Download or read book Polar Oceans from Space written by Josefino Comiso and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2010-03-24 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Only a few centuries ago, we knew very little about our planet Earth. The Earth was considered flat by many although it was postulated by a few like Aristotle that it is spherical based on observations that included the study of lunar eclipses. Much later, Christopher Columbus successfully sailed to the West to discover the New World and Ferdinand Magellan’s ship circumnavigated the globe to prove once and for all that the Earth is indeed a sphere. Worldwide navigation and explorations that followed made it clear that the Earth is huge and rather impossible to study solely by foot or by water. The advent of air travel made it a lot easier to do exploratory studies and enabled the mapping of the boundaries of continents and the oceans. But aircraft coverage was limited and it was not until the satellite era that full c- erage of the Earth’s surface became available. Many of the early satellites were research satellites and that meant in part the development of engineering measurement systems with no definite applications in mind. The Nimbus-5 Electrically Scanning Microwave Radiometer (ESMR) was a classic case in point. The sensor was built with the idea that it may be useful for meteorological research and especially rainfall studies over the oceans, but success in this area of study was very limited.

Download or read book Alien Oceans written by Kevin Hand and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-21 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inside the epic quest to find life on the water-rich moons at the outer reaches of the solar system Where is the best place to find life beyond Earth? We often look to Mars as the most promising site in our solar system, but recent scientific missions have revealed that some of the most habitable real estate may actually lie farther away. Beneath the frozen crusts of several of the small, ice-covered moons of Jupiter and Saturn lurk vast oceans that may have existed for as long as Earth, and together may contain more than fifty times its total volume of liquid water. Could there be organisms living in their depths? Alien Oceans reveals the science behind the thrilling quest to find out. Kevin Peter Hand is one of today's leading NASA scientists, and his pioneering research has taken him on expeditions around the world. In this captivating account of scientific discovery, he brings together insights from planetary science, biology, and the adventures of scientists like himself to explain how we know that oceans exist within moons of the outer solar system, like Europa, Titan, and Enceladus. He shows how the exploration of Earth's oceans is informing our understanding of the potential habitability of these icy moons, and draws lessons from what we have learned about the origins of life on our own planet to consider how life could arise on these distant worlds. Alien Oceans describes what lies ahead in our search for life in our solar system and beyond, setting the stage for the transformative discoveries that may await us.

Download or read book Space and Oceans written by ATF Press and published by ATF Press. This book was released on 2022-10-01 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is a growing concern over the ubiquitous distribution of plastic pollution that is evolving in the Beaufort Gyre in the Arctic Ocean, prompting international collaboration and new environmental measures. Marine pollution is recognised as an immediate threat to both land and marine ecosystems. Satellites have proven useful in identifying ocean plastic patches and current movements in other oceans but little research has been applied to the Arctic, a region that impacts eight countries making up the Arctic Circle. This interdisciplinary team project investigates the use of Sentinel-2, Sentinel-6, Fourier-Transform Spectroscopy, stratospheric balloons and autonomous underwater vehicles to provide an integrated strategy, including communication and outreach, to tackling marine plastic pollution while recognizing that it is necessary to also prevent plastics from entering the ocean in the first place.

Download or read book The Arctic in the Anthropocene written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2014-07-31 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Once ice-bound, difficult to access, and largely ignored by the rest of the world, the Arctic is now front and center in the midst of many important questions facing the world today. Our daily weather, what we eat, and coastal flooding are all interconnected with the future of the Arctic. The year 2012 was an astounding year for Arctic change. The summer sea ice volume smashed previous records, losing approximately 75 percent of its value since 1980 and half of its areal coverage. Multiple records were also broken when 97 percent of Greenland's surface experienced melt conditions in 2012, the largest melt extent in the satellite era. Receding ice caps in Arctic Canada are now exposing land surfaces that have been continuously ice covered for more than 40,000 years. What happens in the Arctic has far-reaching implications around the world. Loss of snow and ice exacerbates climate change and is the largest contributor to expected global sea level rise during the next century. Ten percent of the world's fish catches comes from Arctic and sub-Arctic waters. The U.S. Geological Survey estimated that up to 13 percent of the world's remaining oil reserves are in the Arctic. The geologic history of the Arctic may hold vital clues about massive volcanic eruptions and the consequent release of massive amount of coal fly ash that is thought to have caused mass extinctions in the distant past. How will these changes affect the rest of Earth? What research should we invest in to best understand this previously hidden land, manage impacts of change on Arctic communities, and cooperate with researchers from other nations? The Arctic in the Anthropocene reviews research questions previously identified by Arctic researchers, and then highlights the new questions that have emerged in the wake of and expectation of further rapid Arctic change, as well as new capabilities to address them. This report is meant to guide future directions in U.S. Arctic research so that research is targeted on critical scientific and societal questions and conducted as effectively as possible. The Arctic in the Anthropocene identifies both a disciplinary and a cross-cutting research strategy for the next 10 to 20 years, and evaluates infrastructure needs and collaboration opportunities. The climate, biology, and society in the Arctic are changing in rapid, complex, and interactive ways. Understanding the Arctic system has never been more critical; thus, Arctic research has never been more important. This report will be a resource for institutions, funders, policy makers, and students. Written in an engaging style, The Arctic in the Anthropocene paints a picture of one of the last unknown places on this planet, and communicates the excitement and importance of the discoveries and challenges that lie ahead.

