Earth

The European Space Sciences Committee (ESSC) supports the Article (2) agreement on climate change of the Declaration of the '2015 Budapest World Science Forum on the enabling power of science' urges such a universal agreement aiming at stabilising atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and reducing the amount of airborne particles. The ESSC encourages countries to reduce their emissions in order to avoid dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system, which could lead to disastrous consequences.

Ocean chemistry has strongly shaped the evolution of life and biogeochemical cycles on the Earth. Although it was known that the early oceans (>520 million years ago) were characterized by strong water-column stratification and limited oxidant availability, the detailed chemical structure of early Earth oceans has remained unclear. Recently, researchers in Wuhan have developed a model of the spatial structure of early-Earth ocean chemistry that significantly advances our understanding of how oceanic conditions influenced the evolution of higher life on our planet.

Boulder, Colo., USA - New geophysical data show that fault slip during the March 2005 magnitude 8.7 (Mw) earthquake off the west coast of northern Sumatra, Indonesia (also referred to as the Simeulue-Nias earthquake), was stopped by the topography on the downgoing plate.

Tropical groundwater may prove to be a climate-resilient source of freshwater in the tropics as intense rainfall favours the replenishment of these resources, according to a new study published in Environmental Research Letters.

As climate observations show that global warming leads to fewer but more intense rainfalls, a clearer understanding of how these sources are replenished is crucial for developing strategies for groundwater usage that are better adapted to the greater variability in rainfall and river discharge brought about by climate change.

Scientists and teachers have combined to develop a simple spreadsheet-based method of teaching aerodynamic drag to 14 and 15 year olds. By measuring the speed of one of their classmates riding a bike and taking a photo in order to measure the frontal area of the cyclist, the students were able to calculate the drag co-efficient.

The results are published today, 11th December 2015, in the journal Physics Education.

A new study finds that the viscosity of the Earth's mantle abruptly increases 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) below the surface, differing significantly from previous estimates, which suggest this phenomenon occurs at depths of roughly 670 km (416 miles). Accurately pinpointing viscosity changes within Earth's mantle is important for understanding numerous processes within the planet's deep interior, including heat transport, compositional mixing, and slab (tectonic plate) descent, as well as understanding the mantle's thermal and chemical evolution.

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- For the first time, MIT chemists have measured the energy of the transition state of a chemical reaction -- a fleeting, unstable state that is a reaction's point of no return.

Chemists have long believed it impossible to experimentally characterize transition states, but the MIT team achieved it by analyzing changes in the patterns of vibrational energy levels in reactants approaching the transition state.

Earth's mantle, the large zone of slow-flowing rock that lies between the crust and the planet's core, powers every earthquake and volcanic eruption on the planet's surface. Evidence suggests that the mantle behaves differently below 1 megameter (1,000 kilometers, or 621 miles) in depth, but so far seismologists have not been able to explain why this boundary exists.

A team of Oxford University researchers has developed a technique that could improve heart scans for patients, giving more information about the heart than traditional scans and without any injections, making them safer and faster.

The group of medical, physics and engineering researchers are based at the Oxford Centre for Clinical Magnetic Resonance Research (OCMR). They are using a property of hydrogen atoms to create a pixel-by-pixel map of the heart, called a T1-map, which allows examination of healthy and diseased heart tissue in greater detail than before.

Leipzig. Elevated concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide enhance photosynthesis and plant growth. Although these growth effects can be sustained in the long term, the magnitude of effects fluctuate greatly from year to year. A team of scientists from the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC), the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) and Leipzig University identified a factor contributing to this inter-annual variation.

When grabbing a snack from a food truck, you're likely to find delicious fillings wrapped in a tidy packet of dough. It's easy to visualize the way handheld foods, like empanadas or dumplings, form a half-moon shape. But, until recently, researchers have known far less about how wrapped objects behave at a microscopic scale.

Enter Joseph Paulsen, assistant professor of physics in Syracuse University's College of Arts and Sciences, who is the co-author of a new report in Nature Materials. He says the mechanics are remarkably similar.

With every breath we take, we inhale not only oxygen, but also a mix of gases. This mixture includes carbon dioxide and nitrogen, but also a gas called argon. Neon, the gas that illuminates the signs of all-night diners, is also in the mix.

Our lungs recycle atmospheric argon and neon, in and out with every breath, but lungs are not alone in the recycling game. The Earth, itself, recycles atmospheric gases into the deep Earth and back to the surface again, but on a much longer time scale.

Clouds can increase warming in the changing Arctic region more than scientists expected, by delivering an unexpected double-whammy to the climate system, according to a new study by researchers at NOAA, the University of Colorado Boulder and colleagues.

While global plant growth has increased slightly during the past 30 years, researchers at the University of Montana found it hasn't increased as much as some scientists predicted.

Former UM doctoral student Bill Smith and current UM Professors Cory Cleveland, Ashley Ballantyne and Steve Running studied the relationship between atmospheric carbon dioxide from human emissions and a corresponding growth in plant life, and they compared their results with existing models. The study was published this month in the journal Nature Climate Change.

More than a decade ago, theorists predicted the possibility of a nanolens--a chain of three nanoscale spheres that would focus incoming light into a spot much smaller than possible with conventional microscopy. Such a device would make possible extremely high-resolution imaging or biological sensing. But scientists had been unable to build and arrange many nanolenses over a large area.