Nearly a month has passed since the wounded tanker Prestige spilled thousands of tons of heavy oil into the Atlantic and fouled dozens of Spanish beaches. But anxious residents of coastal Spain and Portugal remain on high alert – wondering where and when the noxious crude will wash ashore next.
In recent years, tanker accidents have ruined fisheries and tourist beaches from Alaska to France. But do oil spills always have to end in catastrophe? Perhaps the most vulnerable beaches and coastal
An especially cold winter in Europe, lots of snow in Scandinavia or lots of rain in the Mediterranean are all symptoms of what meteorologists call the North Atlantic Oscillation, but a group of Penn State researchers has gone beyond the symptoms to try to decipher the dynamics of this atmospheric pattern.
“Some scientists argue that the impact of the NAO on global climate is comparable to El Nino,” says Dr. Sukyoung Lee, associate professor of meteorology. “However, most of the scientific co
A greater number of large “planetary sized waves” in the atmosphere that move from the lower atmosphere into the upper atmosphere were responsible for the smaller Antarctic ozone hole this fall, according to NASA researchers. The September 2002 ozone hole was half the size it was in 2000. However, scientists say that these large-scale weather patterns in the Earths atmosphere are not an indication that the ozone layer is recovering.
Paul Newman, a lead researcher on ozone at NASA
Researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and other institutions have pinpointed the locations of high concentrations of air pollutants around the world by combining data from four satellite imaging systems. Their findings are being presented this week in San Francisco at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).
The researchers used information from instruments on NASA and European Space Agency satellites to measure atmospheric levels of three typ
Management of Pacific Salmon has been an issue for years. To determine whether management goals are working, knowledge of historical populations can prove quite useful. In a recent study published in Ecology, Deanne C. Drake, Robert J. Naiman, and James M. Helfield, all of the University of Washington, paired annual tree ring growth with catch data to determine what salmon stocks looked like 200 years ago.
Born in freshwater lakes and rivers, salmon swim to the ocean where they feed and matu
Four annual mass treatments of single doses of safe and inexpensive drugs found effective
Researchers report in the December 5 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine reaching an important milestone in learning how to halt a major mosquito-borne disease affecting 120 million people around the world. The disease, called lymphatic filariasis and commonly known as elephantiasis, is a leading cause of physical disfigurement, social ostracism, and economic loss throughout Africa, Asia