Earth Sciences

Satellite images have revealed the collapse of Larsen B ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula fulfilling predictions made by British Antarctic Survey (BAS) scientists. The collapse of the 3250 km2 ice shelf is the latest drama in a region of Antarctica that has experienced unprecedented warming over the last 50 years.

Earlier this month Ted Scambos of the University of Colorado alerted BAS glaciologists David Vaughan and Chris Doake to images from the NASA MODIS satellite. Meanwhile, in Antar

Deserts covered Central Asia as early as 22 million years ago

The great Asian deserts developed 22 million years ago at the latest, 14 million years earlier than had been thought. So concludes a new analysis of Chinese soils, filling in another piece of the puzzle of the Himalayas’ birth.

Today, huge deserts characterize the vast landmasses inside Asia, the largest continent on Earth. Here, cut off by the Himalayas from the humidity of the Indian Ocean and far from any othe

Blue jets connect Earth’s electric circuit.

Video images captured in Puerto Rico suggest that blue flashes of light, much like lightning, feed energy from thunderstorms up into the Earth’s ionosphere – a blanket of electrically charged air some 70 kilometres above the ground 1 .

Some researchers suspect that such phenomena may also fix nitrogen for plants to use and interact with the ozone layer 2 .

The images, taken in September 2001

Five times as much water as in all the world’s oceans may lurk deep below its surface.

Geologists have divined water where you might least expect it: 1,000 kilometres below the Earth’s surface. Here, rocks heated to over 1,000 oC and squeezed under high pressures may harbour around five times as much water as in all the world’s oceans. This could give clues to how the Earth formed and how it behaves today.

Between 650 and 2,900 km below the Earth’s surface hot, compressed mi

Scientists at Umeå University in Sweden are putting forward an entirely new picture of climate change and the first immigration of trees following the last Ice Age. Research shows that 8,000-14,000 years ago the climate was considerably warmer than was previously thought. When it was at its warmest 9,000-10,000 years ago, the timberline was 500 m higher than today, and leafy trees grew in the mountains. The spruce immigrated considerably earlier that was assumed until now, and it probably came from t

Since its successful launch into sun synchronous orbit on the morning of the first of March, Envisat has been getting ready to start observing the Earth.

Its 70 m2 of solar arrays are fully deployed, thus enabling it to obtain power from the Sun, and the ASAR antenna is now extending to its full 10 m, ready for its deployment in space. This will bring to an end the Launch and Early Orbit Phase.

The next step is the Switch on and Data Acquisition Phase that starts today. One by on