Tag Archives: boulder

Northern hemisphere losing last dry snow region, says CU study

By Guest PostJune 8, 2013Environment60 year record, air temperature, Arctic sea ice, boulder, dan mcgrath, dry snow region, greenland ice sheet, ice per year, mass balance, melt water, northern hemisphere, surface, university of colorado, warming at summit

Last July, something unprecedented in the 34-year satellite record happened: 98 percent of the Greenland Ice Sheet’s surface melted, compared to roughly 50 percent during an average summer. Snow that usually stays frozen and dry turned wet with melt water. Research led by the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences now shows last summer’s extreme melt could soon be the new normal.

“Greenland is warming rapidly, and such ice-sheet-wide, surface-melt events will occur more frequently over the next couple of decades,” said Dan McGrath, a University of Colorado Boulder doctoral student who works at CIRES. McGrath is lead author of a paper published online May 20 in Geophysical Research Letters and which reports a significant warming trend on the Greenland Ice Sheet. (more…)

Insect eye-inspired camera captures wide field of view with no distortion, according to study co-led by CU-Boulder

By Guest PostMay 4, 2013Nature, Science3d shape, boulder, bowl shaped eyes, camera, conventional cameras, conventional systems, crystalline cone, deform, distortion, dragonflies, electronic detector, electronic system, exoskeletons, experimental digital camera, eyes of arthropods, houseflies, insect eye, jianliang xiao, john roger, mammalian eyes, ommatidia, praying mantises, resolution, university of colorado, university of Illinois, urbana-champaign, viktor malyarchuk, yizhu xie, young min song

By mimicking the bulging, bowl-shaped eyes possessed by dragonflies, praying mantises, houseflies and other insects, a team of researchers that includes a University of Colorado Boulder engineer has built an experimental digital camera that can take exceptionally wide-angle photos without distorting the image.

To create the innovative camera, which also allows for a practically infinite depth of field, the scientists used stretchable electronics and a pliable sheet of microlenses made from a material similar to that used for contact lenses. The researchers described the camera in an article published on May 1, 2013 in the journal Nature. (more…)

NASA Probe Gets Close-Up Views of Large Hurricane on Saturn

By Guest PostMay 1, 2013Scienceandrew ingersoll, angle, boulder, cassini huygens mission, cassini spacecraft, counter clockwise spin, earth, equinox, eye, france, Germany, hexagon, high clouds, hurricane, hydrogen atmosphere, jet propulsion laboratory, kunio sayanagi, mysterious hurricane, NASA, north pole, northern hemisphere, orbit, pasadena, saturn, saturn hurricane movie, saturnian storms, scott edgington, six sided, space science institute, the rose, united kingdom, united states, water vapor, weather pattern

PASADENA, Calif. – NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has provided scientists the first close-up, visible-light views of a behemoth hurricane swirling around Saturn’s north pole.

In high-resolution pictures and video, scientists see the hurricane’s eye is about 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) wide, 20 times larger than the average hurricane eye on Earth. Thin, bright clouds at the outer edge of the hurricane are traveling 330 mph(150 meters per second). The hurricane swirls inside a large, mysterious, six-sided weather pattern known as the hexagon. (more…)

Cutting Specific Atmospheric Pollutants Would Slow Sea Level Rise

By Guest PostApril 25, 2013Environmentaixue hu, amsterdam, anjuli bamzai, atmospheric pollutants, black carbon, boulder, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide emissions, claudia tebaldi, climate central, climate change, computer model, effect, geochemistry, greenhouse gases, heat trapping pollutants, hydrofluorocarbons, important factor, melting ice, methane, miami, mumbai, NASA, national science foundation, ncar, new york, noaa, rising oceans, san diego, scientist, sea-level rise, sio, soot in exhaust, this century, tokyo, tropospheric ozone, us epa, veerabhadran ramanathan, yangyang x

Decreasing emissions of black carbon, methane and other pollutants makes a difference

With coastal areas bracing for rising sea levels, new research indicates that cutting emissions of certain pollutants can greatly slow sea level rise this century.

Scientists found that reductions in four pollutants that cycle comparatively quickly through the atmosphere could temporarily forestall the rate of sea level rise by roughly 25 to 50 percent.

The researchers focused on emissions of four heat-trapping pollutants: methane, tropospheric ozone, hydrofluorocarbons and black carbon. (more…)

CU study provides new evidence ancient asteroid caused global firestorm on Earth

By Guest PostApril 2, 2013Scienceboulder, charcoal, chicxulub crater, cretaceous paleogene, dinosaur days, douglas robertson, earth, earth atmosphere, geological evidence, global firestorm, infrared heat pulse, k pg boundary, manhattan sized asteroid, mass extinctions, Mexico, milwaukee public museum, peter sheehan, radiation, region, sedimentation rates, university of colorado, william lewis, wisconsin, yucatan peninsula

A new look at conditions after a Manhattan-sized asteroid slammed into a region of Mexico in the dinosaur days indicates the event could have triggered a global firestorm that would have burned every twig, bush and tree on Earth and led to the extinction of 80 percent of all Earth’s species, says a new University of Colorado Boulder study.

