Earth Sciences

On the 17 and 18 June a meeting was held at the head office of AZTI-TECNALIA in the Basque port of Pasaia to launch a new project for a Spanish System of Operational Oceanography. Working on the project are the principal research centres, bodies in the field of oceanography and meteorology as well as other agencies involved in coastal management such as the Spanish Ports Authority. More than 50 experts, national and international, bringing together a wide range of multidisciplinary experience, took

Recent research has shown that over the past 50 years the evaporative demand at the terrestrial surface has decreased in many regions, while rainfall has remained constant or even increased a little, effectively making the land wetter. Much of the research to date has been undertaken in the Northern Hemisphere, but a new report details the changes specific to Australia between 1970 and 2002. Results are published this week in the International Journal of Climatology.

In the time period stud

Conservation workers have had their first look at satellite-derived map products that show a remote habitat of endangered African mountain gorillas in unprecedented detail. Production versions of these prototype products will help protect the less than 700 of the species remaining alive.

“It’s very exciting to get a look at some of the products we’re going to be able to take into the field in future,” remarked Maryke Gray, regional monitoring officer of the International Gorilla Conservation

Camping out, for anything up to two months, on vast ice sheets in the Arctic is just one of the challenges scientists faced performing the first of a series of six validation experiments in support of ESA’s CryoSat mission.

CryoSat will be the first Earth Explorer to be launched as part of ESA’s Living Planet Programme. Due for launch at the end of this year, it will measure changes in the elevation of ice sheets and sea ice with unprecedented accuracy in order to determine whether or

They will come by land, sea, and air to probe the skies and take measure of the air we breathe. And the University of New Hampshire will be at the center of it all – the largest and most complex air quality-climate study ever attempted.

Satellites will fly overhead scanning the Earth’s atmosphere, research aircraft will make tight spirals down a 40,000-foot column of air and “sniff” for hundreds of chemical species. Planes will fly wingtip-to-wingtip gathering air samples and comparing meas

Scientists affiliated with the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP), an international scientific research program designed to contribute fundamental knowledge to the topics of climate change, geologic hazards, energy resources, and Earth’s environment, departed Astoria, Ore., June 28, for the first leg of six planned expeditions. At the Juan de Fuca Ridge, off the coast of British Columbia, the first IODP expedition will undertake hydrologic, microbiological, seismic and tracer stud