The Time Is Now, Climate Experts Warn

Earlier this week, renowned NASA climate scientist James Hansen warned Congress of the dangers of climate change, exactly 20 years after he did so for the first time.

The message he delivered was almost the same as it was in 1988, but there was one key difference: "The difference is that now we have used up all slack in the schedule for actions needed to defuse the global warming time bomb," he said.

Hansen's message painted a stark and urgent picture of a world already past the point where significant damage would occur. Discovery News wanted to know if other scientists shared his view. Are we really in for it and at what point? What are our options for avoiding the worst?

Earth's Carbon Budget

Hansen argued this week that the "safe level of atmospheric carbon dioxide is no more than 350 ppm (parts per million), and it may be less." This recommended level is less than the amount currently in the atmosphere -- 385 ppm. It may also be less than the commonly discussed stabilization target of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) of temperature increase, which probably corresponds to an atmospheric CO2 concentration of about 350-400 ppm.

Already, he argued, arid lands are expanding, glaciers are receding, and Arctic sea ice is shrinking, driven by cycles of positive feedback, where melting leads to more warming of the exposed dark ocean water, which leads to more melting.

"As a result, without any additional greenhouse gases, the Arctic soon will be ice-free in the summer," Hansen said.

To forest ecologist Lee Frelich at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, Hansen's argument that a lower stabilization target is safer makes sense.

"If you look at the paleological record, in the last interglacial period 110,000 to 120,000 years ago, the world was thought to have a climate that was two degrees warmer than today," Frelich said. "The oceans were 20 to 25 feet higher, but CO2 was only 290 ppm. I've always thought that if a CO2 content of 290 could cause that, why won't it do it now? Maybe there's just a lag time."

"I'm sympathetic to a more aggressive goal," said glaciologist Jay Zwally of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "The goal that people have adopted of keeping it to a total of two degrees [Celsius] rise since the preindustrial is still going to allow enough warming that we'll have an even more significant impact than we've already seen," he said.

While other scientists agree that 350 ppm is a safer target that increases the likelihood we will avoid many of the negative effects of climate change, some also think it's unrealistic.

"Three hundred and fifty is impossible," said climatologist Stephen Schneider of Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. "We're going to overshoot 350 and 450 and probably 550, though I sure hope not."

Schneider's hope is that while it might still be 20 years before actions to reduce CO2 emissions really have an effect, innovations over the next two decades will make it possible to dramatically reduce emissions.

"My cynical scenario is that there will be more Katrinas, massive fires, melting of the Arctic, and people will say, 'Oh my God, what have we done. We'd better undo this,'" he said. Such catastrophes could finally spark the dramatic change that's needed, he suggests, if we don't take action sooner of our own accord.

"I try not to talk about a threshold of two degrees," Schneider added. "At 1.8 the world is not fine. At 2.2, we don't turn into a climatic pumpkin. We just have more severe events. The object is not to get hung up on the numbers. The object is to get out there and get solutions."

Others agreed.

Nevermind the Tipping Point

"Time is of the essence here. I don't know if targets like 350 ppm are that useful," said John Harte of the University of California, Berkeley. "We can't make a regulation on something we can't control. We don't regulate temperature, and we don't even regulate the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. However, we control what our automobiles look like. We control the efficiency of our devices. We control what our energy looks like."

"I'm not so enthused about the concept of the tipping point," he added. "My view is that we've probably passed some tipping points. We've entered some realms of irreversibility. There are probably many more, but we don't know where they are."

"We know that if we don't take action, it will be a disaster," he said. "That's all we need to know."

Whether they focused on thresholds or not, the scientists all agreed that the problem is urgent and that not doing anything will lead to disaster: rising sea levels, food shortages, spread of infectious diseases and extinctions.

Starting From Here...

Hansen argued that to achieve the target of 350 ppm, we need to put a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants and phase out burning coal without capturing and storing the carbon.

While scientists agree that coal is a huge part of the problem, they also emphasized the need to apply every available sensible strategy to address the problem.

"There seems to be an emphasis on coal and a distraction from other things we can be doing as well," NASA's Zwally said.

"Some people think that climate change is just about saving a few rare species, and it's just environmentalists making a fuss," Frelich said. "That's really not it."

"It's really about the quality of life for people," he continued. The Earth has been through many big changes before. There have been big extinctions, and new species have evolved to fill the ecosystems. It's not a big deal to the Earth's ecosystems, but it will be a really big deal for the quality of life of humans."

Frelich points out that right now the best soil for growing crops in the United States aligns ideally with the right climate for agriculture. But if the favorable climate moves north, it will be over Canada in an area where bedrock lies at the surface, stripped of soil by the last glaciation.

"If the best climate for growing crops lines up with the Canadian shield, that's an issue for people," he adds.

The scientists also pointed out that countries that tackle this most aggressively will be the winners, regardless of what other nations have committed to.

"The economic giants of the rest of this century are going to be the nations that are selling wind turbines and solar panels and efficient cars to the rest of the world," said Harte. "I would think we'd want to be the leader in that."

"Solving this problem is technologically and economically not that difficult," Harte added. "It's proving to be politically difficult."

credited to Discovery News

First hurricane of the 2008 Atlantic storm season - Hurricane Bertha

Hurricane Bertha strengthened again into a Category 2 storm on Wednesday as it inched closer to Bermuda, but it remained uncertain whether the hurricane would actually strike the British mid-Atlantic colony, U.S. forecasters said.

The first hurricane of the 2008 Atlantic storm season surprised forecasters with the speed and vigor at which it strengthened into a "major" Category 3 hurricane on Monday, only to almost fizzle back into a tropical storm on Tuesday.

But warm waters and more favorable atmospheric wind conditions allowed the storm to once again gain traction and reach the second level on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

"Additional strengthening is forecast during the next 24 hours and Bertha could again become a major hurricane," the Miami-based center said in an advisory.

Hurricanes of Category 3 and above are called "major" hurricanes and are the strongest and most destructive. Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in 2005, was a monstrous Category 5 storm in the Gulf of Mexico before coming ashore as a Category 3.

Hurricane Bertha's top sustained winds had reached 105 miles per hour by 5 p.m. EDT, the hurricane center said.

