http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/usc0007l67.php
Showing posts with label Antarctica. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Antarctica. Show all posts
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Australia's rain may have moved to Antarctica - New Scientist
Australia's 40 yr drought linked to heavy snowfall over Antarctica
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Large 6.3 magnitude earthquake hit Drake Passage - 595.7 km (370 mi) of Punta Arenas, Region de Magallanes y de la Antartica Chilena - Jan 17, 2010
| MAP | 6.3 | 2010/01/17 12:00:02 | -57.671 | -65.910 | 10.0 | DRAKE PASSAGE |
Distances355 km (220 miles) SSE of Ushuaia, Argentina
595 km (370 miles) SSE of Punta Arenas, Chile
705 km (440 miles) SSE of Rio Gallegos, Argentina
2625 km (1630 miles) S of BUENOS AIRES, Argentina
Additional information (Radius of 100 km)
Nuclear facilities: There are no nuclear facilities nearby the epicenter.
Airport(s): There are no airport(s) nearby the epicenter.
Volcanoes: None volcano in the 100-kilometer radius.
Friday, December 4, 2009
NASA.gov | Picture of the Day - December 4, 2009
Dry Valleys, Antarctica
The McMurdo Dry Valleys are a row of valleys west of McMurdo Sound, Antarctica, so named because of their extremely low humidity and lack of snow and ice cover. Photosynthetic bacteria have been found living in the relatively moist interior of rocks. Scientists consider the Dry Valleys to be the closest of any terrestrial environment to Mars.
With its 14 spectral bands from the visible to the thermal infrared wavelength region and its high spatial resolution of about 50 to 300 feet, ASTER images Earth to map and monitor the changing surface of our planet. ASTER is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched Dec. 18, 1999, on NASA's Terra satellite. The instrument was built by Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. A joint U.S./Japan science team is responsible for validation and calibration of the instrument and the data products.
The broad spectral coverage and high spectral resolution of ASTER provides scientists with critical information for surface mapping and monitoring of dynamic conditions and temporal change.
With its 14 spectral bands from the visible to the thermal infrared wavelength region and its high spatial resolution of about 50 to 300 feet, ASTER images Earth to map and monitor the changing surface of our planet. ASTER is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched Dec. 18, 1999, on NASA's Terra satellite. The instrument was built by Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. A joint U.S./Japan science team is responsible for validation and calibration of the instrument and the data products.
The broad spectral coverage and high spectral resolution of ASTER provides scientists with critical information for surface mapping and monitoring of dynamic conditions and temporal change.
Image Credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1536.html
Sunday, November 15, 2009
The Australian | Extra steps taken to protect Antarctic expeditioners - 80% exposed to UV radiation in excess of safe work limits
November 16, 2009 - While most would see the frozen continent as the last place to fear sunburn, the study found exposures similar in some cases to those of outdoor workers in Queensland......
Monday, October 26, 2009
USGS | 5.8 magnitude earthquake hit DRAKES PASSAGE - 827 km (514 mi) SSE from Punta Arenas, Chile - Mon, Oct 26, 2009 at 08:04 PM at epicenter
RELATED:The Drake Passage or Mar de Hoces -Sea of "de Hoces"- is the body of water between the southern tip of South America at Cape Horn, Chile and the South Shetland Islands of Antarctica. It connects the southwestern part of the Atlantic Ocean (Scotia Sea) with the southeastern part of the Pacific Ocean and extends into the Southern Ocean.
Xinhua | China expected to complete world's first land cover map of Antarctica
2009-10-26 19:41:42 ABOARD XUELONG, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists from the country's 26th Antarctic expedition are expected to complete the world's first land cover map of the Antarctica at the end of this year. It will be the most accurate map of the continent, presenting various land features, they told Xinhua correspondent aboard Xuelong (Snow Dragon) icebreaker in a recent interview.....
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
KOMOnews.com | More great photos from (way) down under at Antarctica's McMurdo Station
October 19, 2009 - Issaquah's Jeff Fogg, who is working down at Antarctica's McMurdo Station, continues to capture some of the amazing beauty of the South Pole area.
Here are some nighttime photos of the moon over the barren snow-capped landscape. It'll be an increasingly rare sight as they head toward summer and 24 hour daylight. Starting Oct. 23, the sun will rise at 2:08 a.m. local time and then stay above the horizon all winter long, not setting until 1:25 a.m. on Feb. 20th.
But daylight changes rapidly -- around the equinoxes, the days get longer/shorter by a whopping 14 minutes a day -- or roughly an hour every four days. So much so that when they have their first sunset on Feb 20 it's only two months (April 24) until they are in 24 hour darkness, and the sun won't rise again on August 19th.
