The European Space Agency’s CryoSat-2 was launched in June 2010. Now, data from the satellite is allowing researchers to produce maps of the planet’s most important ice fields, with unparalleled coverage and accuracy.
Studying the impacts of climate change requires looking at ranges of variables that transect a broad range of sectors. Geospatial Semantic Array Programming (GeoSemAP) offers the potential to help create a cross-discipline vocabulary for discussing data and processes used in geospatial studies. Within this field, the PESETA II project offers an example of how GeoSemAPs can be used to address the ecological challenges associated with a shifting climate.
Where do fish like to spawn? Dr. Lorenzo Ciannelli of Oregon State University says the answers are complex, but could help us to understand and make more accurate predictions about the impact of climate change on fish and their spawning patterns.
A new generation of weather satellites is helping researchers gain insights into the complex relationship between the cryosphere ÛÒ the planet’s cold regions ÛÒ and the climate. With drinking water supplies dwindling around the world, understanding the cryosphere is becoming a front-burner issue.
Looking back at a groundbreaking Apollo mission offers hope for what we can achieve together in the future.
he monitoring and assessment of the remote Russian forest resources of Siberia is challenging and can only be done by integrating remote sensing techniques. Human and environmental forest disturbances continuously affect changing forest cover and biomass levels. The ZAṔS initiative is prototyping and supporting a forest observation system for Siberia using Earth observation data from European and Russian satellite data providers.
The human use of energy has profound moral and ethical implications, raising issues that can only be answered by considering notions of justice. Earthzine science writer Osha Gray Davidson blogs about these crucial issues while on a fellowship at the Vermont Law School.
NASA’s first satellite devoted to measuring atmospheric CO2 is ready to launch. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 will join a constellation of five other satellites gathering information about Earth systems with unprecedented resolution and coverage.
The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is in a state of irretrievable decline, warns a study released by NASA and the University of California, Irvine. The results have consequences for the glacial structure of the Antarctic and the height of future sea level rise. In an interview with Earthzine, Dr. Prasad Gogineni describes the technologies used to measure these dramatic changes.
Originally Published by The Gaurdian – Last month was the hottest May globally since records began in 1880, new figures show. The record heat, combined with increasingly certain predictions of an El Niño, means experts are now speculating whether 2014 could become the hottest year on record.
