Earth Sciences

A new study by researchers at Oregon State University suggests that the magnitude 6.7 earthquakes that struck California’s San Fernando Valley in 1971 and Northridge area in 1994 may have been about the most powerful quakes that this specific area can sustain. Results of the research were published this week in the journal Geology.

“The study points out the potential of using paleomagnetism to estimate maximum earthquake magnitudes in some regions,” said Shaul Levi, a paleom

Maps of Antarctica need to be amended. The long-awaited collision between the vast B-15A iceberg and the landfast Drygalski ice tongue has taken place. This Envisat radar image shows the ice tongue – large and permanent enough to feature in Antarctic atlases – has come off worst.

An image acquired by Envisat on 15 April 2005 shows that a five-kilometre-long section at the seaward end of Drygalski has broken off following a collision with the drifting B-15A. The iceberg itself appear

The northernmost part of the Baltic Sea, between Finland and Sweden, recently provided an ideal location for scientists to successfully address critical issues relating to sea ice validation before CryoSat is launched in September.

Unlike last year’s CryoSat Validation Experiments (CryoVEx 2004), which focussed on land ice and took place in Greenland and the Canadian Arctic, the recent validation activities in the Baltic scrutinised issues relating to sea ice. The experiment

Scientists drill into sediments of one of the world’s oldest, deepest lakes to improve understanding of global climate change

Four University of Rhode Island oceanographers and colleagues from four other universities recently probed the ancient sediments beneath Lake Malawi in East Africa and recovered sediment samples that provide up to 1.5 million years of information about how climate in Africa has changed – the longest continuous record of such data ever collected from that

Since the time billions of years ago when Mars was formed, it has never been a spherically symmetric planet, nor is it composed of similar materials throughout, say scientists who have studied the planet. Since its formation, it has changed its shape, for example, through the development of the Tharsis bulge, an eight kilometer [five mile] high feature that covers one-sixth of the Martian surface, and through volcanic activity. As a result of these and other factors, its polar axis has not been st

A University of Liverpool scientist has discovered a new layer near the Earth’s core, which will enable the internal temperature of the Earth’s mantle to be measured at a much deeper level than previously possible.

Dr Christine Thomas, from the Department of Earth Sciences, has found a previously undetected seismic layer near the Earth’s core-mantle boundary. Her discovery will allow geophysicists to measure variations in the Earth’s internal temperature near the boundary bet