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Dust tied to climate
Dust moving in April 2001 from arid areas in Central Asia and North Africa to the oceans. From NASA's Nimbus-7 satellite. Image via Wikipedia At present the central areas of the oceans are wet...
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Very persistent cycles
Carboniferous shale (Photo credit: tehsma) The last of five written papers in my 1967 final-year exams was, as always, set by the ‘Prof’. One question was ‘Rock and rhythm: discuss’ – it was the 60s....
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Tiny shrinking horses
Reconstruction of Sifrhippus. Image via Wikipedia The earliest known ancestors of modern horses occur in Palaeogene mammal-rich terrestrial sediments of the northwestern US, particularly those of the...
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Climate change and global volcanism
Geologists realized long ago that volcanic activity can have a profound effect on local and global climate. For instance, individual large explosive eruptions can punch large amounts of ash and sulfate...
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Yes, it was hot during the Permian
For those of us living in what was the heart of Pangaea – Europe and North America – more than 250 Ma ago this item’s title might seem like the ultimate truism. However, despite our vision of desert...
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Did ice-age climate changes across Europe happen at the same time?
Although the frigid conditions at the last glacial maximum, around 19 to 20 thousand years ago, gradually relinquished their grip through slow global warming, this amelioration came to sudden stop...
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Evidence for North Atlantic current shut-down ~120 ka ago
Warming surface currents of the North Atlantic (credit: Wikipedia) A stupendous amount of heat is shifted by ocean-surface currents, so they have a major influence over regional climates. But they are...
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Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions – were humans to blame?
Australia and the Americas had an extremely diverse fauna of large beasts (giant wombats and kangeroos in Australia; elephants, bears, big cats, camelids, ground sloths etc in the Americas) until the...
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The core’s influence on geology: how does it do it?
Although no one can be sure about the details of processes in the Earth’s core what is accepted by all is that changes in core dynamics cause the geomagnetic field to change in strength and polarity,...
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Focus on glaciation…and avoid physics envy
About 1.3 billion years ago two small black holes, each weighing in at about 30 solar masses, ran into one another and fused. At that time Earthly life forms had neither mouths nor anuses, nor even a...
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Out of Africa: a little less blurred?
DNA from the mitochondria of humans who live on all the habitable continents shows such a small variability that all of us must have had a common maternal ancestor, and she lived in Africa about 160 ka...
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Ancient CO2 estimates worry climatologists
Concerns about impending, indeed actual, anthropogenic climate change brought on by rapidly rising levels of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide have spurred efforts to quantify climates of the distant...
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Odds and ends about Milankovitch and climate change
It is some 40 years since the last explosive development in understanding the way the world works. In 1976 verification of Milutin Milanković’s astronomical theory to explain cyclical climate change as...
View ArticleChaos and the Palaeocene-Eocene thermal maximum
Read how chaotic behaviour in the Solar System may have affected Milankovich cycles in the late Palaeocene
View ArticleSoluble iron and global climate
Read about this at Earth-logs Maintenance of Earth-pages has stopped. If you wish to continue following reports on significant research developments in Earth science you can register as a follower of...
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