Heavens

Digital measurements of millions of trees indicate that previous studies likely overestimate the amount of carbon stored by temperate U.S. forests, according to a new NASA study.

The findings could help scientists better understand the impact that trees have on the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. Although it is a well-established fact that trees absorb carbon and store it long-term, researchers are unsure how much is stored in global forests.

This winter, two sounding rockets will launch through the aurora borealis over Norway to study how particles move in a region near the North Pole where Earth's magnetic field is directly connected to the solar wind. After the launch window opens on Nov. 27, 2015, the CAPER and RENU 2 rockets will have to wait for low winds and a daytime aurora before they can send their instrument payloads soaring through the Northern Lights.

During the early morning of Nov. 24, Tropical Storm Sandra became the 18th named storm of the 2015 Eastern Pacific hurricane season. NASA's Global Precipitation Measurement or GPM mission core satellite passed over the new storm and looked at its clouds and rainfall.

At 4 p.m. EST (2100 UTC) on Nov. 23, Tropical Depression Twenty-Two-E was born near latitude 10.8 north, longitude 102.9 west. Twelve hours later it strengthened into a tropical storm.

Tropical Cyclone Annabelle ran into adverse atmospheric and oceanic conditions and was fading quickly on Nov. 24. But the day before, NASA's RapidScat instrument saw some dying bursts of wind from the weakening Southern Indian Ocean system.

Mars' largest moon, Phobos, is slowly falling toward the planet, but rather than smash into the surface, it likely will be shredded and the pieces strewn about the planet in a ring like the rings encircling Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune.

Though inevitable, the demise of Phobos is not imminent. It will probably happen in 20 to 40 million years, leaving a ring that will persist for anywhere from one million to 100 million years, according to two young earth scientists at the University of California, Berkeley.

The Global Precipitation Measurement mission known as GPM passed over Typhoon In-fa and found extreme rainfall occurring in the storm.

GPM is a satellite that can estimate rainfall rates from space. It's a jointly managed satellite by both NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

Planet Earth experienced a global climate shift in the late 1980s on an unprecedented scale, fuelled by anthropogenic warming and a volcanic eruption, according to new research published this week.

Scientists say that a major step change, or 'regime shift', in the Earth's biophysical systems, from the upper atmosphere to the depths of the ocean and from the Arctic to Antarctica, was centred around 1987, and was sparked by the El Chichón volcanic eruption in Mexico five years earlier.

Army ants construct complex bridges from their own bodies to span gaps and create shortcuts in the floor of the tropical forests of Central America, according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Army ants build living bridges by linking their bodies to span gaps and create shortcuts across rainforests in Central and South America. An international team of researchers has now discovered these bridges can move from their original building point to span large gaps and change position as required.

NASA's Terra satellite flew over Typhoon In-fa on Nov. 23 and imagery showed the storm had become elongated to the northeast.

On Nov. 23 at 02:00 UTC (Nov. 22 at 9 p.m. EST) the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite captured an image of Typhoon In-fa in the Pacific Ocean. In-fa's cloud-filled eye was surrounded by powerful thunderstorms. A large band of thunderstorms were wrapping into the low-level center in the northeastern quadrant, and stretching east.

Tropical Storm Annabelle formed early on Nov. 21 in the Southern Indian Ocean, strengthened briefly and began a weakening trend on Nov. 23. NASA's Terra satellite and RapidScat instrument captured imagery of the storm after it developed.

Early on Nov. 21, Annabelle, the third tropical cyclone of the Southern Indian Ocean season, formed near 10.9 south latitude and 71.6 east longitude, about 234 nautical miles south-southwest of Diego Garcia.

The electric industry in the U.S. is undergoing significant changes for a number of reasons, including new and improved technologies, changing customer desires, low load growth in many regions, and changes in federal and state policies and regulations.

Droughts could kill off the tallest trees in tropical rainforests in coming decades, a study suggests.

For the first time, scientists have identified the ecological trigger that brings about the death of tropical rainforest trees during prolonged water shortages.

Reduced rainfall forecast in coming decades could cause the breakdown of the transport system in trees that takes water up from soil to the leaves, scientists say.

Space holds numerous fascinating objects which we can only investigate by observing their radiation - even beyond the visible range. For space telescopes such as the European Space Agency's (ESA) infrared observatory Herschel, whose mission is to observe radiation in the far-infrared, cooling the instruments is of vital importance, since the instruments themselves must not emit disturbing infrared radiation. The mirrors of these telescopes, which are used at temperatures below 190 °C, are made of special, ultrastable ceramics such as silicon carbide.

There is an urgent need to improve both short-term and long-term approaches to education for the large number of Syrian refugee children in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, according to a new RAND Corporation study.

Improving the quality of the current education system will require increasing instructional time, improving teacher training, expanding school monitoring and creating programs tailored for children who have missed instruction for as long as three years because of the crisis, according to the study.