February 8, 2007, 9:57 PM CT

Effects Of Global Warming On Antarctic

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report citing the detrimental.

loss of sea ice sheets in the Arctic due to global warming echoes what a number of in the scientific community have been saying for years. Now scientists at The University of Texas at San Antonio's Department of Earth and Environmental Science are turning their attention to the South Pole to find out if global warming is having similar effects in the frigid Antarctic region.

UTSA Earth and Environmental Science Assistant Professor Hongjie Xie and doctoral student Burcu Cicek are analyzing data collected in December following a two-week trip to the region. The pair were part of.

an international expedition that included researchers and educators from the United States, Chile and Sweden.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) funded the 6,000 mile trip which was designed to allow.

researchers to collect data aboard the Swedish icebreaker Oden during transit from Punta Arenas, Chile to the United States' McMurdo Research Station on the Antarctic continent, south of New Zealand. The Oden was chartered by NSF to break through the ice and create a 25-mile long shipping channel that would allow for the delivery of annual supplies to NSF's McMurdo Research Station. On route to Antarctica, the ship passed through 1,700 miles of extensive sea ice cover that surrounds the continent annually.........

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February 7, 2007, 4:53 AM CT

Cold storage solution for global warming?

Scientists from the University of Leicester and the British Geological Society (BGS) have proposed storing CO2 in huge underground reservoirs as a way of reducing emissions- and have even identified sites in Western Europe that would be suitable.

Their research, reported in the journal, Planet Earth, reveals that CO2 can be contained in cool geological aquifers or reservoirs, where it can remain harmlessly for a number of thousands of years.

PhD research student, Ameena Camps, is working with Professor Mike Lovell at the University's Department of Geology and with Chris Rochelle at BGS, investigating the storage of CO2.

Storing the gas in a solid form as a gas hydrate, or as a pool of liquid CO2 below a cap of hydrate cemented sediments, is believed to offer an alternative method of geological sequestration to the current practices of storage in warm, deep sediments in the North Sea.

Recently quoted in Planet Earth Ameena Camps explained: "Hydrates (also known as clathrates) are ice-like crystalline minerals that look like normal ice and form when gas and water freeze together at low temperature and high pressure. They are made of a cage of frozen water molecules with the gas molecules trapped inside".

Eventhough gas hydrates were first discovered two centuries ago, the possible use of carbon dioxide hydrate as a means to help resolve problems of global climate change, and of naturally occurring methane hydrate as a future source of energy, have only recently been suggested.........

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February 6, 2007, 9:50 PM CT

Createing Undersea Hills

As per a recent paper published by MBARI geologists and their colleagues, methane gas bubbling through seafloor sediments has created hundreds of low hills on the floor of the Arctic Ocean. These enigmatic features, which can grow up to 40 meters (130 feet) tall and several hundred meters across, have puzzled researchers ever since they were first discovered in the 1940s.

Writing in the January issue of Geophysical Research Letters, MBARI geologists Charlie Paull and William Ussler and their coauthors described the results of field work they conducted on the Beaufort Sea Shelf, offshore of the north coast of Canada. In this area of year-round sea ice and permafrost, the team spent over a month mapping the seafloor and collecting sediment cores and gas samples from these underwater hills, which they call "pingo-like features."

"Pingos," small, dome-shaped, ice-cored hills, are found in many Arctic regions. "Pingo-like features" are similar in shape and size to pingos on land, but are found underwater, on the continental shelf in several parts of the Arctic. Previous studies have suggested that pingo-like features are pingos that formed on land but were submerged when sea level rose following the end of the last ice age, over 10,000 years ago.

Based on their geologic fieldwork and subsequent chemical analysis of the gas and sediments from eight pingo-like features, Paull and his coauthors propose an alternative hypothesis: Pingo-like features form when methane hydrate (a frozen mixture of gas and seawater) decomposes beneath the seafloor, releasing gas that squeezes deep sediments up onto the seafloor like toothpaste from a tube.........

