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Volcanic origin for Little Ice Age

Jan 30 - The Little Ice Age was caused by the cooling effect of massive volcanic eruptions, and sustained by changes in Arctic ice cover, scientists conclude. An international research team studied ancient plants from Iceland and Canada, and sediments carried by glaciers. They say a series of eruptions just before 1300 lowered Arctic temperatures enough for ice sheets to expand. Writing in Geophysical Research Letters, they say this would have kept the Earth cool for centuries. more at bbc.co.uk

Payún Matru Volcanic Field, Argentina

Jan 30 - East of the Andes, the volcanic field is a product of complex geological processes.  more at earthobservatory.nasa.gov

Small Asteroid Just Misses Earth

Jan 29 - An asteroid about the size of a city bus came within 37,000 miles of hitting the Earth – about 1/6 of the distance between Earth and Moon. more at msnbc.msn.com

How To Take a Dinosaur's Temperature

Jan 27 - Using a new approach, a team of researchers led by the California Institute of Technology (also known as Caltech) figured out how to take the body temperatures of dinosaurs by analyzing the concentration of certain isotopes preserved in the mineral bioapatite, found in teeth. more at livescience.com

What really happened prior to 'Snowball Earth'?

Jan 27 - In a study published in the journal Geology, Dr. Peter Swart if the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science suggests that the large changes in the carbon isotopic composition of carbonates which occurred prior to the major climatic event more than 500 million years ago, known as "Snowball Earth," are unrelated to worldwide glacial events. rsmas.miami.edu

February Lithosphere Highlights

Jan 26 - The new issue of LITHOSPHERE is online now. Papers present evidence for the on-going re-shaping of the Rocky-Mountain–Colorado Plateau region by young uplift driven from below (mantle buoyancy), research in the Aegean Sea that documents a newly defined extensional fault system, and study of the hydrologic heterogeneity of faulted and fractured sediment layers with implications for similar rocks to affect the flow of moisture downward toward the spent nuclear fuel geologic repository at Yucca Mountain.  more at geosociety.org

Kepler Announces 11 New Planetary Systems

Jan 26 - NASA's Kepler mission has discovered 11 new planetary systems hosting 26 confirmed planets. These discoveries nearly double the number of verified Kepler planets and triple the number of stars known to have more than one planet that transits, or passes in front of, the star. Such systems will help astronomers better understand how planets form.  more at jpl.nasa.gov

February Geology Highlights

Jan 26 - New GEOLOGY articles posted ahead of print examine the role of climate warming in the Permian-Triassic mass extinction, documentation of one of the first examples of land-based magnetic lineations similar to those that characterize sea-floor spreading centers, evidence that the disappearance of the Indus Valley Civilization around 2000 BC may be linked to a rearrangement of river drainage systems, fossil trees from the Cretaceous that reveal the true magnitude of past climate warmth, and more.  more at geosociety.org

February GSA Bulletin Highlights

Jan 25 - New GSA Bulletin postings discuss how subsurface data can be used to understand the form and origin of giant submarine landslides, give new clues to the tectonic history of the Eastern Cordillera, present an alternative theory on how the mountains along the Atlantic margin of northeastern Brazil formed long after the opening of the South Atlantic, integrate several kinds of geological dating for Upper Cretaceous rocks from the Pacific Coast of North America, and more.  more at geosociety.com

Death Valley's Big Bang: Volcano "Potentially Active"

Jan 25 - A volcano in Death Valley National Park might be more dangerous than previously thought, a new study says.A mile and a half wide (2.4 kilometers) and 600 feet (180 meters) deep, California's Ubehebe Crater came explosively into being long ago when rising magma hit water. Scientists had assumed the explosion occurred comfortably in the past, most likely several thousand years ago, when the Death Valley area was wetter. The new study, though, suggests the massive blast occurred more recently, when Death Valley was very much as it is today—which could mean that conditions are still ripe for an eruption.  more at news.nationalgeographic.com

Meteorites definitely struck Moon

Jan 24 - Research led by Curtin University geologists has uncovered a wealth of new evidence in the mineral zircon from lunar rock samples recovered during NASA’s Apollo missions, revealing indisputable proof of meteorite collisions on the Moon.  more at sciencealert.com

190-million-year-old dinosaur nesting site discovered in South Africa

Jan 24 - An excavation at a site in South Africa has unearthed the 190-million-year-old dinosaur nesting site of the prosauropod dinosaur Massospondylus–revealing significant clues about the evolution of complex reproductive behavior in early dinosaurs.  more at smithsonianscience.org

