January 8, 2009, 8:53 PM CT

Inner Workings of Volcano Island

On the ground and in the water, an international team of scientists has been collecting imaging data on the Soufriere Hills Volcano in Montserrat to understand the internal structure of the volcano and how and when it erupts.

"Using land-based measurement, we can see that over the time periods when the magma is erupting, the ground surface deflates into a bowl of subsidence and when the magma is sealed underground, the ground surface inflates like a balloon," says Barry Voight, professor emeritus of geosciences, Penn State. "The interesting thing is that much more magma is erupting than appears represented by the subsiding bowl."

Voight suggests a simple model to explain this discrepancy seen through the various eruptive phases and pauses of the volcano.

In 1995, Soufriere Hills volcano began the current series of eruptions and pauses, with each episode lasting from one to three years. The November 1995 event lasted until March 1998, during which time a thick dome of sticky andesite lava -- a volcanic rock -- grew continuously within the crater, punctuated by occasional and lethal explosions. From March 1998 until November 1999, there was a pause in above-ground volcanic activity and the lava dome collapsed from its own weight and inactivity.

Beginning in December 1999, the second eruptive episode continued until mid-July 2003 followed by a pause until October 2005. The third episode began then and ended in April 2007, followed by a pause, which still continues -- although, as per Voight, "a series of explosions started just a few days ago (early December) and this might mark the onset of the next eruptive period. We will need to wait and see if continuous lava extrusion follows."........ Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source

January 8, 2009, 7:48 PM CT

Predicting weather patterns

Large-scale weather patterns which occur in various locations around the Earth, from the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in the tropics to the high latitude Arctic Oscillation (AO) play a significant part in controlling the weather on a seasonal time scale. Knowing the condition of these atmospheric oscillations in advance would greatly improve long-range weather predictions.

Researchers search for clues in the earth's surface conditions such as tropical sea surface temperatures and snow cover at higher latitudes. Reliable and accurate weather prediction is vitally important in numerous areas of society, especially agriculture and water management and weather risks are reviewed by a wide range of businesses, including power distributors who make fewer sales during cool summers and more sales during cold winters. The portion of the U.S. economy sensitive to weather conditions is estimated to be at least $3 trillion.

The winter of 2002-2003 offers one example of how large-scale patterns can impact a single season. It was supposed to be milder-than-average in the East, driven by the warmer than average sea surface temperatures over the central Pacific during 2002-03 (generated by a strong ENSO event), similar to other recent milder-than-average winters in the northern and eastern United States during other recent El Niño winters. Instead the biting cold of January propelled natural gas prices to an all-time high, and heavy snows paralyzed the transportation infrastructure in all the major eastern cities during February 2003......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source

January 8, 2009, 7:41 PM CT

Balloon Flight Test Over Antarctica

The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have successfully launched and demonstrated a newly designed super pressure balloon prototype that will one day enable a new era of high-altitude scientific research. The super pressure balloon is expected to ultimately carry large scientific experiments to the brink of space for 100 days or more.

"This flight test of NASA's seven-million-cubic-foot super pressure balloon is a very important step forward in building a new capability for scientific ballooning based on sound engineering and operational development," said W. Vernon Jones, NASA's senior scientist for suborbital research at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "While the team has a ways to go in scaling up the pumpkin balloon to be able to lift a one-ton instrument to a float altitude of 110,000 feet, the team has demonstrated they are on the right path".

The super pressure balloon was highlighted in the National Research Council's decadal survey, "Astronomy and Astrophysics in the New Millennium," and will play an important role in providing inexpensive access to the near-space environment for science and technology.

The test flight was launched Dec. 28, 2008, from McMurdo Station, NSF's logistics hub in Antarctica. NASA and NSF conduct an annual scientific balloon campaign during the Antarctic summer. NSF manages the U.S. Antarctic Program and provides logistic support for all U.S. scientific operations in Antarctica......... Posted by: Brooke      Read more         Source

January 7, 2009, 11:43 PM CT

Measuring greenhouse gases

HIAPER, one of the nation's most advanced research aircraft, is scheduled to embark on an historic mission spanning the globe from the Arctic to the Antarctic.

