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New research finds that Earth had sufficient oxygen 1.4 billion years ago for animals to evolve. Therefore, low oxygen levels probably didn’t hold back evolution, as scientists have long thought. Roughly 700 million years ago, animals that need oxygen began to evolve, although simpler forms of life fueled mainly by chemicals or sunlight had already […]

Currents off the coast of northern Brazil can be used to study changes in the larger oceanic circulation pattern in the Atlantic, when variable winds in the regions are properly accounted for. A sketch of the circulation pattern in the Atlantic Ocean. Credit: Böning/Scheinert (GEOMAR). Used with permission. In the Atlantic Ocean, water circulates like […]

A new compilation of underwater terrain provides the most up-to-date mapping of portions of the western Arctic and North Pacific.During the Arctic summer, the Sun barely dips below the horizon over the Beaufort Sea, north of Alaska and the Yukon Territory. This August 2015 photo, which depicts a region inside the Alaska Region Digital Elevation […]

 NASA satellite data and models provide information for mapping fire risks nationwide, giving agencies tools for fire response, say scientists at the AGU Fall Meeting.    Soaring hundreds of kilometers above the Earth, a NASA satellite monitors soil moisture in the ground far below, probing drought conditions. Scientists at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) analyzed […]