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12 June 2013
AGU Video: Big Meadows Fire: Connecting the dots between warming winters and wildfires while at AGU Chapman Conference in Colorado
Jeff Maugans, a retired district naturalist for the National Park Service, talks about the Big Meadows Fire on Tuesday afternoon while on a field trip in Rocky Mountain National Park as part of the AGU Chapman Conference on ‘Communicating Climate Science: A Historic Look to the Future.’
4 June 2013
Return to Tohoku – Taking a big quake’s temperature
There’s a hole in the bottom of the ocean near Japan, the deepest ever drilled for science. It leads to the heart of one of the world’s most dangerous faults, the one that unleashed the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, which devastated Japan’s east coast. The earthquake’s power astonished geologists, who didn’t think the fault was capable of such destruction.To find out why the quake was so massive, an international team drilled through more than 800 meters of rock, seven kilometers beneath the waves, to take the fault’s temperature.
3 June 2013
Hurricane Sandy took highly unusual path, but climate change doesn’t get the blame – yet
Hurricane Sandy’s peculiar path was exceedingly rare, but whether or not climate change influenced the trajectory remains unknown, new research suggests. Sandy differed from most North Atlantic hurricanes by veering west over the northeastern United States and merging with a winter storm. But nothing proved more unusual about the “superstorm” than the nearly perpendicular angle at which it approached the New Jersey shoreline and collided with the coast on October 29, 2012. Usually, hurricanes graze the coast rather than plunging into it head on.
19 April 2013
Exploring a changing coast in the face of sea level rise – Galveston, Texas
Over 80 scientists gathered at a conference here this week to share their latest research on past, current, and projected future sea level rise and to discuss how this information can be used to shape policy. Despite their diverse perspectives and expertise, one thing the scientists agreed on for sure: the rates and impacts of sea level rise are local and communities are facing a growing risk.
15 February 2013
Seeing the hand of climate change in weather extremes
Extreme weather events have been cropping up all around the globe recently, and one place that’s been really hit hard is Texas. The drought that slammed that state in 2011 has already caused $7.6 billion in agricultural losses, sparked the sixth most devastating wildfire in the U.S., and coincided with the windiest spring on record for the state. And, still, the dry weather has not let up.
6 December 2012
Electrifying new way to potentially predict tornado touchdowns
Tornadoes are being betrayed by their lightning in a way that could help save lives, according to researchers who made an accidental discovery.
5 December 2012
Tsunamis in the sky
High in the sky seems like an unusual place to look for a tsunami, a natural disaster created deep beneath the ocean’s surface. But an international team of researchers is scanning the atmosphere for signs of these hazards. Looking at the sky, they say, could help scientists and emergency response agencies improve warning systems before they see any problems on land.
20th Century newspapers, historical documents help improve hurricane predictions
When a storm looms in a hurricane-prone area, coastal residents want to know its strength. Will it be a monster Category 5? A meager Category 1? One research team is taking a low-tech approach to try to give people better advance warning.
21 May 2012
Monitoring earthquakes with GPS could yield faster disaster response
When the March 2011 earthquake shook Japan, scientists needed about 20 minutes to conduct a full analysis. But now, researchers have found a way to shrink that critical analysis time for large earthquakes to two minutes. The speedup results from using data from GPS networks for the initial evaluation, rather than readings of seismometers.
4 May 2012
Building resilience as weather worsens
Two adjacent, brand-new houses – one was torn from its foundation by winds, the other stood strong. A mere $3,000 in building costs made the difference, including a simple wind-resistant measure: a front door that stays shut in a storm because it’s built to open outward rather than inward.
GeoSpace is a blog on Earth and space science, managed by AGU’s Public Information staff. The blog features posts by AGU writers and guest contributors on all sorts of relevant science topics, but with a focus on new research and geo and space sciences-related stories that are currently in the news.