Search Results for: ocean

A Johns Hopkins University graduate student may have solved a problem that has been baffling marine biologists and paleontologists for years: Why do coral reefs disappear from the fossil record during the beginning of the Cretaceous period — 120 million years ago — only to reappear after its end 35 million years ago?

The possible answer: Ancient seawater’s low magnesium-to-calcium ratio during this interval made it difficult for the marine animals — which build their sk

NASA scientists recently found the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the main driver of the change in rain patterns all around the world.

The NASA and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite has enabled scientists to look around the globe and determine where the year-to-year changes in rainfall are greatest. The TRMM is a joint mission between NASA and JAXA designed to monitor and study tropical rainfall.

Resear

Rice U. geologists probe impact of rising seas along US Gulf Coast

New research presented at this week’s annual meeting of the Geological Society of America shows that rising sea levels of as little as a half-meter per century have been sufficient to dramatically change the shoreline of the U.S. Gulf Coast within the past 10,000 years. The findings are significant because half-meter increases are within the moderate range of predictions for the Gulf Coast during this century.

Like the sailing vessel used by Captain Joshua Slocum to sail solo around the world 100 years ago, another ocean-going vehicle is making history. A small ocean glider named Spray is the first autonomous underwater vehicle, or AUV, to cross the Gulf Stream underwater, proving the viability of self-propelled gliders for long-distance scientific missions and opening new possibilities for studies of the oceans.

Launched September 11, 2004, about 100 miles south of Nantucket Island,

Our four-legged, five-toed ancestors conquered the land earlier and more independently than expected, say paleontologists studying newfound 345 to 359-million-year-old tracks at an eroding beach in eastern Canada.

At least six different kinds of four-limbed reptile-like animals – a.k.a. tetrapods – with five digits on their feet left their tromping prints in the mud of what was once a tropical swamp at Blue Beach, Nova Scotia. The five-digit tracks range in size from four i

In August and September of this year, three powerful icebreakers transited to the North Pole in search of a climate record stored in sediments below the Arctic Ocean floor. During the spectacular Arctic Coring Expedition (ACEX), conducted by the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP), 340 meters of sediment core were retrieved from the bottom of the Arctic Ocean — a true “first.” With these sediments in hand, earth scientists for the first time can move away from pure speculation about the