Activity at Kizimen Volcano

Kizimen Volcano, which erupted for the first time in 81 years in December 2010, continues to emit gas and ash. TheModerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured these natural-color (top) and false-color (bottom) views of the eruption on November 1, 2012. Though the plume is difficult to detect in true color, it shows up clearly in false color because of the different combination of bands used to create the two images. In the false-color image, snow and ice appears bright red and vegetation looks green.

42-Foot High Tsunami Hit Geneva 1,500 Years Ago; Could Happen Again, Scientists Warn

 We usually associate tsunamis with beachside property and the seaboard, but what about the mountains? More importantly, how about the postcard-worthy Swiss Alps? It may come as a shocker, but it seems that a tsunami hit Geneva, Switzerland around 1,500 years ago inundating the shores with up to 42 feet of water.

Historical accounts have mentioned the tsunami before, but this is the first time scientists have turned up geological evidence to support the claim. The findings, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, state that there is still a risk of this happening to inhabitants around Lake Geneva.

"It's certainly happened before and I think we can expect that it will probably happen again sometime," says one of the researchers, geologist Guy Simpson, from the University of Geneva.

Almost 200,000 people live in the city of Geneva, and somewhere around one million live around the shores of Lake Geneva. A tsunami with the magnitude of the 563 A.D. version would have devastating consequences on such a population density.

"Our numerical simulations with a shallow water model show that delta collapse in the lake generates a large tsunami at various locations along the shore, where a wave of 13 metres (42 feet) is observed after only 15 minutes, and at Geneva where a wave of eight metres (26 feet) arrives 70 minutes after the mass movement is initiated," said the researchers. 

The 563 A.D. tsunami is believed to have come from a rock slide three miles from where the River Rhone enters Lake Geneva in the east. 

The team of researchers used radar to find a pile of sediment that is six miles long, five miles wide, and 16 feet thick in the deepest part of Lake Geneva. The scientists dated the sediment to between 381 A.D. and 612 A.D. 

"Since the AD 563 event is the only significant natural event recorded in historical accounts within our calculated age interval, we consider our dating results to be a strong indication that the deposit is linked to the AD 563 rockfall and tsunami," wrote Katrina Kremer, according to the AFP.

In essence, it looks like nobody is really safe from Mother Nature, and towns and cities that live in a peaceful lull like some of those in the Alps should have emergency precautions at hand in case such a disasterous scenario occurs.
Read more at http://www.latinospost.com/articles/6284/20121031/42-foot-high-tsunami-hit-geneva-1.htm#El3mYU7ytTSMGedm.99 

Read more at http://www.latinospost.com/articles/6284/20121031/42-foot-high-tsunami-hit-geneva-1.htm#El3mYU7ytTSMGedm.99 

Asteroid Belts at Just the Right Place are Friendly to Life

This illustration shows our solar-system model: a Jupiter-size planet moves slightly inward but is just outside the asteroid belt. Image credit: NASA/ESA/STScI 

November 01, 2012

PASADENA, Calif. -- Solar systems with life-bearing planets may be rare if they are dependent on the presence of asteroid belts of just the right mass, according to a study by Rebecca Martin, a NASA Sagan Fellow from the University of Colorado in Boulder, and astronomer Mario Livio of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md. 

They suggest that the size and location of an asteroid belt, shaped by the evolution of the sun's planet-forming disk and by the gravitational influence of a nearby giant Jupiter-like planet, may determine whether complex life will evolve on an Earth-like planet. 

This might sound surprising because asteroids are considered a nuisance due to their potential to impact Earth and trigger mass extinctions. But an emerging view proposes that asteroid collisions with planets may provide a boost to the birth and evolution of complex life. 

Asteroids may have delivered water and organic compounds to the early Earth. According to the theory of punctuated equilibrium, occasional asteroid impacts might accelerate the rate of biological evolution by disrupting a planet's environment to the point where species must try new adaptation strategies. 

The astronomers based their conclusion on an analysis of theoretical models and archival observations, including infrared data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. 

"Our study shows that only a tiny fraction of planetary systems observed to date seem to have giant planets in the right location to produce an asteroid belt of the appropriate size, offering the potential for life on a nearby rocky planet," said Martin, the study's lead author. "Our study suggests that our solar system may be rather special." 

The findings will appear today in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters. 

Martin and Livio suggest that the location of an asteroid belt relative to a Jupiter-like planet is not an accident. The asteroid belt in our solar system, located between Mars and Jupiter, is a region of millions of space rocks that sits near the "snow line," which marks the border of a cold region where volatile material such as water ice is far enough from the sun to remain intact. When Jupiter formed just beyond the snow line, its powerful gravity prevented nearby material inside its orbit from coalescing and building planets. 

Instead, Jupiter's influence caused the material to collide and break apart. These fragmented rocks settled into an asteroid belt around the sun.

"To have such ideal conditions you need a giant planet like Jupiter that is just outside the asteroid belt [and] that migrated a little bit, but not through the belt," Livio explained. "If a large planet like Jupiter migrates through the belt, it would scatter the material. If, on the other hand, a large planet did not migrate at all, that, too, is not good because the asteroid belt would be too massive. There would be so much bombardment from asteroids that life may never evolve." 

