Category archives: Geosciences

Lunar Anthropocene

Lunar Anthropocene

AnthropologyGeosciences

By César Tomé

Human beings first disturbed moon dust on Sept. 13, 1959, when the USSR’s unmanned spacecraft Luna 2 alighted on the lunar surface. In the following decades, more than a hundred other spacecraft have touched the moon — both crewed and uncrewed, sometimes landing and sometimes crashing. The most famous of these were NASA’s Apollo Lunar […]

Greenland ’s glaciers are melting at an unprecedented pace

Greenland ’s glaciers are melting at an unprecedented pace

EcologyGeosciences

By César Tomé

In the largest survey of its kind ever conducted researchers from the University of Copenhagen firmly established a fivefold increase in the melting of Greenland ‘s glaciers over the last 20 years. Using both satellite imagery and old aerial photos from the Danish National Archives, researchers from the University of Copenhagen firmly establish that Greenland’s […]

Energy input into the ocean from mid-latitude storms is expected to decrease

Energy input into the ocean from mid-latitude storms is expected to decrease

GeosciencesPhysicsPlanetary Science

By César Tomé

The strength of the wind has an important influence on ocean circulation. This is particularly true for extreme events such as storm fronts, tropical storms and cyclones. These weather patterns, which last from a few days to a few weeks, will change in the future due to climate change. In particular, the average energy input […]

Sahara space rock upends assumptions about the early Solar System

Sahara space rock upends assumptions about the early Solar System

GeosciencesPlanetary Science

By Invited Researcher

Sahara Author: Evgenii Krestianinov, PhD candidate, Research School of Earth Sciences, Australian National University In May 2020, some unusual rocks containing distinctive greenish crystals were found in the Erg Chech sand sea, a dune-filled region of the Sahara Desert in southern Algeria. On close inspection, the rocks turned out to be from outer space: lumps […]

What El Niño means for the world’s perilous climate tipping points

What El Niño means for the world’s perilous climate tipping points

Geosciences

By Invited Researcher

Niño Author: David Armstrong McKay, Researcher in Earth System Resilience, Stockholm University The UN World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has confirmed it: El Niño conditions have arrived and are expected to become moderate to strong as they develop over the coming year. El Niño is the hot phase of a natural fluctuation in the Earth’s climate […]

Groundwater pumping alters Earth’s spin

Groundwater pumping alters Earth’s spin

Geosciences

By César Tomé

According to a recent study , humans have displaced a significant volume of water from the ground and relocated it, resulting in an Earth shift of approximately 80 centimetres (31.5 inches) eastward solely between 1993 and 2010. According to prior climate models, researchers had initially estimated that humans extracted around 2,150 gigatons of groundwater between […]