A new global, satellite-based study of Earth’s freshwater distribution found that wet areas are getting wetter and dry areas drier. The data suggest that this pattern is due to a variety of human and natural factors, including people’s use and management of water, human-caused climate change, and natural climate cycles. A NASA-led research team that ...
In the western Utah desert, the Telescope Array sprawls across an area the size of New York City, waiting for cosmic rays. The facility detects the high-energy particles that collide with Earth’s atmosphere constantly; the cosmic rays trigger the 500-plus sensors once every few minutes. While pouring over data in 2013, Telescope Array physicists discovered ...
April to June are the wettest and most humid months for Hong Kong. This year, however, had its residents steaming in the streets and in their homes as May 2018 was the hottest on record. On the heels of this news, the Hong Kong Observatory issued a Tropical Cyclone Warning at 04:45 (HKT) on June 6, 2018. With ...
About 700 million years ago, the Earth experienced unusual episodes of global cooling that geologists refer to as Snowball Earth. Several theories have been proposed to explain what triggered this dramatic cool down, which occurred during a geological era called the Neoproterozoic. In a new study published in the April issue of the journal Terra Nova, ...
Thunderstorms in Earth’s upper atmosphere remain something of a mystery. Scientists cannot reach them directly with instruments; they are too high for balloons and too low for weather satellites. Flying through thunderstorms or camping out on mountaintops waiting for one typically ranks low even on an adventurers’ bucket list. An investigation aboard the International Space Station has come ...
A global expert on infrastructure says that China’s Silk Road plan to crisscross half of the Earth with massive transportation and energy projects is environmentally the riskiest venture ever undertaken. Distinguished Professor William Laurance from James Cook University in Australia notes: “China has enormous ambitions. “But with that comes enormous responsibilities.” Writing in the Nature Sustainability journal, ...
Crescent dunes and meandering rivers can “forget” their initial shapes as they are carved and reshaped by wind and water, while other landforms keep a memory of their past shape, suggests new research. Leif Ristroph from New York University and the senior author of the paper, which is published in the journal Physical Review Fluids, said: “Asking ...
Latest research finds plant debris in lake sediment affects the methane greenhouse gas emissions. The flourishing reed beds created by changing climates could threaten to double the already significant methane production of the world’s northern lakes. A new study of chemical reactions that occur when organic matter decomposes in freshwater lakes has revealed that the ...
The collapse of the Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica could significantly affect global sea levels. It already drains an area roughly the size of Britain or the U.S. state of Florida, accounting for around 4 percent of global sea-level rise — an amount that has doubled since the mid-1990s. As part of a new £20 ...
A new study by geoscientists at the University of Liverpool has identified the temperature at which cooling magma cracks, such as the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland, to form geometric columns. Geometric columns occur in many types of volcanic rocks and form as the rock cools and contracts, resulting in a regular array of polygonal ...
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