Science Daily

The 'sailing' stones of Death Valley in California are famous for apparently moving by themselves, with the phenomenon not being exclusive to this North American desert but also occurring in Spain, in the Manchego lagoon Altillo Chica. Researchers have observed that wind from winter storms generates currents that can push the stones over a surface colonized by microbes. Then once the water has vanished, the mysterious trail is left on the dry bottom of the lagoon.

A new study focusing on the birds of the Ice Age has shed light on the long term response of birds to climate change.

Spring visitors to Great Smoky Mountains or the Blue Ridge Parkway will see ridges and valleys covered in flowering mountain laurels, rhododendrons, tulip poplars, dogwoods, black locusts and silverbell trees. A new study of nearly all the trees and shrubs in the southern Appalachians suggests that roughly half of the species can trace their relatives to thousands of miles away in Asia. Most of the rest likely arose within North America, the researchers say.

Long range weather forecasts and climate change projections could be significantly boosted by advances in our understanding of the relationship between layers of the Earth's atmosphere -- the stratosphere and troposphere.

The grounding of a giant iceberg in Antarctica has provided a unique real-life experiment that has revealed the vulnerability of marine ecosystems to sudden changes in sea-ice cover. Scientists have found that within just three years of the iceberg becoming stuck in Commonwealth Bay -- an event which dramatically increased sea-ice cover in the bay -- almost all of the seaweed on the sea floor had decomposed, or become discolored or bleached due to lack of light.

Gas and oil seeps have been part of religious and cultural practices for thousands of years. Seeps from which gas and oil escape were formative to many ancient cultures and societies. They gave rise to legends surrounding the Delphi Oracle, Chimaera fires and "eternal flames" that were central to ancient religious practices - from Indonesia and Iran to Italy and Azerbaijan.

A decade-long scientific debate about what's causing the thinning of one of Antarctica's largest ice shelves is settled this week with the publication of an international study in the journal The Cryosphere.

The recently published Second Assessment of Climate Change for the Baltic Sea Basin makes an important contribution to understanding variations in the climate. The report also captures the most important changes to the regional climate in the Kattegat and Baltic Sea areas, home to 90 million people.

The National Oceanography Centre (NOC) has been awarded funding to upgrade the South Atlantic Tide Gauge Network. This network has now been continuously operating in some of Earth's most remote places for 30 years, including open ocean islands, such as Ascension, and the hostile Antarctic environments of Rothera and Vernadsky.

Large landslides are an important process of erosion in the Himalaya-Karakoram ranges. These high-relief landscapes are characterized by steep slopes that are prone to frequent landsliding. By mapping nearly 500 large (greater than 0.1 km2) landslides in the HKR, geologists have found that the vast majority of these mass movements lie in the lower portions of the landscape, whereas glaciers and rock glaciers occupy the higher elevations almost exclusively.

Environmental factors similar to those affecting the present day Great Barrier Reef have been linked to a major slowdown in its growth 8,000 years ago, research shows.

As with rivers, civilizations across the world rise and fall. Sometimes, the rise and fall of rivers has something to do with it. At Cahokia, the largest prehistoric settlement in the Americas north of Mexico, new evidence suggests that major flood events in the Mississippi River valley are tied to the cultural center's emergence and ultimately, to its decline.

While fjords are celebrated for their beauty, these ecosystems are also major carbon sinks that likely play an important role in the regulation of the planet's climate, new research reveals.

Considering geological time scales, the occurrence of biogenic shale gas in Sweden´s crust is relatively young. Geoscientists found that biogenic methane in the Alum Shale in South Sweden formed due to deglaciation around 12 years ago. Moreover, the formation processes were due to complex interactions between neotectonic activity and the occurrence of a deep biosphere. Applying a new hydrogeochemical modelling approach, the specific methane generation process was unraveled and quantified for the first time in Europe.

Researchers 'weighed' Antarctica's ice sheet using gravitational satellite data and found that during the past decade, Antarctica's massive ice sheet lost twice the amount of ice in its western portion compared with what it accumulated in the east. Their conclusion -- the southern continent's ice cap is melting ever faster.

A multinational study attempted to gauge the population trends of Arctic marine mammals and changes in their habitat, identify missing scientific information, and provide recommendations for the conservation of Arctic marine mammals over the next decades.

A new study using evidence from a highly detailed ice core from West Antarctica shows a consistent link between abrupt temperature changes on Greenland and Antarctica during the last ice age, giving scientists a clearer picture of the link between climate in the northern and southern hemispheres.

Climate change may be responsible for the abrupt collapse of civilization on the fringes of the Tibetan Plateau around 2000 B.C. according to archaeologists who found that cooling global temperatures at the end of the Holocene Climatic Optimum, a 4,000-year period of warm weather, would have made it impossible for ancient people on the Tibetan Plateau to cultivate millet, their primary food source.

Geoscientists analyzed soil contamination through melt waters at airports. They found that de-icing agents like propylene glycol and potassium formate have a negative impact on groundwater quality and the functions of the soil.

Some scientists have suggested that global warming could melt frozen ground in the Arctic, releasing vast amounts of the potent greenhouse gas methane into the atmosphere, greatly amplifying global warming. It has been proposed that such disastrous climate effects could be offset by technological approaches. One such proposal is to artificially whiten the surface of the Arctic Ocean in order to increase the reflection of the Sun's energy into space and restore sea ice.