He also says it's not all work down there. Here are some fun shots of he and other workmates during a training exercise, and some of the equipment they use to keep the snow away:
Sunday, October 11, 2009
SantiagoTimes.cl | NASA’s “OPERATION ICE BRIDGE” - Investigations Provide Important Clues Regarding The Advance Of Climate Change
NASA’s “OPERATION ICE BRIDGE” TAKES OFF IN PUNTA ARENAS
Monday, 12 October 2009
Investigations Provide Important Clues Regarding The Advance Of Climate Change
Surveillance flights by NASA’s “Operation Ice Bridge” began this week from the southern Chilean city of Punta Arenas in a quest to measure the impact climate change is having on the Antarctica’s sea ice, ice sheets and glaciers.
Aerial view of the city of Punta Arenas where NASA researchers will travel to seek
evidence of climate change.
The Ice Bridge team will traverse the Southern Ocean with up to 17 flights over West Antarctica, the Antarctic Peninsula, and coastal areas where sea ice is prevalent. Each round-trip flight lasts about 11 hours, two-thirds of that time devoted to getting to and from Antarctica. The DC-8 airplane is equipped with a 157-foot-long laboratory to carry out measurement and surveillance duties.
Operation Ice Bridge is a six-year campaign of annual flights to each of Earth's polar regions. Earlier flights this year in March and April carried researchers over Greenland and the Arctic Ocean.
This Antarctic campaign, led by principal investigator Seelye Martin of the University of Washington, will begin the first sustained airborne research effort of its kind over the continent. Data collected by researchers will help scientists bridge the gap between NASA's Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) - which is operating the last of its three lasers - and ICESat-II, scheduled to launch in 2014.
The Ice Bridge flights will help scientists maintain the record of changes to sea ice and ice sheets that have been collected since 2003 by ICESat. The flights lack the continent-wide coverage that can be achieved by satellite, so researchers carefully select key target locations. But the flights will also turn up new information not possible from orbit, such as the shape of the terrain below the ice.
“Space-based instruments like the ICESat lasers are the only way to find out where change is occurring in remote, continent-sized ice sheets like Antarctica,” said Tom Wagner, cryosphere program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. “But aircraft missions like Ice Bridge allow us to follow up with more detailed studies and make other measurements critical to modeling sea level rise.”
ICESat launched in January 2003 and since then, its sole instrument - a precise laser altimeter - has helped scientists map ice sheet elevation, calculate sea ice thickness, and monitor how both have changed.
"With ICESat, we have seen significant changes, things we wouldn't otherwise know were taking place," said Jay Zwally of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and ICESat investigator on the mission. “For example, shifts in surface elevation have previously revealed the draining and filling of lakes below Antarctica's ice.”
Compared to the Arctic, where sea ice has long been on the decline, sea ice in Antarctica is growing in some coastal areas. Snow and ice have been accumulating in some land regions in the east.
West Antarctica and the Peninsula, however, have experienced dramatic warming and rapid ice loss.
“We don't see the same sea ice changes in Antarctica that we see in the Arctic, and the reason is that the system is more complex,” said Thorsten Markus of NASA Goddard, the principal sea ice investigator for the mission. “But the fact that we don't see the same changes in Antarctica that we see in the Arctic doesn’t make it less important to study those changes. It's really important for us to understand the global climate system.”
With the DC-8 limited to just a few hours over Antarctica on each flight, mission planners have carefully selected targets of current and potential rapid change.
One such target is West Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier. “That glacier is one of the great unknowns because its bed – where the glacier contacts rock – is below sea level,” Martin said. “So if there's a surge or dramatic change, seawater could get under the glacier and we could be looking at very rapid change.”
Other proposed targets along the Amundsen coast include the Thwaites, Smith, and Kohler glaciers and the Getz Ice Shelf. Researchers also intend to study the myriad glaciers and ice shelves on the Peninsula, which has been undergoing dramatic changes.
“A remarkable change is happening on the Earth, truly one of the biggest changes in environmental conditions on Earth since the end of the ice age,” Wagner said. “It's not an easy thing to observe, let alone predict what might happen next. Studies like this one are keys.”
RELATED
NASA Ice Satellite Maps Profound Polar Thinning
Greenbelt MD (SPX) Oct 09, 2009 - Researchers have used NASA's Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) to compose the most comprehensive picture of changing glaciers along the coast of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. The new elevation maps show that all latitudes of the Greenland ice sheet are affected by dynamic thinning - the loss of ice due to accelerated ice flow to the ocean. The maps also show ... more
NASA to begin massive climate survey of Antarctica
Washington (AFP) Oct 8, 2009 - NASA next week begins the most extensive aerial survey of Earth's surface to chart the impact of global warming, with six years of flights over Antarctica to understand the frozen continent's glaciers and ice sheets. The US space agency said the massive aerial survey, part of a program dubbed Operation Ice Bridge, will get underway on October 15. Data gathered during the mission will ... more
Monday, 12 October 2009
Investigations Provide Important Clues Regarding The Advance Of Climate Change
Surveillance flights by NASA’s “Operation Ice Bridge” began this week from the southern Chilean city of Punta Arenas in a quest to measure the impact climate change is having on the Antarctica’s sea ice, ice sheets and glaciers.