The storm was around 600 miles southeast of Bermuda, a wealthy finance center whose 66,000 people are regarded as among the most storm-conscious and whose building codes rank among the strictest in the region.

It was moving northwest near 12 mph and was expected to slow down and turn north on a course that would take it well to the east of Bermuda. Bermuda, though, still needed to keep an eye on Bertha, the hurricane center said.

It was highly unlikely that the storm would target the U.S. East Coast, hurricane experts said, and the Gulf of Mexico, where the United States produces a third of its domestic crude oil, has been out of the firing line for days.

Bertha developed last week near the Cape Verde islands off Africa.

Its formation so far east so early in the season that began on June 1 and its explosive growth from a tropical storm into a major hurricane could be seen as harbingers of a busy summer.

Hurricane experts have predicted the six-month season, which rarely gets into high gear before August, would see an average or above-average number of storms, though nothing like record-busting 2005, when 28 formed.

credited to newsdaily.com and reuters.com

Arctic ice melting at record speed

Tens of thousands of years ago, "armadas of ice" crumbled off of the ice sheet covering North America into the Atlantic Ocean. Meanwhile, thousands of miles away on the other side of the continent, icebergs calved off of another ice sheet into the Pacific.

Their synchrony -- just uncovered by new research -- suggests the events might be connected in a long-distance domino effect. The fact that melting at one location may influence ice sheets afar may be useful in understanding the behavior of ice today, according to the study's authors.

"What it is saying is that these ice sheets are connected," said lead author Ingrid Hendy of the University of Michigan. "If we melt Greenland, we could raise sea level and affect Antarctica. Or, if we melt Greenland, we can affect the tidewater glaciers up in Alaska."

Hendy and colleagues analyzed a sediment core collected off the western coast of Vancouver Island, in southern British Columbia. They analyzed the grain sizes of the sand and pebbles in the 130-foot core, using zooplankton remains to determine the date when the debris was deposited. The team published their results in Paleoceanography.

Because the core was taken offshore, past where waves could carry large particles of sand, large debris inside it is assumed to come from an iceberg -- laden with larger sand and pebbles trapped in the ice -- that floated out to sea and melted overhead, dropping the grains to the sea floor.

Such events in the sediment record indicate times when icebergs calved off a nearby ice sheet, in this case the Cordilleran Ice Sheet, which grew down from Alaska into northern Washington, reaching its maximum size 17,500 years ago.

Hendy identified three calving events, but they did not occur in synchrony with major climate swings in the Pacific.

"I was anticipating that I'd see the ice sheets responding to the rapid climate events," Hendy said. "What I found was that the ice sheet doesn't really care."

But the two major events both coincided with enormous so-called Heinrich events approximately 16,000 and 47,000 years ago, when huge numbers of icebergs broke off of the Laurentide Ice Sheet, which covered most of Canada and much of the northern United States, into the north Atlantic.

"Heinrich events are armadas of ice," said John Clague of Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, who was not a part of the study. "They are massive discharges of ice."

Hendy proposes two explanations for how the Heinrich events in the north Atlantic may have influenced melting in of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet in the Pacific.

One possibility is that the Heinrich events triggered sea-level rise, which caused the margins of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet to float up and destabilize.

However, there is no strong evidence that a change in sea level occurred at these times. "But there's something going on then, because the corals don't seem to be growing," Hendy said.

Another possibility, she said, is that continental temperatures had increased, especially in summertime, leading to calving from both ice sheets.

"If you warm up the North American continent, you connect the Laurentide to the Cordilleran," she said.

"The relation between the events in the west and the east is good enough that coincidences and accidents won't work," said Richard Alley of Pennsylvania State University in State College, "but I'm not positive whether one can tell whether the [ice debris] is a warming or a cooling signal in the west, or maybe a sea-level signal."

Alley thinks sea level is least likely.

Understanding the connection between the ice sheets could be helpful for predicting what will happen under today's climate change.

"We know that our climate models now can't predict the full amount of climate change that we see," Hendy said, "If we know what the connections were in the past, we could say whether they would happen again."

credited to discovery.com

Rising Mississippi River threatens Midwestern towns

A small Illinois town was evacuated this morning after a levee breach along the Mississippi River. About 50 people in Meyer, Ill., have had to leave their homes.

The evacuation order is likely not the last in Illinois or in neighbouring states. Towns along the Mississippi River were bracing for more floods Wednesday.

The Mississippi broke through a levee near Gulfport, Ill., Tuesday, covering about 5,000 acres in the region. The floodwaters got so dangerous for boats in the area, that officials used a helicopter to rescue at least three people.

The surging water in the town was just the latest in a spate of floods to hit the region over the past several days.

About 25,000 people left their homes in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, after floodwaters there rushed through large parts of the city, damaging buildings and water treatment plants throughout the region.

The rising Mississippi will likely threaten communities in several states for the rest of the week, leaving many residents on edge. Lois Russell, 83, a Gulfport resident, says he was forced out of his farmhouse after 57 years.

"What else am I going to do? Where else am I going to go," he asked.

Other communities are preparing to follow Gulfport's lead. Officials in towns along the Mississippi are considering evacuation plans and have bolstered defences against rising floodwaters. In Clarksville, Mo., the U.S. National Guard, students, inmates, and residents have been sandbagging around historic buildings and businesses to minimize damage.

However, the potential damage may not be as bad in this round of floods than in the past. Over the past few years, the federal government has bought out homes in some of the most vulnerable flood areas. But not everyone has sold their properties to move to higher ground.

The Mayor of Chelsea, Iowa, says residents in the area have learned to cope.

"For the most part, it's another flood," Roger Ochs said. "For Chelsea, it's more of an inconvenience

The National Weather Service fears the worst may yet be ahead for some communities along the Mississippi. Officials say the river near Canton, Mo., may reach 8.5 metres Thursday. That's four metres above the flood stage. Crests near the towns of Quincy, Ill., and Hannibal, Mo., are expected to be about 4.5 metres above the flood stage.

The flooding in eastern Iowa and surrounding areas has already caused US$1.5 billion in damages.

credited to CTV.ca

Hawaii hopes to boost tourism with $3 million campaign

HONOLULU (AP) — The Hawaii Visitors & Convention Bureau has launched a $3 million advertising campaign aimed at luring travelers amid a sagging economy and major cutbacks in the airline industry.

