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Rep. Lee Zeldin hearkened back to 2016 to remind the nation that the Obama administration was “furious” with retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn for calling on world leaders to block an “anti-Israel” effort. The New York Republican tweeted Thursday morning about Flynn, who served as Trump’s national security adviser in early 2017, and his efforts to block the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334, which focused on Israeli settlements in “Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.” “Keep in mind Obama admin was furious Gen Michael Flynn was making calls to world leaders helping to block UN Sec Council Res 2334 in...

Some 90 million years ago, a temperate rainforest grew near the South Pole. Scientists recovered fossil traces of the ancient rainforest from seafloor sediment cores collected near West Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier. Seismic data suggested the sediment layer was unique, but researchers weren't expecting to find the remnants of a Cretaceous forest. "The finding of this well preserved 'forest soil' layer was actually a lucky dip," researcher Ulrich Salzmann, professor of palaeoecology at the University of Northumbria in Britain, told UPI. "We did not know of the existence of this layer before." Among the sediment layers, Salzmann and his research...

The BBC has completely lost the plot on climate change with its star enviro loon Sir David Attenborough leading the charge over the cliff edge like the wrinkliest, long-tusked male in a herd of suicidal walruses. “The moment of crisis has come” in efforts to tackle climate change, Sir David Attenborough has warned. According to the renowned naturalist and broadcaster, “we have been putting things off for year after year”. “As I speak, south east Australia is on fire. Why? Because the temperatures of the Earth are increasing,” he said.

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Upside-down "rivers" of warm ocean water may be one of the causes of Antarctica's ice shelves breaking up, leading to a rise in sea levels. But a new study suggests an increase in sea ice may lead to a much more devastating change in the Earth's climate — another ice age.

The death of this reigning physics paradigm, the Standard Model, has been predicted for decades. There are hints of its problems in the physics we already have. Strange results from laboratory experiments suggest flickers of ghostly new species of neutrinos beyond the three described in the Standard Model. And the universe seems full of dark matter that no particle in the Standard Model can explain. But recent tantalizing evidence might one day tie those vague strands of data together: Three times since 2016, ultra-high-energy particles have blasted up through the ice of Antarctica, setting off detectors in the Antarctic Impulsive...

When scientists ran DNA analysis on a sediment core taken from the floor of the Arctic ocean back in 2010, they found something surprising. A previously unknown organism belonging to the strange domain of microbes called Archaea appeared to have genomic characteristics associated with a totally different domain - Eukaryota. They named their discovery Lokiarchaeota, after the Loki's Castle hydrothermal vent near Greenland where it was found; but doubt shadowed the finding. Could the sample have been contaminated by something else in the core? Now, thanks to the work of Japanese scientists, those doubts can be put to rest. For...

Actually, the records of temperature and CO2 over the past 650,000 years indicate that Earth's temperature always rises first, followed by a rise in Carbon Dioxide. Published papers, clearly show it is always temperature which rises first by at least several hundred years and then the carbon dioxide responds.

A team of researchers with members from Singapore, the U.S., Thailand and Laos has concluded that the impact point of a meteorite that struck the Earth approximately 790,000 years ago lies buried beneath a volcanic field in southern Laos. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group outlines four lines of evidence that point to the Bolaven volcanic field as the likely site of the meteorite strike. Prior research has shown that approximately 790,000 years ago, a large meteorite (the largest known young meteorite impact) struck Earth in the Eastern Hemisphere. So great was...

A trough beneath Denman Glacier is the deepest continent point in the world, measuring more than 2 miles beneath sea level. Scientists have known for years that Denman Glacier, a very large glacier in East Antarctica, has a trough beneath it, but they had no idea just how deep it was until glaciologists at the University of California, Irvine, mapped the region. According to this recently compiled a sophisticated map of the icy continent, this trench is actually two miles (3.5 kilometers) below sea level, which practically makes it the deepest point in the world. The new topographic map of...

NASA engineers are already working on an underwater rover they hope could one day tackle the challenges posed by ocean worlds like Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus. A team has been working on such a robot, called Buoyant Rover for Under-Ice Exploration or BRUIE, for a few years now. NASA is taking a prototype of that rover to Antarctica for testing in the most similar environment to those moons found on Earth. The tests will take place at Australia's Casey research station along the coast of Antarctica far south of Australia, where BRUIE will spend a month exploring...

