US ‘Tectonic Weapon’ Caused Haiti Quake:Chavez
Posted: January 31, 2010 Filed under: seismic activities Leave a comment »A ‘tectonic weapon‘ under testing by the United States caused the Haiti earthquake, according to Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez.President Chavez said the US was ‘playing God’ by testing devices capable of creating eco-type catastrophes, the Spanish newspaper ABC quoted him as saying.Chavez said the killer earthquake followed a test of ‘weapon of earthquakes’ just offshore from Haiti.
read it here
Did a Nuclear Blast Give Birth to the Moon?
Posted: January 30, 2010 Filed under: Moon 1 Comment »
Discovery reports scientists are proposing in a new theory about formation of our moon: they think a massive nuclear explosion occurred at the edge of Earth’s core, flinging red-hot, liquid rock into space. The orbiting detritus gradually congealed into what is now our planet’s lone satellite.
Researchers think that as the molten Earth spun, radioactive thorium and uranium accumulated at the boundary between the core and mantle in large enough quantities to spark a runaway fission reaction. Heat and energy built up until a nuclear jet pushed giant globs of molten rock into space…
read it here
Global Warming Slowed by Decline in Atmospheric Water Vapor
Posted: January 29, 2010 Filed under: Global Warming, water Leave a comment »
A sudden and unexplained drop in the amount of water vapor present high in the atmosphere almost a decade ago has substantially slowed the rate of warming at Earth’s surface in recent years, scientists say.Water vapor is a powerful greenhouse gas, the decline has slowed the increase of global temperatures, Rosenlof, Susan Solomon, also of NOAA in Boulder, and their colleagues report online January 28 and in an upcoming Science…
read it here
100 Coolest Science Experiments on YouTube
Posted: January 28, 2010 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »Dear Readers
I have found an interesting post and thought of sharing it with you all. Read it here
Methane’s Key Role in Global Warming
Posted: January 27, 2010 Filed under: Global Warming Leave a comment »
Carbon dioxide is the gas we most associate with global warming, but methane gas also plays an important role. For reasons that are not well understood, methane gas stopped increasing in the atmosphere in the 1990s. But now it appears to be once again on the rise. Scientists are trying to understand why — and what to do about it.Methane gas comes from all sorts of sources including wetlands, rice paddies, cow tummies, coal mines, garbage dumps and even termites.Molecule for molecule, methane is much more effective than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere. And that’s just part of the trouble.
read it here
Snowball Earth
Posted: January 26, 2010 Filed under: Uncategorized 3 Comments »
Earth was covered by ice for long periods in the geological past. Snowball earth describes the coldest global climate imaginable – a planet covered by glacial ice . The global mean temperature reaches be about -50°C (-74°F) because most of the Sun’s (Solar) radiation would be reflected back to space by the icy surface. The average equatorial temperature would be about -20°C (-10°F), roughly similar to the temperature of present Antarctica. Without the moderating effect of the oceans, temperature fluctuations associated with the day-night and seasonal cycles would be greatly enhanced. Because of its solid surface, the climate on a snowball earth would have much in common with present Mars. Despite the cold and dry climate, the atmosphere would still transport some water vapor from areas of sublimation to areas of condensation. Given sufficient time, glacial ice would thicken and flow in the opposite direction. Glacial flowage results in sedimentary deposits such as glacial erratics, tills, moraines, eskers, ice-rafted debris, etc.
The term “Snowball Earth” was coined by Joseph Kirschvink, a professor of geobiology at the California Institute of Technology, in a short paper published in 1992 within a lengthy volume concerning the biology of the Proterozoic eon.The major contributions from this work were:
(1) the recognition that the presence of banded iron formations is consistent with such a glacial episode and
(2) the introduction of a mechanism with which to escape from an ice-covered Earth — the accumulation of CO2 from volcanic outgassing leading to an ultra-greenhouse effect.
Different Snowball Earths Occurred
Neoproterozoic
Paleoproterozoic
Karoo Ice Age
Current Work
Stephen Warren, a professor from the University of Washington in Seattle, will lead a small team of U.S. researchers to Antarctica for the 2009-10 and 2010-11 summer field seasons to add more data in support of the Snowball Earth hypothesis. A project funded by the National Science Foundation, the project will study different ice types found in Antarctica that may have existed during the previous Snowball Earth events, specifically to learn more about their albedo, or reflectivity, information important in understanding the processes involved in the exteme glaciation. The team will spend time on the sea ice in McMurdo Sound and in Garwood Valley in the McMurdo Dry Valleys the first season. The second season will be spent in the Transantarctic Mountains.
