Ancient Carbon Resurfacing

A new study reveals a significant amount of carbon stored in lakes and rivers -- often thousands of years old -- is still being released into the atmosphere, challenging current models of long-term carbon storage in aquatic systems and its dynamics in modern climatology.

Drought Reveals Warsaw Treasure

A drought affecting Poland's Vistula River, at its lowest level since records began in the 18th century, have revealed 12 tons of 17th-century marble pieces looted from Kazimierz Palace during the Swedish Deluge and sinking to the river bottom with the barge that carried them away some 350 years ago.

Trees Electrify Atmosphere

New research has shown that trees and other plants function as radon pumps, bringing the gas from the surface and releasing it into the air via transpiration and thus contributing to the electrical ionization of Earth's atmosphere.

Underground Desert Oasis

Researchers have discovered a robust ecosystem of bacteria, archaea, DNA and other molecules of life only two meters beneath the surface of the Atacama Desert in Chile, the driest place on Earth and a good analogue for most of the terrain of Mars.

Volcanoes Triggered Little Ice Age

A new study suggests a 50-year period that included four massive eruptions of tropical volcanoes triggered the "Little Ice Age," a period of extended cooling due to decreased solar radiation that lasted from about 1300 A.D. into the nineteenth century.

Ancient Khmer Droughts

Scientists have found evidence that two severe decades-long droughts about 600 years ago may have weakened the ancient Khmer civilization at Angkor, Cambodia, and were factors in that society's eventual collapse.

Ancient U.S. Megadrought

Analysis of tree growth rings have revealed a previously unknown multi-decade drought for the southwestern United States around the second century A.D., suggesting this area may have periodic extended periods of severe aridity.

Europe's Little Ice Age

A new analysis of data has provided a scientific cause-and-effect link for the first time between climate change and large-scale historical crises, showing agriculturally based food shortages and health problems in European nations coinciding with the harshest years of the "Little Ice Age" from 1560 to 1660.

"Missing Heat" in Oceans

New computer simulations have indicated that the "missing heat" expected by some climate models that has not been detected even with rising greenhouse gas emissions has actually been absorbed into the oceans, accumulating at depths of 1000 feet or more.

Historical Climate Change

Recreating the last 1500 years of climate from sediment records, a new study attributes declining temperatures and rising sea-ice as a contributing cause to the collapse of an established Norse Western Settlement in Disko Bay, Greenland, around AD 1350.

Earth Getting Windier

Over the past 20 years, average wind speeds have increased about 5%, with strong winds from storms increasing up to 10%, for reasons that are not yet clearly understood and not clearly related to global warming or natural cycles.

Arctic Ice at Low Point

Researchers examined the results from 300 past and ongoing studies to compile the first comprehensive history of Arctic ice, revealing that it is at its lowest point in recent geologic history dating back a few thousand years.

Ancient Ocean on Mars

A new NASA map adds further evidence that an ancient ocean once covered up to one third of Mars' surface, with extensive valley networks that imply heavy rainfall that would feed such a large body of water.

New Theory of Extinction

A new theory of the Permian/Triassic extinction 250 million years ago suggests that halogenated gases resulting from giant salt lakes altered the atmosphere enough to affect land-based vegetation.

Turtle Fossil Points to Warm Arctic Past

Geologists from the University of Rochester discovered a warm-weather turtle fossil in the Canadian Arctic that suggests once temperate or even subtropical temperatures at the poles.

Setting out to study the paleomagnetism of the region, the turtle was uncovered almost by accident in an area known to be rich with fossils. A previously unknown species, the fossil resembles modern tropical Mongolian freshwater turtles and suggests a much warmer climate than the current frigid temperatures in the Arctic. In conjunction with the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Canada, the turtle species was named Aurorachelys, or aurora turtle.

Animals were previously thought to migrate between Asia and North America in the Cretaceous period via a former land bridge that existed around the Alaska region. This fossil evidence points to a previous warm Arctic freshwater sea that existed about 90 million years ago, through which species such as this turtle could have migrated directly across the pole.

This warming is believed to be due to ancient volcanic activity pumping massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, creating a "super-greenhouse effect" with a warm Arctic sea free of ice.

These results were published in the February issue of Geology.

Source: ScienceDaily

Particles Detected Underground Tied to Upper Atmosphere

Scientists at the UK’s National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS) and the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) have discovered that particles detected deep underground correlate to weather events in the Earth's upper atmosphere.

Collaborating with the US-based Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search (MINOS) project at Fermilab, scientists analyzed data collected from an abandoned iron-ore mine in Minnesota. They found a remarkably close correlation between subatomic particles named muons detected underground and the temperature of the stratosphere. Cosmic rays naturally decay upon entering the atmosphere, producing a muon as a daughter product. A rise in temperature means an expansion of the atmosphere, with fewer impacts destroying cosmic rays and leaving them to decay and produce muons.

Also suprising was a correlation with sudden and intermittent increases in stratosphere temperature (as much as 40°C) occurring during winter months. This weather event, known as Sudden Stratospheric Warming, has long been regarded as unpredictable but now can be identified by sudden increases in the levels of muons detected.

Climate data has previously only been available via weather balloons and satelites, but these findings open a new avenue for ground-based meteorological study.

These results were published in a recent edition of Geophysical Research Letters.

Source: ScienceDaily

Centuries-Long Climate Record Reconstructed from Coral

Scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution have reconstructed a 218-year temperature record of the North Atlantic by analyzing brain coral.

A wide-ranging pressure phenomenon known as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) affects the climate of North America, Europe and North Africa as well as the ocean between. Precise NAO data has always been difficult to obtain, as land-based measurements do not always capture its greater oceanic behavior. However, corals are slow-growing and have long life spans, and contain annual growth layers much like rings in a tree that depend upon seawater temperature. By sampling these oceanic corals, a month-by-month record of the NAO was recalculated for the previous 218 years.

Knowledge of the NAO has an impact on industries such as shipping, fishing, coastal management and hydroelectric power generation. The researchers did confirm that the variability of the NAO decade-to-decade during the late twentieth century was larger and with greater swings of temperature than previous centuries, suggesting that human industrialization is impacting the stability of the NAO.

Whether the NAO swings positive (warmer) or negative (cooler) over the decades has not been affected by human activity. Instead, the variability within those periods has increased, leading to stronger storms during positive cycles and weaker weather during negative cycles.

These results were published in the December issue of Nature Geoscience.

Photo: ScienceDaily