Preserved in Tar, Relics From Long Before Freeways

Jan 23 - No one expects to stumble across a cache of Picasso’s works in the middle of a desert. So who would think that just off bustling Wilshire Boulevard, tucked between the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the national headquarters of the Screen Actors Guild, lie buried some of the most exquisitely preserved fossils in the world? The fossils of the La Brea Tar Pits are just that.  more at nytimes.com

Geoengineering and global food supply

Jan 23 - There is exploration of drastic ideas for combating global warming, including the idea of trying to counteract it by reflecting sunlight away from the Earth. However, it has been suggested that reflecting sunlight away from the Earth might itself threaten the food supply of billions of people. New research led by Carnegie’s Julia Pongratz examines the potential effects that geoengineering the climate could have on global food production and concludes that sunshade geoengineering would be more likely to improve rather than threaten food security. more at carnegiescience.edu

Huge pool of Arctic fresh water could cool Europe

Jan 23 - British scientists have discovered an enormous dome of fresh water in the western Arctic Ocean. They think it may result from strong Arctic winds accelerating a great clockwise ocean circulation called the Beaufort Gyre, causing the sea surface to bulge upwards.  more at planetearth.nerc.ac.uk

A Salt-Free Primordial Soup

Jan 23 - The saltiness of our blood is often cited as evidence that life originated in the ocean. However, some researchers contend that the first chemical steps toward biology would have been easier in freshwater rather than saltwater.  more at terradaily.com

Scientists turning to crowd-sourcing to gather more information about earthquakes

Jan 20 - n the past, seismologists have had to rely on information provided by just a few sensors in the vicinity of an earthquake to get information about it, and then afterwards, on anecdotal evidence provided by people that had experienced the quake first hand. Now though, because of changes in technology, new sources of data are becoming available that are giving scientists much more information about an earthquake, both during and after the event. One example is Twitter.  more at physorg.com

EARTH: Setting off a supervolcano

Jan 19 - Supervolcanoes are one of nature's most destructive forces. In a matter of hours, an eruption from a supervolcano can force thousands of cubic meters of molten rock above ground, and scar landscapes with massive calderas and craters. These catastrophic eruptions have a global impact, and yet scientists still do not fully understand them. Today, a team of scientists studying Bolivia's Uturuncu volcano is trying to shed some light on how supervolcanoes can become so powerful. more at earthmagazine.com

New Mexico is Taking a Stretch

Jan 18 - Like a waistband after Thanksgiving dinner, New Mexico's borders are gradually gaining girth, according to the Albuquerque Journal. It’s not much, and it’s not happening very fast -- the state is getting about an inch wider every 40 years -- but the state is unquestionably expanding, according to University of Colorado geophysicist Henry Berglund and his colleagues.  more at news.discovery.com

World’s largest emerald up for auction

Jan 18 - Owners of the world’s largest cut emerald – a 57,500-carat natural wonder – will auction off the gem later this month, and the bidding starts at $1 million. Regan Reaney, of Gems Canada in Calgary, said he’s already received interest from buyers in Houston and the Middle East.  more at globalpost.com, YouTube

How a Diamond Is Like a Champagne Cork

Jan 18 - Scientists have long known that a diamond’s trip from deep below Earth’s surface must be quick indeed: Lab tests show that at conditions found in the crust, the gems would burn up in a matter of days, if not hours. New experiments reveal the chemical secret behind such rapid ascent. The eruptions of diamonds to Earth’s surface may be driven by massive quantities of carbon dioxide fizzing from the molten rock that surrounds the gems.  more at wired.com

Google Science Fair Returns for 2012

Jan 18 - In 2012, the Google Science Fair looks to expand its reach. “This year we want to make the Science Fair even more global, so we will be accepting submissions in 13 languages and selecting 90 regional finalists — 30 from the Americas, 30 from Europe/Middle East/Africa, and 30 from Asia Pacific,” says Maggie Johnson, Director of Education and University Relations at Google. “We’ve also introduced the ‘Science in Action’ award, sponsored by one of our partners, Scientific American, for a project that addresses a social, environmental or health issue to make a practical difference in the lives of a group or community.”  more at wired.com

Setting off a supervolcano

Jan 17 - Supervolcanoes are one of nature’s most destructive forces, but given that there are no recorded observations of super-eruptions — the last occurred 74,000 years ago in Indonesia — scientists don’t fully understand how they work. Now a team studying the world’s fastest-inflating volcano, Bolivia’s Uturuncu, is shedding some light on how supervolcanoes become so powerful. more at earthmagazine.org

