A new global map released today by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre and published in the World Bank's World Development Report 2009, measures urbanisation from the new perspective of Travel Time to 8,500 Major Cities. The map fills an important gap in our understanding of economic, physical and even social connectivity. In the absence of agreement on the meaning of "urbanisation", the European Commission and the World Bank are proposing a new definition based on a unique mapping of "Accessibility" called the Agglomeration Index.

MIT researchers are working with Portuguese colleagues to design a pilot-scale device that will capture significantly more of the energy in ocean waves than existing systems, and use it to power an electricity-generating turbine.

In light of recent developments that threaten to lead to the break-up of the Wilkins Ice Shelf, ESA is making daily satellite images of the ice shelf available to the public via the 'Webcam' from Space web page in order to monitor the developments as they occur.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) supports scientific studies in the geosciences and related fields highlighted at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco, Calif., Dec. 15-19, 2008.

Maps pinpointing overlaps of high carbon and high biodiversity areas were launched today by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) with its Carbon and Biodiversity demonstration atlas. The research gives shows how reducing emissions from deforestation can not only assist in combating climate change but can also help the conservation of biodiversity, from amphibians and birds to primates.

The Internet is full of references to global warming. The Union of Concerned Scientists website on climate change is titled "Global Warming," just one of many examples. But we don't use global warming much on this website. We use the less appealing "climate change." Why? To a scientist, global warming describes the average global surface temperature increase from human emissions of greenhouse gases. Its first use was in a 1975 Science article by geochemist Wallace Broecker of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory: "Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?".

Scientists, students, and applications users seeking on-the-fly visualizations and analysis of hurricane-related satellite and model data can now get access to it via the NASA Hurricane Data Analysis tool on-line. This tool was created by the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC), Greenbelt, Md., to help provide valuable hurricane research information, as well as easy data access to a collection of multi-sensor datasets.

As the United States continues to develop alternative energy methods and push towards energy independence, cellulosic-based ethanol has emerged as one of the most commercially viable technologies. Corn stover remains the most popular source available, but the loss of soil organic carbon (SOC) associated with the removal of corn fodder as a cellulosic ethanol feedstock is of agricultural and environmental concern.

Past Earth Science and Climate Change News

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