The latest reports of natural disasters and scientific discoveries about the Earth.
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NASA ships sensors for seafaring satellite to France
Three NASA-built instruments that are integral components of the next in a series of U.S./European ocean altimetry satellites have arrived in France for integration with their spacecraft in preparation for a 2015 launch. Jason-3 will extend the two-decade series of satellites that are tracking global sea level changes and enabling more accurate weather, ocean and climate forecasts.
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Top 10 new species of 2012
An amazing glow-in-the-dark cockroach, a harp-shaped carnivorous sponge and the smallest vertebrate on Earth are just three of the newly discovered top 10 species selected by a global committee of taxonomists.
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Tropical upper atmosphere 'fingerprint' of global warming
The winds of the quasibiennial oscillation in the tropical upper atmosphere have greatly weakened at some altitudes over the last six decades, according to a new study. The finding is consistent with computer model projections of how the upper atmosphere responds to global warming induced by increased greenhouse gas concentrations.
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Bee and wild flower biodiversity loss slows
Declines in the biodiversity of pollinating insects and wild plants have slowed in recent years, according to a new study. Researchers found evidence of dramatic reductions in the diversity of species in Britain, Belgium and the Netherlands between the 1950s and 1980s. But the picture brightened markedly after 1990, with a slowdown in local and national biodiversity losses among bees, hoverflies and wild plants.
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NASA’s BARREL mission launches 20 balloons
In Antarctica in January, 2013 -- the summer at the South Pole -- scientists released 20 balloons, each eight stories tall, into the air to help answer an enduring space weather question: when the giant radiation belts surrounding Earth lose material, where do the extra particles actually go?
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Origins of human culture linked to rapid climate change
Rapid climate change during the Middle Stone Age, between 80,000 and 40,000 years ago, sparked surges in cultural innovation in early modern human populations, according to new research.
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Abundance and distribution of Hawaiian coral species predicted by model
Researchers have developed species distribution models of the six dominant Hawaiian coral species around the main Hawaiian Islands, including two species currently under consideration as threatened or endangered.
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Changing Arctic: What should be done?
In two critical reports released at the Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting in Kiruna, Sweden on May 15th, scientists helped inform an international body of senior government officials about changing conditions in the Arctic, and potential responses to those changes.
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Geochemist aids development of geologic time scale for study of Earth's history
The Geologic Time Scale 2012, or GTS2012, is the latest understanding of Earth's history, and the means by which geoscientists around the world investigate the rock record.
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The mammoth's lament: How cosmic impact sparked devastating climate change
Researchers have found evidence of a major cosmic event near the end of the Ice Age. The ensuing climate change forced many species to adapt or die.
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Amazon River exhales virtually all carbon taken up by rainforest
Woody plant matter is almost completely digested by bacteria living in the Amazon River. This tough stuff plays a major part in fueling the river's breath. The finding has implications for global carbon models, and for the ecology of the Amazon and the world's other rivers. Until recently, people believed much of the rainforest's carbon floated down the Amazon River and ended up deep in the ocean.
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Earth's iron core is surprisingly weak
Researchers have used a diamond anvil cell to squeeze iron at pressures as high as 3 million times that felt at sea level to recreate conditions at the center of Earth. The findings could refine theories of how the planet and its core evolved.
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Roots of future tropical rainfall: Sea level influenced tropical climate during the last ice age
How will rainfall patterns across the tropical Indian and Pacific regions change in a future warming world? Climate models generally suggest that the tropics as a whole will get wetter, but the models don't always agree on where rainfall patterns will shift in particular regions within the tropics.
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Heat-related deaths in Manhattan projected to rise: Killing season may push into spring and fall
Researchers say deaths in Manhattan linked to warming climate may rise some 20 percent by the 2020s, and, in some worst-case scenarios, 90 percent or more by the 2080s. Higher winter temperatures may partially offset heat-related deaths by cutting cold-related mortality -- but even so, annual net temperature-related deaths might go up a third.
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Origins of life: In early Earth, iron helped RNA catalyze electron transfer
A new study shows how complex biochemical transformations may have been possible under conditions that existed when life began on the early Earth. The study shows that RNA is capable of catalyzing electron transfer under conditions similar to those of the early Earth.
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Frogs, salamanders and climate change
Increasingly erratic rainfall patterns can lead to declines in southeastern frog and salamander populations, but protecting ponds can improve their plight.
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Reading rock to understand how climate change unfolds
Geologists reads rock, looking for the natural rules that govern the Earth’s climate in the absence of human activity. New work is challenging many assumptions about the ways drastic climate change unfolds – and what to expect next.
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Climate change may have little impact on tropical lizards: Study contradicts predictions of widespread extinction
Climate change may have little impact on many species of tropical lizards, contradicting a host of recent studies that predict their widespread extinction in a rapidly warming planet.
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GPS solution provides three-minute tsunami alerts
Researchers have shown that, by using global positioning systems (GPS) to measure ground deformation caused by a large underwater earthquake, they can provide accurate warning of the resulting tsunami in just a few minutes after the earthquake onset. For the devastating Japan 2011 event the analysis of the GPS data and issue of a detailed tsunami alert would have taken no more than three minutes.
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Topography of Eastern Seaboard muddles ancient sea level changes
The distortion of the ancient shoreline and flooding surface of the US Atlantic Coastal Plain are the direct result of fluctuations in topography in the region and could have implications on understanding long-term climate change, according to a new study.
