A previously unknown giant volcanic eruption that led to global mass extinction 260million years ago has been uncovered by scientists at the University of Leeds.
The eruption in the Emeishan province of south-west China unleashed around half a million cubic kilometres of lava, covering an area 5 times the size of Wales, and wiping out marine life around the world.
CORVALLIS, Ore. – Researchers from Oregon State University, NASA and other organizations said today that they have succeeded for the first time in measuring the physiology of marine phytoplankton through satellite measurements of its fluorescence – an accomplishment that had been elusive for years.
With this new tool and the continued use of the MODIS Aqua satellite, scientists will now be able to gain a reasonably accurate picture of the ocean's health and productivity about every week, all over the planet.
For one international community – the 165,000 strong Inuit community dispersed across the Arctic coastline in small, remote coastal settlements in Alaska, Canada, Greenland and Siberia – it is already too late to prevent some of the negative effects of climate change.
In the context of the climatic change of the planet, those research works that throw light on global warming are of great interest. That is the case of the studies on atmospheric aerosol, a suspension of solid or liquid particles on a gaseous environment that can contribute to the warming or cooling of the atmosphere.
GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- As the frozen soil in the Arctic thaws, bacteria will break down organic matter, releasing long-stored carbon into the warming atmosphere.
At the same time, plants will proliferate, nurtured by balmier temperatures, more nutrients from decomposing soil and the increasing abundance of the greenhouse gas they depend on for growth.
HOUSTON -- (May 27, 2009) -- A new analysis of the processes that constantly stir the Earth's deep mantle is helping to explain how the mantle holds onto a portion of ancient noble gases that were trapped during the Earth's formation.
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A team of researchers at the University of Illinois has demonstrated that, counter to classical Newtonian mechanics, an entire collection of superconducting electrons in an ultrathin superconducting wire is able to "tunnel" as a pack from a state with a higher electrical current to one with a notably lower current, providing more evidence of the phenomenon of macroscopic quantum tunneling.
Research led by the University of Leicester suggests people today and in future generations should look to the past in order to mitigate the worst effects of climate change.
The dangers of rising sea levels, crop failures and extreme weather were all faced by our ancestors who learnt to adapt and survive in the face of climate change.
Dr Jago Cooper, of the School of Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Leicester, has been studying the archaeology of climate change in the Caribbean as part of a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship.
In collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, scientists have investigated the rotation of molecules on a fixed surface to understand how they may help in the development of future rotor-based machinery at nanoscale level.
The article written by Rosa Binimelis, Walter Pengue and Iliana Monterroso, is the product of collaborative work among the Autonomous University of Barcelona, University of Buenos Aires and the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences in Guatemala. The article describes the geographical advance of the invasion beyond the Pampas, it reviews the environmental history of the invasion process to discuss the major drivers and pressures in the context of the changes of the agriculture of Argentina in the last twenty years.
Studies of climate evolution and the ecology of past-times are often hampered by lost information – lost variables needed to complete the picture have been long thought untraceable but scientists have created a formula which will fill in the gaps of our knowledge and will help predict the future.
A novel method of reconstructing missing data will shed new light on how and why our climate moved us on from ice ages to warmer periods as researchers will be able to calculate lost information and put together a more complete picture.
There are very few places in the world where dynamic activity taking place beneath Earth's surface goes undetected.
Volcanoes, earthquakes, and even the sudden uplifting or sinking of the ground are all visible results of restlessness far below, but according to research by Arizona State University (ASU) seismologists, dynamic activity deep beneath us isn't always expressed on the surface.
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Hospitalized patients who receive acid-suppressive medications such as a proton-pump inhibitor have a 30 percent increased odds of developing pneumonia while in the hospital, according to a study in the May 27 issue of JAMA.
DURHAM, N.H. - Scientists from around the world will convene at the University of New Hampshire June 2-5, 2009, to discuss key findings from the most ambitious effort ever undertaken to measure "short-lived" airborne pollutants in the Arctic and determine how they contribute in the near term to the dramatic changes underway in the vast, climate-sensitive region.
The Mediterranean region is a very active cyclone area, and is often affected by these atmospheric phenomena, which bring strong winds and heavy rain. Despite the efforts of the scientific community to improve numerical cyclone prediction, the systems developed are costly.
"Sensitivity studies are a low-cost and efficient way of establishing the best kinds of observation strategies", Lorena Garcies, lead author of the study and a researcher in the Meteorology Group at the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB), tells SINC.