Sources
read more here , here , here and here
UN climate panel blunders again over Himalayan glaciers
Posted: January 24, 2010 Filed under: Glaciers 1 Comment »
The IPCC had warned that climate change was likely to melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 – an idea considered ludicrous by most glaciologists. Last week a humbled IPCC retracted that claim and corrected its report.
The “Glaciergate” affair has seen Pachauri come under increasing pressure in India, prompting him to call a press conference yesterday (Saturday) where he dismissed calls for his resignation and said no action would be taken against the authors of the erroneous section of the IPCC report.
He said: “I have no intention of resigning from my position,” adding the errors were unintentional and not significant in comparison to the entire report.
However, other questions remain…
Dropstones
Posted: January 23, 2010 Filed under: Glaciers, Landforms, Volcanoes, water Leave a comment »
Dropstones are isolated fragments of rock found within finer-grained water-deposited sedimentary rocks. They range in size from small pebbles to boulders. The critical distinguishing feature is that there is evidence that they were not transported by normal water currents, but rather dropped in vertically through the water column.
Origin
There are four natural mechanisms that produce dropstones.
Glaciers
As glaciers move across a surface, they pluck rocks from it, and incorporate them into their mass. At the coast, fragments of glacier detach and float away as icebergs, which are often transported (ice rafted) many miles into the ocean, where they melt and deposit their load. When entrained rocks sink to the ocean floor, they can be incorporated into the oceanic sediments, which are typically fine grained.
Volcanoes
Whilst dropstones were once thought to be diagnostic of glaciers, it has since been realised that they can also be formed via volcanic eruptions. Volcanic ‘bombs’ are large fragments of rock, projected many miles by the force of an eruption. If these land in fine sediments, they can form dropstones.Dropstones originating in this fashion are relatively rare in the geological record as most will invariably land on high ground, which has a poor preservation potential as it is in an erosive environment. However, a large blast may spread bombs far enough for them to end up in a marine setting of fine enough sediment for them to be recognised.
Turbidity currents
Dropstones can also be deposited through the action of strong ocean-floor turbidity currents. Boulders the size of a man have been found in relatively recent finely laminated sediments near Jamaica,which has been a warm tropical island entirely devoid of glaciers since it came into existence.Whilst turbidity currents are cited as the origin of the boulders, they are not found in association with deposits formed by them.
Biological rafts
Stones can also be transported large distances by becoming bound in a raft of floating plant material, perhaps formed during periods of flooding in forests.When such a raft disintegrates due to waterlogging and sinking of its constituents, the transported rocks would also sink. Dropstones formed in this manner are typically associated with organic matter, especially logs – the fossilised remains of the raft that caused its transport.
Sources:
A Lonely Plant in Fog
Posted: January 22, 2010 Filed under: Photo Post Leave a comment »
Just Outside Our House
Urban ‘Green’ Spaces May Contribute to Global Warming
Posted: January 22, 2010 Filed under: BIODIVERSITY, Global Warming, Urban Studies Leave a comment »
Freshly mowed grass. Turfgrass lawns help remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and store it as organic carbon in soil, making them important "carbon sinks." However, greenhouse gas emissions from fertilizer production, mowing, leaf blowing and other lawn management practices are four times greater than the amount of carbon stored by ornamental grass in parks. (Credit: iStockphoto/Nicholas Campbell)
Dispelling the notion that urban “green” spaces help counteract greenhouse gas emissions, new research has found — in Southern California at least — that total emissions would be lower if lawns did not exist.
Lawns look great — they’re nice and green and healthy, and they’re photosynthesizing a lot of organic carbon. But the carbon-storing benefits of lawns are counteracted by fuel consumption,” said Amy Townsend-Small, Earth system science postdoctoral researcher and lead author of the study, forthcoming in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
The study showed that nitrous oxide emissions from lawns were comparable to those found in agricultural farms, which are among the largest emitters of nitrous oxide globally.
read it here
