Earth Sciences

An international team of geoscientists believes that carbon dioxide, and not changes in cosmic ray intensity, was the factor controlling ancient global temperatures. The new findings resulted from the researchers inclusion of the ocean’s changing acidity in their calculations.

“Reviewing the geologic records of carbon dioxide and glaciations, we found that carbon dioxide was low during periods of long-lived and widespread continental glaciations and high during other, warmer periods,” s

A NASA-funded study found some climate models might be overestimating the amount of water vapor entering the atmosphere as the Earth warms. Since water vapor is the most important heat-trapping greenhouse gas in our atmosphere, some climate forecasts may be overestimating future temperature increases.

In response to human emissions of greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide, the Earth warms, more water evaporates from the ocean, and the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere increases. Since

A new study from the University of California shows, for the first time, that the deep-ocean circulation system of the north Atlantic, which controls ice-age cycles of cold and warm periods in the Northern Hemisphere, is integrally coupled to salinity levels in the Caribbean Sea.

This research reinforces concerns that global warming, by melting the glacial ice of Greenland, could quickly and profoundly change salinity and temperatures in the north Atlantic Ocean. One consequence might be mu

Using satellite and other data, scientists have discovered that sea surface temperatures and sea level pressure in the North Pacific have undergone unusual changes over the last five years. These changes to the North Pacific Ocean climate system are different from those that dominated for the past 50-80 years, which has led scientists to conclude that there is more than one key to the climate of that region than previously thought.

According to a study by Nicholas Bond, J.E. Overland and P.

Large-scale, long-lasting droughts in the United States – such as the present one in the West — tend to be linked to warmer than normal sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic Ocean, and not just cooling in the tropical Pacific, according to a USGS study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study statistically associates the patterns of U.S. droughts during the last century to multi-decade variations in North Pacific and North Atlantic sea sur

To the grand surprise of the investigators, when they removed that apparently normal and unremarkable rock, they found the remains of some three hundred persons. It was a communal grave from the end of the Neolithic, some 5,000 years ago. The bones are in a very good state of conservation, because the rock covering them most probably having protected them from the outside elements.

In Europe there are few archaeological sites containing such a large quantity of bones. Thus, the remains found