Aerial view of the city of Punta Arenas where NASA researchers will travel to seekevidence of climate change.
The Ice Bridge team will traverse the Southern Ocean with up to 17 flights over West Antarctica, the Antarctic Peninsula, and coastal areas where sea ice is prevalent. Each round-trip flight lasts about 11 hours, two-thirds of that time devoted to getting to and from Antarctica. The DC-8 airplane is equipped with a 157-foot-long laboratory to carry out measurement and surveillance duties.
Operation Ice Bridge is a six-year campaign of annual flights to each of Earth's polar regions. Earlier flights this year in March and April carried researchers over Greenland and the Arctic Ocean.
This Antarctic campaign, led by principal investigator Seelye Martin of the University of Washington, will begin the first sustained airborne research effort of its kind over the continent. Data collected by researchers will help scientists bridge the gap between NASA's Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) - which is operating the last of its three lasers - and ICESat-II, scheduled to launch in 2014.
The Ice Bridge flights will help scientists maintain the record of changes to sea ice and ice sheets that have been collected since 2003 by ICESat. The flights lack the continent-wide coverage that can be achieved by satellite, so researchers carefully select key target locations. But the flights will also turn up new information not possible from orbit, such as the shape of the terrain below the ice.
“Space-based instruments like the ICESat lasers are the only way to find out where change is occurring in remote, continent-sized ice sheets like Antarctica,” said Tom Wagner, cryosphere program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. “But aircraft missions like Ice Bridge allow us to follow up with more detailed studies and make other measurements critical to modeling sea level rise.”
ICESat launched in January 2003 and since then, its sole instrument - a precise laser altimeter - has helped scientists map ice sheet elevation, calculate sea ice thickness, and monitor how both have changed.
"With ICESat, we have seen significant changes, things we wouldn't otherwise know were taking place," said Jay Zwally of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and ICESat investigator on the mission. “For example, shifts in surface elevation have previously revealed the draining and filling of lakes below Antarctica's ice.”
Compared to the Arctic, where sea ice has long been on the decline, sea ice in Antarctica is growing in some coastal areas. Snow and ice have been accumulating in some land regions in the east.
West Antarctica and the Peninsula, however, have experienced dramatic warming and rapid ice loss.
“We don't see the same sea ice changes in Antarctica that we see in the Arctic, and the reason is that the system is more complex,” said Thorsten Markus of NASA Goddard, the principal sea ice investigator for the mission. “But the fact that we don't see the same changes in Antarctica that we see in the Arctic doesn’t make it less important to study those changes. It's really important for us to understand the global climate system.”
With the DC-8 limited to just a few hours over Antarctica on each flight, mission planners have carefully selected targets of current and potential rapid change.
One such target is West Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier. “That glacier is one of the great unknowns because its bed – where the glacier contacts rock – is below sea level,” Martin said. “So if there's a surge or dramatic change, seawater could get under the glacier and we could be looking at very rapid change.”
Other proposed targets along the Amundsen coast include the Thwaites, Smith, and Kohler glaciers and the Getz Ice Shelf. Researchers also intend to study the myriad glaciers and ice shelves on the Peninsula, which has been undergoing dramatic changes.
“A remarkable change is happening on the Earth, truly one of the biggest changes in environmental conditions on Earth since the end of the ice age,” Wagner said. “It's not an easy thing to observe, let alone predict what might happen next. Studies like this one are keys.”
RELATED
NASA Ice Satellite Maps Profound Polar Thinning
Greenbelt MD (SPX) Oct 09, 2009 - Researchers have used NASA's Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) to compose the most comprehensive picture of changing glaciers along the coast of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. The new elevation maps show that all latitudes of the Greenland ice sheet are affected by dynamic thinning - the loss of ice due to accelerated ice flow to the ocean. The maps also show ... more
NASA to begin massive climate survey of Antarctica
Washington (AFP) Oct 8, 2009 - NASA next week begins the most extensive aerial survey of Earth's surface to chart the impact of global warming, with six years of flights over Antarctica to understand the frozen continent's glaciers and ice sheets. The US space agency said the massive aerial survey, part of a program dubbed Operation Ice Bridge, will get underway on October 15. Data gathered during the mission will ... more
SHANGHAI Xinhua | Group of 251 scientists from China, Australia & Russia begin research expedition on ice breaker "Snow Dragon" to Antarctica
A group of 251 scientists, workers and logistics staff from China, Australia and Russia began the half-year-long research expedition in the icebreaker Xuelong, or "Snow Dragon." 