Led by Douglas Robertson of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, or CIRES, the team used models that show the collision would have vaporized huge amounts of rock that were then blown high above Earth’s atmosphere. The re-entering ejected material would have heated the upper atmosphere enough to glow red for several hours at roughly 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit — about the temperature of an oven broiler element — killing every living thing not sheltered underground or underwater. (more…)

‘Sideline quasars’ helped to stifle early galaxy formation, says CU study

By Guest PostMarch 31, 2013Scienceastronomers, big bang, black holes, boulder, brightest quasars, caltech astronomer, cos, cosmic web, dark ages, david syphers, early universe, Epoch, fossil record, galaxy formation, gaseous material, gases in universe, generations of stars, helium atoms, helium gas, helium reionization era, Hubble Space Telescope, intergalactic global warming, intergalactic medium, ionizing radiation, lighthouse, maarten schmidt, michael shull, neutral helium gas, planetary sciences, plasma, quasar, quasi stellar, radio source, sideline quasars, stars or galaxies, swiss cheese, ultraviolet spectrograph, universe, university of colorado

University of Colorado Boulder astronomers targeting one of the brightest quasars glowing in the universe some 11 billion years ago say “sideline quasars” likely teamed up with it to heat abundant helium gas billions of years ago, preventing small galaxy formation.

CU-Boulder Professor Michael Shull and Research Associate David Syphers used the Hubble Space Telescope to look at the quasar — the brilliant core of an active galaxy that acted as a “lighthouse” for the observations — to better understand the conditions of the early universe. The scientists studied gaseous material between the telescope and the quasar with a $70 million ultraviolet spectrograph on Hubble designed by a team from CU-Boulder’s Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy. (more…)

Dead Forests Release Less Carbon Into Atmosphere Than Expected

By Guest PostMarch 25, 2013Environmentalaska, atmosphere, boulder, carbon, carbon dioxide, climate, climate change, CO2, david moore, dead forests release, dendroctonus ponderosae, double whammy, earth, greenhouse gas, Mexico, mountain pine beetles, NASA, nicole trahan, niwot ridge, North America, organic compounds, outbreaks, photosynthesis, pine beetle outbreaks, russell monson, soil microbes, surface, university of arizona, university of colorado, warmer conditions

Billions of trees killed in the wake of mountain pine beetle infestations, ranging from Mexico to Alaska, have not resulted in a large spike in carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere, contrary to predictions, a UA-led study has found.

Massive tree die-offs release less carbon into the atmosphere than previously thought, new research led by the University of Arizona suggests.

Across the world, trees are dying in increasing numbers, most likely in the wake of a climate changing toward drier and warmer conditions, scientists suspect. In western North America, outbreaks of mountain pine beetles (Dendroctonus ponderosae) have killed billions of trees from Mexico to Alaska over the last decade. (more…)

Volcanic Aerosols, not Pollutants, Tamped down Recent Earth Warming, Says CU Study

By Guest PostMarch 3, 2013Environmentasia, atmosphere, boulder, brian toon, change, chemical reactions, China, climate, climate change trends, climate variability, coal burning activities, coal burning pollution, community climate model, cooling the planet, david hoffman, earth, emissions, global volcanic eruptions, greenhouse effect, India, industrial sulfur dioxide, jean paul vernier, jeffrey thayer, noaa, reflect, role of volcanoes, ryan neely, Space, stratospheric aerosol layer, sulfur dioxide, sulfuric acid, sunlight, susan solomon, university of colorado, version 3, volcanoe, waccm, warming on earth, water particles

A team led by the University of Colorado Boulder looking for clues about why Earth did not warm as much as scientists expected between 2000 and 2010 now thinks the culprits are hiding in plain sight — dozens of volcanoes spewing sulfur dioxide.

The study results essentially exonerate Asia, including India and China, two countries that are estimated to have increased their industrial sulfur dioxide emissions by about 60 percent from 2000 to 2010 through coal burning, said lead study author Ryan Neely, who led the research as part of his CU-Boulder doctoral thesis. Small amounts of sulfur dioxide emissions from Earth’s surface eventually rise 12 to 20 miles into the stratospheric aerosol layer of the atmosphere, where chemical reactions create sulfuric acid and water particles that reflect sunlight back to space, cooling the planet. (more…)