Using our solar system as a model, Martin and Livio proposed that asteroid belts in other solar systems would always be located approximately at the snow line. To test their proposal, Martin and Livio created models of planet-forming disks around young stars and calculated the location of the snow line in those disks based on the mass of the central star. 

They then looked at all the existing space-based infrared observations from the Spitzer Space Telescope of 90 stars having warm dust, which could indicate the presence of an asteroid belt-like structure. The temperature of the warm dust was consistent with that of the snow line. "The warm dust falls right onto our calculated snow lines, so the observations are consistent with our predictions," Martin said. 

The duo then studied observations of the 520 giant planets found outside our solar system. Only 19 of them reside outside the snow line. This suggests that most of the giant planets that may have formed outside the snowline have migrated too far inward to preserve the kind of slightly dispersed asteroid belt needed to foster enhanced evolution of life on an Earth-like planet near the belt. Apparently, less than four percent of the observed systems may actually harbor such a compact asteroid belt. 

"Based on our scenario, we should concentrate our efforts to look for complex life in systems that have a giant planet outside of the snow line," Livio said. 

The Sagan Fellowship Program is administered by the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., whose purpose is to advance the scientific and technical goals of NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program. The Exoplanet Exploration Program is managed for NASA by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. 

More information about exoplanets and NASA's planet-finding program is at http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov . 

JPL manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at Caltech. Data are archived at the Infrared Science Archive housed at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at Caltech. 

For more information about Spitzer, visit http://spitzer.caltech.edu and http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer .

A Changed Coastline in Jersey

View Image Comparison

On October 29, 2012, lives were changed forever along the shores of New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and in the two dozen United States affected by what meteorologists are calling Superstorm Sandy. The landscape of the East Coast was also changed, though no geologist would ever use the word “forever” when referring to the shape of a barrier island.

The two aerial photographs above show a portion of the New Jersey coastal town of Mantoloking, just north of where Hurricane Sandy made landfall. The top photograph was taken by the Remote Sensing Division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on October 31, 2012; the lower image was acquired by the same group on March 18, 2007. The images were acquired from an altitude of roughly 7,500 feet, using a Trimble Digital Sensor System.

The Mantoloking Bridge cost roughly $25 million when it was opened in 2005 to replace a bridge built in 1938. After Sandy passed through on October 29, 2012, the bridge was covered in water, sand, and debris from houses; county officials closed it because they considered it unstable.

On the barrier island, entire blocks of houses along Route 35 (also called Ocean Boulevard) were damaged or completely washed away by the storm surge and wind. Fires raged in the town from natural gas lines that had ruptured and ignited. A new inlet was cut across the island, connected the Atlantic Ocean and the Jones Tide Pond.

1.  References

2.   The Asbury Park Press (2012, October 29) Update: Floating homes close Mantoloking Bridge. Accessed November 2, 2012.

3.   NOAA National Geodetic Survey (2012) Hurricane Sandy Response Imagery. Accessed November 2, 2012.

4.   Point Pleasant Patch (2012, October 31) Mantoloking Bridge Considered Unstable; Fires Raging Nearby. Accessed November 2, 2012.

Aerial photography courtesy of the NOAA Remote Sensing Division. Caption by Mike Carlowicz.

Instrument: 

Aircraft Sensors - Camera

Sediment from Hurricane Sandy

As Hurricane Sandy moved north along the East Coast of the United States, its waves churned up sediments from the continental shelf and left turbid water in its wake. By midday October 30, 2012, the skies over coastal Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina had cleared enough to reveal that turbidity to the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi NPP satellite. Meanwhile, the remnants of the storm were battering the northeastern states.

Note that the image is rotated so that you are looking south from Canada, with north toward the bottom.

For more views of the storm, please visit our Hurricane Sandy event page or YouTube channel.

NASA image courtesy Norman Kuring, Ocean Color Web.

Europe's oldest prehistoric town unearthed in Bulgaria

Archaeologists in Bulgaria say they have uncovered the oldest prehistoric town found to date in Europe.

The walled fortified settlement, near the modern town of Provadia, is thought to have been an important centre for salt production.

Its discovery in north-east Bulgaria may explain the huge gold hoard found nearby 40 years ago.

Archaeologists believe that the town was home to some 350 people and dates back to between 4700 and 4200 BC.

That is about 1,500 years before the start of ancient Greek civilisation.

The residents boiled water from a local spring and used it to create salt bricks, which were traded and used to preserve meat.

Salt was a hugely valuable commodity at the time, which experts say could help to explain the huge defensive stone walls which ringed the town.

'Extremely interesting'

Excavations at the site, beginning in 2005, have also uncovered the remains of two-storey houses, a series of pits used for rituals, as well as parts of a gate and bastion structures.

A small necropolis, or burial ground, was discovered at the site earlier this year and is still being studied by archaeologists.

"We are not talking about a town like the Greek city-states, ancient Rome or medieval settlements, but about what archaeologists agree constituted a town in the fifth millennium BC," Vasil Nikolov, a researcher with Bulgaria's National Institute of Archaeology, told the AFP news agency.