The recently launched campaign highlights discounted air and hotel packages to convince Americans that they can still afford to come to Hawaii despite rising travel costs.

The ads have begun appearing on Internet travel sites such as Travelocity and Expedia as well as the Web pages of major airlines, such as United and American.

The bureau is also buying full-page ads in the Sunday travel sections of West Coast newspapers in addition to radio and television spots in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Hawaii saw a 15% decline in the number of visitors from the U.S. West in April compared with the same month in 2007. Tourism officials blame the steep drop partly on the closures of Aloha and ATA airlines.

Aloha stopped service to and from and mainland March 30, while ATA's last flight was April 3. The closures resulted in the loss of 1.1 million air seats — roughly 15% of the seats between Hawaii and the mainland — and prompted other airlines to raise fares.

The money for the ads comes from a $5 million emergency fund authorized by the legislature to help boost tourism. Overall, visitor arrivals in April fell 8% compared to the same month last year while hotel occupancy dropped to 69.5%, the lowest percentage for any April since 2003.

The visitor numbers are expected to be down 3% overall this year compared to 2007, according to the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism.

"The concern was that (travelers) were going to shop and see this brick wall of airfares ... and maybe do a drive vacation or ... go to a competitor destination," said Jay Talwar, HVCB's senior vice president for marketing.

He said tourism officials worked with travel wholesalers to offer discounts on airfare inclusive packages. The discounts range from $200 to $1,000.

John Monahan, president of the bureau, said tourism destinations across the country are facing a crisis of rising oil prices that are pushing airfares higher.

"All a destination can do in a crisis like this ... is try to drive demand for your destination," he said.

credited to usatoday and Associated Press

Before & After: 3rd Largest Rain Forest Vanishing Fast

Satellite images show Papua New Guinea's Gulf Province rain forest intact in 1988 (left) and laid bare by logging in 2002. The images were released this week as part of a new study.

At the current rate of destruction, 53 percent of the country's rain forest—said to be the world's third largest—will disappear by 2021, according to the study of three decades of satellite imagery. Between 1972 and 2002 alone, 19.8 million acres (8 million hectares) were lost.

"It was previously thought that PNG had a very low or nonexistent rate of deforestation and degradation," study co-author Phil Shearman, of the University of Papua New Guinea, told Britain's Telegraph newspaper.

"Our study is making it reasonably clear that's not the case—indeed PNG is losing its rain forest at rates comparable to that of the Congo and to that of the Amazon."

Along with trees, unique animals and plants are expected to vanish. And because trees absorb the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, the deforestation could encourage global warming.

Twenty-two million tons of carbon will be released from Papua New Guinea's forests this year as a result of logging-industry action—approximately the equivalent of the annual output of all carbon from the cars in Australia, the report's authors said.

Lee Tan of the Australian Conservation Foundation, said, "We can very confidently predict that if more of the forests are cut, there will be erosion, there will be landslides, lives lost and other calamities"—not to mention the potential loss of species diversity.

"We fear logging and other forms of degradation are wiping out the forests before we even know what is there," Tan said.

Papua New Guinean officials have proposed that the international community pay the country for preserving the forest and that loggers plant three trees for every one they remove.

credited to Associated Press

Aerial images prove existence of remote Amazon tribe

Deep in the Amazon jungle, one of the Brazil's last uncontacted indigenous tribes has been photographed from the air, to prove its existence.

The pictures show tribesmen, painted red from head to toe, preparing to defend themselves with longbows against the aircraft carrying out the photography.

The images, taken by the Brazil's department for Indian affairs (Funai), reveal a number of thatched roof huts in a small clearing in the forest, in the western Amazon, close to Envira, which is not far from the border with Peru.

Funai warned that logging in the region threatened the existence of the few remaining uncontacted indigenous communities.

"We did the overflight to show their houses, to show they are there, to show they exist," said Jose Carlos dos Reis Meirelles, an expert on uncontacted tribes at Funai. "This is very important because there are some who doubt their existence."

Meirelles said the tribe lived in six small communities, each with about six communal houses, in an area known as the Terra Indigena Kampa e Isolados do Envira.

He added that other uncontacted groups on the Peruvian side of the border, who have also been photographed by experts, were being pushed from their homes by illegal logging.

"What is happening in this region [of Peru] is a monumental crime against the natural world, the tribes, the fauna, and is further testimony to the complete irrationality with which we, the civilised ones, treat the world," Meirelles said.

Loggers, often prepared to kill as they move into new areas, have forced uncontacted tribes from Peru into Brazil. The area is regularly full of smoke from the burning of recently-logged areas.

The Brazilian government has a policy of not contacting the few tribes which are untouched by the outside world and whose way of life has apparently changed little in thousands of years. It is not known to which tribe they belonged, Funai said.

It is understood that when the plane first overflew the village, the people scattered into the forest. When it returned a few hours later they had painted themselves red and fired arrows into the sky.

"They must have suffered some sort of trauma in the past and must know that contact is not a good thing," Fiona Watson, of Survival International, said.

Her organisation estimates that there are around 100 similar groups around the world in places like Brazil, the Andaman Islands and New Guinea.

"All of them face a common threat. Their lands are increasingly being encroached upon by loggers, oil companies and so on. They are under threat of violence. We know of past cases where 50% of the community has been lost within 12 months of initial contact [with the outside world]," she told the BBC's Today programme.

She welcomed the Brazilian policy of not contacting groups and attempting to demarcate lands to prevent unrestrained land-grabbing.

credited to guardian.co.uk

Erupting volcano prompts new evacuation in Chile

PUERTO MONTT, Chile, May 5, 2008 (Reuters) — Chile prepared to evacuate another town in its remote Patagonian south on Monday, as ash spewed from a snowcapped volcano for a fourth day after its first eruption in thousands of years.

President Michelle Bachelet made her way to the small town of Futaleufu, the second town to be evacuated, as residents packed what belongings they could carry.

The town lies around 810 miles south of the capital Santiago and 100 miles southeast of the erupting Chaiten volcano, which is some distance from Chile's vital mining industry.

