io9: Earth Science

How will the White House's brutal budget cuts affect NASA?

Phil Plait -- Bad Astronomy — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 08:35:00 PST

The White House has called for draconian cuts to NASA's budget, forcing the Agency to shelve undertakings that run the gamut from ambitious planetary missions to educational outreach. More »

Earth's ice is melting less rapidly than previously thought — but sea levels continue to rise

Robert T. Gonzalez — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 13:20:48 PST

In the most comprehensive analysis of its kind to date, scientists have used NASA satellites to gauge just how much of the world's ice has been lost to the oceans. Their results? Data collected over eight years of the past decade indicates that melting ice raised sea levels worldwide by an average of 1.48 millimeters. More »

A map that reveals Earth's emerging hot zones

Robert T. Gonzalez — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 16:00:00 PST

We've been recording global surface temperatures since 1880, the beginning of what meteorologists call the modern record. In that time, worldwide temperatures have been on the rise. Now, NASA scientists are reporting that the global average surface temperature in 2011 was the ninth warmest that we've ever recorded. So what's the big deal? In the last 132 years, nine of the ten warmest on record have occurred in the last eleven years.

How the American Museum of Natural History will train the next generation of science teachers

Annalee Newitz — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 14:41:54 PST

It's no secret that the U.S. education system is hurting, especially when it comes to science teachers. Public schools are chronically underfunded, and the most talented college graduates shy away from entering the teaching profession when its future seems so grim. But hope isn't lost. A pioneering program at New York's American Museum of Natural History aims to make the future better for science teachers by starting a new kind of Master of Arts program in science teaching. Starting this June, the program will provide 50 teachers-in-training with a thorough education in Earth science, along with a year's classroom work experience, all while paying a modest stipend. More »

A "research cruise" could recruit tourists to study tsunami debris

Esther Inglis-Arkell — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 13:34:58 PST

Research scientists, especially environmental scientists, are always looking for funding. A recent project, studying how debris move and decay in the ocean, has come up with a controversial way to bankroll their project. They'll take tourists on a cruise of the March tsunami debris. More »

A Travel Guide to Prehistoric Places in North America

Sophie Bushwick and Annalee Newitz — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 16:20:07 PST

Want to vacation like a scientific explorer would? We've put together the ultimate travel guide for people who want to journey back to the earliest ages of the Earth. This guide to North American prehistory will take you to valleys full of fossils, mountains carved by ice ages, and petrified forests that are millions of years old.

Further proof that private industry can't fund basic science

Annalee Newitz — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 12:14:29 PST

The congressional supercommittee failed to come up with a budget for the United States, so dramatic cuts will hit every sector — including government-funded science, which has already taken a budget hit two years in a row. Congress has said not to worry because when government money for endeavors like space exploration and environmental science are cut, private companies will step up to fund them. More »

We need an engineering solution to climate change

Annalee Newitz — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 14:02:34 PDT

We hear a lot about slowing climate change by recycling, cutting fossil fuel use, and just generally limiting our carbon footprints. But scientists and engineers believe there could be solutions that go beyond that. These are so-called geoengineering solutions, which include everything from squirting particles into the stratosphere to cool the planet, to creating massive carbon sinks that would pull greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere. Until recently, such solutions were regarded as wildly speculative. But now they are gaining traction — especially among politicians and policy-makers who previously rejected environmental conservation plans. More »

Everything You Need to Know About the Arctic Ozone Hole

Alasdair Wilkins — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 11:00:00 PDT

Last week, we learned that an ozone hole had formed above the North Pole for the first time ever. But what exactly is an ozone hole, why are they so dangerous, and what can we do to fix them? More »

What causes supervolcanoes to erupt?

Alasdair Wilkins — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 16:00:00 PDT

Supervolcano eruptions are the most devastating natural disasters on the planet, unleashing destruction that can level entire continents and kick off new ice ages. We've long struggled to understand what causes these unimaginable eruptions... but now, there might be an answer. More »

When hurricanes catch fire

Keith Veronese — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 15:00:00 PDT

It sounds like a Syfy movie or the next Michael Bay summer blockbuster. An oil spill covers the Gulf of Mexico at the same time that a tropical gathers strength in the Bahamas. As the tropical storms gathers strength, it takes up oil, which is ignited and leads to a blazing storm of fury pointed toward the mainland United States. Many worried about this before Hurricane Katrina and again after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill. But could it really happen? (And can you imagine the premiums for firecane insurance?) Let's take a look at the likelihood of this firestorm.

Absolutely stunning time-lapse footage of the American Southwest

Robert T. Gonzalez — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 14:30:00 PDT

Check out the latest installment in photographer Dustin Farrell's three-part Landscapes series, a collection of jaw-dropping time-lapse videos of the southwestern United States. More »

Help Scientists Gauge Earthquake Strength with Did You Feel It?

Keith Veronese — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 12:40:00 PDT

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If games and puzzles aren't filling your spare time, why not spend your extra minutes contributing to science instead? Here's a quick way to send data to the US Geological Survey when an earthquake happens near your location. The USGS has a wonderful opportunity for you to contribute data quickly and efficiently if you ever find yourself in the midst of a seismic tremor.

