Latest Nature Geoscience Stories

The present rate of greenhouse carbon dioxide emissions through fossil fuel burning is higher than that associated with an ancient episode of severe global warming, according to new research. The findings are published online this week by the journal Nature Geoscience. Around 55.9 million years ago, the Earth experienced a period of intense global warming known as the Palaeocene"“Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), which lasted for around 170,000 years. During its main phase, average annual...

The rate of release of carbon into the atmosphere today is nearly 10 times as fast as during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), 55.9 million years ago, the best analog we have for current global warming, according to an international team of geologists. Rate matters and this current rapid change may not allow sufficient time for the biological environment to adjust."We looked at the PETM because it is thought to be the best ancient analog for future climate change caused by...

Observations major step in improving forecasts of weather extremes such as floods and droughtsMoisture and heat fluctuations from the land surface to the atmosphere form a critical nexus between surface hydrology and atmospheric processes, especially those relevant to rainfall. While current theory has suggested that soil moisture has had a positive impact on precipitation, there have been very few large-scale observations of this. A team of researchers from Columbia Engineering, Geophysical...

Bolivia may need to prepare for a possible 8.9 magnitude quake that would be 125 times more powerful than previously calculated to be possible in this area, AFP reports. Two million people in the region of the east of the central Andes mountains could be affected in what had been thought, until now, to be a relatively calm area for seismic activity, according to a study published in Nature Geoscience."No one suspected that the previous estimates were too low," Benjamin Brooks, a geophysicist...

The Antarctic Peninsula has warmed rapidly for the last half-century or more, and recent studies have shown that an adjacent area, continental West Antarctica, has steadily warmed for at least 30 years, but scientists haven't been sure why.New University of Washington research shows that rising sea surface temperatures in the area of the Pacific Ocean along the equator and near the International Date Line drive atmospheric circulation that has caused some of the largest shifts in Antarctic...

The earliest rocks in our solar system were more like candy floss than the hard rock that we know today, according to research published today in the journal Nature GeoscienceThe earliest rocks in our Solar System were more like candy floss than the hard rock that we know today, according to research published today in the journal Nature Geoscience.The work, by researchers from Imperial College London and other international institutions, provides the first geological evidence to support...

New research gives the first accurate estimate of how much faster the Earth's core is rotating compared to the rest of the planet.Previous research had shown that the Earth's core rotates faster than the rest of the planet. However, scientists from the University of Cambridge have discovered that earlier estimates of 1 degree every year were inaccurate and that the core is actually moving much slower than previously believed "“ approximately 1 degree every million years. Their findings are...

Paper has implications for oxygen depletion, provides photographic evidence of plumesA new University of Georgia study that is the first to examine comprehensively the magnitude of hydrocarbon gases released during the Deepwater Horizon Gulf of Mexico oil discharge has found that up to 500,000 tons of gaseous hydrocarbons were emitted into the deep ocean. The authors conclude that such a large gas discharge"”which generated concentrations 75,000 times the norm"”could result in small-scale...

Earth's global temperature has been rising gradually over the last decades, but the warming has not been the same everywhere. Scientists are therefore trying to pin down how the warming has affected regional climates because that is what really matters to people, and to adaptation and mitigation strategies. Their efforts, however, had hit a roadblock because the necessary observations of the winds over the oceans were biased.Developing a new method to remove the bias, Hiroki Tokinaga and...

The region of Chile that was rocked by an earthquake last February could be at risk for a larger series of tremors, according to a new study published online by the journal Nature Geoscience on Sunday.The 2010 earthquake, which hit the Maule region of the South American country on February 27, "was not unexpected," according to researchers from Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Vulcanology. "A clearly identified seismic gap existed in an area where tectonic loading has been...