Content about earth and climate science

Last week, over 1,600 delegates from across the globe gathered in Geneva, Switzerland, for 'the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) +10 High-Level Event'. A major report published at the event indicates that significant progress has been made over the last decade in increasing mobile cellular coverage, with all rural communities in the world likely to be covered by 2G mobile cellular signals by 2015. However, internet connectivity remains a challenge and access to broadband continues to be unequal.

One of Antarctica’s biggest ice streams, the Pine Island Glacier, may be in uncontrollable retreat, with the potential risk of raising global sea levels by up to 1 cm by the year 2031. Discover the role that high-performance computing played in enabling this research.

Last week, representatives of major research institutions and leading IT companies came to CERN for a data analytics workshop organized by CERN openlab.

Ever wondered what the climate would be like in Middle Earth, the fantasy land of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings? So did a researcher at the University of Bristol, UK. And he had access to a supercomputer...

Last month, the European Space Agency in Frascati, Italy, played host to an event titled ‘Big data from space’. Wolfgang Lengert, manager of two separate Earth-observation satellite missions at ESA, gives iSGTW his take on the event…

Horizon 2020, the European Commission’s next funding cycle, is set to launch in January 2014. With less than a year to go, you may be wondering: what is Horizon 2020? What makes it different to the frameworks that preceded it? And what are the implications, both for the e-infrastructure projects themselves and the researchers who benefit from them? e-Science Briefing’s Stefan Janusz gives an overview of the road ahead...

Despite global agreements to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases, current efforts may prove inadequate without more effective – and more affordable – carbon control technologies. A recent breakthrough means next generation carbon scrubbers may soon be at hand.

With preparations for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 5th Assessment Report now entering their final stages, find out how climate models have evolved in the last 40 years and how grid computing is helping to project future climate.

Eleni Katragkou, a climate scientist from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece, discussed many of these issues during an exciting plenary session at the recent EGI Community Forum 2013.

With access to significantly more computational power, researchers can provide more accurate earthquake predictions with the potential to save lives and minimize property damage. Read about advances in developing code to cut both research times and energy costs in simulating seismic hazards.

Predicting where and when tsunamis are likely to hit shore has the potential to save many lives. At last month's International Symposium for Grids and Cloud Computing in Taipei, Taiwan, researchers presented iCOMCOT, a web-based portal which can be used to model the progression of tsunamis as they approach land.

The University of Texas at Austin and TACC competed against the top supercomputing centers and universities to claim one of the most advanced systems in the world — and won. The prize, an estimated $50 million-plus investment over a four-year period.