Tuesday, February 24, 2009

NASA's global warming satellite falls to Earth

Orbiting Carbon Observatory’s launch failure traced to balky rocket shroud

NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory, a new satellite dedicated to mapping Earth's carbon dioxide levels, crashed into the ocean near Antarctica just after launch Tuesday when a shroud designed to protect the spacecraft accidentally doomed its mission.

The glitch occurred just minutes after the $273.4 million spacecraft blasted off at 4:55 a.m. ET atop a Taurus XL rocket launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

"Our whole team at a very personal level is disappointed in the events of this morning," John Brunschwyler, the Taurus project manager for the Dulles, Va.-based rocket manufacturer Orbital Sciences, said in a somber post-launch briefing. "It's very hard."

Read full story MSNBC

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Thursday, February 19, 2009

Tropical Forests Recover From Clear-Cutting

Feb. 18, 2009 -- Deforestation is generally considered to be bad news, especially in the tropics. But there may be some hope: In many places, trees are growing back, according to new research, and some of the new forests are nearly as diverse as the old ones were.

The work adds to a growing sense that tropical forests are more resilient than scientists previously thought and that second-growth forests are far from worthless.

Read full story Discovery News

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Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Global warming changing birds' habits

Study: Many North American species spending winters farther north

WASHINGTON - When it comes to global warming, the canary in the coal mine isn't a canary at all. It's a purple finch.

As the temperature across the U.S. has gotten warmer, the purple finch has been spending its winters more than 400 miles farther north than it used to.

And it's not alone.

An Audubon Society study released Tuesday found that more than half of 305 birds species in North America, a hodgepodge that includes robins, gulls, chickadees and owls, are spending the winter about 35 miles farther north than they did 40 years ago.

Read full story MSNBC

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Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Silent Quakes Build Stress Along Mega Fault Line

Feb. 2, 2009 -- A bizarre form of earthquake, which happens over the course of two to three weeks but makes barely a rumble, are lending important clues to the Cascadia subduction zone in the Pacific northwest, one of the most dangerous fault zones on Earth.

For the last decade, slow-slip earthquakes have been measured in fault zones all over the world, baffling scientists. Though the 'quakes' release as much energy as a normal earthquake between magnitude 6.0 and 6.5, they produce almost no shaking.

Read full story Discovery News

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