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NASA Responds to California’s Evolving Drought

By Guest PostFebruary 26, 2014Sciencebay area, california, central valley, drought, dwr, earth, evolving drought, flood control, freshwater, groundwater, icesat 2, jeanine jones, michael freilich, NASA, nasa satellite, san francisco, san joaquin valley, usgs, water cycle

NASA is partnering with the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) to develop and apply new technology and products to better manage and monitor the state’s water resources and respond to its ongoing drought.

NASA scientists, DWR water managers, university researchers and other state resource management agencies will collaborate to apply advanced remote sensing and improved forecast modeling to better assess water resources, monitor drought conditions and water supplies, plan for drought response and mitigation, and measure drought impacts. (more…)

Survey: Americans struggle with science; respect scientists

By Guest PostFebruary 23, 2014General, Scienceamericans, earth, john besley, michigan state university, respect scientists, Science, struggle, survey, technology museum, united states

While most Americans could be a bit more knowledgeable in the ways of science, a majority are interested in hearing about the latest scientific breakthroughs and think highly of scientists.

This is according to a survey of more than 2,200 people conducted by the National Science Foundation, one that is conducted every two years and is part of a report – Science and Engineering Indicators – that the National Science Board provides to the president and Congress. (more…)

Research in the news: The rise of oxygen on Earth

By Guest PostFebruary 22, 2014Sciencebiological innovation, earth, ecosystem change, eric gershon, great oxygenation event, noah planavsky, rise of oxygen, timothy lyons

Yale’s Noah J. Planavsky and collaborators have published a Nature review article titled “The rise of oxygen in Earth’s early ocean and atmosphere.”

Published online Feb. 19, the review surveys and assesses research about the emergence of significant oxygen concentrations and suggests that this happened hundreds of millions of years before the “great oxygenation event” of 2.3 billion years ago. In between, oxygen levels appear to have fluctuated considerably, according to the authors. (more…)

Yale study: Forest emissions, wildfires explain why ancient Earth was so hot

By Guest PostFebruary 7, 2014Environment704 node cluster, aerosol particles, ancient atmospheric level, ancient earth, arabian peninsula, carbon dioxide, climate scientists, co2 concentration, co2 emission, earth, earth system model, forest emissions, hot, methane, model e2, nadine unger, omega supercomputer, ozone, pliocene, pre industrial climate, radiation balance, volatile organic compound, wildfires, yale study, yale university

The release of volatile organic compounds from Earth’s forests and smoke from wildfires 3 million years ago had a far greater impact on global warming than ancient atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide, a new Yale study finds.

The research provides evidence that dynamic atmospheric chemistry played an important role in past warm climates, underscoring the complexity of climate change and the relevance of natural components, according to the authors. They do not address or dispute the significant role in climate change of human-generated CO2 emissions. (more…)

Kepler Finds a Very Wobbly Planet

By Guest PostFebruary 5, 2014ScienceBaltimore, bermuda shorts, constellation cygnus, earth, johns hopkins university, kepler, kepler 413b, kepler space telescope, peter mccullough, planet hunting, super neptune, very wobbly planet, veselin kostov

Imagine living on a planet with seasons so erratic you would hardly know whether to wear Bermuda shorts or a heavy overcoat. That is the situation on a weird, wobbly world found by NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler space telescope.

The planet, designated Kepler-413b, precesses, or wobbles, wildly on its spin axis, much like a child’s top. The tilt of the planet’s spin axis can vary by as much as 30 degrees over 11 years, leading to rapid and erratic changes in seasons. In contrast, Earth’s rotational precession is 23.5 degrees over 26,000 years. Researchers are amazed that this far-off planet is precessing on a human timescale. (more…)

Scientists reveal why life got big in the Earth’s early oceans

By Guest PostJanuary 24, 2014Nature, Scienceangeomorphs, cambrian explosion, canada, canopy flow models, complex life, david gold, david jacobs, david johnston, early ocean, earth, ecology, evolutionary biology, fossil community, fossil record, foundations, guy narbonne, harvard, large life forms, life, marc laflamme, matthew clapham, MIT, modeling technique, multicellular eukaryotes, multicellular organism, newfoundland, nutrient carrying, nutrient uptake, nutrients from seawater, ocean flow, queens university, roger summons, uc santa cruz, ucla biologist, university of toronto, variety of scale

Why did life forms first begin to get larger and what advantage did this increase in size provide? UCLA biologists working with an international team of scientists examined the earliest communities of large multicellular organisms in the fossil record to help answer this question. (more…)

Eight Seconds of Terror

By Guest PostJanuary 17, 2014Environmentandrea donnellan, aperture radar mission, better models, blind thrust fault, california, crack, crust, crustal deformation, data analyses, downtown los angeles, earth, earthquake faults, earthquake in long beach, eight seconds, geodetic imaging techniques, geophysicist, global positioning system, golden guardian, gps, isro, large earthquakes, NASA, nature magazine, northridge earthquake, periodic shakeout, plate boundary observatory, reseda, rupture, san fernando valley, synthetic, terror, uavsar

A JPL Scientist Reflects on L.A.’s Last Big Quake

Twenty years ago this week, in the predawn darkness of Jan. 17, 1994, at five seconds before 4:31 a.m. PST, the ground ruptured violently on a blind thrust fault (a crack in Earth’s crust that does not reach the surface) about 11 miles (18 kilometers) beneath Reseda, in California’s San Fernando Valley about 20 miles (31 kilometers) northwest of downtown Los Angeles. The resulting magnitude 6.7 earthquake, known as the Northridge earthquake, became the first large quake to strike directly under an urban area in the United States since the 1933 magnitude 6.4 earthquake in Long Beach, Calif. (more…)

Exoplanet study finds ‘super-Earths’ likely have oceans and continents

By Guest PostJanuary 15, 2014Scienceastronomy, continents, dorian abbot, earth, exoplanet study, Galaxy, geological timescale, geophysicist, geophysics, habitable zone, interior, massive terrestrial planets, Milky Way, new model, nicolas b cowan, oceans, proportional to gravity, solar system, super earths, thermostat, university of chicago, water, water cycle

Massive terrestrial planets, called “super-Earths,” are known to be common in Earth’s galaxy, the Milky Way. Now a Northwestern University astrophysicist and a University of Chicago geophysicist report the odds of these planets having an Earth-like climate are much greater than previously thought.

Nicolas B. Cowan and Dorian Abbot’s new model challenges the conventional wisdom, which says super-Earths actually would be very unlike Earth—each would be a waterworld, with its surface completely covered in water. They conclude that most tectonically active super-Earths—regardless of mass—store most of their water in the mantle and will have both oceans and exposed continents, enabling a stable climate such as Earth’s. (more…)

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