Starting Jan. 7, 2008, the HIAPER Pole-to-Pole Observations (HIPPO) mission will cover more than 24,000 miles as an international team of researchers makes a series of five flights over the next three years sampling the atmosphere in some of the most inaccessible regions of the world.

The goal of the mission is ambitious--the first-ever, global, real-time sampling of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses across a wide range of altitudes in the atmosphere, literally from pole-to-pole.

To date, much of our understanding of global atmospheric greenhouse gasses has been acquired from distant satellites, balloon launches, or highly sophisticated supercomputer models. HIAPER's pole-to-pole mission will, for the first time, give researchers real-time global observation data to correlate with those climate models.

HIAPER is short for the National Science Foundation's High-performance Instrumented Airborne Platfrom for Environmental Research. A modified Gulfstream V jet, it can fly at high altitudes for extended periods of time and can carry 5,600 pounds of sensing equipment, making it a premier aircraft for scientific discovery......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source

January 5, 2009, 11:17 PM CT

Big volcanic eruption can cool the tropics

Climate scientists have shown that big volcanic eruptions over the past 450 years have temporarily cooled weather in the tropics but suggest that such effects may have been masked in the 20th century by rising global temperatures. Their paper, which shows that higher latitudes can be even more sensitive to volcanism, appears in the current issue of Nature Geoscience

Researchers already agree that large eruptions have lowered temperatures at higher latitudes in recent centuries, because volcanic particles reflect sunlight back into space. For instance, 1816, the year following the massive Tambora eruption in Indonesia, became known as "The Year Without a Summer," after low temperatures caused crop failures in northern Europe and eastern North America. More extensive evidence comes in part from tree rings, which tend to grow thinner in years when temperatures go down. This is one of the first such studies to show how the tropics have responded, said main author Rosanne D'Arrigo, a scientist at the Tree Ring Lab at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. "This is significant because it gives us more information about how tropical climate responds to forces that alter the effects solar radiation," said D'Arrigo. The other authors were Rob Wilson of Lamont and the University of St. Andrews, Scotland; and Alexander Tudhope of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source

December 18, 2008, 10:36 PM CT

Ancient Magma 'Superpiles' May Have Shaped the Continents

Two giant plumes of hot rock deep within the earth are associated with the plate motions that shape the continents, scientists have found.

The two superplumes, one beneath Hawaii and the other beneath Africa, have likely existed for at least 200 million years, explained Wendy Panero, assistant professor of earth sciences at Ohio State University.

The giant plumes -- or "superpiles" as Panero calls them -- rise from the bottom of Earth's mantle, just above our planet's core. Each is larger than the continental United States. And each is surrounded by a wall of plates from Earth's crust that have sunk into the mantle.

She and her colleagues reported their findings at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

Computer models have connected the piles to the sunken former plates, but it's currently unclear which one spawned the other, Panero said. Plates sink into the mantle as part of the normal processes that shape the continents. But which came first, the piles or the plates, the scientists simply do not know.

"Do these superpiles organize plate motions, or do plate motions organize the superpiles? I don't know if it's truly a chicken-or-egg kind of question, but the locations of the two piles do seem to be correlation to where the continents are today, and where the last supercontinent would have been 200 million years ago," she said......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 21:52:20 GMT

Santa says go green, buy the Cardboard Christmas Tree

If being environmentally responsible has always been your priority, but you haven"t quite extended your environment-friendly nature to the Christmas tree yet, the Cardboard Christmas Tree from Cloud Gate Design can be a splendid alternative this Christmas.

Not only is the Cardboard Tree (plus packaging) made from 100% recycled corrugated cardboard, but a portion of the profits from the tree sales will be donated to the Cloud Gate Design for replanting trees in destroyed forests. Which means, you save a tree and (indirectly) have several replanted.