Upside-down "rivers" of warm ocean water may be one of the causes of Antarctica's ice shelves breaking up, leading to a rise in sea levels. But a new study suggests an increase in sea ice in a colder climate may lead to a much more devastating change in the Earth's climate — another ice age. Using computer simulations, the research suggests that an increase in sea ice could significantly alter the circulation of the ocean, ultimately leading to a reverse greenhouse effect as carbon dioxide levels in the ocean increase and levels in the air decrease. “One key question in...

WASHINGTON—The ozone hole near the South Pole this year is the smallest since it was discovered, but it is more due to freakish Antarctic weather than efforts to cut down on pollution, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) reported. This fall, the average hole in Earth’s protective ozone layer is 3.6 million square miles (9.3 million square kilometers). That’s down from a peak of 10.3 million square miles (26.6 million square kilometers) in 2006. This year’s hole is even smaller than the one first discovered in 1985. “That’s really good news,” Nasa scientist Paul Newman said Tuesday. “That means more...

Unusual weather patterns in the upper atmosphere over Antarctica have caused a drastic reduction in ozone depletion, leaving the ozone with the smallest hole seen since its discovery in 1982, according to NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The government agencies said that the hole had shrunk to 3.9 million square miles for the remainder of September and October, according to satellite data. The peak in the hole was 6.3 million square miles, observed on Sept. 8. During normal weather conditions, the hole is usually around 8 million square miles during this time of year.

The Amery Ice Shelf in Antarctica has just produced its biggest iceberg in more than 50 years. The calved block covers 1,636 sq km in area - a little smaller than Scotland's Isle of Skye - and is called D28. The scale of the berg means it will have to be monitored and tracked because it could in future pose a hazard to shipping. Not since the early 1960s has Amery calved a bigger iceberg. That was a whopping 9,000 sq km in area. ...The Scripps researcher stressed that there was no link between this event and climate change. Satellite...

The researchers combined magnetic readings and radioisotope dating of samples from seven lava flow sequences to recreate the magnetic field over a span of about 70,000 years centered on the latest geomagnetic reversal. They accurately dated the lava flows by measuring the argon produced from radioactive decay of potassium in the rocks. They found that the final reversal was quick by geological standards, less than 4,000 years. But it was preceded by an extended period of instability that included two excursions — temporary, partial reversals — stretching back another 18,000 years. The lava flow data was corroborated by magnetic readings...

Organizers of an annual conference that brings together people who believe that the Earth is flat are planning a cruise to the purported edge of the planet. They're looking for the ice wall that holds back the oceans. The journey will take place in 2020, the Flat Earth International Conference (FEIC) recently announced on its website. The goal? To test so-called flat-Earthers' assertion that Earth is a flattened disk surrounded at its edge by a towering wall of ice. Believers in a flat Earth argue that images showing a curved horizon are fake and that photos of a round Earth...

In 2016 and 2017, a hole of open water, called a polynya, appeared in the winter ice of the Weddell Sea in Antarctica. It eventually grew to about 19,000 square miles; roughly twice the size of Vermont. Though polynyas are not unusual, this large and frequent of a hole was a great opportunity for scientists to figure out why, exactly, these holes were appearing. A team from the University of Washington explored the hole with a combination of robots, radio equipment and seals with antennas stuck to their heads. The team found that, in order for a polynya to occur,...

The structure is an old tectonic boundary, probably formed during the birth of the Antarctic continent or shortly thereafter. According to new research published May 27 [2019] in the journal Nature Geoscience, this boundary protects the ice shelf's grounding line, the point at which it is thick enough to extend all the way to the sea floor. The geology created by the boundary keeps warm, melt-promoting ocean water away from that part of the shelf. But the ocean circulation driven by that same geology drives intense summer melt along the shelf's easterly edge. "We could see that the geological boundary...

Sediment column at the mouth of the Amazon River. Credit: NASA The Amazon River has been around for 11 million years ago and in its shape for the last 2.4 million years ago, according to a study on two boreholes drilled in proximity of the mouth of the Amazon River by Petrobras, the national oil company of Brazil. Until recently the Amazon Fan, a sediment column of around 10 kilometres in thickness, proved a hard nut to crack, and scientific drilling expeditions such as Ocean Drilling Program could only reach a fraction of it. Recent exploration efforts by Petrobras lifted...