On Friday, Chaiten volcano erupted, forming a mushroom cloud as ash shot high into the sky. It continued to belch hot gas and ash on Monday, sending sooty emissions as far as neighboring Argentina.

Chilean authorities were caught off-guard by the eruption of a volcano long considered inactive. No lava flow has been detected, but experts have not ruled out the possibility of a more violent eruption.

"We are not sure what is going to happen with the volcano," Bachelet told reporters in the southern town of Puerto Montt, where many of the 4,200 people evacuated from the town of Chaiten are staying.

"We don't know if it will continue to spew ash, we don't know if lava will appear, and for that reason, we have taken precautionary measures, which is early evacuation," she added.

The National Emergency Office said a few of Futaleufu's 1,000 or so residents had crossed into neighboring Argentina, where some areas have also been showered with ash and where authorities last week closed schools and treated some for breathing problems.

Bachelet urged those in the affected area to protect their eyes and wear masks to avoid inhaling the ash.

The ash is in more than 6 inches thick in some places, coating houses, vehicles, trees and water supplies. It has also covered animal fodder.

Bachelet said around 25,000 head of cattle in the area were in serious danger of dying. The navy shipped in some fresh feed and planned to remove some animals on the return leg.

An elderly woman died from a heart attack as she was evacuated from Chaiten on Sunday, local media reported.

There is no record of the volcano erupting in the last 2,000 years, according to Sernageomin, a government mining and geology agency.

Luis Lara, a geologist at the agency who specializes in volcanoes, said the eruption was a reasonably major one and could get worse.

Worst case scenarios included a possible collapse of the volcano, which could trigger lava flows, or the explosion of the peak of its dome, he said.

Southern Chile is fragmented into hundreds of small islands and fjords. Some residents had never ventured from Chaiten until the 3,280-foot (1,000-meter) volcano six miles away forced them to go.

Chile has the world's second most active string of volcanoes behind Indonesia.

credited to reuters and newsdaily

Heavy Rain Floods South America

Two months after intense rains began to pound much of South America, rivers along the northwest coast of Peru remained flooded. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured the top image of the flooded river systems on April 1, 2008. Streams and pools of dark blue water dominate what was a tan-pink desert in early February, immediately before the rains began.

The images show the Sechura Desert in northwestern Peru near the border with Ecuador. The large image shows additional flooding extending north into Ecuador. To increase the contrast between muddy water and land, which often look the same in photo-like images, the image was made with both visible and infrared light. This false-color combination colors water black and dark blue and bare or sparsely vegetated earth tan. Plant-covered land is green, and clouds are turquoise and white.

Floods throughout Peru damaged farmland, homes, and transportation networks, reported the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. On February 28, the government of Peru declared a state of emergency in Piura and Lambayeque, the regions included in this image, and in Tumbes, the region immediately north of the area shown, and in Ucayali, a region in central Peru along the Brazilian border. More than 450,000 people were affected by flooding throughout Peru as of March 12, said the United Nations.

credited to nasa.gov

Study shows life was tough for ancient Egyptians

CAIRO, Mar. 30, 2008 (Reuters) — New evidence of a sick, deprived population working under harsh conditions contradicts earlier images of wealth and abundance from the art records of the ancient Egyptian city of Tell el-Amarna, a study has found.

Tell el-Amarna was briefly the capital of ancient Egypt during the reign of the pharaoh Akhenaten, who abandoned most of Egypt's old gods in favor of the Aten sun disk and brought in a new and more expressive style of art.

Akhenaten, who ruled Egypt between 1379 and 1362 BC, built and lived in Tell el-Amarna in central Egypt for 15 years. The city was largely abandoned shortly after his death and the ascendance of the famous boy king Tutankhamun to the throne.

Studies on the remains of ordinary ancient Egyptians in a cemetery in Tell el-Amarna showed that many of them suffered from anemia, fractured bones, stunted growth and high juvenile mortality rates, according to professors Barry Kemp and Jerome Rose, who led the research.

Rose, a professor of anthropology in the University of Arkansas in the United States, said adults buried in the cemetery were probably brought there from other parts of Egypt.

"This means that we have a period of deprivation in Egypt prior to the Amarna phase," he told an audience of archaeologists and Egyptologists in Cairo on Thursday evening.

"So maybe things were not so good for the average Egyptian and maybe Akhenaten said we have to change to make things better," he said.

Kemp, director of the Amarna Project which seeks in part to increase public knowledge of Tell el-Amarna and surrounding region, said little attention has been given to the cemeteries of ordinary ancient Egyptians.

"A very large number of ordinary cemeteries have been excavated but just for the objects and very little attention has been paid for the human remain," he told Reuters.

"The idea of treating the human remains ... to study the overall health of the population is relatively new."

Paintings in the tombs of the nobles show an abundance of offerings, but the remains of ordinary people tell a different story.

Rose displayed pictures showing spinal injuries among teenagers, probably because of accidents during construction work to build the city.

The study showed that anemia ran at 74 percent among children and teenagers, and at 44 percent among adults, Rose said. The average height of men was 159 cm (5 feet 2 inches) and 153 cm among women.

"Adult heights are used as a proxy for overall standard of living," he said. "Short statures reflect a diet deficient in protein. ... People were not growing to their full potential."

Kemp said he believed further excavations in Tell el-Amarna would "firm-up" the conclusions of his team.

"We are seeing a more realistic picture of what life was like," he told Reuters. "It has nothing to do with the intentions of Akhenaten, which may have been good and paternal toward his people."

credited to reuters

Avalanches On Mars Photographed By NASA Spacecraft

The High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took the photograph Feb. 19. It is one of approximately 2,400 HiRISE images being released today.

Ingrid Daubar Spitale of the University of Arizona, Tucson, who works on targeting the camera and has studied hundreds of HiRISE images, was the first person to notice the avalanches. "It really surprised me," she said. "It's great to see something so dynamic on Mars. A lot of what we see there hasn't changed for millions of years."

The camera is looking repeatedly at selected places on Mars to track seasonal changes. However, the main target of the Feb. 19 image was not the steep slope.

