December 7, 2011

Good Morning,

Scientists at NASA have been tracking vegetation distribution in Quebec via satellite, and have found an increase in "greenness" due to climate change. Check out the details to this unique study in the second article.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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Images of 'vampire' star captured

MUNICH, Germany - European astronomers say they've obtained the best visual images ever of a star that has lost most of its material to a "vampire" companion. By combining the light captured by several telescopes at the European Southern Observatory Paranal site in Chile, they created a virtual telescope more than 450 feet across, with vision 50 times sharper than the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, and used it to capture images of the double star system SS Leporis, a release from ESO's Munich, Germany, headquarters said Wednesday. "The images are so sharp that we can not only watch the stars orbiting around each other, but also measure the size of the larger of the two stars," lead study author Nicolas Blind said. The two stars circle around each other in 260 days, at a distance only a little more than the distance between Earth and the sun. Because they are so close, the hotter and smaller of the two has already cannibalized about half the mass of the larger, cooler star. Surprisingly, astronomers said, the new images show the transfer of mass from one star to the other in this double system is gentler than expected. "We knew that this double star was unusual, and that material was flowing from one star to the other," co-author Henri Boffin from ESO said. "What we found, however, is that the way in which the mass transfer most likely took place is completely different from previous models of the process. The 'bite' of the vampire star is very gentle but highly effective."


Satellites show changing vegetation norms

GREENBELT, Md. - Scientists say satellite data show 20 years of warming temperatures in Quebec have resulted in an increase in the amount of shrubs and grasses. Researchers say NASA Landsat missions revealed increased vegetation in the north of the province between 1986 and 2004. The study is one of the first to present a detailed view of how warmer temperatures are influencing plant distribution and density in northern areas of North America, a NASA release said Thursday. "Unlike the decline of sea ice, which is a dramatic effect that we're seeing as a result of global warming, the changes in vegetation have been subtle," Jeff Masek, the program's project scientist, said. "For the first time, we've been able to map this change in detail, and it's because of the spatial resolution and length-of-record that you can get with Landsat," he said. By using Landsat's higher optical resolution and viewing the same area at the same time for 23 years, Masek and his colleagues were able to track the areas as they continued to show more "greenness" over the years. "It makes sense," Masek said. "This is how shrub encroaching occurs. They increase in size, they increase in density, and then they move northward."


Mars rover finds more evidence of water

PASADENA, Calif. - The Opportunity Mars rover has found powerful evidence of liquid water activity on the planet's surface, NASA says. The rover has found and photographed bright veins of a mineral, apparently gypsum deposited by water, evidence of a past wet environment on Mars, a NASA release said Thursday. "This tells a slam-dunk story that water flowed through underground fractures in the rock," Steve Squyres of Cornell University said. "This stuff is a fairly pure chemical deposit that formed in place right where we see it," said Squyres, principal investigator for Opportunity. "That can't be said for other gypsum seen on Mars or for other water-related minerals Opportunity has found. It's not uncommon on Earth, but on Mars, it's the kind of thing that makes geologists jump out of their chairs." The vein of gypsum, or calcium sulphate, is about the width of a human thumb and 16 to 20 inches long, protruding slightly from the bedrock on either side of it. "To me, this is the single most powerful piece of evidence for liquid water at Mars that has been discovered by the Opportunity rover," Squyres said. "This stuff formed right here. There was a fracture in the rock, water flowed through it, gypsum was precipitated from the water. End of story. There's no ambiguity."


Study of ancient climate yields warning

SAN FRANCISCO - Earth's paleoclimate history suggests rapid climate changes, including sea level rise, may occur if global warming is not abated, U.S. researchers say. James E. Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies looked at how Earth's climate responded to past natural changes to answer a fundamental question raised by ongoing climate change: "What is the dangerous level of global warming?" While some international leaders have suggested a goal of limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial times to avert catastrophic change, Hansen said a warming of 2 degrees C would lead to drastic changes such as significant ice sheet loss in Greenland and Antarctica. Hansen made his remarks at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco Tuesday. Hansen compared the current climate with previous similar "interglacial" epochs when polar ice caps existed but glaciers did not dominate the world. Hansen found global mean temperatures during the Eemian period, which began about 130,000 years ago and lasted about 15,000 years, were less than 1 degree Celsius warmer than today but still caused sea level rises of 13 to 20 feet. "The paleoclimate record reveals a more sensitive climate than thought, even as of a few years ago. Limiting human-caused warming to 2 degrees is not sufficient," Hansen said. "It would be a prescription for disaster."

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