Why the hurricane Irene evacuations in New York City were a success

Annalee Newitz and Robert Gonzalez — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 08:00:00 PDT

When hurricane Irene failed to flood Manhattan as predicted over the weekend, many called the evacuation an overreaction to media hype - one local told the New York Times he was "embarrassed." But scientists and civil engineers say the city's response made good sense. More »

Back in the 1700s, two science professors created the world's first fossil hoax to prank a religious colleague

Esther Inglis-Arkell — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 07:00:00 PDT

Piltdown Man, a fossil that supposedly proved early humans originated in England, was discovered in 1912, and wasn't proven a hoax until 1953. This fraud was one of the earliest fossil hoaxes out there — but it was actually two centuries too late to claim that distinction. More »

Are you ready for Hurricane Irene?

Annalee Newitz — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 17:00:00 PDT

Hurricane Irene, which satellite observations reveal is already a third the size of the U.S. East Coast, has already smashed through the Bahamas and is bearing down on Florida. It's expected to slam the southeast for the next few days, working its way up to New York and eventually becoming a torrential rainstorm in the Boston area. More »

21 Scientific Research Projects Starting This Fall That Could Change The World

Robert T. Gonzalez, Keith Veronese, and Annalee Newitz — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 14:31:37 PDT

Every year, governments and other institutions give scientists grants to continue valuable research in their fields. In the fall, we'll see thousands of such research projects get started — projects that will cure disease, improve agriculture, create more efficient energy, and take us into space — all thanks to funding from taxpayers and philanthropists. More »

How could an earthquake happen in Virginia?

Robert T. Gonzalez — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 12:45:00 PDT

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the small town of Mineral, Virginia was was the epicenter of a 5.9 magnitude earthquake earlier this afternoon, making today's quake at least equal in intensity to Virginia's largest earthquake on record, which the USGS says occurred in Giles County, Virginia in 1897. More »

NASA has released the first complete map of Antarctic ice flows

Robert T. Gonzalez — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 16:30:00 PDT

NASA has released a map charting the movement of massive ice sheets on the continent of Antarctica. By compiling these maps into animations like the one shown above, researchers can, for the very first time, examine how the outward flow of the continent's ice sheets could help us predict future rises in sea level. More »

Radioactive sulfur over California shows exactly how bad the Fukushima radiation leak was

Tim Barribeau — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 11:38:22 PDT

When emergency technicians in Fukushima attempted to cool the overheating reactor with seawater, they didn't realize they'd be enabling a set of incredibly accurate calculations that would allow researchers half a world away to calculate how bad the leak had been, and where it was going in the environment. More »

What caused a slowdown in climate change at the turn of the millennium?

Annalee Newitz — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 12:44:42 PDT

Over the past century, we've witnessed a rise in the greenhouse gas methane in our atmosphere. But for a few years at the turn of the millennium, methane levels tapered off and reached a stable state before starting to climb again. If we could just figure out what caused this slowdown, and replicate it, we might be able to alter the course of climate change. More »

The first successful prediction of an undersea volcano eruption

Alasdair Wilkins — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 11:49:06 PDT

The Axial Seamount is an undersea volcano located 250 miles off the Oregon coast. It's one of the most active underwater volcanoes in the world, and it's just started erupting. For the first time ever, scientists saw that eruption coming. More »

This is why you're hot

Robert T. Gonzalez — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 17:31:37 PDT

The US has entered the 34th day of a crippling heat wave, with no sign of relief in sight. According to the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), July's broiling temperatures affected close to 200 million Americans, and set 2,755 daily-high records across the country — including at least one record in every state. More »

The best solution to world thirst may be desalination

Robert T. Gonzalez — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 18:28:38 PDT

Water may be flowing on Mars, but where we really need it is here on Earth. Over 75% of our planet's surface is covered in water, yet 2 billion people worldwide reside in water-stressed countries. With fresh water accounting for a meager 3% of Earth's total water supply (and the vast majority of it locked up in glaciers and icecaps), the demand for state-of-the-art desalination technologies that can purify ocean water has never been greater. More »

Could iron dust stop global warming in its tracks?

Alasdair Wilkins — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 13:20:00 PDT

The Ice Age can be explained by some well-placed specks of iron. Adding dust to the waters around Antarctica can supercharge plankton growth, causing global temperature drops. To stop climate change, we need a whole lot of iron filings. More »

Frogs are dying in record numbers. Now you can help scientists study this problem.

