You are browsing the archive for Geophysical Research Letters Archives - AGU Blogosphere.
1 July 2020
How to design continents for maximum tides
A new study simulates ocean tides on imaginary Earth-like worlds, revealing the limits of topography’s influence on tidal energy
17 June 2020
Utah’s arches continue to whisper their secrets
Seismic studies assess the stresses and health of iconic rock structures.
4 June 2020
Hydrologists show environmental damage from fog reduction is observable from outer space
A new paper presents the first clear evidence that the relationship between fog levels and vegetation status is measurable using remote sensing. The discovery opens up the potential to easily and rapidly assess fog’s impact on ecological health across large land masses — as compared to painstaking ground-level observation.
18 May 2020
How climate killed corals
New study shows multiple factors joined forces to devastate the Great Barrier Reef in 2016.
12 May 2020
New evidence of watery plumes on Jupiter’s moon Europa
Scientists are keen to explore beneath Europa’s thick blanket of ice, and they can do so indirectly by hunting for evidence of activity emanating from below. A new study published in the AGU journal Geophysical Research Letters, did exactly this.
16 April 2020
Dust devils may roam hydrocarbon dunes on Saturn’s moon Titan
Smoggy, with a chance of dust devils: conditions at the surface of Saturn’s moon Titan may spawn convective whirlwinds By Liza Lester Meteorological conditions on Saturn’s large moon Titan, the strange, distant world that may be the most Earth-like in the solar system, appear conducive to the formation of dust devils, according to new research in AGU’s journal Geophysical Research Letters. If true, these dry whirlwinds may be primary movers …
9 April 2020
Greenland Ice Sheet meltwater can flow in winter, too
New findings published in Geophysical Research Letters underscore need for year-round investigations of Arctic hydrology.
7 April 2020
Scientists propose explanation for night sky glow of STEVE (video)
Researchers have just published a theory of what powers the celestial phenomenon known as STEVE, the aurora-like glow amateur sky-watchers brought to scientists’ attention in 2016. Scientists first thought STEVE was a new kind of aurora, but previous research shows its light is not produced the same way. Researchers are still unsure of what generates STEVE’s light, but a group of space physicists now suspect STEVE lights up when fast-flowing rivers of plasma jumpstart certain chemical reactions high in the atmosphere.
11 March 2020
Small climate change effects can be the most obvious
Researchers looked at how climate change has already changed temperatures and rainfall patterns worldwide to the point that they would be unfamiliar to people living at the end of the 19th century. Crucially, they then examined how these changes compared with climate fluctuations already experienced in different regions of the globe.
10 March 2020
Major Greenland glacier collapse 90 years ago linked to climate change
Ninety years ago there were no satellites to detect changes in Greenland’s coastal glaciers, but a new study combining historical photos with evidence from ocean sediments suggests climate change was already at work in the 1930s and led to a major collapse of the one of Greenland’s largest coastal glaciers.
3 March 2020
Researchers develop new explanation for destructive earthquake vibrations
Two researchers propose that rocks colliding inside a fault zone as an earthquake happens are the main generators of high-frequency vibrations. That’s a very different explanation than the traditional one, they say, and it could help explain puzzling seismic patterns made by some earthquakes. It could also help scientists predict which faults are likely to produce the more damaging quakes.
11 February 2020
Climate change could trigger more landslides in High Mountain Asia
More frequent and intense rainfall events due to climate change could cause more landslides in the High Mountain Asia region of China, Tibet and Nepal, according to the first quantitative study of the link between precipitation and landslides in the region.
7 February 2020
Surfing space dust bunnies spawn interplanetary magnetic fields
New research finds that fine dust from pulverized space rocks is riding the solar wind past multiple spacecrafts, which are detecting the clouds of fine debris as a temporary changes in the local magnetic field.
29 January 2020
Likelihood of space super-storms estimated from longest period of magnetic field observations
A ‘great’ space weather super-storm, large enough to cause significant disruption to our electronic and networked systems, occurred on average once in every 25 years according to a new study in the AGU journal Geophysical Research Letters.
15 January 2020
Air Pollution from Oil and Gas Production Sites Visible from Space
Between 2007 and 2019, across much of the United States, nitrogen dioxide pollution levels dropped because of cleaner cars and power plants, the team found, confirming findings reported previously. The clean air trend in satellite data was most obvious in urban areas of California, Washington and Oregon and in the eastern half of the continental United States… However, several areas stuck out with increased emissions of nitrogen dioxide: The Permian, Bakken and Eagle Ford oil and gas basins, in Texas and New Mexico, North Dakota, and Texas, respectively.
14 January 2020
Final images from Cassini spacecraft
For the last leg of its journey, Cassini was put on a particularly daring orbit passing between Saturn and its rings which brought it closer to Saturn than ever before. This allowed scientists to obtain images of Saturn’s ultraviolet auroras in unprecedented resolution. The new observations are detailed in two new studies published in the AGU journals.
26 December 2019
Forces from Earth’s spin may spark earthquakes and volcanic eruptions at Mount Etna
A new study suggests that polar motion and subsequent shifts in Earth’s crust may increase volcanic activity. “I find it quite exciting to know that while climate drives Earth’s spin, its rotation can also drive volcanoes and seismicity,” said Sébastien Lambert, a geophysicist at Paris Observatory in France and lead author of the study. The new findings, however, don’t allow scientists to forecast volcanic activity.
10 December 2019
NASA’s treasure map for water ice on Mars
NASA has big plans for returning astronauts to the Moon in 2024, a stepping stone on the path to sending humans to Mars. But where should the first people on the Red Planet land? A new paper published in the AGU journal Geophysical Research Letters will help by providing a map of water ice believed to be as little as one inch (2.5 centimeters) below the surface.
4 December 2019
New study models impact of calving on retreat of Thwaites Glacier
A new study in the AGU journal Geophysical Research Letters modeled how much faster Thwaites, one of West Antarctica’s largest and fastest-retreating glaciers, would retreat in the absence of its ice shelf — the part of the glacier that floats on top of the sea, supporting the thicker ice behind…“Worst-case scenario, it is going to be gone in less than a century. But it may also take much longer.”
3 December 2019
New study finds the mix that makes Titan’s lakes spew nitrogen bubbles
In a new study published in AGU’s journal Geophysical Research Letters, researchers simulated Titan’s lakes in a pressurized chamber. They found the right combination of methane, ethane and nitrogen crucial for bubbles to form. It is possible these bubble outbreaks are strong enough to shape river deltas in bodies of liquid on the moon.
