2017

Published June 28, 2017 9:39 PM

The Hawaiian-Emperor volcanic island chain in the NW Pacific Ocean is well known for its peculiar 60° bend. This bend has been heavily debated for decades. Researchers from University of Oslo, GFZ Potsdam, and Utrecht University now definitely demonstrate that to form the observed bend requires an abrupt change in the motion of the Pacific tectonic plate, while southward drift of the mantle plume that has sourced the chain since ~80 Ma is required to explain its entire 2000 km length.

Published June 22, 2017 9:05 PM

Across the globe, sea level has been rising for decades, but we don’t know how fast. Researchers have now analyzed tide gauge data and reconstructed global mean sea level since 1902. Their record yields a slower average rise before 1990 than previously thought, but similar high rates of about 3.1 mm/yr as observed from independent satellite observations from 1993-2012. This suggests that global mean sea level has been accelerating much faster than previously assumed in the past two decades.

Published Apr. 26, 2017 12:03 PM

A warming Arctic will give an extended growing season particularly due to an earlier spring, and it has been believed that this will give a greater uptake of CO2 in plants and an increased carbon sink. An impact potentially offsetting some of the anthropogenic increases in greenhouse gases. A new study suggest that the “warmer spring, bigger sink” hypothesis may no longer hold.

Published Apr. 26, 2017 11:35 AM

“Scream”, Edvard Munch’s most iconic painting, shows a blood-red sky over the Oslo fjord. “Suddenly the sky became red as blood” - Munch describes this event as scaring. Was it pollution particles from a volcano eruption which caused this red sky? Three Norwegian meteorologists offer an alternative hypothesis: it could have been mother-of-pearl clouds Munch saw and painted in 1892.

Published Feb. 1, 2017 9:32 AM

Mauritius is best known as a tropical holiday paradise island in the Indian Ocean, but for an Earth Science research team led by Professor Trond H. Torsvik it is piece of a geological puzzle. Now they have found a new fragment of an ancient continental crust beneath the young, but inactive volcanoes on the island.