Earth Sciences

There is undeniable proof that water once existed on the planet Mars, a team of researchers has concluded in a series of 11 articles this week in a special issue of the journal Science.

A team of more than 100 scientists from numerous government agencies and universities, among them Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University’s College of Geosciences, co-wrote the articles. Lemmon was the principal author on one article and co-author on three others describing the work of Spiri

It is hard to overstate the scale of the humanitarian emergency unfolding in Sudan’s strife-torn Darfur region: by current estimates there are 1.45 million people displaced from their homes across an area the size of France. However, images from space are assisting aid workers as they cope with the crisis.

An ESA-supported consortium called Respond is supplying Earth Observation-derived maps and other geographical information products direct to users in the field including

University of Leeds and Cambridge research into climate change, published today (December 2nd) in Science Express, reveals that there is no regular pattern in the duration of warm phases (interglacials) on land over the last 350,000 years. This raises doubts over our ability to predict when the onset of the next ice age might occur.

For over 30 years it’s been thought that interglacials lasted about 10,000 years. On this basis, our current interglacial, already 11,500 years old, would appe

The world’s fastest glacier, Greenland’s Jakobshavn Isbrae, doubled its speed between 1997 and 2003. The rapid movement of ice from land into the sea provides key evidence of newly discovered relationships between ice sheets, sea level rise and climate warming.

The findings were reported in the journal Nature on December 2, 2004. Co-authoring the study was University of New Hampshire glaciologist Mark Fahnestock of the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space (

A spectacular new discovery from an ongoing excavation at the Teotihuacan’s Pyramid of the Moon is revealing a grisly sacrificial burial from a period when the ancient metropolis was at its peak, with artwork unlike any seen before in Mesoamerica.

Though archaeologists hope that discoveries at the pyramid will answer lingering questions about the distinctive culture that built the great city, the new find deepens the mystery, with clear cultural connections to other burial

International network reaches 1,500th float deployment-halfway to full array

Note: This news release is issued in conjunction with the Group on Earth Observations (GEO-5) and the Partnership for Observation of the Global Oceans (POGO-6) international meetings held the week of Nov. 29, 2004.

Scientists have crossed an important threshold in an international effort to deploy a global network of robotic instruments to monitor and investigate important changes in the world’s oc