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February 5, 2007, 6:31 PM CT

Volcanism with Under-Ocean Sensors

Earthquakes and volcanic activity occur when the tectonic plates that make up Earth's surface move apart or converge. While this activity is relatively easy to observe on land, it's more difficult to observe under the ocean, where most of it occurs. A University of Missouri-Columbia researcher will soon undertake a study to learn more about this process by placing sensors on a mid-ocean ridge called the East Pacific Rise.

"Right now, we can only listen from land using seismometers, or in the oceans using hydrophones, and try to find out when there is activity in a mid-ocean ridge," said Marie-Helene Cormier, assistant professor of geological sciences in MU¿s College of Arts and Science. "We might not know for a few days, and then it might take at least a week to get a ship to the site. If we want to study what's happening, it's very difficult to get accurate and timely information. Our goal is to put sensors in place so that we can record activity as it is happening. When we recover our sensors, we'll be able to study what was happening during those moments."

In mid February, Cormier and her colleagues, Spahr Webb and Roger Buck of Columbia University, will place sensors on the seafloor in multiple positions along the East Pacific Rise southwest of Mexico. The sensors will measure and record changes in the pressure of the water column above them. Cormier said the pressure of the water is expected to decrease during ridge activity because magma flows up between the two plates, creating new seafloor and raising the height of the sensors by a few inches. She and her team will collect data from the sensors while they are in place until they are removed from the ocean floor in 2009 or 2010. MU undergraduate students are expected to accompany Cormier on the research mission to learn more about geology and marine research. ........

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February 4, 2007, 8:23 PM CT

Sophisticated ESA space weather tool

If a satellite encounters high-energy particles or other 'space weather' phenomena before ground controllers can take action, on-board electronics could be disrupted, scientific instruments damaged and, in very rare and extreme cases, spacecraft may even be lost. A sophisticated tool in development at ESOC promises to provide effective monitoring and forecasting for any type of mission.

But since early 2005, SEISOP (Space Environment Information System for Operations), a space-weather monitoring and forecasting tool under development at ESA's Space Operations Centre, has been successfully providing near-real-time space weather reports for Integral, ESA's gamma-ray space observatory.

Solar activity influences the entire solar system in several ways, including generating streams of fast-moving energetic particles and sudden bursts of damaging X-rays during solar flares.

Energetic cosmic rays from elsewhere in the galaxy also penetrate into our solar system. These phenomena are some of the major sources of abnormal behaviour and aging for spacecraft and their sensitive scientific instruments.

"SEISOP can potentially provide warning services to space agencies worldwide, since space weather can affect any spacecraft."

Space Weather affects spacecraft in a number of ways.........

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February 4, 2007, 8:15 PM CT

Climate Change only one Symptom of a Stressed Planet Earth

In releasing its latest comprehensive report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) focuses an important spotlight on the current state of the Earth's climate.

Climate change is just one of the a number of symptoms exhibited by a planet under pressure from human activities. "Global environmental change, which includes climate change, threatens to irreversibly alter our planet," says Kevin Noone, Executive Director of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP).

Global studies by IGBP show that human-driven environmental changes are affecting a number of parts of the Earth's system, in addition to its climate. For example:.

• Half of Earth's land surface is now domesticated for direct human use.

• 75 percent of the world's fisheries are fully or over-exploited.

• The composition of today´s atmosphere is well outside the range of natural variability the Earth has maintained over the last 650,000 years.

• The Earth is now in the midst of its sixth great extinction event.

"The IPCC report, with its interdisciplinary approach to climate change, is a clear example of how the Earth needs to be considered as a coupled system in order to understand global environmental change," says Noone. "The study of the Earth as a system, looking not only at climate but also at changes in the oceans and on land, how those changes affect each other, and the role of humans as part of that system is a crucial approach to managing a sustainable planet," he says.........

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February 2, 2007, 4:56 AM CT

Good Times Using GPS and the Internet

International time coordination is improving throughout the Americas thanks to a low-cost system relying on Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites and the Internet, which enables much faster time comparisons and gives small countries the opportunity to evaluate easily their measurements in relation to others and to world standards.

The time and frequency network of the Sistema Interamericano de Metrologia (SIM), or Inter-American Metrology System, began operation in 2005. The system includes national metrology institutes in member nations of the Organization of American States (OAS). The SIM network currently compares time and frequency measurements made in Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Panama and the United States. Costa Rica and Columbia are expected to join the network soon, and additional OAS members have expressed interest.

