Earth

A new study quantifies for the first time future losses in deep-sea marine life, using advanced climate models. Results show that even the most remote deep-sea ecosystems are not safe from the impacts of climate change.

As mangrove trees lose ground to deforestation and urban sprawl, one development seems to be giving them a boost: climate change. Fewer winter cold snaps have enabled them to conquer new territory around their northern Florida boundary, according to a study of 28 years of satellite data from the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center and the University of Maryland published Dec. 30 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Mangrove forests have been expanding northward along the Atlantic coast of Florida for the last few decades not because of a general warming trend, but likely because cold snaps there are becoming a thing of the past. That surprising finding, reported by a team of ecologists the week of Dec. 30 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provides a new and unique illustration of the speed and scale on which alterations in climate extremes have affected crucial ecosystems.

COLLEGE PARK, MD – Cold-sensitive mangrove forests have expanded dramatically along Florida's Atlantic Coast as the frequency of killing frosts has declined, according to a new study based on 28 years of satellite data from the University of Maryland and the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Maryland.

Earth's mantle temperatures during the Archean eon, which commenced some 4 billion years ago, were significantly higher than they are today. According to recent model calculations, the Archean crust that formed under these conditions was so dense that large portions of it were recycled back into the mantle. This is the conclusion reached by Dr. Tim Johnson who is currently studying the evolution of the Earth's crust as a member of the research team led by Professor Richard White of the Institute of Geosciences at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU).

Nearly 25 percent of earthquakes occur more than 50 kilometers below the Earth's surface, when one tectonic plate slides below another, in a region called the lithosphere. Scientists have thought that these rumblings from the deep arise from a different process than shallower, more destructive quakes. But limited seismic data, and difficulty in reproducing these quakes in the laboratory, have combined to prevent researchers from pinpointing the cause of intermediate and deep earthquakes.

Boulder, Colo., USA – New Geosphere contributions include two additions to the "Origin and Evolution of the Sierra Nevada and Walker Lane" special series. Four articles focus on western North America, while a fifth discusses faulting in the northern Mergui Basin of the Andaman Sea. Authors hale from the University of Arizona, the China Earthquake Administration, the U.S. Geological Survey, Dennison University, and PTTEP ENCO of Bangkok, Thailand.

Dec. 22, 2013 – Researchers at the University of Utah have discovered a new aquifer in the Greenland Ice Sheet that holds liquid water all year long in the otherwise perpetually frozen winter landscape. The aquifer is extensive, covering 27,000 square miles.

The reservoir is known as a "perennial firn aquifer" because water persists within the firn – layers of snow and ice that don't melt for at least one season. Researchers believe it figures significantly in understanding the contribution of snowmelt and ice melt to rising sea levels.

Scientists using GPS to study changes in the Earth's shape accurately forecasted the size and location of the magnitude 7.6 Nicoya earthquake that occurred in 2012 in Costa Rica.

A team of material scientists, chemical engineers and physicists from the University of Pennsylvania has made another advance in their effort to use liquid crystals as a medium for assembling structures.

In their earlier studies, the team produced patterns of "defects," useful disruptions in the repeating patterns found in liquid crystals, in nanoscale grids and rings. The new study adds a more complex pattern out of an even simpler template: a three-dimensional array in the shape of a flower.

DETROIT — Protons and neutrons, the particles in an atomic nucleus, are made of smaller pieces called "quarks." Some types of quarks can form particles that exhibit surprising behaviors.

Smooth" or grainy? Is space-time continuous or is it made up of very fine (10-35 metres on the "Planck scale") but discrete grains, if we look at it very close up ? If the latter were true, scientists think, this would lead to deviations from the theory of special relativity formulated by Albert Einstein more than 100 years ago.

However, it is crucial what one observes – paper fracture or the avalanching of snow. The results were just published in the Nature Communications journal.

A six-year study of the Financial Times has found that the more frequently a company is mentioned in the newspaper in the morning, the greater the volume of shares traded in that company during the same day.

Merve Alanyali, of the Centre for Complexity at the University of Warwick, and Suzy Moat and Tobias Preis, of Warwick Business School, looked at 1,821 issues of the Financial Times from January 2, 2007 to December 31, 2012.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – While climate change negotiators struggle to agree on ways to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, they have paid inadequate attention to other greenhouse gases associated with livestock, according to an analysis by an international research team.

A reduction in non-CO2 greenhouse gases will be required to abate climate change, the researchers said. Cutting releases of methane and nitrous oxide, two gases that pound-for-pound trap more heat than does CO2, should be considered alongside the challenge of reducing fossil fuel use.