SHANGHAI, Oct. 11 (Xinhua) -- One would head to China's Kunlun Station located at Dome A, the highest point on the continent at 4,093 meters above sea level, where more research equipment would be installed for astronomical observation.
SHANGHAI, Oct. 11 (Xinhua) -- One would head to China's Kunlun Station located at Dome A, the highest point on the continent at 4,093 meters above sea level, where more research equipment would be installed for astronomical observation.The other to the Grove Mountains some 400 kilometers away from the Zhongshan Station to collect meteorolites and conduct other scientific research. From 1998 to 2006, China has made four trips of scientific research to the mountains and collected 9,834 meteorolites, making the country boast the third largest collection of meteorolites in the world.
The scientists were expected to return to Shanghai on April 10 next year.
China launched its first expedition to the Antarctic in 1984 and has set up three stations there. According to the Polar Research Institute of China, the Chinese have made nearly 4,000 visits to the South Pole during the past 25 years.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
FATA MORGNA EFFECT | Antarctica's fairy castles in the air
The coolest mountain you never actually saw
Photo of "Fata Morgana" effectnear McMurdo Station, Antarctica (by Jeff Fogg)
It can go down as Antarctica's prettiest mountain that doesn't actually exist.
Our friend Jeff Fogg, who is from Issaquah but working a 6-month tour as a heavy equipment operator down at McMurdo Station on Antarctica, sent another great photo from his arctic environment.
This is of a mirage-like phenomenon called "Fata Morgana." It has to do with light rays being reflected as the light travels through different densities of air masses, most likely related to temperature differences.
Here is a more complete explanation.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
PowerBoat-World.com | Recent research at Davis has found that the ozone hole this spring is likely to be large, but not of record proportions
Australia's new laser to probe Antarctic atmosphere
The lidar operating at Davis with an aurora in the background.
Photo David Corell - LIDAR at Davis Station Antarctica
Photo David Corell - LIDAR at Davis Station Antarctica
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
TheAge.com.au | Big stink brews in Antarctica
September 3, 2009
ANTARCTICA, the most pristine continent on Earth, has a dirty secret. Human waste is being dumped there as governments turn a blind eye to normal standards.
More than half of 71 Antarctic scientific stations surveyed lack any kind of sewage treatment system, a Swedish study has found.......
Australia should join Antarctic space race
A topographical map of the locations of planned observatories in Antarctica including the recently discovered Ridge A. Photo: UNSW
Australian scientists have discovered the coldest, driest place in the world on Australian soil and they say this could be the hub for a new generation of advanced astronomy.
The area known as Ridge A is deep in the heart of the Australian Antarctic Territory - about 1000 kilometres from the South Pole - and following the investigations of a joint US-Australian research team possesses all the characteristics of a perfect setting to build a space observatory.
READ MORE....
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
NASA.gov | Map Characterizes Active Lakes Below Antarctic Ice
Dots represent the locations where scientists have identified 124 active lakes below the ice sheet in Antarctica. Warmer colors (orange and red) depict lakes with larger water volumes while cooler colors (green and blue) depict lakes with smaller volumes. Purple areas show the locations of previously known inactive lakes. Credit: Ben Smith, University of WashingtonRelated:
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Chilean researchers on Isla Rey Jorge, off the coast of Antarctica, have discovered fossilized footprints of ancient duck and stork-like birds
| http://www.patagoniatimes.cl/index.php/20090825891/News/Health-Science/ANCIENT-STORK-FOSSILS-UNEARTHED-IN-CHILEAN-ANTARCTICA.html ANCIENT STORK FOSSILS UNEARTHED IN CHILEAN ANTARCTICA | | | |
| Written by EL MERCURIO | |
| Tuesday, 25 August 2009 | |
| Chilean researchers on Isla Rey Jorge (King George Island), off the coast of Antarctica, have discovered fossilized footprints of ancient duck and stork-like birds. The scientists, members of the Instituto Antártico Chileno (INACH), think the fossils date back some 50 million years, to a time when Antarctica and South America were joined. The now frozen Antarctica was at that time a land of lush green forests, researchers believe.The INACH scientists – Marcelo Leppe and Héctor Mansilla – made the discovery at approximately 70 meters above sea level. In total they uncovered some 50 fossilized prints. The fossils range in size from 1.8 centimeters to 6 centimeters. According to Leppe and Mansilla, the findings offers further proof than many of the endemic species now found in South America may actually have originated in Antarctica. |
Monday, August 10, 2009
Sunday, August 9, 2009
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