Science Features

2009 Ice Melt Comparison to Average


The catastrophic 2008 Iowa floods offered a rare opportunity to test a nonlinear geophysical theory, 20 years in the making.

Spearheaded by Vijay Gupta, CIRES Fellow and professor of civil and environmental engineering, a new theory may help improve real-time flood prediction, which today is more art than science. Read more

 


Quake Cruise 2

Anne Sheehan reports from offshore New Zealand, where she travels to recover ocean bottom seismometers left by her team last year. The seismometers have been recording earthquakes from around the world.


Tackling A Climate Model Mystery

Imagine a climate model as a black box. You put something in, you get something out. But what happens when the output is unexpected? Learn how Tom Chase and Peter Lawrence spot a snag in an important climate model.


Quake Cruise

What's shaking under the sea? Join Teacher-at-Sea Dan Tomlin and Geophysicist Anne Sheehan on the QuakeCruise as they travel to the Southern Ocean near New Zealand to install thirty earthquake-monitoring instruments on the ocean floor.


South Pole Traverse

Ted Scambos is traversing Antarctica to investigate variations in climate and snow accumulation. He and his fellow scientists will look for connections between air and ocean temperatures, atmospheric circulation patterns, and snow chemistry. Read more in the online expedition diary.


Water Plays Surprising Role In Climate Change

From the sprawling dome of Mauna Loa, climate scientists David Noone and Joe Galewsky can track water vapor that's traveled as far as the equator and the pole. They're the first to try to measure vapor's chemical signature in real-time in order to understand the processes controlling the global water cycle.


Seismometers Spy Under the Rockies

Over the last year, nearly 60 earthquake recording instruments have been installed throughout Colorado as part of a national experiment to learn more about the structure of the Earth beneath North America. How do they do it? Check it out!

 


Tracking Earth's Most Abundant Greenhouse Gas

Fifty years ago scientists began measuring carbon dioxide continuously on top of Hawaii's Mauna Loa. Last year they set up the first real-time experiments there to track Earth's most abundant, and arguably most important, heat-trapping gas: water vapor.

 


Thawing Alaska

Alaska's northern coastline is eroding at rates as high as 30 meters per year. That's a whole football field in length! CIRES researcher Cam Wobus and his colleagues at CU and the USGS photographed the rapid erosion this summer.