As the U.S. civilian timekeeper, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) participates in the SIM network and also calibrates other members' equipment, which consists of a computer-based measurement system and a GPS receiver provided by OAS. Institutes simultaneously compare their time scales to clocks on the same GPS satellites, and then automatically compare their results over the Internet. Time differences can be viewed on the Web by all laboratories in the network, with updates every 10 minutes.........

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February 2, 2007, 4:19 AM CT

Human Link To Global Warming

Evidence presented in the first phase of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 4th Assessment Report, released recently in Paris, paints the clearest picture yet that human-derived greenhouse gases are playing a significant role in observed global warming, says a Duke University scientist who co-authored one of the report's main chapters.

"We are now seeing, not merely predicting, effects of greenhouse warming on a scale and in ways that were not observable before," said Gabriele Hegerl, associate research professor at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, who also co-authored a summary of the report for policymakers.

"When you look at the changes in temperature, circulation, ocean warming, arctic sea ice reduction and glacial retreat together, it paints a much clearer picture that external drivers, especially greenhouse gases, are playing a key role," she said. "As a result, we can be much more confident that 20th century climate changes were not just associated with natural variability".

Hegerl was a coordinating lead author of the IPCC report's chapter on "Understanding and Attributing Climate Change." Francis Zwiers of the Canadian Centre of Climate Modeling and Analysis was also a coordinating lead author of the chapter.........

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January 30, 2007, 7:39 PM CT

Sources of the World's Tiny Pollutants

Pinpointing pollutant sources is an important part of the ongoing battle to improve air quality and to understand its impact on climate. Researchers using NASA data recently tracked the path and distribution of aerosols -- tiny particles suspended in the air -- to link their region of origin and source type with their tendencies to warm or cool the atmosphere.

By altering the amount of solar energy that reaches the Earth's surface, aerosols influence both regional and global climate, but their impact is difficult to quantify because most only stay airborne for about a week, while greenhouse gases can persist in the atmosphere for decades. As per a research findings published Jan. 24 in the American Geophysical Union's Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres, scientists investigated the sources of aerosols and how different types of aerosols influence climate.

"This study offers details on the aerosol source regions and emission source types that policy makers could target to most effectively combat climate change," said Dorothy Koch, lead author and atmospheric scientist at Columbia University and NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), New York.

Using a GISS computer model that includes a variety of data gathered by NASA and other U.S. satellites, the scientists simulated realistic aerosol concentrations of important aerosol types in the atmosphere and studied the amount of light and heat they absorb and reflect over several regions around the globe.........

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January 11, 2007, 6:33 PM CT

Greetings From The Bottom Of The World

In May 2003, astronaut Don Pettit returned home from his five-month stay aboard the International Space Station. Living in isolated conditions in an extreme environment, he spent much of his time conducting scientific research.

Now, he's doing it again, but this time he's not leaving the planet.

Pettit is currently in Antarctica on a scientific expedition to look for meteorites. Even though he's still on Earth, the trip will have a lot in common with his ISS stay as part of the Expedition 6 crew. So in addition to the search for meteorites, Pettit will be using his background for another mission -- learning more about how Antarctica can prepare astronauts to travel to the moon and Mars.

"This is an opportunity that appeals to the heart of any explorer, whether an Earth explorer or space explorer," he said. "To be able to go off on a frontier, a place where one's normal intuition no longer applies, is the essence of exploration. When in such a place, new discoveries abound, to be found simply by opening your eyes. And to be able to participate in some meaningful way with other scientific missions and gain the experience for space exploration presents an exceptional opportunity."

"Antarctica is a great match for either lunar or Martian training analogs," he said. "Antarctica has both Mars and moon analogs, depending on where you go on the continent. If you go to the dry valleys, places in Antarctica that have no snow, you have as close to a Mars environment on Earth as you can get. If you stay on the ice sheets, you have more like a lunar setting where the geographic contrast is self-similar without the rich resources that we are use to on a planetary surface (like Earth and Mars). Where we will be going is the ice sheets, and this should be more akin to a lunar analog setting."........

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