Latest Nature Geoscience Stories

Blobs of warm ice that periodically rise to the surface and churn the icy crust on Saturn's moon Enceladus explain the quirky heat behavior and intriguing surface of the moon's south polar region, according to a new paper using data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft."Cassini appears to have caught Enceladus in the middle of a burp," said Francis Nimmo, a planetary scientist at the University of California Santa Cruz and a co-author of the new paper in Nature Geoscience. "These tumultuous periods...

In a vivid example of how a small geographic feature can have far-reaching impacts on climate, new research shows that water levels in the Bering Strait helped drive global climate patterns during ice age episodes dating back more than 100,000 years.The international study, led by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), found that the repeated opening and closing of the narrow strait due to fluctuating sea levels affected currents that transported heat and salinity...

There is little doubt among scientists now that human carbon dioxide emissions are warming the planet. Another problem of rising atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is that CO2 is being absorbed by the oceans, which increases seawater acidity (lowers the seawater pH). This process, termed 'ocean acidification', has received growing scientific and public interest because it threatens certain groups of marine organisms, including corals. Only recently have researchers realized that man-made carbon...

The kinds of increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide taking place today could have a significantly larger effect on global temperatures than previously thought, according to a new study led by Yale University geologists. Their findings appear December 20 in the advanced online edition of Nature Geoscience.The team demonstrated that only a relatively small rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) was associated with a period of substantial warming in the mid- and early-Pliocene era, between...

A new study of Pacific Ocean sediments off the coast of Chile has found that  offshore waters experienced systematic oxygen depletion during the rapid warming of the Antarctic following the last "glacial maximum" period 20,000 years ago.The findings are intriguing as scientists are exploring whether climate change may be contributing to outbreaks of hypoxia "“ or extremely low oxygen levels "“ along the near-shore regions of South America and the Pacific Northwest of the United...

The Earth's temperature may be 30-50 percent more sensitive to atmospheric carbon dioxide than has previously been estimated, reports a new study published in Nature Geoscience this weekIn the long term, the Earth's temperature may be 30-50% more sensitive to atmospheric carbon dioxide than has previously been estimated, reports a new study published in Nature Geoscience this week.The results show that components of the Earth's climate system that vary over long timescales "“ such as...

Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) suggest that the eccentricity of Saturn's orbit around the sun may be responsible for the unusually uneven distribution of methane and ethane lakes over the northern and southern polar regions of the planet's largest moon, Titan. On Earth, similar "astronomical forcing" of climate drives ice-age cycles.A paper describing the theory appears in the November 29th advance online edition of Nature Geoscience.As revealed by...

Using a technique normally used for detecting weak tremors, scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology discovered that the 2004 magnitude 6 earthquake along the Parkfield section of the San Andreas fault exhibited almost 11 times more aftershocks than previously thought.  The research appears online in Nature Geoscience and will appear in print in a forthcoming edition."We found almost 11 times more events in the first three days after the main event. That's surprising because this...

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-gasesOf all global carbon dioxide emissions, less than half accumulate in the atmosphere where it contributes to global warming. The remainder is hidden away in oceans and terrestrial ecosystems such as forests, grasslands and peat-lands. Stimulating this "free service" of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems is...

Despite the economic effects of the global financial crisis (GFC), carbon dioxide emissions from human activities rose 2 percent in 2008 to an all-time high of 1.3 tons of carbon per capita per year, according to a paper published Nov. 17 in Nature Geoscience.The paper "“ by scientists from the internationally respected climate research group, the Global Carbon Project (GCP) "“ says rising emissions from fossil fuels last year were caused mainly by increased use of coal but there were...