Professor Kevin Gurney of NAU’s School of Informatics, Computing and Cyber Systems is building a detailed three-dimensional map of the urban Washington, D.C. area that will reveal every source of greenhouse gas being emitted into the atmosphere down to individual buildings, like the Pentagon, and roads such as Pennsylvania Ave. Gurney, an atmospheric… Read more
atmosphere
NAU scientists, national partners win $3.3 million to study microbes’ role in a changing world
If the fate of carbon is a test that planet Earth is taking right now, one of the answer keys is likely to be found in soil, where microorganisms—which account for nearly 15 percent of global biomass, by some estimates—eat, store and respire carbon and other nutrients. As Earth warms, how these microbes change the way they live will have potentially big consequences for where the carbon goes.
Now, a team led… Read more
NAU astrophysicist leads international team in ‘unprecedented’ discovery of unique infrared light signature on Neptune’s moon Triton
Triton orbits Neptune, the eighth planet from the Sun, some 2.7 billion miles from Earth — at the cold outer fringe of our Solar System’s major planet zone. Surface temperatures hover near absolute zero; so low that common compounds… Read more
Excavating a climate report from the past: NAU geology team joins multidisciplinary study to investigate ancient warming event
As the climate changes, extreme weather and flooding are intensifying and occurring more frequently worldwide. Scientists believe that by studying warming events in Earth’s past, they can better understand how the current warming trend is triggering other changes to the environment.
As part of a large, multidisciplinary study involving eight institutions and a multimillion-dollar National Science Foundation… Read more
Think twice before moving to Mars—NAU planetary scientist refutes terraforming in NASA study
Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Colonizing Mars as a backup planet for Earth has been a theme in both science fiction and popular science for decades, and NASA plans to send human explorers to the Red Planet within the next 20 years.
But how feasible is it for humans to explore or colonize Mars? With an average daily… Read more
NAU researchers join Department of Energy project to study the soil microbiome and its effect on carbon persistence
The Earth’s atmosphere, oceans and biosphere are huge reservoirs of carbon, and all play a critical role in global carbon cycling. Soil is one of the largest carbon pools on the planet, storing more carbon than the atmosphere and biosphere combined, yet scientists aren’t sure what regulates carbon persistence—the amount of carbon that remains in the soil.
Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National… Read more