All Stories by Sid Perkins
- Earth
Carbon dioxide: blame where blame is due?
Tracking the outsourcing of greenhouse gas emissions.
- Earth
Seismology in your backyard (and on your Twitter feed)
With two USGS programs, Twitter, inexpensive seismic equipment transform citizens into scientists.
- Earth
Earth’s magnetic field … updated
Three most used models of Earth's magnetic field are revised to reflect small changes in the field.
- Earth
Irrigation draining California groundwater at ‘unsustainable’ pace
The GRACE satellites have tracked water movement from the Central Valley since 2003.
- Paleontology
New fossil helps solidify dino origins
The dog-sized creature bolsters the notion that early dinosaurs first appeared in what is now South America.
- Earth
Earth’s atmosphere may be extraterrestrial in origin
Analyses of krypton, xenon hint that air didn’t fizz from within the planet.
- Planetary Science
Pluto’s cloud components verified
Newly analyzed observations suggest that particles are tiny spherules of frozen nitrogen and carbon monoxide.
- Earth
Ocean’s carbon dioxide uptake varies year to year
Data taken hourly by cargo ships show that how much of the greenhouse gas North Atlantic waters absorb varies more than thought.
- Paleontology
Major eruption cooled the climate but went unnoticed
Ice-core records suggest that a major 1809 eruption cooled Earth even before the Tambora eruption and ‘the year without a summer’.
- Earth
GPS bolsters view that big Cascadia quakes could hit inland
Satellite tracking of plate movements shows that a magnitude-9 tremor in Pacific Northwest could strike close to urban areas.
-
- Life
Climate not really what doomed large North American mammals
Prevalence of a dung fungus over time suggests megafauna extinctions at end of last ice age started before vegetation changed.
