Wednesday, 09 June 2021 07:40
There’s a new ocean!
On World Oceans Day, Nat Geo cartographers say the swift current circling Antarctica keeps the waters there distinct and worthy of their own name: the Southern Ocean. Those familiar with the Southern Ocean, the body of water encircling Antarctica, know it’s unlike any other. “Anyone who has been there will struggle to explain what's so mesmerizing about it, but they'll all agree that the glaciers are bluer, the air colder,…
Wednesday, 02 June 2021 11:29
Survey the World's Water
How much water sloshes around in Earth’s lakes, rivers, and oceans? And how does that figure change over time? The upcoming Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission plans to find out. Targeting a late-2022 launch date, this SUV-size satellite will measure the height of Earth’s water. SWOT will help researchers understand and track the volume and location of water – a finite resource – around the world, making NASA’s…
Tuesday, 01 June 2021 14:51
Drivers of sustainable development
A Policy Brief from the Policy Learning Platform on Environment and resource efficiency Rivers and wetlands are critical for life on Earth since they provide a wide range of ecosystem services upon which species and habitats, as well as humans and their socio-economic activities entirely, depend, such as food, biodiversity, water and climate regulation. Yet available data point both to their continuous degradation as well as to limited and slow-paced…
Friday, 21 May 2021 15:19
World’s largest iceberg
The 4,320 square kilometre slab of ice dubbed A-76 broke off Ronne shelf and is floating in Weddell sea A giant slab of ice almost four times the size of New York City has sheared off from the frozen edge of Antarctica into the Weddell Sea, becoming the largest iceberg afloat in the world, according to the European Space Agency. The newly calved berg, designated A-76 by scientists, was spotted…
Tuesday, 18 May 2021 12:32
AI under the sea
Terradepth CEO talks about a project to map out and collect data from all the oceans of the world. The company uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to gather and make sense of the data. TechRepublic's Karen Roby spoke with Joe Wolfel, co-CEO of Terradepth, about the company's ocean data-collection robot. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation. Karen Roby: I think this is a good way to…
Thursday, 13 May 2021 13:59
Stratosphere shrinkers
Thinning indicates a profound impact of humans and could affect satellites and GPS Humanity’s enormous emissions of greenhouse gases are shrinking the stratosphere, a new study has revealed. The thickness of the atmospheric layer has contracted by 400 metres since the 1980s, the researchers found and will thin by about another kilometre by 2080 without major cuts in emissions. The changes have the potential to affect satellite operations, the GPS…
