Melting Ice in the Polar North Drives Weather in Europe
Eos Magazine
by Katherine Kornei
18h ago
Drip by drip, steady ice loss in the Arctic and sub-Arctic is injecting enormous quantities of meltwater into the North Atlantic Ocean. Researchers have now shown how all that fresh water ultimately drives more extreme summer weather over Europe. These results might enable better long-term weather predictions in Europe, the team concluded. Every year, the Arctic and sub-Arctic lose several hundred cubic kilometers, on average, of both sea ice and glacial ice due to rising temperatures. The fresh water liberated by all that melting eventually enters the North Atlantic, where it aggregates into ..read more
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California Mountains Face Weather Whiplash
Eos Magazine
by Andrew Chapman
18h ago
In late February 2024, residents of California and Nevada communities surrounding Lake Tahoe were starting to wonder whether winter would ever come. Warm temperatures and rain had left shovels and snowblowers untouched, local skiers discouraged, and water and disaster managers wondering what the year’s water supply and fire hazard would look like. “Our snowpack needed a huge boost.” Then, on the last day of February, the storm of the year blew in, dumping more than 10 feet (3 meters) of snow in some places and bringing fierce winds, making national headlines. “A quarter of the seasonal snow ..read more
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Out With the Old, in With the Cold
Eos Magazine
by Sarah Stanley
18h ago
Source: Radio Science Constructed within a natural sinkhole in Puerto Rico, the 305-meter-wide Arecibo Telescope played a part in numerous discoveries, including the first detection of an exoplanet. It was the largest radio telescope in the United States from 1963 until it collapsed in 2020. However, since 2011, the Arecibo Observatory has also been home to a second, smaller radio telescope. In a new paper, Roshi et al. describe how recent updates to this 12-meter telescope expand possibilities for future discoveries. The 12-meter telescope originally operated at a relatively narrow bandwidth ..read more
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The Unexplored Microbial Life in Subterranean Estuaries
Eos Magazine
by Marguerite A. Xenopoulos
18h ago
Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors. Source: Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences Subterranean estuaries (STEs), where terrestrial groundwater and seawater intermix, are vital zones of coastal ocean ecosystems. Defined for the first time 25 years ago by Willard Moore (1999), these zones are poorly studied, despite facing escalating threats by future global changes. Adyasari et al. [2024] seek to fill gaps in knowledge by quantifying microbial communities and their functions within STEs. By employing sediment incubations that mimic anticipated ..read more
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The Baildon landslide in West Yorkshire
Eos Magazine
by Dave Petley
21h ago
The Landslide Blog is written by Dave Petley, who is widely recognized as a world leader in the study and management of landslides. On 5 February 2024, a railway cutting failed on the edge of Baildon in West Yorkshire, England. As a consequence, the railway line, an important route linking towns across the region, was closed whilst repairs were initiated. I have written previously about the challenges that Network Rail, which manages the railway infrastructure, faces around earthworks. The UK’s railway infrastructure was mostly constructed in the Victorian era, so is now in urgent need of up ..read more
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Uncovering Earthquake Evidence in Azerbaijan’s Greater Caucasus Mountains
Eos Magazine
by Rebecca Owen
2d ago
Source: Tectonics The Greater Caucasus mountain range stretches between the Black and Caspian Seas across parts of Russia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. These formidable peaks are the result of the subduction of the Arabian plate beneath the Eurasian plate. The energy stored by the tectonic forces that push these two plates together is released during earthquakes, uplifting the Greater Caucasus mountains. These tectonic movements have mostly been accommodated by the Kura fold-thrust belt, which runs for approximately 275 kilometers along the southern front of the mountain range between Tbilisi, Geo ..read more
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Dwarf Planets Show Evidence of Recent Geologic Activity
Eos Magazine
by Damond Benningfield
2d ago
The dwarf planets in the outer solar system aren’t all dead balls of ice. Observations by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) recently showed that the surfaces of some have been repaved by methane ice squirting up from interior oceans of liquid water. Some of that activity could have occurred in the geologically recent past and may continue today on at least one of the worlds. JWST “is giving us a good opportunity to compare and contrast these different bodies,” said Christopher Glein, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. Glein is the lead author of a ..read more
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Scientists Gain a New Tool to Listen for Nuclear Explosions
Eos Magazine
by Adityarup Chakravorty
2d ago
Both natural and human-made events can shake the ground: Grinding tectonic plates send earthquakes through the crust, and weapons tests set off explosions. Telling the difference from afar is tricky but crucial, especially when it comes to enforcing international weapons agreements such as the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. In a new paper published in Geophysical Journal International, researchers present a new mathematical method that’s able to correctly classify 99% of explosions and 98% of earthquakes in a test data set of seismic events from the western United States. It’s the lat ..read more
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How Earthquakes Grow from a Tiny Fracture to a Catastrophic Event
Eos Magazine
by Satoshi Ide
2d ago
Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors. Source: Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth Our understanding of the governing laws of seismic phenomena has advanced considerably and it is now possible to explain various features with numerical simulations using experiment-based friction laws. However, for the earthquake growth process in which a small rupture grows into a catastrophic event, various observable characteristics cannot be explained using only existing friction laws. The key to explaining these characteristics is the hierarchical heterogeneou ..read more
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The Small Self and the Vast Universe: Eclipses and the Science of Awe
Eos Magazine
by Kate Evans
3d ago
It sounded as if the Streets were running And then—the Streets stood still— Eclipse—was all we could see at the Window And Awe—was all we could feel. —Emily Dickinson Total Eclipse of the Sun When the Moon’s shadow glides over the Sun and the world goes dark, birds call in alarm, bats emerge into the uncanny night, flowers close up their petals, and zooplankton rise to the ocean’s surface. And humans? Humans are overcome with awe. Many accounts of total solar eclipses use the word—like the poem Emily Dickinson wrote to a friend in 1877, which probably refers to an eclipse that had passed ..read more
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