8 posts · 4,508 views
This blog covers the latest discoveries about how the Earth’s mountains, atmosphere, coasts, oceans, ice, deserts and rivers work.
Vivienne
8 posts
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- November 7, 2010
- 11:08 AM
- 820 views
Where does desert sand come from?
by Vivienne in Outdoor Science
Sand is a great traveller. Go to the seaside for the day and it’ll ride home on your shoes or sneak into your picnic sandwiches. You may wonder, as you shake sand from your bag on the beach: ‘where did all this sand come from and how long’s it been here?’ Dr Pieter Vermeesch and colleagues had the same question about the sand in the Namib Sand Sea – one of …... Read more »
Vermeesch, P., Fenton, C., Kober, F., Wiggs, G., Bristow, C., & Xu, S. (2010) Sand residence times of one million years in the Namib Sand Sea from cosmogenic nuclides. Nature Geoscience. DOI: 10.1038/NGEO985
- October 31, 2010
- 05:22 AM
- 446 views
Whales turn oceanographer
by Vivienne in Outdoor Science
The latest weapon in an oceanographer’s arsenal? Whales tagged with thermometers. A US team recently published a study into whether narwhals – a medium-sized Arctic whale – can venture where research ships struggle to go. The scientists led by Dr Kristin Laidre wanted to know if Baffin Bay, which lies between Canada and Greenland, warmed this decade. Researchers previously found west Greenland coast waters deeper than about 0.5km got hotter …... Read more »
Laidre, K., Heide-Jørgensen, M., Ermold, W., & Steele, M. (2010) Narwhals document continued warming of southern Baffin Bay. Journal of Geophysical Research, 115(C10). DOI: 10.1029/2009JC005820
- October 28, 2010
- 08:33 AM
- 463 views
Warning! Climate change is a fire hazard
by Vivienne in Outdoor Science
Here’s some bad news. Wildfires triggered by heat waves – like those that swept through Russia this summer – could dominate the coming century. Research by NASA’s Dr Olga Pechony and Dr Drew Shindell suggests hotter weather could take over from people as the controlling force behind the world’s blazes. Firefighters and governments may need [...]... Read more »
Pechony O, & Shindell DT. (2010) Driving forces of global wildfires over the past millennium and the forthcoming century. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. PMID: 20974914
- October 5, 2010
- 11:48 AM
- 888 views
Finding the sweet spot for using sunshades in space
by Vivienne in Outdoor Science
Sunshades in space might sound silly, but mega-engineering projects like these are increasingly taken seriously as an emergency measure to delay catastrophic climate change. Reflecting sunlight back into space by deploying fleets of tiny, glass spacecraft or pumping aerosol particles into the atmosphere is one method suggested for stopping the Earth tipping into runaway warming. [...]... Read more »
Irvine, P., Ridgwell, A., & Lunt, D. (2010) Assessing the regional disparities in geoengineering impacts. Geophysical Research Letters, 37(18). DOI: 10.1029/2010GL044447
- September 26, 2010
- 07:07 AM
- 453 views
Good news about climate change… for oil rig operators
by Vivienne in Outdoor Science
We’re used to hearing how climate change will lead to wilder weather like this summer’s devastating Pakistan floods or Russia’s record heat wave. So here’s a rare surprise from a recent paper in Nature: Our results provide a rare example of a climate change effect in which a type of extreme weather is likely to decrease, [...]... Read more »
Zahn M, & von Storch H. (2010) Decreased frequency of North Atlantic polar lows associated with future climate warming. Nature, 467(7313), 309-12. PMID: 20844533
- September 19, 2010
- 05:13 AM
- 453 views
Can tiny marine plants steer some of the world’s biggest storms?
by Vivienne in Outdoor Science
Phytoplankton – microscopic marine plants – may be small, but they could have a big impact on the routes hurricanes take across the North Pacific. Incredible to think plants less than five millimetres across could change the paths of storms perhaps 500km wide, but the phytoplanktons’ secret is their vast numbers. Sometimes called the ‘grass [...]... Read more »
Gnanadesikan, A., Emanuel, K., Vecchi, G., Anderson, W., & Hallberg, R. (2010) How ocean color can steer Pacific tropical cyclones. Geophysical Research Letters, 37(18). DOI: 10.1029/2010GL044514
- September 12, 2010
- 06:27 AM
- 540 views
Why was last winter so cold? And is this a problem for climate change?
by Vivienne in Outdoor Science
The winter of 2009/2010 was unusually cold across most of the Northern Hemisphere, leading to deaths and traffic chaos. Newspapers told lurid tales of planes sliding off icy runways, home-going revellers found frozen to death, and heavy snow and icy roads trapping motorists in their cars all night – and that was just in Britain. Needless [...]... Read more »
Cohen, J., Foster, J., Barlow, M., Saito, K., & Jones, J. (2010) Winter 2009–2010: A case study of an extreme Arctic Oscillation event. Geophysical Research Letters, 37(17). DOI: 10.1029/2010GL044256
- August 24, 2010
- 06:29 AM
- 445 views
Fancy going on a wild plankton chase?
by Vivienne in Outdoor Science
Fancy going on a wild plankton chase around Antarctica this Christmas? In November 2002, a team of scientists did exactly that. They went on a nine-week expedition around the Southern Ocean – the ocean surrounding Antarctica – looking for a lush marine oasis awash with marine life and previously overlooked by science. Among their trials and tribulations, Dr Walter Geibert [...]... Read more »
Geibert, W., Assmy, P., Bakker, D., Hanfland, C., Hoppema, M., Pichevin, L., Schröder, M., Schwarz, J., Stimac, I., Usbeck, R.... (2010) High productivity in an ice melting hot spot at the eastern boundary of the Weddell Gyre. Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 24(3). DOI: 10.1029/2009GB003657
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