"We were checking for springtime changes in the carbon-dioxide frost covering a dune field, and finding the avalanches was completely serendipitous," said Candice Hansen, deputy principal investigator for HiRISE, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

The full image reveals features as small as a desk in a strip of terrain 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) wide and more than 10 times that long, at 84 degrees north latitude. Reddish layers known to be rich in water ice make up the face of a steep slope more than 700 meters (2,300 feet) tall, running the length of the image.

"We don't know what set off these landslides," said Patrick Russell of the University of Berne, Switzerland, a HiRISE team collaborator. "We plan to take more images of the site through the changing Martian seasons to see if this kind of avalanche happens all year or is restricted to early spring."

More ice than dust probably makes up the material that fell from the upper portion of the scarp. Imaging of the site during coming months will track any changes in the new deposit at the base of the slope. That will help researchers estimate what proportion is ice.

"If blocks of ice broke loose and fell, we expect the water in them will be changing from solid to gas," Russell said. "We'll be watching to see if blocks and other debris shrink in size. What we learn could give us a better understanding of one part of the water cycle on Mars."

Another notable HiRISE image released today shows a blue crescent Earth and its moon, as seen by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The west coast of South America is visible in the photo. Still other images allow viewers to explore a wide variety of Martian terrains, such as dramatic canyons and rhythmic patterns of sand dunes.

The camera is one of six science instruments on the orbiter. The spacecraft reached Mars in March 2006 and has returned more data than all other current and past missions to Mars combined.

"Our Mars program is the envy of the world," said Alan Stern, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. "We plan to launch a total of five more missions in the next decade, beginning with the Mars Science Lab rover next year and a Mars Aeronomy Scout mission in 2011."

The avalanche image, other selected images, and additional information about the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter are online at http://www.nasa.gov/mro . All the newly posted and previously posted images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment are available online at http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu .

The MRO mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, Colo., is the prime contractor for the project and built the spacecraft. The University of Arizona operates the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera, which was built by Ball Aerospace and Technology Corp., Boulder, Colo.

credited to jpl.nasa.gov

New Dinosaur Species Found In Montana

A dinosaur skeleton found 24 years ago near Choteau has finally been identified as a new species that links North American dinosaurs with Asian dinosaurs. The dinosaur would have weighed 30 to 40 pounds, walked on two feet and stood about three feet tall. The fossil came from sediment that's about 80 million years old.

A paper on the finding was published in September's issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, co-author Jack Horner said Friday after returning from Mongolia where he and his crew found 80 dinosaurs in a week. Horner is curator of paleontology at Montana State University's Museum of the Rockies. The paper's lead author was Brenda Chinnery, a former postdoctoral researcher with Horner.

Horner said he found the nearly-complete skeleton in 1983, but it was located in extremely hard rock and took a long time to prepare. He also had to wait about two decades before he found an expert who could identify it. That expert was Chinnery, who specializes in horned dinosaurs. Chinnery had worked for one of Horner's colleagues at Johns Hopkins University and then came to MSU. She left MSU about two years ago and is now a paleontologist at the University of Texas.

"I knew it was probably a new dinosaur, but it took someone that really knew what they were doing to be able to describe it," Horner said.

The dinosaur fossil has been stored in the Museum of the Rockies since its discovery, but it will be displayed this winter, Horner said. The skeleton has a reddish tinge because some of the original bone was replaced by jasper. It dates to the early part of the Late Cretaceous Period.

The dinosaur, nicknamed Cera, was named Cerasinops hodgskissi after landowner Wilson Hodgskiss. who gave him permission to collect the skeleton for the Museum of the Rockies, Horner said. The fossil was found about five miles south of Choteau, in a different area than the famed Egg Mountain site.

The C. hodgskissi is such a simple specimen that it's hard to describe in terms of distinguishing characteristics, Horner said. Tests, however, showed that it represents a very primitive species that shares characteristics of Neo-ceratopsian dinosaurs in North America and Asia. Ceratopsian dinosaurs have horns, but these do not.

Horner said he was looking at even more primitive dinosaurs on his recent trip to Mongolia. His team collected more than 80 skeletons, with 70 of them coming from one site. Last year, they collected 67 skeletons at the same site. The Mongolian project is a joint research project between MSU and Mongolia's Science and Technology University.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Montana State University and published by ScienceDaily LLC.

Arctic Sea Ice Minimum Shatters All-time Record Low, Report Scientists

Scientists from the University of Colorado at Boulder's National Snow and Ice Data Center said today that the extent of Arctic sea ice appears to have reached its minimum for 2007 on Sept. 16, shattering all previous lows since satellite record-keeping began nearly 30 years ago.

The Arctic sea ice extent on Sept. 16 stood at 1.59 million square miles, or 4.13 million square kilometers, as calculated using a five-day running average, according to the team. Compared to the long-term minimum average from 1979 to 2000, the new minimum extent was lower by about 1 million square miles -- an area about the size of Alaska and Texas combined, or 10 United Kingdoms, they reported.

The minimum also breaks the previous minimum set on Sept. 20 and Sept. 21 of 2005 by about 460,000 square miles, an area roughly the size of Texas and California combined, or five United Kingdoms, they found. The sea ice extent is the total area of all Arctic regions where ice covers at least 15 percent of the ocean surface.

Scientists blame the declining Arctic sea ice on rising concentrations of greenhouse gases that have elevated temperatures from 2 degrees F to 7 degrees F across the arctic and strong natural variability in Arctic sea ice, said the researchers.

The CU-Boulder research group said determining the annual minimum sea ice is difficult until the melt season has decisively ended. But the team has recorded five days of little change, and even slight gains in Arctic sea ice extent this September, so reaching a lower minimum for 2007 seems unlikely, they reported.

Arctic sea ice generally reaches its minimum extent in September and its maximum extent in March. The researchers used satellite data from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Department of Defense, as well as data from Canadian satellites and weather observatories for the study.

"The amount of ice loss this year absolutely stunned us because it didn't just beat all previous records, it completely shattered them," said CU-Boulder senior scientist Mark Serreze of NSIDC.

Spectacular Hubble Image Of Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1672

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has delivered an unrivalled snapshot of the nearby barred spiral galaxy NGC 1672. This remarkable image provides a high definition view of the galaxy’s large bar, its fields of star-forming clouds and dark bands of interstellar dust.

