Search Results for: Ocean

Petroleum exploration tool may have new use in hurricane study

In 2004 and now in 2005, the hurricane seasons have been horrifyingly intense – so how bad is the long-range forecast? Based on a century of data, meteorologists currently believe that a 30-year lull in hurricane activity is over and we are at the beginning of a new multi-decade period of larger and more frequent storms. However, there is other data that suggests we may also be coming to the end of a thousand year peri

Picky female frogs in a tiny rainforest outpost of Australia have driven the evolution of a new species in 8,000 years or less, according to scientists from the University of Queensland, the University of California, Berkeley, and the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service.

“That’s lightning-fast,” said co-author Craig Moritz, professor of integrative biology at UC Berkeley and director of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. “To find a recently evolved species like this is excep

As Hurricane Wilma barrels towards the Florida coast, a last-minute acquisition by a unique instrument aboard ERS-2 is helping strengthen weather forecasters’ final predictions of its future course and strength.

The ERS-2 radar scatterometer data shown here was acquired by the satellite on 04:30 UTC this morning (06:30 CEST), then relayed via the ground station of the Center for Southeastern Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing (CSTARS) at the University of Miami to be speedily p

Nanorobot fabrication makes ultrasmall sensors possible

How do you build an infrared (IR) camera that is small enough to fit on a mini-unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) without cryogenic cooling? Call in the nanobots.

Researchers working with the Office of Naval Research (ONR) have developed a way to build extremely small sensors using nanorobot fabrication. This new process, created by Harold Szu and James Buss of ONR and implemented by Xi Ning of Michigan State University, a

Scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory’s Marine Meteorology Division in Monterey, CA, (NRL-Monterey), working with researchers from Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute and the National Geophysical Data Center, presented the first satellite detection of a phenomenon known as the “milky sea.” The satellite observations were corroborated by a ship-based account. This research was published in the October 4, 2005, issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Rapidly fluctuating wind gusts blowing over mountains and hills can create “hotspots” high in the atmosphere and significantly affect regional air temperatures. A research paper to be published this month in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Space Physics reports that the actions of such winds can create high-frequency acoustic waves and could stimulate a 1000-Kelvin [1,000-degree Celsius; 2,000-degree Fahrenheit]spike in a short period of time in the thermosphere, at an altitude of 200-300 k