'Lost' Darwin fossils rediscovered

Jan 17 - A treasure trove of fossils including plant specimens collected by Charles Darwin, have been rediscovered. The fossils, which have been lost for 165 years, were unearthed in an old cabinet at the British Geological Survey's vast fossil collection. They have now been registered and photographed and are available for viewing by the public through a new online museum exhibit released today.  more at bgs.ac.uk

Eruption at Kizimen Continues

Jan 16 - NASA’s Earth Observatory has a new satellite image of the eruption of Kizimen Volcano on Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula. It shows a gas-steam plume and lava flow on the eastern flank of the mountain. view at earthobservatory.nasa.gov

New research shows 1992 earthquake in Pakistan was due to rare horizontal shift

Jan 16 - Instead of two plates rubbing together, a whole section of the earth simply moved from one place to another, like a rug being pulled out from underneath those that were living there. In some ways, it appears the quake was more like a giant mud slide than a normal earthquake. more at physorg.com

Scientists set to drill into buried Antarctic lake

Jan 15 - Scientists with the British Antarctic Survey are seeking to drill through the continent's thick covering of ice to a giant, hidden lake, cut off since before modern humans first evolved, which may house life forms invisible to human eyes. They could be unlike anything scientists have seen before. more at msnbc.msn.com

Elements under pressure reveal secrets of extreme chemistry

Jan 14 - Deep within the planet, rock experiences pressures more than 1 million times as great as the “1 atmosphere” that ordinary humans live under at sea level. To mimic these hellish realms, scientists are ramping up pressure in the lab and in the process, they’re squeezing out some surprising insights. One team has found a new kind of iron oxide, a compound that somehow had never been seen before, even though it contains two of the most common elements in Earth’s crust. Another group argues that hydrogen’s odd behavior at high pressures means that the cores of giant gas planets, such as Jupiter, are eroding in a slow hydrogen drip. more at sciencenews.org

100 Years of Volcano Monitoring in the United States

Jan 13 - This year, the USGS is proud to celebrate 100 years of continuous volcano monitoring in the United States. Monitoring began in 1912, when Thomas A. Jaggar, Jr., of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, founded the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) in the then U.S. territory of Hawai‘i. The HVO became a permanent part of the USGS in 1947, and today the USGS Volcano Hazards Program monitors volcanoes across the United States and helps monitor others around the world.  more at usgs.gov

AGU journal highlights

Jan 13 - Featured in this release are research papers on the following topics: "Variability of North Atlantic heat transport observed from instrument data"; "Methane exceeds nitrous oxide in rivers' contribution to warming"; "Waste recycling primary source of energy in deep ocean"; "Record Arctic ozone depletion could occur again"; "Traveling supraglacial lakes observed on Antarctic ice shelf"; and "Lunar images alter understanding of impact history." more at eurekalert.org

Researchers discover particle which could ‘cool the planet’

Jan 13 - Scientists have shown that a new molecule in the earth’s atmosphere has the potential to play a significant role in off-setting global warming by cooling the planet. In a breakthrough paper published in Science, researchers from The University of Manchester, The University of Bristol and Sandia National Laboratories report the potentially revolutionary effects of Criegee biradicals. more at manchester.ac.uk

Seafloor surveys shed light on 2010 Haiti earthquake

Jan 13 - Marine evidence from the deadly 2010 Haiti earthquake is shedding light on how it happened, and could help assess the risk this and other areas face, researchers say. Researchers found the quake generated vast landslides, driving large amounts of earth sliding into the sea from the shore as well as from shallower to deeper portions of the Canal de Sud off the island of Hispaniola, of which Haiti is the western half. Nearly two months after the main shock, a 2,000-foot-thick (600 meters) plume of sediment was still present in the lowermost waters at this location, revealing just how powerful the quake was. more at msnbc.msn.com

Source code: the methane race

Jan 10 - Researchers are developing instruments to determine where molecules come from — revealing everything from the origins of natural gas on Earth to how much methane is being released from Arctic tundra to whether there is life on Mars. more at earthmagazine.com

Satellite imagery detects thermal 'uplift' signal of underground nuclear tests

Jan 10 - Satellite imagery detects thermal 'uplift' signal of underground nuclear tests A new analysis of satellite data from the late 1990s documents for the first time the "uplift" of ground above a site of underground nuclear testing, providing researchers a potential new tool for analyzing the strength of detonation. The findings provide another forensic tool for evaluation, especially for the potential explosive yield estimates. more at oregonstate.edu

Neighboring Craters Emi Koussi and Aorounga in Chad Have Very Different Origins

Jan 9 - An image taken by the International Space Station features two examples of circular landscape features—labeled as craters—that were produced by very different geological processes. In it you see the broad grey-green shield volcano of Emi Koussi, marked by three overlapping calderas that were formed by eruptions. The circular Aorounga Impact Crater lies approximately 68 miles)to the southeast of Emi Koussi and has its origins in forces from above rather than below. read more at earthobservatory.nasa.gov

Could Siberian volcanism have caused the Earth's largest extinction event?