NGC 1672, visible from the Southern Hemisphere, is seen almost face on and shows regions of intense star formation. The greatest concentrations of star formation are found in the so-called starburst regions near the ends of the galaxy’s strong galactic bar. NGC 1672 is a prototypical barred spiral galaxy and differs from normal spiral galaxies in that the spiral arms do not twist all the way into the centre. Instead, they are attached to the two ends of a straight bar of stars enclosing the nucleus.

Astronomers believe that barred spirals have a unique mechanism that channels gas from the disk inwards towards the nucleus. This allows the bar portion of the galaxy to serve as an area of new star generation. It appears that the bars are short-lived, raising the question: will non-barred galaxies develop a bar in the future, or have they already hosted one that has disappeared?

In the new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, clusters of hot young blue stars form along the spiral arms, and ionize surrounding clouds of hydrogen gas that glow red. Delicate curtains of dust partially obscure and redden the light of the stars behind them. NGC 1672’s symmetric look is emphasised by the four principal arms, edged by eye-catching dust lanes that extend out from the centre.

Galaxies lying behind NGC 1672 give the illusion they are embedded in the foreground galaxy, even though they are really much farther away. They also appear reddened as they shine through NGC 1672’s dust. A few bright foreground stars inside our own Milky Way Galaxy appear in the image as bright, diamond-like objects.

NGC 1672 is a member of the family of Seyfert galaxies, named after the astronomer, Carl Keenan Seyfert, who studied a family of galaxies with active nuclei extensively in the 1940s. The energy output of these nuclei can sometimes outshine their host galaxies. The active galaxy family include the exotically named quasars and blazars. Although each type has distinctive characteristics, they are thought to be all driven by the same engine – supermassive black holes – but are viewed from different angles.

The new Hubble observations, performed with the Advanced Camera for Surveys aboard the observatory, have shed light on the process of starburst activity and on why some galaxies are ablaze with extremely active star formation.

NGC 1672 is more than 60 million light-years away in the direction of the Southern constellation of Dorado. These observations of NGC 1672 were taken with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys in August of 2005. This composite image contains filters that isolate light from the blue, green, and infrared portions of the spectrum, as well as emission from ionized hydrogen.

Amazing Ocean Facts

Deep Waters

The record for the deepest free dive is held by Jacques Mayol. He dove to an astounding depth of 282 feet without any breathing equipment.

The deepest spot on Earth, Challenger Deep, is 35,802 feet (11,034 m) deep. It is found in the Mariana Trench, one of the many deep valleys of the Pacific Ocean. The pressure here is over 8 tons per square inch.

Movie director James Cameron ventured to 12,378 feet below the surface of the Atlantic, in a submersible with a nine-inch-thick porthole, to film the movie "Titanic."

Tides

The highest tides on Earth are found in the Bay of Fundy east of New Brunswick, Canada. The channeling effect of the bay is responsible for the amazing difference between high tide and low tide, which, during spring tides, can reach 53.5 feet. This is almost as tall as a four-story building.

Amazing Features of the Ocean Floor

The longest mountain range on Earth is really the Mid-Ocean Ridge. It extends from the Arctic Ocean, down the middle of the Atlantic, winding into the Pacific Ocean.

The largest waterfall on Earth is actually underwater. It is found in the Denmark Strait, and slowly cascades downward for 2.2 miles. This is over three times as tall as Angel Falls, in Venezuela, which is the tallest land waterfall.

The tallest mountain on Earth is also (you guessed it!) partly underwater. Mauna Kea, an inactive volcanic island in Hawaii, stands 33,465 feet tall when measured from ocean floor to summit.

Ocean Water

The elements oxygen and hydrogen are 96.5% of ocean water. The other 3.5% is dissolved elements, such as chlorine, sodium, and other salts.

About 97% of all of the Earth's water is saltwater.

The oceans cover about 71% of Earth's surface.

The thermocline is an ocean zone in which the temperature drops very rapidly. It is usually found at around 300 to 800 meters deep, between the relatively warm surface zone and the cold deep zone. The thermocline blocks sonar, so it is a favorite hiding place of submarines.

The temperature of most ocean water is about 39 degrees Farenheit (4 degrees Celsius), which is just above freezing!

Global Warming Will Bring Violent Storms And Tornadoes, NASA Predicts

NASA scientists have developed a new climate model that indicates that the most violent severe storms and tornadoes may become more common as Earth's climate warms.

Previous climate model studies have shown that heavy rainstorms will be more common in a warmer climate, but few global models have attempted to simulate the strength of updrafts in these storms. The model developed at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies by researchers Tony Del Genio, Mao-Sung Yao, and Jeff Jonas is the first to successfully simulate the observed difference in strength between land and ocean storms and is the first to estimate how the strength will change in a warming climate, including "severe thunderstorms" that also occur with significant wind shear and produce damaging winds at the ground.

This information can be derived from the temperatures and humidities predicted by a climate computer model, according to the new study published on August 17 in the American Geophysical Union's Geophysical Research Letters. It predicts that in a warmer climate, stronger and more severe storms can be expected, but with fewer storms overall.

Global computer models represent weather and climate over regions several hundred miles wide. The models do not directly simulate thunderstorms and lightning. Instead, they evaluate when conditions are conducive to the outbreak of storms of varying strengths. This model first was tested against current climate conditions. It was found to represent major known global storm features including the prevalence of lightning over tropical continents such as Africa and, to a lesser extent, the Amazon Basin, and the near absence of lightning in oceanic storms.

The model then was applied to a hypothetical future climate with double the current carbon dioxide level and a surface that is an average of 5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the current climate. The study found that continents warm more than oceans and that the altitude at which lightning forms rises to a level where the storms are usually more vigorous.

These effects combine to cause more of the continental storms that form in the warmer climate to resemble the strongest storms we currently experience.

Lightning produced by strong storms often ignites wildfires in dry areas. Researchers have predicted that some regions would have less humid air in a warmer climate and be more prone to wildfires as a result. However, drier conditions produce fewer storms. "These findings may seem to imply that fewer storms in the future will be good news for disastrous western U.S. wildfires," said Tony Del Genio, lead author of the study and a scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York. "But drier conditions near the ground combined with higher lightning flash rates per storm may end up intensifying wildfire damage instead."