Additional benefits? Show your unique ensemble to your dear ones and bask in their admiration for leading the way to a greener world. The Cardboard Christmas tree sells for an economical $22.95. Each tree measures 3-by-3 feet and can be custom decorated with the available ornaments on the website.

Via Cloud Gate Design. Posted by: Sarah      Read more     Source

December 16, 2008, 9:52 PM CT

Ecosystem changes and climate warming

Unparalleled warming over the last few decades has triggered widespread ecosystem changes in a number of temperate North American and Western European lakes, say scientists at Queen's University and the Ontario Ministry of the Environment.

The team reports that striking changes are now occurring in a number of temperate lakes similar to those previously observed in the rapidly warming Arctic, eventhough typically a number of decades later. The Arctic has long been considered a "bellwether" of what will eventually happen with warmer conditions farther south.

"Our findings suggest that ecologically important changes are already under way in temperate lakes," says Queen's Biology research scientist, Dr. Kathleen Ruhland, from the university's Paleoecological Environmental Assessment and Research Lab (PEARL) and lead author of the study.

The research was recently reported in the international journal Global Change Biology Also on the team are Biology professor John Smol, Canada Research Chair in Environmental Change, and Andrew Paterson, a research scientist at the Ontario Ministry of the Environment and an adjunct professor at Queen's.

One of the biggest challenges with environmental studies is the lack of long-term monitoring data, Dr. Ruhland notes. "We have almost no data on how lakes have responded to climate change over the last few decades, and certainly no data on longer term time scales," she says. "However, lake sediments archive an important record of past ecosystem changes by the fossils preserved in mud profiles"......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source

December 16, 2008, 9:40 PM CT

How healthy are America's coasts?

The overall condition of the nation's coastal waters has improved slightly, based on a recently released environmental assessment. The National Coastal Condition Report III (NCCRIII) is the third in a series of environmental assessments of U.S. coastal and Great Lakes waters.

The report, a collaboration of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA); the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS); the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; coastal states; and the National Estuary Program, assessed America's coastal conditions using five indicators of condition: water quality, sediment quality, benthic community condition (the health of the water's bottom-dwelling invertebrate species), coastal habitat loss as indicated by changes in wetland area, and fish tissue contaminants.

The overall condition of America's coasts is rated as "fair," based on these five indicators. Comparison of the condition scores shows that overall condition in U.S. coastal waters has improved slightly since the 1990s. Coastal conditions improved in the Northeast and the West, but there were slight decreases in conditions in the Southeast and Gulf of Mexico. The conditions in the Great Lakes and Puerto Rico remained the same.

The next National Coastal Condition Report is expected to be released in 2011 and will provide an assessment of the status of U.S. coastal waters from 2003 to 2006, along with trends in condition since the 1990s......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source

December 16, 2008, 8:33 PM CT

Oregon's Rogue River Basin faces climate-change hurdles

Three major global climate-change projections scaled down to Oregon's Rogue River Basin point to hotter, drier summers with increasing wildfire risk, reduced snowpack and rainier, stormy winters, as per a report coordinated by the University of Oregon's Climate Leadership Initiative and the National Center for Conservation Science & Policy.

Among the report's recommendations: a gradual relocation of structures and people from areas at most risk of flash flooding and wildfires and a call for governments, private firms and households to prioritize and cooperatively pursue strategies and policies to prepare for the changes.

"Preparing for Climate Change in the Rogue River Basin of Southwest Oregon" is the first of four such reports that, authors say, represent the first such comprehensive scaling down of global models to specific river basins in the United States. The three models involved (Hadley, CSIRO and MIROC) are used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a scientific intergovernmental body established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and United Nations Environment Programme.

A number of buildings and infrastructure in the Rogue basin are in flood plains, while a number of rural populations reside year-round in narrow and steeply sloped canyons. Storms and other climate stresses, the report concludes, could threaten millions of dollars in direct costs and five to 10 times that in indirect costs. There currently are a total of $21.5 billion in taxable properties in Josephine and Jackson counties alone, eventhough not all are considered in harm's way......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source