Nasa: Mass gains of Antarctic ice sheet greater than losses

An increase in Antarctic snow accumulation that began 10,000 years ago is currently adding enough ice to the continent to outweigh the increased losses from its thinning glaciers.

Areas of the continent like the Antarctic peninsula have increased their mass loss in the last decades, says a new Nasa study.

A new NASA study says that Antarctica is overall accumulating ice. Still, areas of the continent, like the Antarctic Peninsula photographed above, have increased their mass loss in the last decades.

The research challenges the conclusions of other studies, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2013 report, which says that Antarctica is overall losing land ice.

According to the new analysis of satellite data, the Antarctic ice sheet showed a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice a year from 1992 to 2001. That net gain slowed to 82 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008.

“Essentially in agreement with other studies that show an increase in ice discharge in the Antarctic Peninsula and the Thwaites and Pine Island region of West Antarctica.”

Map showing the rates of mass changes from ICESat 2003-2008 over Antarctica. Sums are for all of Antarctica: East Antarctica (EA, 2-17); interior West Antarctica (WA2, 1, 18, 19, and 23); coastal West Antarctica (WA1, 20-21); and the Antarctic Peninsula (24-27). A gigaton (Gt) corresponds to a billion metric tons, or 1.1 billion U.S. tons.

Scientists calculate how much the ice sheet is growing or shrinking from the changes in surface height that are measured by the satellite altimeters. In locations where the amount of new snowfall accumulating on an ice sheet is not equal to the ice flow downward and outward to the ocean, the surface height changes and the ice-sheet mass grows or shrinks.

“At the end of the last Ice Age, the air became warmer and carried more moisture across the continent, doubling the amount of snow dropped on the ice sheet.”

Researchers analyzed variations in the surface height of the Antarctic ice sheet using radar instruments on two European Space Agency satellites from 1992 to 2001, and by laser sensors on a NASA satellite from 2003 to 2008.

The extra snowfall that began 10,000 years ago has been slowly accumulating on the ice sheet and compacting into solid ice over millennia, thickening the ice in East Antarctica and the interior of West Antarctica by an average of 0.7 inches (1.7 centimeters) per year. This small thickening, sustained over thousands of years and spread over the vast expanse of these sectors of Antarctica, corresponds to a very large gain of ice – enough to outweigh the losses from fast-flowing glaciers in other parts of the continent and reduce global sea level rise.

ICESat-2. “It will contribute to solving the problem of Antarctica’s mass balance by providing a long-term record of elevation changes.”

Antarctica may not be contributing to sea level rises, but researchers caution against celebrating as the current trend could reverse within a few decades.
Ref:
http://qz.com/538902
https://www.nasa.gov/feature

FRIENDS!!!PART1/8-- A Blueprint for the Universe(The Origin, History, Evolution & Future of the Universe)

Credit: Illustration: Karl Tate; Galaxy M74: NASA, ESA, and Hubble Heritage Collaboration; "Awakening of the Pilgrim" by Camille Flammarion

Our universe is both ancient and vast, and expanding out farther and faster every day. This accelerating universe, the dark energy that seems to be behind it, and other puzzles like the exact nature of the Big Bang and the early evolution of the universe are among the great puzzles of cosmology.

There was a time when scientists thought Earth was at the center of the universe(GeocentricTheory). Now Helio-Centric Theory-Sun is at the centre of  our SOLAR SYSTEM. As late as the 1920s, we did not realize that our galaxy was just one of many in a vast universe. Only later did we recognize that the other galaxies were running away from us — in every direction — at ever greater speeds. Likewise in recent decades, our understanding of the universe has accelerated.
PART1-BLUE PRINT OF THE UNIVERSE:The universe is filled with stars, galaxies, planets and more, plus a veritable buffet of invisible stuff like dark matter astronomers have yet to see. But scientists have pinned down some of the major ingredients of our universe. Take a look at star stuff and more in this video show.

This still from a NASA video shows a snapshot of the universe as simulated by NASA's Pleiades supercomputer, the seventh fastest in the world. The Bolshoi universe simulation is the most realistic view of the universe to date and was released in late September 2011.

