Climate modelers from the University of New Hampshire have shown that the most likely explanation for the initiation of Antarctic glaciation during a major climate shift 34 million years ago was decreased carbon dioxide (CO2) levels. The finding counters a 40-year-old theory suggesting massive rearrangements of Earth's continents caused global cooling and the abrupt formation of the Antarctic ice sheet. It will provide scientists insight into the climate change implications of current rising global CO2 levels.
In a paper published today in Nature, Matthew Huber of the UNH Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space and department of Earth sciences provides evidence that the long-held, prevailing theory known as "Southern Ocean gateway opening" is not the best explanation for the climate shift that occurred during the Eocene-Oligocene transition when Earth's polar regions were ice-free.
Read more ...
A number of credible studies have shown that indoor air quality can have a significant effect on employee productivity. And we're not just talking about air that's so bad that you can't see or breathe. Generally speaking, OSHA takes cares of those (though I could tell you a story about an agricultural processing job I once worked in Arkansas). What we're talking about here is much more subtle than that.
Read more ...
As the climate warms and sea ice retreats, the North is changing. An ice-covered expanse now has a season of increasingly open water that is predicted to extend across the whole Arctic Ocean before the middle of this century. Storms thus have the potential to create Arctic swell – huge waves that could add a new and unpredictable element to the region. A University of Washington researcher made the first study of waves in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, and detected house-sized waves during a September 2012 storm. The results were recently published in Geophysical Research Letters.
Read more ...
Robins sit on their eggs for about two weeks after they are laid. Male seahorses usually carry eggs for 9 to 45 days. Deep-sea octopuses? Four and a half years! Researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) have observed this unique brooding phenomenon and have declares this species to have a longer brooding time than any other known animal. Egg brooding happens after the parent species lays the eggs. The parents then do everything in their power to protect those eggs so that offspring can develop. This includes cleaning the eggs and guarding them from predators, which evidently risks the parents' own ability to survive. In May 2007, during a deep-sea survey, researchers from MBARI, led by Bruce Robison, discovered a female octopus (Graneledone boreopacifica), clinging to a rocky ledge just above the floor of the canyon, about 1,400 meters (4,600 feet) below the ocean surface. Over the next four and one-half years, the researchers dove at this same site 18 times.
Read more ...
More than 70 years after major turtle nesting beaches became protected on the remote UK overseas territory of Ascension Island researchers are now reporting a boom in population numbers.
Scientists from the University of Exeter and Ascension Island Government Conservation Department report that the number of green turtles nesting at the remote South Atlantic outpost has increased by more than 500 per cent since records began in the 1970s.
Read more ...
