Earth Sciences

New research from NASA scientists suggests emissions of black soot alter the way sunlight reflects off snow. According to a computer simulation, black soot may be responsible for 25 percent of observed global warming over the past century.

Soot in the higher latitudes of the Earth, where ice is more common, absorbs more of the sun’s energy and warmth than an icy, white background. Dark-colored black carbon, or soot, absorbs sunlight, while lighter colored ice reflects sunlight.

Biogeochemists from the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research have shown that prehistoric tropical oceans were no less than five to eight degrees warmer than they are now. Their findings have been published in the December issue of the renowned American journal Geology.

During the mid-Cretaceous period, some 90 to 120 million years ago, the seawater around the equator had a temperature of 30 to 37 degrees Celsius, which is five to eight degrees higher than the temperature now. This wa

Studies of the unique landscape in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica provide new insights into the origin of similar features on Mars and provide one line of evidence that suggests the Red Planet has recently experienced an ice age, according to a paper in this week’s issue of the journal Nature.

The distribution of hexagonal mounds and other features on the Martian surface at mid-latitudes similar to those in the Dry Valleys also supports previous scientific assertions that a significant amou

New findings may have implications for the stability of today’s climate

Scientists at the University of California, Riverside and Columbia University have found evidence of the release of an enormous quantity of methane gas as ice sheets melted at the end of a global ice age about 600 million years ago, possibly altering the ocean’s chemistry, influencing oxygen levels in the ocean and atmosphere, and enhancing climate warming because methane is a powerful greenhouse gas. Th

Radioactive potassium, common enough on Earth to make potassium-rich bananas one of the “hottest” foods around, appears also to be a substantial source of heat in the Earth’s core, according to recent experiments by University of California, Berkeley, geophysicists.

Radioactive potassium, uranium and thorium are thought to be the three main sources of heat in the Earth’s interior, aside from that generated by the formation of the planet. Together, the heat keeps the mantle actively churning

Using the perspective of the last few centuries and millennia, speakers in a press conference at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco will discuss the latest research involving climate reconstructions and different climate models.

The press conference features Caspar Ammann of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Boulder, Colo.; Drew Shindell of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York; and Tom Crowley of Duke University, Durham