Earth Sciences

A new Envisat viewing mode means that icebergs can be routinely tracked on their long trek around Antarctica, with regularly updated images of polar regions now available to highlight ice movements.

The Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) instrument on ESA’s Envisat can see through the polar storms and winter darkness that keep Antarctica hidden from optical satellite sensors. ASAR works in a variety of different modes: its latest, operational since February, is called Glo

Dark-colored river runoff includes nitrogen and phosphorus, which are used as fertilizers in agriculture. These nutrients cause blooms of marine algae called phytoplankton. During extremely large phytoplankton blooms where the algae is so concentrated the water may appear black, some phytoplankton die, sink to the ocean bottom and are eaten by bacteria. The bacteria consume the algae and deplete oxygen from the water that leads to fish kills.

For the first time, scientists may now de

Over the past six weeks, scientists aboard the research vessel “Polarstern” of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research have been investigating changes in ocean temperature and sea ice cover in the area of Fram Strait between Spitsbergen and Greenland.

In this area significant exchange of water masses between the Arctic Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean takes place. The ongoing process of global warming throughout the past years has also altered conditions in Fram Stra

What do the Amazon Basin and Sahara Desert have in common? They are intricately linked by dust and climate and both belong to a family of hotspots or “Achilles’ heels” that have a profound impact on the global environment, says Professor John Schellnhuber, speaking at the EuroScience Forum in Stockholm today.

Dust from the Sahara Desert fertilises the Amazon, increasing the abundance of life there, says Professor Schellnhuber, IGBP* Science Ambassador and Director of the UK-based

People in Georgia’s Dodge and Bleckley counties have for years picked up small pieces of natural glass called “Georgiaites,” which were produced by an unknown asteroid or comet impact millions of years ago. Just where these small, translucent green objects came from, however, was unclear.

Now researchers at the University of Georgia, studying a kaolin mine in Warren County, have found a layer of tiny grains, which indicate that the grains and the Georgiaites were products o

University of Arizona scientists have discovered that meteorites, particularly iron meteorites, may have been critical to the evolution of life on Earth.

Their research shows that meteorites easily could have provided more phosphorus than naturally occurs on Earth — enough phosphorus to give rise to biomolecules which eventually assembled into living, replicating organisms.

Phosphorus is central to life. It forms the backbone of DNA and RNA because it connects these molec