|
| US ARMY MAY HAVE KILLED ITALIAN TREES |
| The US Army may have unwittingly killed hundreds of pine trees in an Italian hunting estate. Genetic analysis suggests that the trees were infected with an American fungus, imported by US troops during the Second World War. |
|
| ARE CITIES CHANGING LOCAL AND GLOBAL CLIMATES? |
| New evidence from satellites, models, and ground observations reveal urban areas, with all their asphalt, buildings, and aerosols, are impacting local and possibly global climate processes. This is according to some of the world's top scientists convening in a special session at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. |
|
| BURNING OIL CLOUD ABOVE NORTHERN IRAQ |
| A burning oil pipeline in northern Iraq produced an immense cloud of black smoke stretching across thousands of square kilometres, as seen in this image acquired by Envisat’s Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer.
The smoke cloud is visible in the centre of this image of the alluvial plain occupied by the valley of the river Tigris (flowing from the top centre of the image) and the Euphrates (flowing from the top left corner). |
|
| PORTRAIT OF A DOOMED SEA |
| Earth’s youngest desert is shown in this July MERIS satellite image of the Aral Sea in Central Asia. Once the fourth largest lake in the world, over the last 40 years the Aral Sea has evaporated back to half its original surface area and a quarter its initial volume, leaving a 40,000 square kilometre zone of dry white-coloured salt terrain now called the Aralkum Desert. |
|
| MUDDY MAYAN MYSTERY MADE CLEARER BY RESEARCHERS WORKING IN THE 'BAJOS' |
| A team of scholars led by University of Cincinnati professors Nicholas and Vernon Scarborough found evidence of a major environmental transformation that helps to explain a puzzle that has stumped Maya scholars for decades. Why would the Maya live in an area where the primary water source is little more than mud half of the year? |
|
| CLIMATE CHANGE FOLLOWING COLLAPSE OF THE MAYA EMPIRE |
| Researchers from the University of Amsterdam have demonstrated that the climate in South Mexico changed following the collapse of the Maya empire. From preserved pollen grains the paleoecologists could deduce that the climate quickly became dryer. |
|
| POLLUTION THREATENS WATER CYCLE |
| A haze of sunlight-absorbing particles above the Indian Ocean may be grinding the water cycle to a slow halt, says an international study.
The tiny aerosol particles - pollutants from burning fossil fuel and vegetation - cut down the amount of heat reaching the ocean, which initiates the cycling of water vapour. The researchers think the aerosols may be 'spinning down' the hydrological cycle of the planet. |
|
| THE SUN'S CHILLY IMPACT ON EARTH |
| A new NASA computer climate model reinforces the long-standing theory that low solar activity could have changed the atmospheric circulation in the Northern Hemisphere from the 1400s to the 1700s and triggered a "Little Ice Age" in several regions including North America and Europe. Changes in the sun's energy was one of the biggest factors influencing climate change during this period, but have since been superceded by greenhouse gases due to the industrial revolution. |
|
| HUMANS KILLED GIANT BIRDS: BUT HOW? |
| The fossil remains of a giant flightless bird add to evidence that humans caused Australia's megafauna extinction. But fires, rather than overhunting, may have been responsible, say the researchers. |
|