Jan 9 - Around 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian geologic period, there was a mass extinction so severe that it remains the most traumatic known species die-off in Earth's history. Although the cause of this event is a mystery, it has been speculated that the eruption of a large swath of volcanic rock in Russia called the Siberian Traps was a trigger for the extinction. New research from Carnegie's Linda Elkins-Tanton and her co-authors offers insight into how this volcanism could have contributed to drastic deterioration in the global environment of the period. Their work is published January 9 in Earth and Planetary Science Letters. more at esciencenews.com

New cores from glacier may yield new clues

Jan 9 - Researchers at OSU are beginning their analysis of what are probably the first successful ice cores drilled to bedrock from a glacier in the eastern European Alps. With luck, that analysis will yield a record of past climate and environmental changes in the region for several centuries, and perhaps even covering the last 1,000 years. Scientists also hope that the core contains the remnants of early human activity in the region, such as the atmospheric byproducts of smelting metals. more at osu.edu

Ice age, interrupted

Jan 9 - Research shows that a new ice age could well have been upon us in the next millennium were it not for increases in CO2 due to humans, despite the advantageous trend in solar radiation of our current age. In a paper published in Nature Geoscience this week, new research proposes that the next ice age would have been kick-started sometime in the next thousand years, just round the corner in the context of the Earth’s lifespan, if CO2 was sufficiently low.  more at cam.ac.uk

Scientists Look to Microbes to Unlock Earth's Deep Secrets

Jan 9 - An international team of scientists sailing onboard the research vessel JOIDES Resolution recently returned from installing observatories beneath the seafloor in "North Pond"--a remote area in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Scientists hope that data collected from these subseafloor observatories (known as CORKs, or Circulation Obviation Retrofit Kits), along with studies of rock and sediment samples collected during the expedition, will help to shed light on the role tiny subseafloor microbes play in shaping Earth's oceans and crust.  more at nsf.gov

Earth's massive extinction: The story gets worse

Jan 6 - Scientists have uncovered a lot about Earth's greatest extinction event that took place 250 million years ago when rapid climate change wiped out nearly all marine species and a majority of those on land. Now, they have discovered a new culprit likely involved in the annihilation: an influx of mercury into the eco-system.  more at esciencenews.com

Rare Moon Mineral Found in Australia

Jan 6 - A mineral brought back to Earth by the first men on the moon and long thought to be unique to the lunar surface has been found in Australian rocks more than one billion years old, scientists said Thursday. Named after Apollo 11's 1969 landing site at the Sea of Tranquility, tranquillityite was one of three minerals first discovered in rocks from the Moon.  more at news.discovery.com

New research suggests North American continent is a slow eroder

Jan 6 - The expanse of the whole of North America appears as a relatively unchanging plot of land between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans except for what we people do to it. New research shows that this appears to be true - that the North American continent erodes very slowly. So slowly, writes Terrence Blackburn and his team of researchers from MIT, that not much has changed over the past billion and a half years. more at physorg.com

NPL and SUERC calibrate a 'rock clock'

Jan 5 - New research will improve the accuracy of estimates of the time of geological events. The work centers on the calibration of one of the world's slowest clocks, known as the 'argon-argon clock'. The 'argon-argon clock' works by measuring the ratio of the amount of radioactive potassium in a sample of rock to the amount of its decay product, argon. As scientists already know the half-life of this radioactive decay (1.25 billion years), it can be used to date rocks back to the time of the formation of the Earth, 4.5 billion years ago. The older a rock is, the more potassium has decayed and the more argon is found in the rock.  more at eurekalert.org

NASA probes reach moon for gravity-mapping mission

Jan 5 - NASA's twin Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory, or GRAIL, spacecraft wrapped up 2.6-million-mile journey to put themselves into lunar orbit on Saturday and Sunday. Over the next two months, the probes' 34-mile-high orbits will be adjusted to get them into optimal position to measure the pushes and pulls of the moon's gravity, data that scientists can use to model what is inside the moon.  more at reuters.com