*University of Minnesota professor is part of international team that predicts the volatile region’s water may once again vanish*
MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL — An international team of scientists drilling deep under the bed of the Dead Sea has found evidence that the sea may have dried up during a past warm period similar to predicted scenarios for climate change in coming decades. Emi Ito, professor of earth sciences in the University of Minnesota’s College of Science and Engineering, is a research team member. (more…)
A Yale University-led research team has found evidence that carbon dioxide levels in Earth’s atmosphere plunged prior to and during the initial icing of Antarctica, about 34 million years ago. The new findings provide further evidence of atmospheric carbon dioxide’s role as a major trigger of global climate change.
“CO2 is tracking global cooling at that time,” said Yale geochemist Mark Pagani, lead author of a paper published online Dec. 1 in the journal Science. “It’s important to demonstrate that there are obvious linkages between CO2 and climate change. It’s one more piece of evidence that CO2 is a primary lever on climate.” (more…)
ANN ARBOR, Mich.— How common are droplets of saltwater on Mars? Could microbial life survive and reproduce in them? A new million-dollar NASA project led by the University of Michigan aims to answer those questions.
This project begins three years after beads of liquid brine were first photographed on one of the Mars Phoenix lander’s legs.
“On Earth, everywhere there’s liquid water, there is microbial life,” said Nilton Renno, a professor in the Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences who is the principal investigator. Researchers from NASA, the University of Texas at Dallas, the University of Georgia and the Centro de Astrobiologia in Madrid are also involved. (more…)
*Melting ice sheets contributed much more to rising sea levels than thermal expansion of warming ocean waters during the Last Interglacial Period, a UA-led team of researchers has found. The results further suggest that ocean levels continue to rise long after warming of the atmosphere levels off.*
Thermal expansion of seawater contributed only slightly to rising sea levels compared to melting ice sheets during the Last Interglacial Period, a University of Arizona-led team of researchers has found.
The study combined paleoclimate records with computer simulations of atmosphere-ocean interactions and the team’s co-authored paper is accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters. (more…)
*Rate is greater now than at any time during past 2,100 years*
The rate of sea level rise along the U.S. Atlantic coast is greater now than at any time in the past 2,000 years–and has shown a consistent link between changes in global mean surface temperature and sea level.
The findings are published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). (more…)
AUSTIN, Texas — Scientists from the U.S., U.K. and Australia have used ice-penetrating radar to create the first high-resolution topographic map of one of the last uncharted regions of Earth, the Aurora Subglacial Basin, an immense ice-buried lowland in East Antarctica larger than Texas.
The map reveals some of the largest fjords or ice cut channels on Earth, providing important insights into the history of ice in Antarctica. The data will also help computer modelers improve their simulations of the past and future Antarctic ice sheet and its potential impact on global sea level. (more…)
WASHINGTON — The West Coast of North America has caught a break that has left sea level in the eastern North Pacific Ocean steady during the last few decades, but there is evidence that a change in wind patterns may be occurring that could cause coastal sea-level rise to accelerate beginning this decade.
That is the conclusion of a new study that says that conditions dominated by cold surface waters along the West Coast could soon flip to an opposite state.
“There are indications that this is what might be happening right now,” says Peter Bromirski, a researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, and lead author of a study now in press in the Journal of Geophysical Research–Oceans, a journal of the American Geophysical Union. (more…)
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A new University of Floridastudy of 45-million-year-old pollen from Pine Island west of Fort Myers has led to a new understanding of the state’s geologic history, showing Florida could be 10 million to 15 million years older than previously believed.
The discovery of land in Florida during the early Eocene opens the possibility for researchers to explore the existence of land animals at that time, including their adaptation, evolution and dispersal until the present. (more…)