Archaeologist Krum Bachvarov from the institute said the latest find was "extremely interesting".

"The huge walls around the settlement, which were built very tall and with stone blocks... are also something unseen in excavations of prehistoric sites in south-east Europe so far," he told AFP.

Similar salt mines near Tuzla in Bosnia and Turda in Romania help prove the existence of a series of civilisations which also mined copper and gold in the Carpathian and Balkan mountains during the same period.

BBC Europe correspondent Nick Thorpe says this latest discovery almost certainly explains the treasure found exactly 40 years ago at a cemetery on the outskirts of Varna, 35km (21 miles) away, the oldest hoard of gold objects found anywhere in the world.

A View Inside Sandy

Satellite instruments captured numerous images of Hurricane Sandy—using both daylight and moonlight—as the enormous storm approached the heavily-populated East Coast of the United States in late October 2012. In most cases, these instruments observed just the uppermost layer of clouds at the top of the storm.

However, one satellite—Cloudsat—peered inside the storm and observed its vertical structure. It did so with a cloud-profiling radar that sent pulses of energy toward Earth and recorded the strength of the signal that bounced off ice and water particles.

The bottom map shows the storm as observed by Cloudsat around 2 p.m. local time (18:00 Universal Time) on October 29, 2012. The image shows a cross-section—what the storm would look like if it had been sliced near the middle and viewed from the side. (Watch this animation to see how Cloudsat collects data). The top image, acquired the same day by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on the Aqua satellite, is shown for reference. The yellow line is the north-to-south track that CloudSat took over the storm.

In the Cloudsat data, the darkest blues represent areas where clouds and raindrops reflected the strongest signal back to the satellite radar. These areas had the heaviest precipitation and the largest water droplets. The blue line in the center of the image is the freezing line; ice particles formed above it, raindrops below it. Though they look similar from above, the thin clouds on the far left of the image at an altitude between about 6 and 10 kilometers (4 and 6 miles) are cirrus clouds producing little or no precipitation.

Another clue to the intensity and concentration of precipitation is visible at the bottom of the image. In areas with fewer clouds and less vigorous precipitation, enough radar signals made it all the way to the ground to create the blue line along the bottom. In areas with heavy precipitation, the line is absent because so much of the radar’s signal was scattered before reaching the ground.

Sandy was an unusual hybrid storm that included features of both a tropical cyclone and an extratropical winter storm. The offshore tropical storm merged with a storm system approaching from the west, giving Sandy a cloud structure that was different than most hurricanes and typhoons.

Sandy’s clouds, for instance, reached about 10 kilometers (6 miles) at their highest point—not as high as the clouds of many tropical cyclones. For comparison, Hurricane Earl and Super Typhoon Choi-Wan’s both reached about 15 kilometers (9 miles).

Sandy’s cloud field was also unusually wide—about 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) from one end to the other—because the storm was in the process of becoming an extratropical cyclone. Tropical cyclones tend to have tight, circular cloud bands that are about 400 kilometers (250 miles) from edge to edge (or end to end). Extratropical cyclone bands often stretch more than 800 kilometers (500 miles).

Scientists are creating a database of Cloudsat overpasses in order to better understand how storms work. Natalie Tourville, a research meteorologist at Colorado State University who studies tropical cyclones, explained some of the ways that Cloudsat has proven useful since it launched in 2006.

“CloudSat is providing exceptional views of the internal structure of tropical cyclones, with at least 30 eye overpassesglobally,” she said. “We’ve been able to sample eye wall slope and view the vertical details of the convective core regions. This includes where and how large these cores are and how high the cloud tops are. We've also sampledovershooting cloud tops (some extend over 17 kilometers into the atmosphere) and provide detailed analysis of exactly what is underneath the cirrus clouds of these storm systems.”

Scientists have also developed an innovative technique that uses Cloudsat measurements, in conjunction with data from other satellites, to estimate storm intensity—something that has proven challenging to do from space. A team of researchers first described the technique in an article published in IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters in 2008. Tourville is currently working on a follow-up project that aims to improve the technique by using more recent Cloudsat data.

1.    Further Reading

2.     Durden, S. (2009) Cloudsat and A-Train Observations of Tropical Cyclones. The Open Atmospheric Journal.

3.     Earth Observatory. (2012) Hurricane Sandy Event Page.

4.     New York Times. (n.d.) Hurricane Sandy: Live Updates Accessed Oct. 31, 2012.

5.     Posselt, D. (2008, May) Cloudsat Adding a New Dimension to a Classical View of Extratropical Cyclones. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

6.     Stephens, G.L. (2008, January) On the Use of CloudSat and MODIS Data for Estimating Hurricane Intensity.Geosciences and Remote Sensing Letters.

7.     Washington Post. (n.d.) Hurricane Sandy: Live Updates Accessed Oct. 31, 2012.

NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen, using CloudSat FirstLook data provided courtesy of the CloudSat team at Colorado State University. Caption by Adam Voiland.

Instrument: