Urban areas are currently responsible for ~70% of the global energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, and rapid ongoing global urbanization is increasing the number and size of cities. Thus, understanding city-scale CO2 emissions and how they vary between cities with different urban densities is a critical task. While the relationship …
A NASA spacecraft that aims to study the upper atmosphere of Mars and reveal how its climate changed over time is poised to begin orbiting the Red Planet. After a 10-month journey, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) probe is making its final approach to Mars and will begin …
India's maiden mission to Mars has "entered the Martian neighbourhood", its space agency says, 48 hours before its planned arrival in orbit. Launched last November, the spacecraft - known informally as Mangalyaan - will complete a 300-day journey to reach the orbit on Wednesday. If it succeeds, India will become …
August 2014 was marginally the warmest August worldwide since records began 130 years ago, according to new data from Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Temperatures measured by government meteorological offices using land, sea and satellite data suggest this year’s global high was very close to those of 2011, 2008, …
Last month was the hottest August on record globally, adding to a run of months with exceptionally warm conditions. According to US space agency NASA, worldwide land and sea-surface temperatures were 0.7 degrees above the 1951-80 baseline average - edging ahead of the previous high set in 2011 - as …
Australia's hottest year of 2013 started with a heatwave that caused widespread bush fires. In January the Holmes family from Tasmania took refuge under a jetty as wild fires raged around them. Australia’s hottest year of 2013 started with a heatwave that caused widespread bush fires. In January the Holmes …
Our atmosphere "contains an unexpectedly large amount of an ozone-depleting compound from an unknown source, decades after the compound was banned worldwide," reports a NASA study out this week. Before its use was supposedly banned in 1987 by an international treaty, the compound, carbon tetrachloride (CCI4), was produced in large …
Over a 14-year period, the Colorado River basin in the U.S. has lost nearly 65 cubic km of freshwater, almost double the volume of the nation's largest reservoir, Nevada's Lake Mead. More than three-quarters of the total — about 50 cubic km was from groundwater. The basin region has been …
The mission of Aura, which is Latin for breeze, centers on obtaining measurements of ozone, aerosols and key gases throughout the atmosphere. And after one decade in space, the satellite has provided vital data about the cause, concentrations and impact of major air pollutants. One instrument on the satellite, built …
An unmanned Delta 2 rocket blasted off from California on Wednesday, carrying a NASA science satellite to survey where carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas tied to climate change, is moving into and out of Earth's atmosphere, a NASA Television broadcast showed. The 127-foot-tall (39-meter) rocket lifted off at 2:56 a.m. …
The US space agency is to launch today a satellite that tracks atmospheric carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming. The launch of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 is expected at 2:56 am Pacific time from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. “Now that humans are acknowledging …
Nasa has launched a mission dedicated to measuring carbon dioxide (CO2) from space. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) will help pinpoint the key locations on the Earth's surface where the gas is being emitted and absorbed. A Delta rocket carrying the satellite lifted clear of the Vandenberg Air Force Base …
The US space agency (Nasa) will make a second attempt on Tuesday to put a high-resolution carbon dioxide observatory in orbit. The first satellite was destroyed on launch in 2009. Since then, scientists and engineers have built a near identical spacecraft, which will launch from the Vandenberg Air Force Base …
Five years after a NASA satellite to track carbon dioxide plunged into the ocean after liftoff, the space agency is launching another almost exactly like it — this time on a different rocket. The $468 million mission is designed to study the main driver of climate change emitted from smokestacks …
According to new data released this week, May 2014 is officially the warmest May in recorded history. Both NASA and the Japan Meteorological Agency have tentatively ranked May at the top of historical measurements, though NASA's numbers are preliminary because crucial information is still missing from China. Gavin Schmidt, the …
Sea level rise is threatening the majority of Nasa's launch pads and multi-billion dollar complexes famous for training astronauts and launching historic missions to space, scientists said on Tuesday. From Cape Canaveral in Florida to mission control in Houston, the US space agency is busily building seawalls where possible and …
We are very concerned with the changing climate on Earth. The climate on other planets is more difficult to study, and direct observations are impossible, save some observations from the Mars rovers. Jupiter has an atmosphere that is very different from Earth's. The prominent Giant Red Spot, a swirling anti-cyclonic …
The collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which holds enough water to raise global seas by several feet, has begun. University of Washington researchers have used detailed topography maps and computer modelling to confirm that the sheet has started to thin. In some places, the Thwaites Glacier has been …
A rapidly melting glacial region of Antarctica has passed “the point of no return,” threatening to increase sea levels, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. “The collapse of this sector of West Antarctica appears to be unstoppable,” Eric Rignot, a glaciologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the …
The collapse of the Western Antarctica ice sheet is already under way and is unstoppable, two separate teams of scientists said on Monday. The glaciers' retreat is being driven by climate change and is already causing sea-level rise at a much faster rate than scientists had anticipated. The loss of …
