Latest Nature Geoscience Stories
The melting of glaciers is well documented, but when looking at the rate at which they have been retreating, a team of international researchers steps back and says not so fast.Previous studies have largely overestimated mass loss from Alaskan glaciers over the past 40-plus years, according to Erik Schiefer, a Northern Arizona University geographer who coauthored a paper in the February issue of Nature Geoscience that recalculates glacier melt in Alaska.The research team, led by Étienne...
An asteroid strike may not only account for the demise of ocean and land life 65 million years ago, but the fireball's path and the resulting dust, darkness and toxic metal contamination may explain the geographic unevenness of extinctions and recovery, according to Penn State geoscientists."Our results shed light on the causes of nannoplankton extinction, how productivity was restored, the factors that controlled the origination of new species, and, ultimately, how phytoplankton...
Nanoparticles are atmospheric materials so small that they can't be seen with the naked eye, but they can very visibly affect both weather patterns and human health all over the world "“ and not in a good way, according to a study by a team of researchers at Texas A&M University.Researchers Renyi Zhang, Alexei Khalizov, Jun Zheng, Wen Xu, Yan Ma and Vinita Lal in the Departments of Atmospheric Sciences and Chemistry say that nanoparticles appear to be growing in many parts of the world,...
Researchers are tracking Indian Ocean climate patterns with the possibility that they will improve early-warning systems for the El Nino phenomenon, which could save countless lives and billions of dollars lost each year to the severe weather it causes. Researchers from Japan and France said their new forecast model may predict an El Nino up to 14 months ahead of time, several months earlier than with current models. A paper on the project was published in the journal Nature Geoscience. "It...
A 2009 claim that sea levels would rise up to 32 inches by the end of the century, is being retracted, as the original report's author says the real estimate is still not known. Scientists have discovered mistakes that undermine the projected sea level increase that would be affected by global warming. The study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, confirmed the conclusions of a 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The 2009 study collected data from the...
A study by University of Michigan researchers offers new insight into what happens to mercury deposited onto Arctic snow from the atmosphere.The work also provides a new approach to tracking mercury's movement through Arctic ecosystems.Mercury is a naturally occurring element, but some 2000 tons of it enter the global environment each year from human-generated sources such as coal-burning power plants, incinerators and chlorine-producing plants."When released into the atmosphere in its...
Researchers have discovered that some of the most fundamental assumptions about how water moves through soil in a seasonally dry climate such as the Pacific Northwest are incorrect "“ and that a century of research based on those assumptions will have to be reconsidered.A new study by scientists from Oregon State University and the Environmental Protection Agency showed "“ much to the surprise of the researchers "“ that soil clings tenaciously to the first precipitation after a dry...
Indonesia may be looking at a catastrophe as a huge tsunami-generating earthquake is possibly expected to hit the city of Padang and the island of Sumatra.A warning was issued by a scientist who miraculously predicted the quake that hit Sumatra in 2005. The warning was issued in a letter to the journal Nature Geoscience.The peril comes from a relentless buildup of pressure over the last two centuries on a section of the Sunda Trench, one of the world's most notorious earthquake zones, which...
The combination of low concentrations of oxygen and nutrients in the lower layers of the beaches of Alaska's Prince William Sound is slowing the aerobic biodegradation of oil remaining from the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, according to researchers at Temple University.Considered one of the worst environmental disasters in history, the Exxon Valdez spilled more than 11 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound, contaminating some 1,300 miles of shoreline, killing thousands of...
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...
