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  • Kansas Legislator Proposes Bill to Outlaw Sustainability Education
    A bill has been introduced in the Kansas legislature this week that would prohibit the promotion of ...Read more

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    Kansas Legislator Proposes Bill to Outlaw Sustainability Education

    A bill has been introduced in the Kansas legislature this week that would prohibit the promotion of sustainability. Here is a link to the one-page bill: http://www.kslegislature.org/li/b2013_14/measures/documents/hb2366_00_0000.pdf. See report on Bloomberg News.
  • Earth's Center Is 1,000 Degrees Hotter Than Previously Thought, Synchrotron X-Ray Experiment Shows
    Scientists have determined the temperature near the Earth’s center to be 6000 degrees Celsius, 1000 ...Read more

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    Earth's Center Is 1,000 Degrees Hotter Than Previously Thought, Synchrotron X-Ray Experiment Shows

    Scientists have determined the temperature near the Earth’s center to be 6000 degrees Celsius, 1000 degrees hotter than in a previous experiment run 20 years ago. These measurements confirm geophysical models that the temperature difference between the solid core and the mantle above, must be at least 1500 degrees to explain why the Earth has a magnetic field. For more information about this study, see the press release from the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility.
  • Ocean Volcanic Rocks Contain Samples of Recycled Crust
    Scientists have long believed that lava erupted from certain oceanic volcanoes contains materials fr...Read more

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    Ocean Volcanic Rocks Contain Samples of Recycled Crust

    Scientists have long believed that lava erupted from certain oceanic volcanoes contains materials from the early Earth’s crust. But decisive evidence for this phenomenon has proven elusive. New research from a team including Carnegie’s Erik Hauri demonstrates that oceanic volcanic rocks contain samples of recycled crust dating back to the Archean era 2.5 billion years ago. Their work is published in Nature. Oceanic crust sinks into the Earth’s mantle at so-called subduction zones, where two plates come together. Much of what happens to the crust during this journey is unknown. Model-dependent studies for how long subducted material can exist in the mantle are uncertain and evidence of very old crust returning to Earth’s surface via upwellings of magma has not been found until now. For more information about these results, see the press release from the Carnegie Institution.

    Image courtesy of Steven Domonkos, University of Washington

From: Dr. Robert Wood
Seattle, Washington, September 24, 2008

Making a device to sample aerosol particles

Before we leave to carry out field work, there's much that needs to be done in preparation. There are many challenges involved with setting up a measurement site in a remote environment. Questions we have to ask are: Will we have enough electricity to power our instruments? Is there a place to sleep nearby?

Paposo is a small fishing village on the Chilean coast. In this region the Atacama Desert, one of the driest deserts in the world meets the Pacific Ocean. So little rain falls that people harvest the clouds for water!

What we are trying to do in the VOCALS project at Paposo is to learn more about what causes these clouds (which are mainly stratocumulus clouds) to form, and why they do not rain. The droplets of water in a cloud form on aerosol particles which are tiny particles 100 times thinner than a human hair. We need to measure aerosol particles to understand how they affect clouds.

The photograph above shows Duli Chand, a scientist who will work in Paposo to make aerosol measurements. He is holding a device (called an inlet) that will suck in aerosol particles from the surrounding air and allow us to measure them with specialized instruments.

Postcards from the Field: Climate Science from the Southeast Pacific

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