News tagged with abrupt change

Topological transitions in metamaterials

The ability to control the flow of electrons using engineered materials is fundamental to the information technology revolution, yet many properties of matter are still unclear. Now a University of Alberta researcher is closer ...

Physics / Optics & Photonics

created Apr 14, 2012 | popularity 4.2 / 5 (6) | comments 1

New understanding of Earth's lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary beneath the Pacific Ocean

Scientists have long speculated about why there is a large change in the strength of rocks that lie at the boundary between two layers immediately under Earth's crust: the lithosphere and underlying asthenosphere. ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Mar 22, 2012 | popularity 4.3 / 5 (4) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Sediments from the Enol lake reveal more than 13,500 years of environmental history

A team of Spanish researchers have used different geological samples, extracted from the Enol lake in Asturias, to show that the Holocene, a period that started 11,600 years ago, did not have a climate as ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Feb 03, 2012 | popularity 4.1 / 5 (7) | comments 1

The Arctic is already suffering the effects of a dangerous climate change

Two decades after the United Nations established the Framework Convention on Climate Change in order to "prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system", the Arctic shows the first signs of a dangerous ...

Space & Earth / Environment

created Jan 30, 2012 | popularity 4.1 / 5 (9) | comments 9

Glaciers make way for new stream habitat in Alaska

(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers from the University of Birmingham and other UK universities describe the evolution and assembly of a stream ecosystem in South East Alaska in new de-glaciated terrain, from early insect and crustacean ...

Space & Earth / Environment

created Oct 18, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 4

800,000 years of Greenland's abrupt climate variability

An international team of scientists, led by Dr Stephen Barker of Cardiff University, has produced a prediction of what climate records from Greenland might look like over the last 800,000 years.

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Sep 08, 2011 | popularity 4.2 / 5 (12) | comments 19 | with audio podcast

55 million years of climate change

State-of-the-art climate models, as used in the assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change, could be giving a false sense of security in terms of upcoming abrupt change, suggests a Commentary ...

Space & Earth / Environment

created Jun 27, 2011 | popularity 4 / 5 (8) | comments 10

Atmospheric carbon dioxide buildup unlikely to spark abrupt climate change

There have been instances in Earth history when average temperatures have changed rapidly, as much as 10 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Fahrenheit) over a few decades, and some have speculated the same could happen again as ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Jun 20, 2011 | popularity 3.8 / 5 (13) | comments 27 | with audio podcast

New model changes view of climate change

(PhysOrg.com) -- Using new, high-resolution global ocean circulation models, University of Massachusetts Amherst geoscientist Alan Condron, with Peter Winsor at the University of Alaska, report this week that ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Feb 11, 2011 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (22) | comments 8 | with audio podcast

Comet cause for climate change theory dealt blow by fungus

(PhysOrg.com) -- A team of scientists - led by Professor Andrew C Scott of the Department of Earth Sciences at Royal Holloway, University of London - have revealed that neither comet nor catastrophe were the ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Jun 17, 2010 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (14) | comments 2 | with audio podcast

Dead Ahead: Similar Early Warning Signals of Change in Climate, Ecosystems, Financial Markets, Human Health

(PhysOrg.com) -- What do abrupt changes in ocean circulation and Earth's climate, shifts in wildlife populations and ecosystems, the global finance market and its system-wide crashes, and asthma attacks and ...

Biology / Ecology

created Sep 02, 2009 | popularity 3.8 / 5 (19) | comments 4

Ancient drought and rapid cooling drastically altered climate

Two abrupt and drastic climate events, 700 years apart and more than 45 centuries ago, are teasing scientists who are now trying to use ancient records to predict future world climate.

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Jun 18, 2009 | popularity 3.6 / 5 (9) | comments 4

Oceanic seesaw links Northern and Southern hemisphere during abrupt climate change

Very large and abrupt changes in temperature recorded over Greenland and across the North Atlantic during the last Ice Age were actually global in extent, according to an international team of researchers led by Cardiff University.

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Feb 25, 2009 | popularity 4 / 5 (13) | comments 8

Charcoal evidence tracks climate changes in Younger Dryas

A new study reports that charcoal particles left by wildfires in sediments of 35 North American lake beds don't readily support the theory that comets exploding over the continent 12,900 years ago sparked ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Jan 28, 2009 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (7) | comments 0

Slight changes in climate may trigger abrupt ecosystem responses

Some of these responses, including insect outbreaks, wildfire, and forest dieback, may adversely affect people as well as ecosystems and their plants and animals.

Space & Earth / Environment

created Jan 16, 2009 | popularity 2.8 / 5 (6) | comments 3