Climate change Archives

Images of forams created by a scanning electronic microscope. Credit: Dustin Harper

What Microscopic Fossilized Shells Tell Us About Ancient Climate Change

by Keith CowingAugust 27, 2024August 27, 2024

At the end of the Paleocene and beginning of the Eocene epochs, between 59 to 51 million years ago, Earth experienced dramatic warming periods, both gradual periods stretching millions of […]

Global CO2 ppm for January-March of 2020 -- NASA

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Status Report, Terraforming & Geoengineering, Video, Audio, Webcasts, Podcasts

Watch Carbon Dioxide Move Through An Inhabited World’s Atmosphere

by Keith CowingJuly 23, 2024July 24, 2024

Editor’s note: As we begin to mount Astrobiology expeditions to other worlds with potential habitable zones, understanding a world’s global climate will be important. Short term trends (“weather”) as well […]

A small increase in water temperature can have a very big impact on the amount of melting experienced by ice sheets

Arctic / Antarctic / Alpine, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Icy Worlds, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Press Release, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Ice Planet Update: New Tipping Point Discovered Beneath Earth’s Antarctic Ice Sheet

by Keith CowingJuly 19, 2024July 7, 2024

A new and worrying way that large ice sheets can melt has been characterised by scientists for the first time. The research focuses on how relatively warm seawater can lap […]

A quarry illustrating bands of stratified limestone from the ancient seafloor in what is now Mercato San Severino in Italy. Credit: Courtesy of F. Tissot

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Extinction events, Fossils & Paleontology, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Origin & Evolution of Life, Press Release, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Sediments Reveal The Ancient Ocean During a Mass Extinction Event

by Keith CowingJuly 15, 2024July 7, 2024

About 183 million years ago, volcanic activity in modern South Africa unleashed an estimated 20,500 gigatons of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the ocean-atmosphere system over a period of 300 to […]

RV Polarstern in inner Pine Island Bay (Photo: R. Larter, BAS)

Arctic / Antarctic / Alpine, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Exploration Gear & Tech, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Icy Worlds, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Missions & Hardware, Press Release, Robotics/Rovers/UAVs, ROVs/Submersibles/Diving, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Ice Planet Update: The Dawn Of Earth’s Antarctic Ice Sheets

by Keith CowingJuly 14, 2024July 7, 2024

For the first time, researchers, including from British Antarctic Survey, have combined unique geological samples with sophisticated modelling to provide surprising insights into when and where today’s East and West […]

Host microorganism carrying antimicrobial resistance and virulence-related genes in air samples under varying atmospheric conditions. The RPKM values of contigs associated with both taxonomy and antimicrobial resistance (A) and virulence-related traits (B) are annotated by numbers outside the circle. The sample name is displayed at the center of each chord diagram. For visual clarity, only three air samples representing clear (t13), dusty (t29), and high-temperature clear (t50) days are included. Inside the diagrams, colored sectors depict the top 20 species, top 10 antimicrobial resistance, and top 5 virulence-related traits with the highest RPKM values. The sum of the other taxa and functional features is depicted with a gray color code. The top 20 taxa are colored according to class and species level. Class level color codes (top section) are shown in the legend, while species level coloring (bottom section) represents dust-indicator taxa with a black color and the rest are colored randomly for each sample. The total log10(RPKM) values are presented as bar plots at the bottom of each chord diagram. -- biorxiv.org

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Extremeophiles and Extreme Environments, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics, Microbiology & Virology, Panspermia, Planetary Protection & Biosafety, Status Report, Terraforming & Geoengineering

Dust storm-driven Dispersal of Potential Pathogens and Antimicrobial Resistance Genes In The Eastern Mediterranean

by Keith CowingJuly 13, 2024July 7, 2024

The atmosphere hosts a microbiome that connects remote ecosystems but remains underexplored. In this study, we employed metagenomics to examine the ecological roles of the atmospheric microbiome, including the dispersal […]

Rendered graphic of the MARUM-MeBo70 landing on the seabed of the Amundsen Sea coast of West Antarctica

Arctic / Antarctic / Alpine, Away Teams & Field Reports, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Exploration Gear & Tech, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Missions & Hardware, Press Release, Robotics/Rovers/UAVs, ROVs/Submersibles/Diving, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Ice Planet Update: Landing A Droid On The Antarctic Seabed – Formation Of Antarctica’s Ice Sheet

by Keith CowingJuly 11, 2024July 7, 2024

In recent years global warming has left its mark on the Antarctic ice sheets. The “eternal” ice in Antarctica is melting faster than previously assumed, particularly in West Antarctica more […]

Adaptation to the harsh conditions of a geologic period of global glaciation may have sparked the development of multicellular life. (image: Michael Schiffer/Unsplash)

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Cryobiology, Extinction events, Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics, Habitable Zones, Icy Worlds, Origin & Evolution of Life, Press Release, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Why The Harsh Snowball Earth Kick-started Our Earliest Multicellular Ancestors

by Keith CowingJune 27, 2024June 27, 2024

For a billion years, single-celled eukaryotes ruled the planet. Then around 700 million years ago during Snowball Earth — a geologic era when glaciers may have stretched as far as […]

Astrochemistry, Astrogeology, Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Press Release, SETI & Technosignatures, Terraforming & Geoengineering, TRAPPIST-1

Telltale Greenhouse Gases Could Signal Alien Terraforming Activity

by Keith CowingJune 26, 2024June 26, 2024

If aliens modified a planet in their solar system to make it warmer, we’d be able to tell. A new UC Riverside study identifies the artificial greenhouse gases that would […]