The central and eastern areas of the United States are especially prone to severe storms and thunderstorms that arise when strong updrafts combine with horizontal winds that become stronger at higher altitudes. This combination produces damaging horizontal and vertical winds and is a major source of weather-related casualties. In the warmer climate simulation there is a small class of the most extreme storms with both strong updrafts and strong horizontal winds at higher levels that occur more often, and thus the model suggests that the most violent severe storms and tornadoes may become more common with warming.

The prediction of stronger continental storms and more lightning in a warmer climate is a natural consequence of the tendency of land surfaces to warm more than oceans and for the freezing level to rise with warming to an altitude where lightning-producing updrafts are stronger. These features of global warming are common to all models, but this is the first climate model to explore the ramifications of the warming for thunderstorms.

Northwest Passage Opens: Arctic Sea Ice Reaches New Low

The area covered by sea ice in the Arctic has now (September 16, 2007) shrunk to its lowest level since satellite measurements began nearly 30 years ago, opening up the Northwest Passage – a long-sought short cut between Europe and Asia that has been historically impassable.

Leif Toudal Pedersen from the Danish National Space Centre said: "We have seen the ice-covered area drop to just around 3 million sq km which is about 1 million sq km less than the previous minima of 2005 and 2006. There has been a reduction of the ice cover over the last 10 years of about 100 000 sq km per year on average, so a drop of 1 million sq km in just one year is extreme.

"The strong reduction in just one year certainly raises flags that the ice (in summer) may disappear much sooner than expected and that we urgently need to understand better the processes involved."

Arctic sea ice naturally extends its surface coverage each northern winter and recedes each northern summer, but the rate of overall loss since 1978 when satellite records began has accelerated.

The most direct route of the Northwest Passage across northern Canada is now fully navigable, while the Northeast Passage along the Siberian coast remains only partially blocked. To date, the Northwest Passage has been predicted to remain closed even during reduced ice cover by multi-year ice pack – sea ice that survives one or more summers. However, according to Pedersen, this year’s extreme event has shown the passage may well open sooner than expected.

The previous record low was in 2005 when the Arctic area covered by sea ice was just 4 million sq km. Even then, the most direct Northwest Passage did not fully open.

The Polar Regions are very sensitive indicators of climate change. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change showed these regions are highly vulnerable to rising temperatures and predicted the Arctic would be virtually ice free by the summer of 2070. Still other scientists predict it could become ice free as early as 2040 due to rising temperatures and sea ice decline.

Because sea ice has a bright surface, the majority of solar energy that hits it is reflected back into space. When sea ice melts, the dark-coloured ocean surface is exposed. Solar energy is then absorbed rather than reflected, so the oceans get warmer and temperatures rise, making it difficult for new ice to form.

The Arctic is one of Earth’s most inaccessible areas, so obtaining measurements of sea ice was difficult before the advent of satellites. For more than 20 years, ESA has been providing satellite data to the cryosphere communities. Currently, ESA is contributing to the International Polar Year (IPY) – a large worldwide science programme focused on the Arctic and Antarctic.

Since 2006, ESA has supported Polar View, a satellite remote-sensing programme funded through the Earthwatch GMES Service Element (GSE) that focuses on the Arctic and the Antarctic.

In 2009, ESA will make another significant contribution to cryosphere research with the launch of CryoSat-2. The observations made over the three-year lifetime of the mission will provide conclusive evidence on the rates at which ice cover is diminishing.

Bird Completes Epic Flight Across The Pacific

A female bar-tailed godwit, a large, streamlined shorebird, has touched down in New Zealand following an epic, 18,000-mile-long (29,000 km) series of flights tracked by satellite, including the longest non-stop flight recorded for a land bird.

The U.S. Geological Survey's Alaska Science Center tracked the odyssey of the bird as part of an ongoing collaborative effort with colleagues in California and New Zealand. The scientists were hoping to better understand potential transmission of avian influenza by migratory birds.

The bird, dubbed "E7" after the tag on its upper leg, was captured along with 15 other godwits in New Zealand in early February 2007. There each bird was fitted with a small, battery-powered satellite transmitter. USGS scientists hoped the transmitters' batteries would last long enough to track the birds' northward migration to Alaska.

On March 17, E7 departed Miranda on the North Island of New Zealand and flew non-stop to Yalu Jiang, China, completing the 6,300-mile-long flight in about eight days. There she settled in for a 5-week-long layover before departing for the breeding grounds.

On the evening of May 1, she headed east out over the Sea of Japan and the North Pacific, eventually turning northeast towards Alaska, crossing the end of the Alaska Peninsula en route to her eventual nesting area on the Yukon-Kuskokwim River Delta in western Alaska. This flight was also accomplished non-stop, covering some 4,500 miles in five days.

E7 was then tracked to the coast of the Yukon Delta where she joined other godwits preparing for their return flight to New Zealand.

On the early morning of August 29, she took off southeast back across the Alaska Peninsula, went out over the vast North Pacific and headed towards the Hawaiian Islands. When less than a day's flight from the main Hawaiian Islands, she turned southwest, crossing the Hawaiian Archipelago over open ocean 125 miles west of Kauai, heading towards Fiji. She crossed the dateline about 300 miles north-northeast of Fiji, and then appeared to fly directly over or slightly west of Fiji, continuing south towards New Zealand.

In the early afternoon of September 7th she passed just offshore of North Cape, New Zealand, and then turned back southeast, making landfall in the late evening at the mouth of a small river, eight miles east of where she had been captured seven months earlier.

The last leg of E7's journey is the most extraordinary, entailing a non-stop flight of more than eight days and a distance of 7,200 miles, the equivalent of making a roundtrip flight between New York and San Francisco, and then flying back again to San Francisco without ever touching down.

Since they are land birds, godwits like E7 can't stop to eat or drink while flying over open-ocean. The constant flight speeds at which E7 was tracked by satellite indicate that she did not stop on land.

Godwits do not become adults until their 3rd or 4th year and many live beyond 20 years of age. If 18,000 miles is an average annual flight distance, then an adult godwit would fly some 288,000 miles in a lifetime.

