Earth Sciences news

New radar helps monitor site of century-old tragedy

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

5 hours ago | not rated yet | 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- A University of Alberta researcher has turned the site of a southern Alberta rockslide tragedy into the proving ground for new equipment meant to avert such a disaster in the future.

Past regional cold and warm periods linked to natural climate drivers

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Nov 26, 2009 | 3.8 / 5 (14) | 25

Intervals of regional warmth and cold in the past are linked to the El Niño phenomenon and the so-called "North Atlantic Oscillation" in the Northern hemisphere's jet stream, according to a team of climate scientists. These ...

Oceanic crust formation is dynamic after all

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Nov 25, 2009 | 4.7 / 5 (7) | 0

Imagine the Earth's crust as the planet's skin: Some areas are old and wrinkled while others have a fresher, more youthful sheen, as if they had been regularly lathered with lotion.

Oceans absorbing carbon dioxide more slowly, scientist finds

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Nov 24, 2009 | 3 / 5 (4) | 7

The world's oceans are absorbing less carbon dioxide (CO2), a Yale geophysicist has found after pooling data taken over the past 50 years. With the oceans currently absorbing over 40 percent of the CO2 emitted by human activity, ...

Researchers Establish Common Seasonal Patterns Among Bacterial Communities in Arctic Rivers

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Nov 24, 2009 | 5 / 5 (1) | 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- New research on bacterial communities throughout six large Arctic river ecosystems reveals predictable temporal patterns, suggesting that scientists could use these communities as markers ...

Icebergs head from Antarctica for New Zealand

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Nov 24, 2009 | 3 / 5 (5) | 1

(AP) -- Ships in the south Pacific Ocean have been alerted that hundreds of icebergs believed to have split off Antarctic ice shelves are drifting north toward New Zealand, officials said Tuesday.

LSU gets to the bottom of things -- in Antarctica

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Nov 24, 2009 | 4.3 / 5 (3) | 1

Antarctica has long held secrets of the earth's history locked in its icy depths, and until recently, there has been very little information on the environments that have been sealed beneath miles of ice for millions of years. ...

Supervolcano eruption -- in Sumatra -- deforested India 73,000 years ago

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Nov 23, 2009 | 4.5 / 5 (17) | 3

A new study provides "incontrovertible evidence" that the volcanic super-eruption of Toba on the island of Sumatra about 73,000 years ago deforested much of central India, some 3,000 miles from the epicenter, ...

Intensive land management leaves Europe without carbon sinks

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Nov 23, 2009 | 3.5 / 5 (8) | 0

A new calculation of Europe's greenhouse gas balance shows that emissions of methane and nitrous oxide tip the balance and eliminate Europe's terrestrial sink of greenhouse gases.

Using new technique, scientists find 11 times more aftershocks for 2004 quake

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Nov 23, 2009 | 4.5 / 5 (2) | 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- Using a technique normally used for detecting weak tremor, scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology discovered that the 2004 magnitude 6 earthquake along the Parkfield section of the San Andreas ...

Antarctic ice loss vaster, faster than thought: study

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Nov 22, 2009 | 3.1 / 5 (30) | 36

The East Antarctic icesheet, once seen as largely unaffected by global warming, has lost billions of tonnes of ice since 2006 and could boost sea levels in the future, according to a new study.

El Nino intensifies Latin America drought

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Nov 20, 2009 | 5 / 5 (2) | 0

From a devastating food crisis in Guatemala to water cuts in Venezuela, El Nino has compounded drought damage across Latin America this year.

New Method to Measure Snow, Soil Moisture With GPS May Benefit Meteorologists, Farmers

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Nov 20, 2009 | not rated yet | 1

(PhysOrg.com) -- A research team led by the University of Colorado at Boulder has found a clever way to use traditional GPS satellite signals to measure snow depth as well as soil and vegetation moisture, a technique expected ...

International expedition investigates climate change, alternative fuels in Arctic

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Nov 20, 2009 | 3 / 5 (1) | 1

Scientists from the Marine Biogeochemistry and Geology and Geophysics sections of the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) organized and led a team of university and government scientists on an Arctic expedition ...

After mastodons and mammoths, a transformed landscape

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Nov 19, 2009 | 4.6 / 5 (12) | 1

(PhysOrg.com) -- Roughly 15,000 years ago, at the end of the last ice age, North America's vast assemblage of large animals -- including such iconic creatures as mammoths, mastodons, camels, horses, ground ...

Rich Ore Deposits Linked to Ancient Atmosphere

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Nov 19, 2009 | 4.3 / 5 (3) | 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- Much of our planet's mineral wealth was deposited billions of years ago when Earth's chemical cycles were different from today's. Using geochemical clues from rocks nearly 3 billion years old, a group of ...

Paleontologists find extinction rates higher in open-ocean settings during mass extinctions

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Nov 19, 2009 | 5 / 5 (1) | 0

Arnie Miller, University of Cincinnati professor of paleontology in the McMicken College of Arts & Sciences, and co-author Michael Foote of the University of Chicago publish their research in the Nov. 20 issue ...

Mysteriously warm times in Antarctica

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Nov 18, 2009 | 4.2 / 5 (26) | 31

(PhysOrg.com) -- A new study of Antarctica's past climate reveals that temperatures during the warm periods between ice ages (interglacials) may have been higher than previously thought. The latest analysis ...