Earth Sciences

Representatives from 47 countries and more than two dozen international organisations met in Tokyo last week, coming a significant step closer to achieving the goal of an integrated Earth monitoring network.

The Japanese capital was the location of the fourth Group on Earth Observations (GEO) summit. GEO is an intergovernmental working group charged with developing a plan for a co-ordinated global Earth Observation network providing data on environmental factors for both scientific and human

The National Center for Atmospheric Research will fly a C-130 research aircraft over Colorado’s Front Range this May and July to measure how much carbon dioxide mountain forests remove from the air as spring turns into summer. NCAR scientists and their university colleagues are developing new methods for assessing carbon uptake over complex terrain on regional scales. Accurate assessments could help show to what extent carbon dioxide storage in Western mountain forests– a potentially important “sink

Fossilized organic molecules of green sulfur bacteria are helping to unlock secrets of what may have been a period of helter-skelter climate change and mass kills of sea life during the Jurassic Period some 150-160 million years ago.

The fossils were found in sedimentary rock commonly used to make house bricks in England, quarried from what is called the Oxford Clay Formation.

The findings are reported in the May issue of the journal Geology (now online to subscribers.) Fabien Ken

A new study strengthens evidence that the oceans and climate are linked in an intricate dance, and that rapid climate change may be related to how vigorously ocean currents transport heat from low to high latitudes.

A new study, reported April 22 in the journal Nature, suggests that when the rate of the Atlantic Ocean’s north-south overturning circulation slowed dramatically following an iceberg outburst during the last deglaciation, the climate in the North Atlantic region became cold

Freshwater from melting ice sheets set the stage several thousand years ago for production of natural gas along the margins of sedimentary basins.

Now researchers at the University of Michigan and Amherst College are reading chemical signatures of water in those areas to pinpoint places where gas is most likely to be found. Their most recent work is described in a paper published in the May/June issue of the Geological Society of America Bulletin.

Natural gas forms when organic ma

On hearing the word, “radar”, we usually think of speed controls or air traffic control systems. In fact, there are many kinds of radar and applications thereof.

At Punta Galea in Getxo the Climatology and Meteorology Office of the Basque Government has installed a very special kind of radar: a radar that indicates the patterns of winds; wind patterns at up to 3,000 metres altitude indicating its direction and speed. This is what is special about the radar at Punta Galea.

In normal