The study that recorded E7's epic flight is a collaborative effort led jointly by USGS and Point Reyes Conservation Science, with cooperators from Massey University and Miranda Shorebird Centre, New Zealand, and The Global Flyway Network. The project is funded by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the USGS, Alaska Science Center, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Marine Team Finds Surprising Evidence Supporting A Great Biblical Flood

Did the great flood of Noah's generation really occur thousands of years ago? Was the Roman city of Caesarea destroyed by an ancient tsunami? Will pollution levels in our deep seas remain forever a mystery?

These are just a few of the questions that are being addressed by a new environmental marine research team from Tel Aviv University and the non-profit research and education organization, EcoOcean.

The team, headed by EcoOcean's Andreas Weil and Prof. Sven Beer of Tel Aviv University, are working to uncover new secrets about civilization and climate change from the depths of the sea floor. They are also a conducting a large-scale study on the health of the Mediterranean Sea with Ph.D. students they sponsor. The work is being done aboard "Mediterranean Explorer", a floating marine vessel.

"When I was looking for a partner, I needed to find a team of marine scientists who were leaders in their fields," says Weil, a Swedish environmental philanthropist who helped conceive and fund the idea of giving a free, floating marine research lab to any scientist who needed it. "I didn't want us to be just another Greenpeace group of environmental activists. My dream was to build the foremost research vessel for high-level scientific marine research. I wanted to be able to help provide hard scientific data and education about the real state of affairs of our oceans."

The first and only institution that came to mind was Tel Aviv University (TAU), internationally famous for its work in marine biology. "Besides being the only university in Israel that has a dedicated marine unit, its researchers are leaders not only in Israel, but the world," says Weil, who brought a crew of TAU scientists on board as EcoOcean advisors. They include Professors Yossi Loya, Micha Ilan, Yehuda Benayahu, and Sven Beer, with Beer appointed as the chief partner and chief scientific advisor for EcoOcean.

Climate, the marine environment, and the health of humanity are inexorably intertwined, says Beer. "Marine research is more important for the future of humanity than some people realize. Marine plants provide most of the oxygen that we breathe and regulate the climate more than any other ecosystem on the planet. In the face of global warming, it is critical that we understand our seas in order to sustain life as we know it."

Prof. Beer was part of the team on board "Mediterranean Explorer" that recently headed to the Black Sea off the coast of Turkey, the site where historians believe the great biblical flood occurred. EcoOcean and an international team believe they have found evidence to substantiate what is written in the Bible.

Says Weil, "We found that indeed a flood happened around that time. From core samples, we see that a flood broke through the natural barrier separating the Mediterranean Sea and the freshwater Black Sea, bringing with it seashells that only grow in a marine environment. There was no doubt that it was a fast flood -- one that covered an expanse four times the size of Israel. It might not have been Noah, as it is written in the Bible, but we believe people in that region had to build boats in order to save their animals from drowning. We think that the ones who survived were fishermen -- they already had the boats."

The action and adventure never seem to stop aboard "Mediterranean Explorer", which often plays host to visiting scientists from institutions abroad, including New York's Columbia University, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution near Boston, McMaster University in Canada, and Istanbul Technical University.

Next week the team will sail out to take underwater footage for evidence of an ancient tsunami thought to have destroyed the port city Caesarea generations ago. They will also be looking for deep-sea sea grasses, algae and sponges that had been observed earlier by researchers but were never properly investigated. "This is very interesting," says Weil, "because sea grasses are normally not found at these depths. Maybe one day one of these organisms can provide us with a new drug."

Dan Schaffer, the operations manager for EcoOcean and captain of the ship, has been working with EcoOcean for nearly four years. "I am doing a lot more than driving the boat," jokes Schaffer, who sums up the point of EcoOcean quite well. "The way I see it, we are working on three different venues. One is in education -- we are teaching children who will be our future environmental stewards. The second thing is that we have brought this research vessel to Israel and have created a platform that academics in Israel and abroad can use for maritime research. The third is that we have created a floating classroom for students in higher education. Not only can these students do science, but they learn how it is done properly in the field of oceanography."

Schaffer adds that EcoOcean is proving to be an important matchmaker to help scientists cross more than the great big seas. "Prof. Yehuda Benayahu from Tel Aviv University wanted to go to Eritrea to work on a joint project with Eritrea University," he relates. "We made that happen by bringing the know-how and encouraging USAID to supply the funding. It is a perfect story for how research between people and across continents should be done. We are looking forward to more international collaborations."

Crater Mystery Cracked in Michigan

Eighteen hundred million years ago, an area that now spans the U.S.-Canadian border near Lake Huron was battered by a rain of molten debris and mega-tsunamis caused by what is thought to be the second largest impact in Earth's history. But the source of that collision has long been a mystery.

Now, telltale signs of what's called the Sudbury impact of southern Ontario — including shocked quartz, once-molten rock spherules and extraterrestrial iridium — are ruling out a comet and making a strong argument that it was an asteroid that struck southern Canada all those eons ago.

"It was a Himalaya-sized object that slammed into the Earth," said geologist Peir Pufahl of Acadia University in Nova Scotia.

The asteroid was about a dozen miles across and flew through space at 45,000 miles per hour, he said. The crater it left behind is estimated to have been about 150 miles across and is a very unusual and important deposit of valuable metals ores. The largest on Earth is the Vredefort Crater in South Africa, at 190 miles across.

In the millions of years since then, the crater itself has been eroded and buried, and much of the more remote debris from the impact has done the same. Even the shape of the crater has changed as the crust has been pushed and pulled.

"The impact crater has been squashed into an east-west oval," Pufahl told Discovery News. "Some of [the fallout] is preserved a kilometer below the surface of the Earth."

In northern Michigan, across Lake Huron from the impact zone, Pufahl and his team drilled down into the Earth to find rocks containing signs of the impact. The most obvious were long, teardrop-shaped blobs in rocks that were once molten rock flying through the air just after the impact. They also found that the fallout material was quite jumbled.

"It looks like the impact caused a mega-tsunami that reworked deposits of the impact," said Pufahl. He and his team published their discovery in the September issue of the journal Geology.