http://www.physorg.com/space-news/earth-sciences/ en-us PhysOrg Team PhysOrg.com provides the latest news on earth science, astronomy and space exploration. The Earth's climate was far cooler -- perhaps more than 50 degrees -- billions of years ago, which could mean conditions for life all over the planet were more conducive than previously believed, according to a research team that includes a Texas A&M University expert who specializes in geobiology. http://www.physorg.com/news177171329.html Space & Earth - Earth Sciences 2009-11-11T15:00:02-07:00 (PhysOrg.com) -- The scalding-hot sea that supposedly covered the early Earth may in fact never have existed, according to a new study by Stanford University researchers who analyzed isotope ratios in 3.4 billion-year-old ocean floor rocks. Their findings suggest that the early ocean was much more temperate and that, as a result, life likely diversified and spread across the globe much sooner in Earth's history than has been generally theorized. http://www.physorg.com/news177168552.html Space & Earth - Earth Sciences 2009-11-11T14:00:01-07:00 The Congo Basin -- with its massive, lush tropical rain forest -- was far different 150 million to 200 million years ago. At that time Africa and South America were part of the single continent Gondwana. The Congo Basin was arid, with a small amount of seasonal rainfall, and few bushes or trees populated the landscape, according to a new geochemical analysis of rare ancient soils. http://www.physorg.com/news177100413.html Space & Earth - Earth Sciences 2009-11-10T18:34:10-07:00 (PhysOrg.com) -- A University of Arkansas professor and his colleagues have shown that the Earth's mantle contains the same isotopic signatures from magnesium as meteorites do, suggesting that the planet formed from meteoritic material. This resolves a long-standing debate in the field over the planet's origins. http://www.physorg.com/news177097140.html Space & Earth - Earth Sciences 2009-11-10T17:39:32-07:00 As sea-surface temperatures rise across the globe, some scientists believe that hurricane frequency and intensity may increase. A fresh technique offers promise to generate new data from long-dead storms, which could improve researchers' forecasts and make them more accurate. http://www.physorg.com/news177095065.html Space & Earth - Earth Sciences 2009-11-10T17:07:52-07:00 (PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission, or TRMM satellite has the ability to provide data that can be made into three-dimensional images. Visualizers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. used TRMM data to create a 3-D movie to better see the thunderstorms in Ida. http://www.physorg.com/news177093254.html Space & Earth - Earth Sciences 2009-11-10T16:35:14-07:00 California experienced centuries-long droughts in the past 20,000 years that coincided with the thawing of ice caps in the Arctic, according to a new study by UC Davis doctoral student Jessica Oster and geology professor Isabel Montaņez. http://www.physorg.com/news177088772.html Space & Earth - Earth Sciences 2009-11-10T15:20:55-07:00 Tropical Cyclone 4A formed yesterday, November 10 off the western coast of India in the Arabian Sea, and NASA's infrared imagery captured some high, powerful thunderstorms developing in the storm's center. http://www.physorg.com/news177086576.html Space & Earth - Earth Sciences 2009-11-10T15:00:02-07:00 In an effort to plug gaps of knowledge about key ocean processes, scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego have been awarded nearly $1 million from the National Science Foundation to develop a new breed of ocean-probing instruments. http://www.physorg.com/news177085880.html Space & Earth - Earth Sciences 2009-11-10T14:41:45-07:00 Neal Iverson opened his laboratory's walk-in freezer and said the one-of-a-kind machine inside could help scientists understand how glaciers slide across their beds. And that could help researchers predict how glaciers will react to climate change and contribute to rising sea levels. http://www.physorg.com/news177084249.html Space & Earth - Earth Sciences 2009-11-10T14:30:01-07:00 Aerosols, very small particles suspended in the air, play an important role in the global climate balance and in regulating climate change. They are one of the greatest sources of uncertainty in climate change models. ESA's GlobAerosol project has been making the most of European satellite capabilities to monitor them. http://www.physorg.com/news177080138.html Space & Earth - Earth Sciences 2009-11-10T12:56:02-07:00 Tropical Storm Ida made landfall around 6:40 a.m. ET this morning on Dauphin Island, along the Alabama coastline. NASA's GOES Project created the latest image from Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-12) data showed that the bulk of Ida's clouds and rain are now inland, even though Ida's center was just near the Alabama coast. http://www.physorg.com/news177076167.html Space & Earth - Earth Sciences 2009-11-10T11:50:30-07:00 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 2009-11-09T19:50:02-07:00 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 2009-11-09T15:40:03-07:00 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 2009-11-09T15:20:01-07:00 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 2009-11-09T14:28:57-07:00 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 2009-11-09T14:20:05-07:00 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 2009-11-09T10:49:50-07:00 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 2009-11-08T13:23:32-07:00 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 2009-11-06T11:30:07-07:00 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 2009-11-05T17:30:01-07:00 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 2009-11-05T16:00:01-07:00 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 2009-11-05T12:00:01-07:00 (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 2009-11-05T08:10:01-07:00 (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 2009-11-04T17:40:01-07:00 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 2009-11-04T15:20:01-07:00 (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 2009-11-04T13:49:32-07:00 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 2009-11-04T03:15:32-07:00 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 2009-11-03T16:30:01-07:00 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 2009-11-03T10:50:02-07:00