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Content about earth and climate science

April 18, 2012
Carbon dioxide came before ice age melt

High performance computing helps scientists answer the question: What came first - greenhouse gases or global warming?

April 18, 2012
Clearing up a cloudy view on cloud formation

Researchers review computer simulations in combination with two decades of observations to get a fix on cloud formation.

April 18, 2012
Preparing for wildfires

Video courtesy of Los Alamos National Laboratory.

April 4, 2012
Engineers enlist weather model to optimize offshore wind plan

By running a sophisticated weather model on supercomputers, environmental engineers have defined optimal placement of a grid of four wind farms off the US East Coast. The model successfully balances production at times of peak demand and significantly reduces costly spikes and zero-power events.

April 4, 2012
The Perpetual Ocean

Image courtesy of NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center.

Not all visualizations are created equal. Some stand out for their elegance in conveying information efficiently. Others are outstanding for the beauty they achieve without abandoning the goal of conveying information.

March 21, 2012
Pocket-sized sensors bring earthquake science to schools

In a project that could set an example for other earthquake-prone areas, high school students in Taiwan are now taught how to install low-cost seismic sensors at home and school. Scientists use them to offer students hands-on learning in geosciences and cloud computing.

March 14, 2012
Forecasting the success of wind farms

How much electricity can a wind turbine produce? Finding the answer requires studying at least wind patterns and air turbulance, and weather data sets can be huge.

Professor of Scientific Computation Ashraf Hussein writes about how his team used massively parallel high performance computing to address this problem in Egypt.

March 7, 2012
The Delta community in 2100

The Delta community in 2100 if no action is taken. Image courtesy UBC.

February 8, 2012
Blowing up asteroids

Who could forget the 1998 blockbuster movie Armageddon? When an asteroid the size of Texas is discovered heading straight for Earth, NASA sends a bunch of blue-collar drillers to drill into its core to detonate a nuclear device from within.

Unfortunately for the aspiring space cowboys among us, Armageddon probably wasn’t scientifically correct. According to Robert Weaver, a researcher at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, a blast from the surface is enough to destroy Earth-threatening asteroids.

February 8, 2012
Tying the Sun together

Solar flares affect us on Earth in a variety of ways, ranging from disrupted telecommunications to the beauty of the aurora borealis. But what do they mean for the sun?

January 25, 2012
Protecting Portugal's Aveiro Lagoon

To help preserve a Portugese national treasure, researchers have created a detailed simulation of the Aveiro Lagoon ecosystem.

December 14, 2011
Finding extreme weather events in climate models

Scientists automate the search for hurricanes and other storms in massive datasets.

December 14, 2011
The forecast: no fire for tomorrow

November 2, 2011
Museum brings prehistoric animals back to life

October 19, 2011
Synchronizing Antarctic sea ice models with measurements

Most researchers blame the hole in the ozone layer for the mysterious growth in Antarctic sea ice. But more detailed simulations suggest that the cause may be more complex.

October 5, 2011
Wildlife on candid camera

The TEAM Network aims to serve as nature's early warning system for tropical regions. Sites scattered across the globe gather data for researchers to access and analyze through a distributed computing architecture. Recent results of the first global camera trap study of mammals confirmed suspicions that  habitat loss is having a direct effect on the survival and diversity of mammals.