In the mid-1970s, the first available satellite images of Antarctica during the polar winter revealed a huge ice-free region within the ice pack of the Weddell Sea. This ice-free region, […]
climate
Posted inBiogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Plant Biology
Symbiotic Fungi Inhabiting Plant Roots Have Major Impact on Atmospheric Carbon
Microscopic fungi that live in plants’ roots play a major role in the storage and release of carbon from the soil into the atmosphere. According to a University of Texas […]
Posted inExoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones
Super Earths Likely To Have Both Oceans and Continents
Massive terrestrial planets, called “super-Earths,” are known to be common in our galaxy, the Milky Way. Now a Northwestern University astrophysicist and a University of Chicago geophysicist report the odds […]
Posted inBiogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Habitable Zones, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography
Geochemical and planetary dynamical views on the origin of Earth's atmosphere and oceans
Earth’s volatile elements (H, C, and N) are essential to maintaining habitable conditions for metazoans and simpler life forms. However, identifying the sources (comets, meteorites, and trapped nebular gas) that […]
Posted inMars
Unusual Greenhouse Gases – Raising Ancient Martian Temperature?
Much like the Grand Canyon, Nanedi Valles snakes across the Martian surface suggesting that liquid water once crossed the landscape, according to a team of researchers who believe that molecular […]
Posted inHabitable Zones
Evaluating Solutions to the Faint Young Sun Problem
During the Archean eon, between about 3.8 billion years ago and 2.5 billion years ago, the Sun was about 20 to 25 percent fainter than it is today. With less […]
Posted inHabitable Zones, Radiation
The Possible Effect of Cosmic Rays on Terrestrial Climate
The problem of the contribution of cosmic rays to climate change is a continuing one and one of importance. In principle, at least, the recent results from the CLOUD project […]
Posted inHabitable Zones
Planetary Runaway Greenhouse More Easily Triggered
It might be easier than previously thought for a planet to overheat into the scorchingly uninhabitable “runaway greenhouse” stage, according to new research by astronomers at the University of Washington […]
Posted inAtmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Icy Worlds, Press Release
Early Earth May Have Been Prone to Deep Freezes
Two University of Colorado Boulder researchers who have adapted a three-dimensional, general circulation model of Earth’s climate to a time some 2.8 billion years ago when the sun was significantly […]
Posted inAtmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Habitable Zones, Icy Worlds, Mars, Meteorites & Asteroids, Press Release
Taking The Temperature Of Mars’ Past
Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have directly determined the surface temperature of early Mars for the first time, providing evidence that’s consistent with a warmer and wetter […]