Increasing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere may lead to a rise in the number of annual extreme precipitation events in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, which in turn could increase the frequency of flooding in California, a NASA-funded study finds.
A NASA-funded study uses a computer model to understand an observed link between winter and spring snowfall in the Western U.S. and El Ni?o Southern Oscillation. Almost 75 to 85 percent of water resources in the Western U.S come from snow that accumulates in the winter and early spring and melts as runoff in spring and summer. Understanding this connection and using it to predict future snowfall rates would greatly help both citizens and policy makers.
NASA today released the best “baby picture” of the Universe ever taken; the image contains such stunning detail that it may be one of the most important scientific results of recent years. Scientists used NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) to capture the new cosmic portrait, which reveals the afterglow of the big bang, a.k.a. the cosmic microwave background.
The unique capabilities of a NASA earth-observing satellite have allowed researchers to view the effects of a major earthquake that occurred in 2001 in Northern India near the border of Pakistan. Lead author Bernard Pinty of the Institute for Environment and Sustainability in the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, Ispra, Italy, and colleagues from the U.S., France and Germany, used the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument on NASA’s Terra satellite to observe the effects of a massive earthquake in the Gujarat province of India.
A team of researchers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and the Royal Observatory of Belgium has apparently solved a recently observed mystery regarding changes to the physical shape of Earth and its gravity field. The answer, they found, appears to lie in the melting of sub-polar glaciers and mass shifts in the Southern, Pacific and Indian Oceans associated with global-scale climate changes.