The universe is a big place, near-infintely big, but there's a structure to our cosmos that astronomers are hard at work unraveling. Take a tour of some of the out-of-this-world structures that make our universe tick in this video show, "A Blueprint for the Universe."
Episode 1: The Way of Things
Episode 2: The Dark Force
Episode 3: Yesterday's News
Episode4:Ede Of Unknown
Episode5:The Matter of Matter
Episode 6: The Grand Architecture
Episode 7: Galaxy Collision
Episode 8: Galactic Live
Episode 9: The Tully Collection
Episode 10: Beyond the Event Horizon
Episode 11: Galaxy: Home
Episode 12: Extra-Solar Worlds
Episode 13: Jewels and Junk
Episode 14: Birth in the Family of Sol
Episode 15: The Perfect Ballet
Episode 16: Rivers in the Sky
Episode 17: Know Your Place
Episode 18: From Radar to Redshift
Episode 19: Your Universe

FRIENDS!!!! Do YOU want to know"How the universe evolved into what we see today?"Our universe is both ancient and vast, and expanding out farther and faster every day. This accelerating universe, the dark energy that seems to be behind it, and other puzzles like the exact nature of the Big Bang and the early evolution of the universe are among the great puzzles of cosmology.


NOTE: Unable to copy URLs of the above videos/even unable to upload videos--requested to type each episode Heading in YOUTube---Eg-The Way of Things,The Dark Force etc. Watch&Enjoy Really VERY INFORMATIVE&INTERESTING VIDEOS

SORRY for INCONVENIENCE
http://www.space.com/13352-universe-history-future-cosmos-special-report
http://www.space.com/13277-universe-blueprint-space-video-show.html

NASA’s TIMED mission has confirmed a surprisingly fast carbon dioxide increase in Earth’s upper atmosphere using 14 years of data from a radiometer aboard the satellite.

The area near the surface of the earth can be divided up into four inter-connected "geo-spheres:" the lithosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and atmosphere. Scientists can classify life and material on or near the surface of the earth to be in any of these four spheres.

NASA Goddard manages the TIMED mission for the Heliophysics Division within the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, built the spacecraft for NASA.

Credits: Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía

NASA’s TIMED mission, short for Thermosphere, Ionosphere, Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics, has confirmed a surprisingly fast carbon dioxide increase in Earth’s upper atmosphere, raising questions about how different layers of the atmosphere are interconnected. Even more curious—though climate models predict carbon dioxide should increase more or less equally across the globe, in its 14 years of data collection, TIMED data revealed that the carbon dioxide in these upper layers, long thought to follow the same patterns across the globe, is increasing faster over the Northern Hemisphere.Though the Northern Hemisphere produces much more carbon dioxide because of its greater land area and population, scientists expect the difference to become negligible at such great heights due to diffusion and mixing.
Understanding the way carbon dioxide moves throughout the atmosphere is key, both for making accurate climate models and for planning spacecraft flight paths. Though carbon dioxide raises temperatures near Earth’s surface, it actually causes cooling in the upper atmosphere, reducing air density in these outermost reaches of the atmosphere and impacting spacecraft orbits.“We tend to separate them into different fields—lower atmosphere is Earth science, upper atmosphere is heliophysics—but we need to understand the atmosphere as a complete system.”

Before TIMED, the only measurements of carbon dioxide in the upper atmosphere were direct measurements from sounding rocket research flights and short-lived spaceborne sensors.

FRIENDS!!!
Though carbon dioxide raises temperatures near Earth’s surface, it actually causes cooling in the upper atmosphere, reducing air density in these outermost reaches of the atmosphere and impacting spacecraft orbits.NASA’s TIMED mission has confirmed a surprisingly fast carbon dioxide increase in Earth’s upper atmosphere using 14 years of data from a radiometer aboard the satellite.


http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard
http://geography.about.com/od/physicalgeography
https://www.google.com.sa

ATTENTION!!!A scary 1.5 mile-wide (2.5km) asteroid is set to make a 'close' encounter with Earth(but don't panic, it will still be 310,000 miles away)

Nasa predicts 'near miss' with scary asteroid on Halloween Night(but don't panic, it will still be 310,000 miles away)
What To Expect
Asteroid 2015 TB145 is expected to reach its closest approach to Earth at about 1:18 pm Eastern. It'll blast past us at a speed of about 78,300 miles an hour, and should be bright enough to see with a decent telescope and a star chart.

Artist's view of an asteroid

Lucas/Flickr CC By 2.0

Pan-STARRS is one of few telescopes whose main goal is to search for comets and asteroids

Forest Starr and Kim Starr/Flickr CC By 2.0

Rendering of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope

LSST

The asteroid's proximity will give scientists an excellent chance to study it. Scientists hope to image it with a resolution as high as 6.5 feet (2 meters) per pixel, and radar measurements will help shed light on the asteroid's precise size and composition. So far all we really know is that it's somewhere around 1,050 to 2,100 feet (320 to 640 meters) in diameter.

The 'asteroid' could be a dead comet.

Vesta gave us a good look at what an asteroid looks like.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

• Asteroid 2015 TB145 is believed to be around 1.5 miles (2.5 km) wide
• An asteroid just quarter-of-a-mile wide could cause global devastation
• 2015 TB145 will pass 1.3 times the distance from the Earth to the moon
• Despite its size, Nasa has said the rock 'poses no threat' of impact

The asteroid will be plenty far away, but still close enough for researchers to get excited about imaging it. NASA notes that the fast-moving object "may be cometary in nature." If that's the case, it could be made up of rock, ice and dust, whereas asteroids consist mainly of rock and metals.

The space rock, named 2015 TB145, will safely fly past our planet at 78,000mph (125,500km/h) at 310,000 miles (499,000km) away.

While there's no danger to Earth, Nasa has described the asteroid as 'hazardous' as it comes 4,600,000 mile (7,403,00km) threshold of proximity to our planet. 

That's around 1.3 times the distance between the Earth   and the moon, allowing anyone with a telescope to see the event.

The asteroid, named 2015 TB145, will make its closest approach to Earth on 11:14 a.m. ET (3:14 pm GMT) on October 31, and can be seen by anyone using a telescope.

The 'high velocity' Halloween asteroid's closest approach will take place on 11:14 a.m. ET (3:14 pm GMT) on October 31.

It will be the closest approach to Earth since July 2006 and scientists believe we probably won't see another large asteroid come this close to the planet until 2027.

While there's no danger to Earth, Nasa has described the asteroid as 'hazardous' as it comes 4,600,000 mile (7,403,00km) threshold of proximity to our planet.

The asteroid was spotted by Nasa a fortnight ago, which is relatively short notice for the space agency.

FRIENDS!!! WATCH with TELESCOPE --Nasa predicts 'near miss' with scary asteroid on Halloween (but don't panic, it will still be 310,000 miles away) --The asteroid, named 2015 TB145, will make its closest approach to Earth on 11:14 a.m. ET (3:14 pm GMT) on October 31

'The asteroid is on an extremely eccentric and a high inclination orbit,' the space agency explained.

'This is the closest approach by a known object this large until 1999 AN10 approaches within 1 lunar distance in August 2027'

Because of its erratic orbit, Nasa isn't sure where it will go, but the space agency says it's confident it will not hit Earth.

It comes just weeks after doomsdayers claimed the end of the world was nigh after Nasa revealed a giant asteroid is heading towards the planet.

Called Asteroid 86666 (2000 FL10), the 1.5-mile wide (2.5km) space rock made its closest pass on 10 October.

Then there were assertions surrounding the end of the Mayan calendar on 21 December 2012, insisting the world would end with a large asteroid impact.

Earlier this year, asteroids 2004 BL86 and 2014 YB35 were also said to be on dangerous near-Earth trajectories, but their flybys in January and March went without incident.

Asteroid 86666 (2000 FL10) made its closest pass on 10 October (illustrated). An asteroid of its size has the potential to cause global devastation if it was to hit Earth but Nasa said at the time it posed no threat to Earth

FRIENDS!!! WATCH with TELESCOPE --The asteroid, named 2015 TB145, will make its closest approach to Earth on 11:14 a.m. ET (3:14 pm GMT) on October 31

For more information

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3279668

Friends!!! Are U interested to know more about DWARF Pluto's Geology?

Take a pinch of Mars, a sprinkle of Saturn’s moon Iapetus and a dash of Neptune’s moon Triton—and the recipe will yield something like Pluto.

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft combines blue, red and infrared images taken by the .

Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

The first published scientific findings from NASA’s New Horizons mission, which flew past Pluto in July, confirm that the dwarf planet does not resemble any other single world in the Solar System. Instead, its wildly varying terrain is a crazy quilt of geological patterns and textures—copied, pasted and tweaked from other planets and moons.


Like Mars, Pluto has volatile compounds that cycle between freezing onto the ground and sublimating back into the atmosphere. Like Iapetus, it has stunningly bright terrain juxtaposed with dark areas. And like Triton, it seems to have streaks made by wind marring its icy surface.

Pluto’s geological activity is driven both by heat leaking from radioactive elements in its interior—a remnant of its birth more than 4 billion years ago—and by the volatile compounds that flit between its surface and its atmosphere. As Pluto moves away from the Sun in its 248-year elliptical orbit, temperatures plummet and these compounds freeze out of the atmosphere and fall onto the surface as frost. When Pluto warms up again, methane, nitrogen, carbon monoxide and other chemicals transform directly from ice on the surface into atmospheric gases.

 “Punching a hole in jello springs to mind,” says Howett. “Everything suggests this ice is exceptionally soft”—making it unique in the Solar System.

Incredible New Photos Of Pluto Show Blue Skies And Water Ice

Pluto's Blue Sky

"A blue sky often results from scattering of sunlight by very small particles," said science team researcher Carly Howett, also of SwRI. "On Earth, those particles are very tiny nitrogen molecules. On Pluto they appear to be larger – but still relatively small – soot-like particles we call tholins."

Water ice on Pluto. NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

As if blue haze wasn’t exciting enough, New Horizons had another surprise for us this week: water ice on Pluto’s surface. While there aren’t large areas of exposed ice, there are many small regions.

Pluto’s Puzzling Patterns and PitsCredits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

It seems that the more we see of Pluto, the more fascinating it gets. With its prominent heart-shaped feature, icy mountains, and “snakeskin” terrain.

Pluto's Tiny Moons Start Coming Into View


Charon is the biggest game in town, but Pluto has four smaller moons that make for a complicated system.

NASA / JHUAPL

Pluto‬ system family portrait!

Kerberos Revealed. This image of Kerberos was created by combining four individual Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) pictures taken on July 14, approximately seven hours before New Horizons’ closest approach to Pluto, at a range of 245,600 miles (396,100 km) from Kerberos. The image was deconvolved to recover the highest possible spatial resolution and oversampled by a factor of eight to reduce pixilation effects. Kerberos appears to have a double-lobed shape, approximately 7.4 miles (12 kilometers) across in its long dimension and 2.8 miles (4.5 kilometers) in its shortest dimension.

Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

FRIENDS !!! Be CURIOUS!!! OBSERVE!!! ONE DAY U will also DISCOVER something!!!
For more information
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article
http://www.iflscience.com/space/
http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/

42---BEST SUPER BLOOD MOON PICTURES

Maybe it’s the light pollution, maybe it’s always cloudy some have yet to experience with my own eyes the magic of these celestial events. Thankfully there are people around the world who not only experience them but beautifully capture it for all to enjoy. Until next time!

Missed it? Want to see it again? You can, with our readers' amazing shots of this rare celestial event.

Several lunar events combined to create a once-in-a-few-decades sight in the sky.

First, there was a full moon. Second, it was a special type known as a harvest moon, since it was the closest full moon to the autumn equinox. Third, the moon was as close to Earth as it will get all year, making it a supermoon. Fourth, there was a total lunar eclipse, in which the Earth's shadow first tints the moon red (hence the name blood moon), then hides it entirely. 

 The supermoon occurs when the moon is in the closest part of its orbit to Earth, making it appear larger in the sky. A lunar eclipse is also known as a blood moon because of the reddish glow caused by the earth's shadow.

The eclipse was visible in North America, South America, West Africa and Western Europe. While the western half of North America, the rest of Europe and Africa, the Middle East and South Asia observed a partial eclipse.

The supermoon, which occurs when the moon is closest to earth in its orbit, coincided with a lunar eclipse, which hasn’t happened since 1982 and won’t happen again until 2033.

This kind of overlap has only happened five times since 1900. The last was in 1982, and the next will be in 2033. But if you missed it, fear not.   

SEE & ENJOY!!!!!

Red moon over Volcan Colima, 27 Sept. 2015. 

Rivulets of lava erupted from the summit beneath a blood red moon. Volcan Colima is an active stratovolcano situated in the Mexican states of Colima and Jalisco, 300 miles west of Mexico City. It is one of North America's most active volcanoes.

This photo from Quebec, Canada is among the best pictures of the event posted to our Your Shot community

.
The Blood Moon as taken from the roof of our building, overlooking the South of Market district of San Francisco. Taken with a Sony A7s on a tripod.

Using Photoshop merged the two images

It was a one-in-a-million chance that it happened to pass right in front of the moon, snapped this photograph using Canon SX280 point-and-shoot held against the eyepiece of a 5” Celestron 130SLT telescope.

Shot on a Nikon D7000, 200mm (55-200mm lens), F/10, 1.6”, ISO 400. When producing the final image,  brightened the original shots by overlaying four copies of each. Overlaying and some minor cropping all done in GIMP.

Canon T3i and 18-200mm lens on a tripod with IR remote, 10s exposure, f/8, ISO 400. This is a composite of two images merged in photoshop in order to get the statue and moon in focus.

Taken from the pier in Saucalito, CA. That’s Karl the Fog. Fuji X-T1, XF 55-200mm, 800 ISO, f/8

The so-called supermoon behind Glastonbury Tor in Somerset, England, early on Monday.

Photographer John Kelsey captured this fantastic time-lapse image from his Brooklyn rooftop.

The Moon, appearing next to a statue on the Alexander III bridge, in Paris (Picture: Reuters)

Next to a statue on a roof in Hamburg, Germany (Picture: Reuters)

Rising into the sky over St Mary’s Lighthouse in Whitley Bay North Tyneside (Picture: NNP)

The moon dwarfed Penshaw Monument (Picture: NNP)

The supermoon next to the Eiffel Tower. Photo: Mustafa Yalcin/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

The supermoon during the early stages of the lunar eclipse near Big Ben in London, United Kingdom. Photo: Joseph Okpako/2015 Joseph Okpako

The supermoon near the London Eye Capsules in London, U.K. Photo: Joseph Okpako/2015 Joseph Okpako

The eclipsed supermoon rises behind the Las Vegas Strip. Photo: Ethan Miller/Getty Images/2015 Getty Images

The supermoon behind the Colorado State Capitol building during a total lunar eclipse. Photo: Bill Ingalls/NASA

The supermoon rises over a sailboat in Boston Harbor in Boston, Massachusetts. Photo: Scott Eisen/Getty Images

The Super Blood Moon rises over the spires of the House of Parliament on in London, U.K. Photo: Joseph Okpako/Getty Images

The super blood moon can be seen behind one of the steeples of the Cologne Cathedral in Cologne, western Germany (ROLF VENNENBERND/AFP/Getty Images)

The supermoon could be seen behind the Quadriga sculpture on top of Berlin's Brandenburg Gate (KAY NIETFELD/AFP/Getty Images)

Reindeers are seen silhouetted against the blood moon during the lunar eclipse near the village of Yavterishki, about 250 kilometers north of Minsk, Belarus. (SERGEI GAPON/AFP/Getty Images)

Super blood moon, as seen from Long Island City, New York. (Brian Michael Tully)

The supermoon in Innsbruck, Austria. (Jan Hetfleisch / Getty Images

The supermoon appears behind the Turning Torso building in Malmo in the south of Sweden during a total lunar eclipse. (Johan Nilsson /AFP/Getty Images)

A supermoon is seen during a lunar eclipse behind pods of the London Eye wheel in London, September 28, 2015. Sky-watchers around the world are in for a treat Sunday night and Monday when the shadow of Earth casts a reddish glow on the moon, the result of rare combination of an eclipse with the closest full moon of the year. The total "supermoon" lunar eclipse, also known as a "blood moon" is one that appears bigger and brighter than usual as it reaches the point in its orbit that is closest to Earth.Toby Melville/Reuters

The Moon, appearing in a dim red colour, is covered by the Earth's shadow during a total lunar eclipse over Paris, France September 28, 2015.Charles Platiau/Reuters

A supermoon is seen in the sky in San Salvador, El Salvador, September 27, 2015.Jose Cabezas/Reuters

A supermoon, the last of this year's supermoons, rises over a minaret of a mosque in Wadi El-Rayan Lake at the desert of Al Fayoum Governorate, south west of Cairo, Egypt.Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters

A super moon rises in the sky near the Eiffel tower as seen from Suresnes, Western Paris, France.Charles Platiau/Reuters

A supermoon rises in the sky over the Rio de La Plata in Buenos Aires, Argentina.Enrique Marcarian/Reuters

The Moon, appearing next to a statue on the Alexander III bridge, in a dim red colour, is covered by the Earth's shadow during a total lunar eclipse over Paris, France September 28, 2015.Philippe Wojazer/Reuters

A supermoon is seen over the Unisphere at Flushing Meadows Corona Park in the Queens borough of New York September 27, 2015.Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

The total "supermoon" lunar eclipse is seen from Vigeland Park in Oslo, Norway.Haakon Mosvold Larsen/Reuters

A supermoon is seen in the sky above Griffith Park Observatory in Los Angeles, California.Jonathan Alcorn/Reuters

The partially covered Supermoon is seen behind a look-out point on the peak of mount Uetliberg in Zurich, Switzerland.Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters

Ref:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer

http://www.theverge.com

http://europe.newsweek.com/