Earth Sciences

Scientists will soon be extracting the deepest Arctic sedimentary cores ever drilled from the Lomonosov Ridge, in the deep oceans more than 2,000 km off the coast of Norway. They will core to a depth of about 500 metres under the seabed. From studying these cores the researchers expect to answer questions such as ’what caused the ice-age?’ So far the deepest oceanic sediment core extracted from the Arctic is only from a depth of 16 metres.

Seafloor sediments conceal a rich history

’Strapped in’ by wing dykes

The oldest data available on the Missouri River – from the logs of Lewis and Clark – show that water flow on the river today is far more variable than it was 200 years ago. The data also show that the river is some 220 yards narrower at St. Charles, Mo., today at 500 yards across than in 1804 when it spread out some 720 yards.

These changes are due to modifications of the river by the Army Corps of Engineers, say Robert Criss, Ph.D., pro

ESA’s Proba satellite here shows a winding segment of the 7240-km long Great Wall of China situated just northeast of Beijing. The Great Wall’s relative visibility or otherwise from orbit has inspired much recent debate.

The 21 hours spent in space last October by Yang Liwei – China’s first ever space traveller – were a proud achievement for his nation. The only disappointment came as Liwei informed his countrymen he had not spotted their single greatest national symbol from

If rising global temperatures cause the ice streams of Western Antarctica to break up, major cities and agricultural heartlands the world over would be submerged. Researchers from the University of Leeds’ School of Geography are set to embark on a £1m, three-year project to find out exactly how stable they are.

The project, the biggest of its kind to date, will drill up to 2.2km down into the Rutford ice stream in Western Antarctica to determine its stability and see how close it is to break

IRD scientists have revealed, in an article just published in Nature, that the cooling event known in the Northern Hemisphere as the Younger Dryas (about 12 000 years B.P.) was expressed in the Pacific by the absence of any South Pacific Convergence Zone activity and the movement of tropical waters closer to the Equator. This observation shows the interaction which occurs between the low and high latitudes and provides boundaries relevant for building ocean-atmosphere climatic models. Geochemical ana

Scientists at Bristol University have established the time when mountains first became forested. The timing of upland ‘greening’ has major implications for understanding global temperatures in the past, and will help refine models of present-day climate change.

A unique assemblage of giant fossil trees has been found in 300-million-year-old rocks in Newfoundland, Canada, by Dr Howard Falcon-Lang of Bristol University’s Earth Sciences Department. The fossilised trees represent the oldest upla