Latest Nature Geoscience Stories

New University of Florida research puts to rest the mystery of where old carbon was stored during the last glacial period. It turns out it ended up in the icy waters of the Southern Ocean near Antarctica.The findings have implications for modern-day global warming, said Ellen Martin, a UF geological sciences professor and an author of the paper, which is published in this week's journal Nature Geoscience."It helps us understand how the carbon cycle works, which is important for understanding...

The deadly Haiti earthquake that killed upwards of 300,000 people in January may have been caused by a previously unknown fault and pressure could be building for another seismic catastrophe, Reuters reported on Sunday. Two reports were published in the journal Nature Geoscience that follow different paths but ultimately conclude the fault that was originally blamed for the earthquake was not the real source, and it is still a real threat. "As the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault did not...

While it's still hotly debated among scientists whether climate change causes a shift from the traditional form of El Nino to one known as El Nino Modoki, online in the journal Nature Geoscience, scientists now say that El Nino Modoki affects long-term changes in currents in the North Pacific Ocean.El Nino is a periodic warming in the eastern tropical Pacific that occurs along the coast of South America. Recently, scientists have noticed that El Nino warming is stronger in the Central Pacific...

The magnitude 7.0 earthquake that caused more than 200,000 casualties and devastated Haiti's economy in January resulted not from the Enriquillo fault, as previously believed, but from slip on multiple faults -- primarily a previously unknown, subsurface fault -- according to a study published online this week in Nature Geoscience.In addition, because the earthquake did not involve slip near Earth's surface, the study suggests that it did not release all of the strain that has built up on...

Geologists studying the Jan. 12 Haiti earthquake say the risk of destructive tsunamis is higher than expected in places such as Kingston, Istanbul, and Los Angeles.Like Haiti's capital, these cities all lie near the coast and near an active geologic feature called a strike-slip fault where two tectonic plates slide past each other like two hands rubbing against each other.Until now, geologists did not consider the tsunami risk to be very high in these places because when these faults rupture,...

A better way to pinpoint where volcanic eruptions are likely to occur has been produced by an international team of geophysicists.Scientists from the universities of Leeds, Purdue, Indiana and Addis Ababa, investigated volcanic activity occurring in the remote Afar desert of Northern Ethiopia between 2005 and 2009.By studying a rare sequence of 13 magmatic events "“ where hot molten rock was intruded into a crack between the African and Arabian plates "“ they found that the location of...

According to a study published on Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience, the solar system could be close to two million years older than previously thought. Evidence of a meteorite from the Moroccan desert in 2004 contains a "relict" mineral, which is one of the oldest solid materials formed after the birth of the Sun. The meteorite that was discovered was 3.2 pounds.An analysis of a lead isotope suggests the mineral was formed 4.4 billion years ago.  The analysis has found...

A new study has found that a mixing of two different types of magma is the key to the historic eruptions of Mount Hood, Oregon's tallest mountain, and that eruptions often happen in a relatively short time "“ weeks or months "“ after this mixing occurs.This behavior is somewhat different than that of most other Cascade Range volcanoes, researchers said, including Mount Hood's nearby, more explosive neighbor, Mount St. Helens.The research is being reported this week in Nature Geoscience by...

Greenhouse gases are playing a role in changes, say scientistsNewly detected rising sea levels in parts of the Indian Ocean, including the coastlines of the Bay of Bengal, the Arabian Sea, Sri Lanka, Sumatra and Java, appear to be at least partly a result of human-induced increases of atmospheric greenhouse gases, says a study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder.The study, which combined sea surface measurements going back to the 1960s and satellite observations, indicates...

Earth could be as much as 70 million years younger than scientists originally believed, according to a new study which claims that it could have taken the planet 100 million years to reach its current size instead of the widely believed 30 million years.Dr. John Rudge, a research fellow at the University of Cambridge's Trinity College, along with an international team of experts, compared geochemical information originally found in the Earth's mantle and compared it to the same material from...