey of the ice fields remaining on the mountain . http://www.physorg.com/news176399304.html Space & Earth - Earth Sciences Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:40:01 EST news176399304 Researchers spent two months this summer high in the Peruvian Andes and brought back two cores, the longest ever drilled from ice fields in the tropics. http://www.physorg.com/news176399362.html Space & Earth - Earth Sciences Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:00:24 EST news176399362 Mirinae (Santi) caused 12 hours of flooding rains in the Philippines when it crossed the northern Luzon region over the weekend. On October 31 at 5 a.m. Local (Asia/Manila) Time (October 30 at 2100 UTC) Typhoon Mirinae weakened dramatically after it moved inland over central Luzon, the Philippines. By October 31 at 5 p.m. Local time, Mirinae had already reemerged into the South China Sea as a tropical storm and was headed for Vietnam, but it left behind floods, destruction and death. Mirinae made landfall in Vietnam early this morning, Eastern Time. http://www.physorg.com/news176396119.html Space & Earth - Earth Sciences Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:50:01 EST news176396119 Deep-sea ecosystems occupying 60% of the Earth's surface could be vulnerable to the effects of global warming warn scientists writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. http://www.physorg.com/news176398686.html Space & Earth - Earth Sciences Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:38:48 EST news176398686 When NASA's Aqua satellite flew over the Philippine Sea during the early morning hours today, November 2 infrared imagery saw another new tropical cyclone coming together. http://www.physorg.com/news176395921.html Space & Earth - Earth Sciences Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:10:01 EST news176395921 Most land use changes occurring in the continental U.S result in raised regional surface temperatures, says a new study by scientists at the University of Maryland, Purdue University and the University of Colorado in Boulder. http://www.physorg.com/news176395691.html Space & Earth - Earth Sciences Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:49:44 EST news176395691 (PhysOrg.com) -- In 2005, a gigantic, 35-mile-long rift broke open the desert ground in Ethiopia. At the time, some geologists believed the rift was the beginning of a new ocean as two parts of the African continent pulled apart, but the claim was controversial. http://www.physorg.com/news176395329.html Space & Earth - Earth Sciences Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:43:38 EST news176395329 Scientists including researchers from the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton and the University of Essex have discovered that interactions between iron supply, transported through the atmosphere from deserts, and large-scale oceanic circulation control the availability of a crucial nutrient, nitrogen, in the Atlantic. Their findings have potentially important implications for understanding global climate, both past and future. http://www.physorg.com/news176387275.html Space & Earth - Earth Sciences Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:28:36 EST news176387275 It's hard to picture a bigger landslide than the one that buried a quarter-mile of Highway 410 in Yakima County, Wash., in mid-October. http://www.physorg.com/news176319006.html Space & Earth - Earth Sciences Sun, 01 Nov 2009 17:31:16 EST news176319006 Officials in southern Colombia have issued a code orange alert for the newly-active Galeras volcano which they said could erupt in a matter of days or weeks, according to the state-run Geological and Mining Institute. http://www.physorg.com/news176318698.html Space & Earth - Earth Sciences Sun, 01 Nov 2009 17:25:25 EST news176318698 Infrared imagery from NASA's Aqua satellite revealed that Typhoon Mirinae's cold thunderstorm clouds were already over sections of the central and northern Philippines on October 30 at 4:53 p.m. (Asia/Manila) local time. Mirinae is also known as "Santi" in the Philippines. http://www.physorg.com/news176142930.html Space & Earth - Earth Sciences Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:36:20 EST news176142930 (PhysOrg.com) -- For decades, climate scientists have worked to identify and measure key substances -- notably greenhouse gases and aerosol particles -- that affect Earth`s climate. And they`ve been aided by ever more sophisticated computer models that make estimating the relative impact of each type of pollutant more reliable. http://www.physorg.com/news176058147.html Space & Earth - Earth Sciences Thu, 29 Oct 2009 18:03:19 EST news176058147