science wire

The heat generated by everyday activities in metropolitan areas has a significant enough warming effect to influence the character of the jet stream and other major atmospheric systems during winter months, according to a trio of climate researchers. Led by Guang Zhang, a research meteorologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, the scientists report Climate Change that the extra heat given off by Northern Hemisphere urban areas causes as much as 1 degree C (1.8 degrees F) of warming in winter.

Birmingham scientists are taking part in the first scientific collaboration of its kind, where British and American scientists are trading skills and expertise and are using an unmanned robotic aircraft to gather high altitude atmospheric data. Today ( Friday 25 January) NASA is holding an event at its Dryden Flight Research Center in Southern California to showcase a number of Earth science missions to study climate change and air pollution.

The western Antarctic Peninsula is one of the fastest warming regions on the planet, and the fastest warming part of the Southern Hemisphere. Scientists have debated the causes of this warming, particularly in light of recent instrumental records of both atmospheric and oceanic warming from the region.

Professor of Zoology, Professor Matthew Cobb, was one of two named consultants on the ambitious series.

A recent look at how research at the University of Bristol has had an impact beyond academia has illustrated the diversity and global reach of Bristol's research portfolio.

Research by Chris Nielsen, Executive Director of the Harvard China Project, and colleagues at Nanjing University and Jiangsu Provincial Academy of Environmental Science in China was cited in a Wall Street Journal article titled "China Clean Air Bid Faces Resistance" (January 22, 2013). The research, published in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics , examined the effect of China's national policies on the emissions of carbon dioxide and atmospheric pollutants from anthropogenic sources over the period 2005 to 2010.

A geoscientist from the University of Sheffield has explained why some of the ice caused by the Arctic conditions this month is slippy and other times it is almost grippy underfoot.

Stanford Report, January 18, 2013 Members of the media invited to an information session and Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve tour learn that the 120-year-old Searsville Dam is a "champion sediment p

Details of around 2,000 major volcanic eruptions which occurred over the last 1.8 million years have been made available in a new open access database, complied by scientists at the University of Bristol with colleagues from the UK, US, Colombia and Japan.

ESA's Mars Express imaged the striking upper part of the Reull Vallis region of Mars with its high-resolution stereo camera last year.

A new model from Queen Mary, University of London could be a useful security tool in tracking people in large, busy venues such as airport terminals and shopping centres.

ANN ARBOR-Black carbon, or soot, is the second largest human-caused contributor to global warming, according to a landmark study published today that involves a University of Michigan researcher. Behind only carbon dioxide in terms of its influence on the climate, the impacts of black carbon have been greatly underestimated, the researchers say.

The talk will examine the threat posed by potential future earthquakes to the water supply of Southern California, or that of hurricanes to New York City.

In addition to causing smoggy skies and chronic coughs, soot - or black carbon - turns out to be the number two contributor to global warming.

Soot is the second largest man made contributor to global warming and its influence on climate has been greatly underestimated, according to the first comprehensive analysis of the problem. The landmark study, co-led by the University of Leeds and published in the Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres , says the direct warming effect of black carbon, the term used by scientists to describe soot, could be about twice previous estimates.

Researchers have tracked a trail of minerals that point to the prior presence of water at the Curiosity rover site on Mars.

An American atmospheric chemist who led efforts to identify the cause of the Antarctic ozone hole and a French geochemist who extracted the longest-yet climate record from polar ice cores have won the prestigious 2012 Vetlesen Prize.

An extensive research investment into climate monitoring, ICOS, is to map greenhouse gases across Europe.

Less than a millimeter across, the shells of tiny organisms called planktonic foraminifera — like these from an offshore drilling site in the Atlantic Ocean — make up much of the sediment on the ocean floor.

AUSTIN, Texas — A rapid response science team from the University of Texas at Austin's Institute for Geophysics will help map the impact of Hurricane Sandy on the beach/barrier systems off the south shore of Long Island.

Numerical simulations illustrate that fault segments can move slowly and stably over long periods of time and later host large earthquakes. Dashed lines represent slow slip every 50 years along a cross-section of the fault, with the numbers indicating the simulated time in years. Earthquakes are shown by solid lines plotted every second.

An extensive undersea mapping program of the Australian coast has revealed some surprises about the deep Great Barrier Reef, including a dense network of submarine canyons, the remains of numerous undersea landslide scarps where large parts of the continental slope have given way, and some areas which may be prone to future underwater landslides.

Given that over 20 trillion cubic meters of natural gas, a third of the United States' total reserves, are thought to be trapped in shale, and given the rush to exploit shale oil and gas resources by

Trees and the insects that eat them wage constant war. Insects burrow and munch; trees deploy lethal and disruptive defenses in the form of chemicals.

Whether it's the economics of clean energy, the politics of Washington or claims over the severity of the problem itself, the debate over climate change is loud and crowded. One aspect that often goes overlooked is the Southern Ocean ringing Antarctica at the bottom of the globe. But that, says Jorge Sarmiento , is about to change.