Annalee Newitz — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 17:19:28 PDT

For decades, zoologists have been dismayed to watch frog and other amphibian populations shrinking dramatically all over the world. In some areas, as many as a third of the local frog species are threatened with extinction. Some scientists say it's more like half of all species. More »

Bizarre volcanoes on the far side of the Moon erupted with gooey, viscous lava

Annalee Newitz — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 08:00:00 PDT

Though scientists believed volcanoes on the Moon to be long dead, a recent discovery suggests they were active as recently as 800 million years ago, which is fairly recent in geological time. Even weirder, volcanoes studied on the far side of the Moon appear to have erupted with a very unusual kind of lava, made of a super-viscous liquid rock almost never seen on the satellite. More »

Flawed diamonds reveal the shape of a lost Earth

Tim Barribeau — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 09:00:00 PDT

A tiny, blood-red flaw inside a diamond can reveal what was happening to Earth 3 billion years ago. A recent scientific study of thousands of flawed diamonds like this one have given us a window into our planet's strange and violent past. More »

200 million years ago, half the world died from a massive methane eruption

Annalee Newitz — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 16:45:00 PDT

A little over 200 million years ago, when Earth had only one mega-continent called Pangaea, fifty percent of life in the oceans died abruptly. What happened? Researchers long believed that this event, called the End-Triassic mass extinction, might have been caused by intense volcanic activity as Pangaea broke into two smaller continents. More »

The tale of the epic struggle to make an Earth sandwich

Esther Inglis-Arkell — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 08:30:00 PDT

Or at least the epic struggle to make an earth sandwich without getting the bread soggy. Where on earth could you put a piece of bread, on dry land, while having a bit of dry land on the other side to put the other piece of bread on? More »

Why did the temperature of the Red Sea rise abruptly in 1995?

Annalee Newitz — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 08:30:00 PDT

In 1995, the temperature of the Red Sea rose abruptly. It's already-warm waters became 0.7°C hotter, which is a significant amount for a body of water whose reefs support life that's adapted for a very specific temperature. Scientists studying the Red Sea recently published a study using satellite data to prove that the temperature spike led to an overall increase in the sea's temperature over time. More »

Explorers discover 3 billion-year-old life forms off the coast of Michigan

Annalee Newitz — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 15:00:00 PDT

In mysterious sinkholes beneath the waters of Lake Huron, scientists have been exploring strange pockets of life that shouldn't exist on present-day Earth. The microbes researchers have found would have been perfectly comfortable on the Earth of 3 billion years ago, before we had oxygen in the atmosphere. More »

Asteroids are making Earth's weather unpredictable

Annalee Newitz — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 08:00:00 PDT

Ceres and Vesta are two of the largest asteroids in the Belt, and their power extends far beyond the band of rocks they inhabit between Jupiter and Mars. Astronomers have discovered that these asteroids' gravitational effects introduced "strong chaos" into the Earth's orbit, making it impossible to know the exact path the Earth took around the sun before 60 million years ago. More »

Where is all the Earth's heat coming from?

Alasdair Wilkins — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 10:00:00 PDT

Earth runs on massive amounts of heat, enough to melt iron in the core and create our magnetic field, enough to power the constant movement of plate tectonics. Where all this heat comes from is a mystery...but we're getting closer. More »

This lost continent off the coast of Scotland disappeared beneath the ocean 55 million years ago

Annalee Newitz — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 08:20:38 PDT

This week, a group of geologists report that they've found a lost continent off the coast of Scotland. 55 million years ago, about 10 million years after dinosaurs died out, a chunk of the seafloor erupted from beneath the water. It created a small continent that existed for at least a million years, covered in dramatic mountains and valleys, and irrigated with streaming rivers. Eventually the landscape sank back beneath the waves, its once-sunny mountains buried beneath 2 kilometers of seabed. More »

A map of future undersea mining facilities

Annalee Newitz — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 08:00:00 PDT

Rare earth elements like yttrium are difficult to extract from the ground, but they're crucial ingredients in flat screens and consumer electronics. Now a group of researchers have discovered massive deposits of these elements in mud on the deep sea floor. They believe we could start mining ocean mud to build more smart phones. More »

The trouble with predicting climate change

Annalee Newitz — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 08:00:00 PDT

When you hear predictions about climate change, scientists often refer to simple models of gradual transformation. But new evidence suggests that climate change is likely to be abrupt, with the temperature of the planet rising quickly over only a few decades. More »

End the prejudice against non-native species! Embrace the new nature.

Annalee Newitz — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 17:13:42 PDT

Gardners and biologists often grumble about the ways non-native animals and plants have invaded a region, spoiling things for all the locals. Sometimes a non-native species can destroy an ecosystem — a common example is the introduction of rabbits to Australia, where they have no native predators. Sometimes, however, they are far more beneficial than local creatures like the mountain pine beetle, a native species that kills more trees than any other insect in North America. More »

New radar maps reveal the once and future fjords of Antarctica

Annalee Newitz — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 08:00:00 PDT

A fjord is a deep valley carved by glaciers. Most famously, fjords were cut into the land by ice melt during Norway's summers, when fast-moving rivers flow between stunningly tall cliffs. Now a group of researchers have discovered that the fjord was also common to Antarctica, back when its eastern ice sheet grew and shrank rapidly every year. More »

Why we need volcanoes to build a high-tech society

Annalee Newitz — Wed, 25 May 2011 13:00:00 PDT

In this io9 interview with Earth Scientist Jim Webster at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, you'll learn why the technological revolution is dependent on volcanoes. They're the source of most metals we use in our machines. More »