Earth Sciences

Using a suite of microwave remote sensing instruments aboard satellites, scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif., and the University of Montana, Missoula, have observed a recent trend of earlier thawing across the northern high latitudes. This regional thawing trend, advancing almost one day a year since 1988, has the potential to alter the cycle of atmospheric carbon dioxide intake and release by vegetation and soils across the region, potentially resultin

NASA’s Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) is sending home important scientific data and spectacular 3-D views of Earth’s polar ice sheets, clouds, mountains, and forestlands. The data are helping scientists understand how life on Earth is affected by changing climate.

The principal objective of the ICESat mission, and its Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) instrument, is to measure the surface elevations of the large ice sheets covering Antarctica and Greenland

Tiny ground movements that occur too gradually to be seen by the human eye can nevertheless be detected by ESA satellites looking down to Earth from 800 km away.

At a workshop in Italy last week, researchers explained how they are using this ability to monitor volcanoes and earthquake zones, aid oil and gas prospecting, observe urban subsidence and measure the slow flow of glaciers.

Data from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) instruments like those flown aboard the ERS spacecra

Four scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) are studying the chemistry of sulfur and nitrogen in the air above Antarctica. The investigation will help them understand the continent’s chemical processes better, as well as refine scientists’ interpretations of ice cores, which provide information on past climates.

The expedition, which runs through January 4, is part of the Antarctic Tropospheric Chemistry Investigation (ANTCI), a four-year program funde

Scientists have found that, despite a vast difference in precipitation between the north and south sides of the Himalaya Mountains, rates of erosion are indistinguishable across these mountains.

Douglas Burbank, professor of geology and director of the Institute for Crustal Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is the first author of the article, “Decoupling of erosion and precipitation in the Himalayas,” to be published Thursday, December 11, in the international scientif

The pattern of rainfall in the Washington Cascades strongly affects long-term erosion rates in the mountain range and may cause bedrock to be pulled up towards the Earth’s surface faster in some places than others, according to a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded study published in this week’s issue of the journal Nature. The results are the first convincing evidence of such effects, on mountain-range scales.

“The data strongly suggest that precipitation controls erosion ra