The Green Revolution has stagnated for key food crops in many regions of the world, according to a study published in Nature by scientists with the University of Minnesota's Institute on the Environment and McGill University. Led by IonE research fellow Deepak Ray, the study team developed geographically detailed maps of annual crop harvested areas and yields of maize (corn), rice, wheat and soybeans from 1961 to 2008.

ESA's ice mission is now giving scientists a closer look at oceans, coastal areas, inland water bodies and even land, reaching above and beyond its original objectives. Launched in 2010, the polar-orbiting CryoSat was developed to measure the changes in the thickness of polar sea ice, the elevation of the ice sheets that blanket Greenland and Antarctica, and mountain glaciers.

An international research team has updated a Victorian map that has been the blueprint for our understanding of the diversity of life-forms across the world. The original map was created in 1876 by Alfred Russel Wallace, who co-discovered the theory of natural selection with Charles Darwin. Using advances in modern technology and data on more than 20,000 species, scientists have compiled the next generation map, which is published online in Science Express today.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. Sridhar Anandakrishnan is away for the winter holiday, somewhere summer is in full swing - an ice sheet at the end of the earth.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. Satire has always played an important role in democracy, but a current group of television satirists are more influential than ever with American citizens, particularly younger ones, according to a Penn State researcher.

Comedian Ed Byrne has teamed up with Oxford University scientists to help explain the science of volcanoes.

A surprising number of microorganisms - 99 percent more kinds than had been reported in findings published just four months ago - are leaping the biggest gap on the planet. Hitching rides in the upper troposphere, they're making their way from Asia across the Pacific Ocean and landing in North America.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. Brine water that flows back from gas wells in the Marcellus Shale region after hydraulic fracturing is many times more salty than seawater, with high contents of various elements, including radium and barium. The chemistry is consistent with brines formed during the Paleozoic era, a study by an undergraduate student and two professors in Penn State's Department of Geosciences found.

I was beginning to think I was looking for a needle in a haystack when I noticed a gateway to an almost hidden area I had not previously spotted on many routine travels. Within another minute or two, somehow, I'd found it." —Clive Oppenheimer The first known visitor to the site since Scott's men left, his search was based on written accounts and historic images from the Scott Polar Research Institute.

 Professor Richard Davies, Director of Durham Energy Institute, has called for a balanced discussion of hydraulic fracturing to extract shale gas, popularly known as fracking.

A British team of scientists and engineers will realise a 16-year ambition to drill through more than 3km of Antarctic ice into an ancient buried lake - and Durham University members of the team are eagerly awaiting the results. The Antarctic team hopes to find signs of life in the water and clues to the Earth's past climate in the mud at the lake floor.

Stanford Report, December 10, 2012 Stanford is beginning the process of implementing a 50-year Habitat Conservation Plan under the auspices of the Endangered Species Act.

The asteroid collision widely thought to have killed the dinosaurs also led to extreme devastation among snake and lizard species, according to new research - including the extinction of a newly identified lizard Yale and Harvard scientists have named Obamadon gracilis .

Posted under: Environment , For UW Employees , Honors and Awards , Research , Science , UW and the Community University of Washington oceanographer Virginia (Ginger) Armbrust has received a multi-million dollar award to spend as she wishes on her research to reveal the diversity of microbes in the ocean and understand the role they play in regulating ocean environments and our atmosphere.

Robert Bateman can't understand why some people don't see the forest for the trees.

Some of the world's leading alpine researchers from the arts, sciences and humanities will set up base camp at the University of Alberta next week to discuss the many uphill challenges facing the planet's mountain regions.

A new way to learn about dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures, which harnesses some of the cutting edge techniques used by palaeontologists to study fossils, is being pioneered by researchers at the University of Bristol.

Stanford Report, December 7, 2012 Environmental problems should be treated with as much urgency as solving the debt crisis, says Stanford's Paul Ehrlich.

The high-resolution stereo camera on ESA's Mars Express imaged the Charitum Montes region of the Red Planet on 18 June, near to Gale crater and the Argyre basin featured in our October and November image releases.

Determining the fate of a squadron of Spitfire fighter aircraft, believed buried in the jungles of Burma, will be the focus of an aviation archaeological expedition involving a researcher from Imperial College London.

The Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite captured this nighttime image of the United States.

Stanford Report, December 5, 2012 Research by Stanford scientists focuses on geologic features and activity in the Himalayas and Pacific Northwest that could mean those areas are primed for major earthquakes.

LiDAR-derived image of Meteor Crater, AZ. Color bands show range of elevations from 1541 meters at the bottom of the crater, to a maximum of 1835 meters on the crater rim.

Researchers have discovered what may be the earliest dinosaur, a creature the size of a Labrador retriever, but with a five foot-long tail, that walked the Earth about 10 million years before more familiar dinosaurs like the small, swift-footed Eoraptor and Herrerasaurus. The findings mean that the dinosaur lineage appeared 10 million to 15 million years earlier than fossils previously showed, originating in the Middle Triassic rather than in the Late Triassic period.

For decades, a source of powerful earthquakes and volcanic activity on the Pacific Rim was shrouded in secrecy, as the Soviet government kept outsiders away from what is now referred to as the Russian Far East.