Category: Earth
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California sees another week of dramatic drought improvement. How does it compare to US?
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain California is more than 91% drought-free, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, after months of non-stop rain and snow yanked the state from its direst three-year-stretch on record. California is now free of “severe,” “extreme,” and “exceptional” drought conditions—evidence that each week the state moves further away from its drought-stricken status.…
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2022 Tongan volcanic eruption was largest natural explosion in more than a century, new study finds
This image was captured by the Sentinel-1A synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite in VV polarization over the Tonga island archipelago on 14 January 2022 at 17:08 UTC, 13 hours after the initial eruption, and relayed to the University of Miami Rosenstiel School’s Center for Southeastern Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing (CSTARS) facility in southwest Miami-Dade County.…
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Geotechnical expert says one in four international tailings dam failures are due to earthquakes
There are approximately 250 active tailings dams in Australia and each is used to store byproducts of mining operations after separating the ore from the gangue. Credit: Shutterstock Did you know the U.S. National Earthquake Information Center logs the measurements of 20,000 earthquakes around the globe each year—approximately 55 a day? A concern that most…
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Burying Biomass in Dry Landfills
A simplified version of the biolandfill technology used for agro-sequestration. To keep the biomass dry, it’s necessary to use two layers of high-density polyethylene with a combined thickness up to 4 millimeters. The plastic acts as a water diffusion barrier, allowing less than 1.75 micrometers equivalent water thickness to diffuse through annually. This rate of…
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$8 Million Grant Awarded to West Virginia University for Rare Earth Element Extraction Facility
An $8 million research grant from the U.S. Department of Energy was recently awarded to West Virginia University (WVU) to aid in the further development and advancement of a novel rare earth element (REE) technology, which helps power a myriad of technologies from smartphones to the missile guidance systems in the United States and was…
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Greenland Ice Sheet Nearing the Point of No Return
Much of the southern Greenland Ice Sheet, shown here, will melt irreversibly if we emit about 1000 gigatons of carbon, according to models in a new Geophysical Research Letters study. Credit: NASA GSFC Once we emit about 1000 gigatons of carbon, much of the massive ice sheet will melt irreversibly. We’ve emitted 500 gigatons so…
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New Camera Could Help Scientists Forecast Volcano Eruptions Affecting Millions
The SO2 camera installation on Kīlauea volcano, Hawaii, US. The gas plume can be faintly seen rising from the crater at the center of the image and drifting to the left. The flank of Moana Loa can be seen in the background. Credit: Dr. Tom Pering Researchers have made long-term volcano monitoring a possibility by…
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How did the Andes Mountains get so huge? A new geological research method may hold the answer
Pacific absolute plate-motion change as obtained from a hotspot reference frame (red; from Wessel and Kroenke (2008)) versus as obtained from RPM analysis (blue; fixed Eurasia plate). Map shows the 30% confidence interval ellipse for the PA Euler pole change for each ensemble. Inset shows the magnitude-change distribution for the aforementioned Euler-vector ensembles. Map uses…
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New look at climate data shows substantially wetter rain and snow days ahead
The LOCA2 data estimate how often a “once-in-a-century” day of rain or snow will hit in different climate change scenarios between now and 2100. Colors on the maps show how frequently researchers expect such an extreme precipitation event to occur, with the darkest brown indicating every 30 to 40 years. Credit: Dave Pierce/Scripps Institution of…
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Researchers defend their theory that molecular oxygen existed on Earth 2.5 billion years ago
Living stromatolites at Shark Bay, Western Australia. Oxygen produced by ancient stromatolites may have left its mark on Earth’s environment as early as 2.5 billion years ago. Credit: Ariel Anbar When did molecular oxygen, the gas that all large and complex forms of life on Earth today require to function, first appear on Earth? For…