Meteorologists can see a busy hurricane season brewing months ahead, but until now there has been no such crystal ball for tornadoes, which are much smaller and more volatile. This information gap took on new urgency after tornadoes in 2011 killed more than 550 people, more than in the previous 10 years combined, including a devastating outbreak in April that racked up $5 billion in insured losses.
Earth
Extraordinarily cold temperatures in the winter of 2010/2011 caused the most massive destruction of the ozone layer above the Arctic so far: The mechanisms leading to the first ozone hole above the North Pole were studied by scientists of the KIT Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research (IMK). According to these studies, further cooling of the ozone layer may enhance the influence of ozone-destroying substances, e.g. chlorofluorocarbons (CFC), such that repeated occurrence of an ozone hole above the Arctic has to be expected.
Alexandria, VA – Supervolcanoes are one of nature's most destructive forces. In a matter of hours, an eruption from a supervolcano can force thousands of cubic meters of molten rock above ground, and scar landscapes with massive calderas and craters. These catastrophic eruptions have a global impact, and yet scientists still do not fully understand them. Today, a team of scientists studying Bolivia's Uturuncu volcano is trying to shed some light on how supervolcanoes can become so powerful.
Last year, earthquakes and their consequences, such as tsunamis, landslides, and ground settlements, caused a damage of 365 billion US dollars. Hence, 2011 was the year with the so far highest economic losses due to earthquakes. This is the result of an analysis submitted by James Daniell from the Center for Disaster Management and Risk Reduction Technology (CEDIM) of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). According to this analysis, 20,500 people died, about a million people lost their homes.
RICHLAND, Wash. -- For some time, researchers have explored flammable ice for low-carbon or alternative fuel or as a place to store carbon dioxide. Now, a computer analysis of the ice and gas compound, known as a gas hydrate, reveals key details of its structure. The results show that hydrates can hold hydrogen at an optimal capacity of 5 weight-percent, a value that meets the goal of a Department of Energy standard and makes gas hydrates practical and affordable.
A new paper published today in Nature reveals that human land use activity has begun to change the regional water and energy cycles-the interplay of air coming in from the Atlantic Ocean, water transpiration by the forest, and solar radiation-of parts of the Amazon basin. In addition, it shows that ongoing interactions between deforestation, fire, and climate change have the potential to alter carbon storage, rainfall patterns and river discharge on an even larger basin-wide scale.
Engineering our way out of global climate warming may not be as easy as simply reducing the incoming solar energy, according to a team of University of Bristol and Penn State climate scientists. Designing the approach to control both sea level rise and rates of surface air temperature changes requires a balancing act to accommodate the diverging needs of different locations.
BOZEMAN, Mont. – Many tropical forests are extremely rich in nitrogen even when there are no farms or industries nearby, says Montana State University researcher Jack Brookshire.
It's because of biological interactions that occur naturally in the forests, Brookshire and four colleagues said in a paper they published Jan. 15 in the online version of the journal Nature Geoscience.
AMHERST, Mass. – Geoscientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the University of Minnesota this week published the first evidence that warm-cold climate oscillations well known in the Northern Hemisphere over the most recent glacial period also appear as tropical rainfall variations in the Amazon Basin of South America. It is the first clear expression of these cycles in the Southern Hemisphere.
Lead sulfide (PbS) forms when an equal number of lead and sulfur atoms exchange electrons and bond together in cubic crystals. Now scientists have determined that a structure comprising 32 lead-sulfur pairs is the smallest possible cubic arrangement that exhibits the same coordination as bulk lead sulfide. (The coordination number is the number of nearest neighbors each atom in the crystal has.)
Scientists from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the company Dioxide Materials have demonstrated that randomly stacked graphene flakes can make an effective chemical sensor.
LIVERMORE, Calif. -- By looking at the stability of the atmosphere, wind farm operators could gain greater insight into the amount of power generated at any given time.
Power generated by a wind turbine largely depends on the wind speed. In a wind farm in which the turbines experience the same wind speeds but different shapes (such as turbulence) to the wind profile, a turbine will produce different amounts of power.
To better understand the fundamental behavior of molecules at surfaces, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory are combining the powers of neutron scattering with chemical analysis.
Scientists have a fundamental interest in how molecules behave at solid surfaces because surface interactions influence chemistry, such as in materials for catalysis, drug delivery and carbon sequestration. Understanding these interactions allows researchers to tailor materials for a specific desirable outcome.
How liquid can a fluid be? This is a question particle physicists at the Vienna University of Technology have been working on. The "most perfect liquid" is nothing like water, but the extremely hot quark-gluon-plasma which is produced in heavy-ion collisions at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. New theoretical results at Vienna UT show that this quark-gluon plasma could be even less viscous than was deemed possible by previous theories. The results were published in Physical Review Letters and highlighted as an "editors' selection".
Glaucoma is the second leading cause of blindness. Nearly 4 million Americans have the disorder, which affects 70 million worldwide. There is no cure and no early symptoms. Once vision is lost, it's permanent.
New findings at Georgia Tech, published in January during Glaucoma Awareness Month, explore one of the many molecular origins of glaucoma and advance research dedicated to fighting the disease.