Here’s a beautiful photograph of the Mississippi River Delta taken by ESA’s Envisat Earth observation satellite. The image shows how the river empties sediment into the Gulf of Mexico, slowly building up the jutting peninsula. Natural and man-made factors have reversed this process over the last century, though, and Louisiana is losing its protective wetlands. The city of New Orleans is visible as the white crescent just below the inland Lake Pontchartrain.
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Satellites Reveal Subglacial Streams in Antarctica
Although it looks ancient and unchanging, the ice sheet in Antarctica is a surprisingly active place. Deep beneath the sheet’s surface, there are waterways, channels and pipes that connect various subglacial “lakes”. These channels can cause these lakes to drain away into the ocean, or transfer water from one to the other.
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Last Weekend’s Auroras… From Space
Of course, as usual, we had rain here on Vancouver Island, Canada in December. But large portions of the Northern Hemisphere were treated to quite the sky show over the weekend – beautiful auroras stretched across the skies. All thanks to a powerful flurry of solar flares unleashed from the Sun last week.
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Europe’s New Weather Satellite Blasts Off
MetOp, a new European weather satellite, has successfully launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The Russian Soyuz carrying MetOp blasted off from the launch pad on Thursday, October 19 at 1628 UTC (12:28pm EDT). The satellite was successfully placed into an orbit that will bring it 850 km (531 miles) above the Earth’s poles. The satellite has 8 instruments designed to gather data about the planet’s atmospheric and surface conditions, and 3 additional instruments for viewing space and relaying data.
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Polar Ice is Melting Fast
New data gathered by NASA’s QuikScat satellite has found that ice at the Arctic polar ice cap is disappearing rapidly. Just between 2004 and 2005, the spacecraft measured a loss of 14% of the perennial sea ice; ice that normally lasts all year round. This is an amount of ice measuring 720,000 square kilometers (280,000 square miles), an area the size of Texas. Scientists expect that the coverage of perennial sea ice will continue to decrease this year as well.
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Connection Found Between the Earth and Space Weather
Researchers have found a connection between weather here on Earth, and the weather in space. The connection comes from the ionosphere, a high-altitude region of the Earth’s atmosphere formed by solar X-rays and ultraviolet light. NASA satellites found that regions of the ionosphere become more dense above areas of thunderstorm activity in the lower atmosphere. This is a surprising discovery because the ionosphere and the lower atmosphere are separated by hundreds of kilometres.
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Human Influences Will Generate More Hurricanes
Climate scientists have uncovered more evidence that human activities are raising ocean temperatures, spawning more powerful hurricanes. The researchers used 22 different climate models to reproduce ocean temperatures over the last 100 years. They found that human-caused greenhouse gases, ozone and aerosol particles are raising ocean temperatures, which provide energy to the strongest hurricanes.
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Ancient Ocean Released a Torrent of Methane
New research indicates that periods of global warming in the past triggered the release of vast quantities of methane stored beneath the oceans. These reserves are generated over long periods of time by bacteria and other organisms, but is chemically frozen into the sea floor. Methane is powerful greenhouse gas, and contributes to the general effect of global warming. The emissions peaked 16,000-14,000 years ago, and then again 11,000-10,000 years ago, and could happen again if ocean temperatures rise above some unknown level.
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Did the Earth Flip Over in the Past?
Scientists have found evidence that the Earth might have flipped over in the past, completely shifting the orientation of its poles. The theory has been around for years; that a large mountain range or supervolcano might unbalance the spinning Earth. Over the course of millions of years, the Earth would change the orientation of its axis until the object was balanced at the equator again. The scientists found evidence of magnetic grains in layers of rock sediment on the ocean floor that maintain a record of the Earth’s magnetic field over millions of years.
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The Secret to Earth’s Shining Auroras
Auroras appear near to the poles when material from the Sun interacts with the Earth’s magnetic field. Now ESA’s Cluster spacecraft have helped determine exactly how energetic particles are generated that cause the atmosphere to glow so brightly. Cluster has confirmed that the interactions with the Earth’s magnetosphere cause flows of gas traveling more than 300 km/second (186 miles/second) to crash into the atmosphere, generating the light show we see.
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