Earth Sciences news

Tropical Cyclone Laurence menaces Northern Australia

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Dec 16, 2009 | not rated yet | 0

Laurence is still a tropical cyclone even though the storm has made landfall in northern West Australia and is moving over land. The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite noticed some powerful ...

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, ...

Lightning-produced radiation a potential health concern for air travelers

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Dec 07, 2009 | 3.8 / 5 (10) | 7

New information about lightning-emitted X-rays, gamma rays and high-energy electrons during thunderstorms is prompting scientists to raise concerns about the potential for airline passengers and crews to be ...

Lost water of the Napa Valley vineyards

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Dec 16, 2009 | 4.3 / 5 (3) | 0

Getting the most out of every drop of water is a high priority for grape growers in the southern Napa Valley, where summers are hot and dry and vines have to be irrigated to make it through the growing season. But Stanford ...

Philippine volcano rumbles with fresh explosions

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Dec 16, 2009 | 4.8 / 5 (5) | 0

(AP) -- The Mayon volcano, which has blown its top nearly 40 times in 400 years, menaced nearby residents with small eruptions of ash and lava Wednesday as Philippine authorities moved more than 30,000 people ...

Jupiter's Moon Europa Has Enough Oxygen For Life

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Oct 16, 2009 | 4.8 / 5 (99) | 42

New research suggests that there is plenty of oxygen available in the subsurface ocean of Europa to support oxygen-based metabolic processes for life similar to that on Earth. In fact, there may be enough ...

NASA Outlines Recent Breakthroughs in Greenhouse Gas Research (w/ Video)

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Dec 15, 2009 | 3.7 / 5 (6) | 1

(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers studying carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas and a key driver of global climate change, now have a new tool at their disposal: daily global measurements of carbon dioxide ...

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 ...

Greenland glaciers: What lies beneath

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Dec 15, 2009 | 3.6 / 5 (5) | 1

Scientists who study the melting of Greenland's glaciers are discovering that water flowing beneath the ice plays a much more complex role than they previously imagined.

Fossils on the Edge of Forever

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Dec 14, 2009 | 4.9 / 5 (12) | 0

Astrobiologists have not yet found alien life on other planets. But the fossil record has evidence of aliens of another sort: the Ediacarans that lived on Earth millions of years ago.

Ecosystem, vegetation affect intensity of urban heat island effect

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Dec 15, 2009 | 5 / 5 (2) | 0

NASA researchers studying urban landscapes have found that the intensity of the "heat island" created by a city depends on the ecosystem it replaced and on the regional climate. Urban areas developed in arid and semi-arid ...

Underwater gas may hold clues on Turkey quake risk

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Dec 15, 2009 | 5 / 5 (2) | 0

Natural gas that lies under Turkey's Marmara Sea close to Istanbul could provide advance warning of an earthquake experts believe will hit the country's largest city, scientists said on Tuesday.

Portions of Arctic coastline eroding, no end in sight, says new study

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Dec 14, 2009 | 4.1 / 5 (9) | 4

The northern coastline of Alaska midway between Point Barrow and Prudhoe Bay is eroding by up to one-third the length of a football field annually because of a "triple whammy" of declining sea ice, warming ...

Samoan Tsunami wave was 46 feet high

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Dec 04, 2009 | 4.7 / 5 (7) | 0

(AP) -- The tsunami that killed more than 200 people in the Samoan islands and Tonga earlier this year towered up to 46 feet (14 meters) high - more then twice as tall as most of the buildings it slammed into, scientists ...

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 ...