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NASA Finds Drought May Take Toll on Congo Rainforest

By Guest PostApril 23, 2014EnvironmentAmazon rainforest, ammirati, atlantic ocean, biodiversity, carbon storage, climate experiment, daniel huber, drought, gravity recovery, hypercam, hyperspectral camera, ibm ix, jaxa, klima mooc, modis, NASA, neel joshi, paul papas, sassan saatchi, terra satellite, united states, university at albany

A new analysis of NASA satellite data shows Africa’s Congo rainforest, the second-largest tropical rainforest in the world, has undergone a large-scale decline in greenness over the past decade.

The study, led by Liming Zhou of University at Albany, State University of New York, shows between 2000 and 2012, the decline affected an increasing amount of forest area and intensified. The research, published Wednesday in Nature, is one of the most comprehensive observational studies to explore the effects of long-term drought on the Congo rainforest using several independent satellite sensors. (more…)

Littlest Continent Had Biggest Role in Sea Level Drop

By Guest PostAugust 22, 2013Environmentargo global array, atmospheric patterns, australia, climate experiment, earth, german aerospace center, grace, gravity recovery, john fasullo, la niña, littlest continent, NASA, ncar, poseidon, satellite altimeters, sea level drop, smallest continent, spacecraft, topex

A unique and complex set of circumstances came together over Australia from 2010 to 2011 to cause Earth’s smallest continent to be the biggest contributor to the observed drop in global sea level rise during that time, finds a new study co-authored and co-funded by NASA.

In 2011, scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and the University of Colorado at Boulder reported that between early 2010 and summer 2011, global sea level fell sharply, by about a quarter of an inch, or half a centimeter. Using data from the NASA/German Aerospace Center’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) spacecraft, they showed that the drop was caused by the very strong La Nina that began in late 2010. That La Nina changed rainfall patterns all over our planet, moving huge amounts of Earth’s water from the ocean to the continents. The phenomenon was short-lived, however. (more…)

World’s melting glaciers making large contribution to sea rise

By Guest PostMay 29, 2013Environmentalaska, alex gardner, antarctic ice sheets, arctic canada, clark university, climate experiment, coastal greenland, columbia glacier, contribution, glacier mass changes, grace, gravity recovery, greenland, icesat, john wahr, melting glaciers, NASA, sea rise, sea-level rise, tad pfeffer, the himalayas, the southern andes, university colorado boulder, university of michigan, world

While 99 percent of Earth’s land ice is locked up in the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, the remaining ice in the world’s glaciers contributed just as much to sea rise as the two ice sheets combined from 2003 to 2009, says a new study led by Clark University and involving the University Colorado Boulder.

The new research found that all glacial regions lost mass from 2003 to 2009, with the biggest ice losses occurring in Arctic Canada, Alaska, coastal Greenland, the southern Andes and the Himalayas. The glaciers outside of the Greenland and Antarctic sheets lost an average of roughly 260 billion metric tons of ice annually during the study period, causing the oceans to rise 0.03 inches, or about 0.7 millimeters per year. (more…)

NASA’s GRAIL Creates Most Accurate Moon Gravity Map

By Guest PostDecember 10, 2012Scienceapollo lunar missions, basin rings, bouguer gravity anomalies, cambridge, celestial body, crater central peaks, earth, ebb, flow, grail, gravity anomalies, gravity field, gravity field map, gravity gradients, gravity recovery, interior laboratory, jeff andrews hanna, linear gravity anomalies, maria zuber, mark wieczorek, massachusetts institute, mission, moon, moon basin, moon dike map, moon dikes, NASA, olivine materials map, probe, rocky planets, solar system, solar system history, Technology, tectonic structures, thin moon crust, volcanic landforms

PASADENA, Calif. — Twin NASA probes orbiting Earth’s moon have generated the highest resolution gravity field map of any celestial body.

The new map, created by the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission, is allowing scientists to learn about the moon’s internal structure and composition in unprecedented detail. Data from the two washing machine-sized spacecraft also will provide a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed and evolved.

The gravity field map reveals an abundance of features never before seen in detail, such as tectonic structures, volcanic landforms, basin rings, crater central peaks and numerous simple, bowl-shaped craters. Data also show the moon’s gravity field is unlike that of any terrestrial planet in our solar system. (more…)

Tag Archives: gravity recovery

NASA Finds Drought May Take Toll on Congo Rainforest

Littlest Continent Had Biggest Role in Sea Level Drop

World’s melting glaciers making large contribution to sea rise

NASA’s GRAIL Creates Most Accurate Moon Gravity Map