Search Results for: Ocean

As the future of Earth’s forests moved up the agenda at the United Nations Climate Change Conference – negotiating a post-Kyoto strategy to combat global warming – ESA and its national collaborators presented delegates with promising results from projects using satellites to identify wide-area forest retreat and expansion.

The planet’s climate is moving into uncharted territory, as our burning of fossil-fuels and clearances of forests release massive amounts of heat-trapping

Against the backdrop of the Montreal Summit on global climate being held this week, an article on African droughts and monsoons, by a University of California, Santa Barbara scientist and others, which appears in the December issue of the journal Geology, underlines concern about the effects of global climate change.

Tropical ocean temperatures and land vegetation have an important effect on African monsoon systems, explains first author Syee Weldeab, a post-doctoral fellow in

The magnitude 9.2 earthquake that triggered a devastating tsunami in the Indian Ocean in December of 2004 originated just off the coast of northern Sumatra, but an “energy pulse” – an area where slip on the fault was much greater – created the largest waves, some 100 miles from the epicenter. Seismologists have mapped these energy pulses for Sumatra and are trying to learn more about them to predict better when and where tsunamis may occur. They also hope these pulses will help them gain a more co

The catastrophic tsunami that struck Indonesia and East Asia almost a year ago has done much to heighten the interest, research programs and preparations in the United States for events of this type, but experts say there are areas that need more attention and challenges yet to be met.

Dec. 26 will mark the first anniversary of the tsunami that claimed the lives of about 275,000 people and struck with waves up to 100 feet high, one of the deadliest disasters in modern history.

Strong turbulence in the upper atmosphere, a second ionospheric layer and possible lightning were among the surprises found by the Huygens Atmospheric Structure Instrument (HASI) during the descent to Titan’s surface.

HASI provided measurements from an altitude of 1400 km down to the surface of the physical characteristics of the atmosphere and surface, such as temperature and density profiles, electrical conductivity, and surface structure. The Huygens SSP made measurements just

Rutgers-led team shows rising ocean levels tied to human-induced climate change

Global ocean levels are rising twice as fast today as they were 150 years ago, and human-induced warming appears to be the culprit, say scientists at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and collaborating institutions.

While the speed at which the ocean is rising – almost two millimeters per year today compared to one millimeter annually for the past several thousand years – may