Earth Sciences

The first comprehensive study of glaciers around the coast of the Antarctic Peninsula reveals the real impact of recent climate change.

Results from the study by researchers at British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) published this week in the journal Science, show that over the last 50 years 87% of 244 glaciers studied have retreated, and that average retreat rates have accelerated.

BAS and USGS analysed more than 2000 aerial photographs dating fr

Global warming link remains elusive

The first comprehensive study of glaciers on Antarctic Peninsula has uncovered widespread glacier retreat and suggests that recent climate change on the peninsula is responsible. Eighty-seven percent of the 244 marine glaciers have retreated over the last 50 years, a new study says. The widespread glacier retreat began at the northern, warmer tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. As atmospheric temperatures rose along the peninsula — more than 2.5 de

Uranium-series dating shows cave engravings oldest in Britain

A team of scientists from Bristol, The Open and Sheffield Universities have proved the engravings at Creswell Crags to be greater than 12,800 years old, making them Britain’s oldest rock art.

Creswell Crags which straddles the Nottinghamshire-Derbyshire border is riddled with caves which have preserved evidence of human activity during the last Ice Age. Recently, engravings on the walls and ceiling wer

When Kathryn Bard reached through the small hole that opened in a hillside along Egypt’s Red Sea coast, her hand touched nearly 4,000 years of history.

The opening that Bard, an associate professor of archaeology at Boston University, and her team’s co-leader Rodolfo Fattovich, a professor of archaeology at Italy’s University of Naples “L’Orientale,” discovered was the entrance to a large, man-made cave. Two days later at a site about 30 meters beyond this cav

The strength of hurricane activity striking the United States during the main hurricane season can now be predicted with significant accuracy thanks to a new computer model developed by scientists at University College London (UCL).

The model, unveiled in a paper in the 21 April issue of the journal Nature, will enable government, public, emergency planning bodies and insurers with US interests to receive warning in early August of the likelihood of either high or low hurrica

Potentially links climate with mountain building

A Dartmouth researcher is part of a team that has discovered a new active “thrust fault” at the base of the Himalaya in Nepal. This new fault likely accommodates some of the subterranean pressure caused by the continuing collision of the Indian subcontinent with Asia.

The study, titled “Active out-of-sequence thrust faulting in the central Nepalese Himalaya,” will be published in the April 21 issue of the journal Nature.