Massive magma pool found deep below Yellowstone

 Science News, April 2015

Every day, the supervolcano lurking under Yellowstone National Park belches up 45,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide — much more than could be produced by the known magma chamber that lies just below the surface. Now, scientists have spotted a source of the excess gas, and it’s a doozy. They’ve discovered a magma pool containing enough hot rock to fill the Grand Canyon 11 times, the researchers report online April 23 in Science.

Monster storm dominates view from space station

 Science News, April 2015

Looking down from 400 kilometers above Earth, astronauts aboard the International Space Station couldn’t help but gawk at a huge typhoon churning in the Western Pacific. On March 31, European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti captured this photo of Typhoon Maysak at near-peak strength as it drifted toward the Philippines.

Canadian glaciers face drastic demise

 Science News, April 2015

The Great White North may lose its glaciers faster than previously thought. A detailed physics simulation of how glaciers melt in a warming world show that Western Canada’s glaciers will shed 70 percent of their ice by 2100 relative to their 2005 volumes, researchers report online April 6 in Nature Geoscience. That level of melt would raise global sea levels by roughly 4.4 millimeters and reshape the region’s landscape.

Spot the northern lights with Aurorasaurus

 Science News, April 2015

The Twitterverse can help you catch a glimpse of the shimmering northern lights. The NASA-backed Aurorasaurus project uses crowdsourcing to assemble a real-time map of aurora sightings around the Northern Hemisphere. Aurora-related tweets and reports made by citizen scientists feed in to the project through its smartphone apps and website.

Antarctic ice shelves rapidly melting

 Science News, March 2015

Antarctica’s ice shelves are shrinking at an accelerating rate, one of the longest satellite records of ice thickness reveals. Researchers report online March 26 in Science that several West Antarctic ice shelves are now on pace to disappear completely within 100 years.