Download or read book Analysis of SAR Data of the Polar Oceans written by Costas Tsatsoulis and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a collection of the most recent and significant research on algorithms for the analysis of polar sea-ice SAR data. All algorithms are implemented and tested. One chapter is from the Alaskan SAR Facility, the major NASA archive of polar SAR data and a source of many SAR analysis algorithms, including high-level results of such analyses. One chapter has been written jointly by the US and Canadian Ice Centers, which provide e.g., operational sea-ice products to the shipping and oil-drilling industries and to polar explorations. This book will be useful to all researchers in the polar sciences community.

Download or read book Enhancing NASA s Contributions to Polar Science written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2001-05-23 with total page 139 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The high latitudes of the Arctic and Antarctic, together with some mountainous areas with glaciers and long-lasting snow, are sometimes called the cryosphere-defined as that portion of the planet where water is perennially or seasonally frozen as sea ice, snow cover, permafrost, ice sheets, and glaciers. Variations in the extent and characteristics of surface ice and snow in the high latitudes are of fundamental importance to global climate because of the amount of the sun's radiation that is reflected from these often white surfaces. Thus, the cryosphere is an important frontier for scientists seeking to understand past climate events, current weather, and climate variability. Obtaining the data necessary for such research requires the capability to observe and measure a variety of characteristics and processes exhibited by major ice sheets and large-scale patterns of snow and sea ice extent, and much of these data are gathered using satellites. As part of its efforts to better support the researchers studying the cryosphere and climate, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)-using sophisticated satellite technology-measures a range of variables from atmospheric temperature, cloud properties, and aerosol concentration to ice sheet elevation, snow cover on land, and ocean salinity. These raw data are compiled and processed into products, or data sets, useful to scientists. These so-called "polar geophysical data sets" can then be studied and interpreted to answer questions related to atmosphere and climate, ice sheets, terrestrial systems, sea ice, ocean processes, and many other phenomena in the cryosphere. The goal of this report is to provide a brief review of the strategy, scope, and quality of existing polar geophysical data sets and help NASA find ways to make these products and future polar data sets more useful to researchers, especially those working on the global change questions that lie at the heart of NASA's Earth Science Enterprise.

Download or read book Satellite Altimetry for Earth Sciences written by Frédéric Frappart and published by MDPI. This book was released on 2019-04-09 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Satellite altimetry is a radar technique for measuring the topography of the Earth’s surface. It was initially designed for measuring the ocean’s topography, with reference to an ellipsoid, and for the determination of the marine geoid. Satellite altimetry has provided extremely valuable information on ocean science (e.g., circulation surface geostrophic currents, eddy structures, wave heights, and the propagation of oceanic Kelvin and Rossby waves). With more than 25 years of observations, it is also becoming vital to climate research, providing accurate measurements of sea level variations from regional to global scales. Altimetry has also demonstrated a strong potential for geophysical, cryospheric, and hydrological research and is now commonly used for the monitoring of Arctic and Antarctic ice sheet topography and of terrestrial surface water levels. This book aims to present reviews and recent advances of general interest in the use of radar altimetry in Earth sciences. Manuscripts are related to any aspect of radar altimetry technique or geophysical applications. We also encourage manuscripts resulting from the application of new altimetric technology (SAR, SARin, and Ka band) and improvements expected from missions to be launched in the near future (i.e., SWOT).

Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of Ocean Space written by Kimberley Peters and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-07-29 with total page 591 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Invisible as the seas and oceans may be for so many of us, life as we know it is almost always connected to, and constituted by, activities and occurrences that take place in, on and under our oceans. The Routledge Handbook of Ocean Space provides a first port of call for scholars engaging in the ‘oceanic turn’ in the social sciences, offering a comprehensive summary of existing trends in making sense of our water worlds, alongside new, agenda-setting insights into the relationships between society and the ‘seas around us’. Accordingly, this ambitious text not only attends to a growing interest in our oceans, past and present; it is also situated in a broader spatial turn across the social sciences that seeks to account for how space and place are imbricated in socio-cultural and political life. Through six clearly structured and wide-ranging sections, The Routledge Handbook of Ocean Space examines and interrogates how the oceans are environmental, historical, social, cultural, political, legal and economic spaces, and also zones where national and international security comes into question. With a foreword and introduction authored by some of the leading scholars researching and writing about ocean spaces, alongside 31 further, carefully crafted chapters from established as well as early career academics, this book provides both an accessible guide to the subject and a cutting-edge collection of critical ideas and questions shaping the social sciences today. This handbook brings together the key debates defining the ‘field’ in one volume, appealing to a wide, cross-disciplinary social science and humanities audience. Moreover, drawing on a range of international examples, from a global collective of authors, this book promises to be the benchmark publication for those interested in ocean spaces, past and present. Indeed, as the seas and oceans continue to capture world-wide attention, and the social sciences continue their seaward ‘turn’, The Routledge Handbook of Ocean Space will provide an invaluable resource that reveals how our world is a water world.

Download or read book Carbon Capture Utilization and Sequestration written by Ramesh K. Agarwal and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2018-09-12 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is divided in two sections. Several chapters in the first section provide a state-of-the-art review of various carbon sinks for CO2 sequestration such as soil and oceans. Other chapters discuss the carbon sequestration achieved by storage in kerogen nanopores, CO2 miscible flooding and generation of energy efficient solvents for postcombustion CO2 capture. The chapters in the second section focus on monitoring and tracking of CO2 migration in various types of storage sites, as well as important physical parameters relevant to sequestration. Both researchers and students should find the material useful in their work.

Download or read book Space and Energy written by L. G. Napolitano and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2013-10-22 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Space and Energy contains the proceedings of the 26th Congress of the International Astronautical Federation, held in Lisbon, Portugal, on September 21-27, 1975. The papers explore developments and trends of interest as well as research in space and energy. Topics covered range from engineering and life sciences to space systems, space technology, and communication satellites. This book is comprised of 16 chapters and begins with a discussion on the Earth as an open system and how to utilize solar energy. The next section is devoted to engineering and life sciences and includes chapters giving surveys and/or assessments of a number of basic topics in astrodynamics and bioastronautics. Propulsion system concepts for a single stage shuttle are also considered, along with the reliability of outer planet spacecraft and the contribution of biological satellites to space biology and medicine. Specific systems such as an experimental hybrid rocket are also described. The last part evaluates application satellites, with particular reference to communication and earth resource satellites. This monograph should be of interest to space scientists and engineers.

Download or read book Ice in the Ocean written by Peter Wadhams and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2000-10-31 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ICe in the Ocean examines sea ice and icebergs and their role in the global climate system. It is comprehensive textbook suitablefor students, pure and applied researchers, and anyone interested in the polar oceans; the distribution of sea ice; the mechanisms of growth, development and decay; the thermodynamics and dynamics of sea ice; sea ice deformation and ridge-building; the role of marginal ice zones; the characteristics of icebergs; and the part played by sea ice in the climate system and in the transport of pollutants. An extensive reference list and recommendations for further reading and numerous illustrations, and add to the usefulness of the text.

Download or read book Protecting the Polar Marine Environment written by Davor Vidas and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000-11-23 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can we best protect the polar marine environment against pollution? Leading scholars on environmental law, the law of the sea, and Arctic and Antarctic affairs here examine this important question. To what extent do existing global instruments of environmental protection apply to the Arctic Ocean and the Southern Ocean? Can the arrangements adopted at regional, sub-regional and national levels provide adequate protection? This book examines and compares various levels of regulation in protecting the marine environment of the Arctic and Antarctic, with specific attention to land-based activities, radioactive waste dumping, and shipping in ice-covered waters. Developments since the establishment of the Arctic Council in 1996 and the entry into force of the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty in 1998 are also discussed. This is a volume that will appeal to polar specialists and to all those interested in environmental law and policy.

Download or read book Polar Oceans Governance in an Era of Environmental Change written by Tim Stephens and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2014-04-25 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This timely book provides a cutting-edge assessment of how the dynamic ocean regions at the highest latitudes on Earth are being managed in an era of unprecedented environmental change. The Arctic and Southern Oceans are experiencing transformative env

Download or read book The Law of the Sea and Polar Maritime Delimitation and Jurisdiction written by Alex G. Oude Elferink and published by Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. This book was released on 2001-10-17 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The climate and other characteristics of the polar regions have been major factors in shaping the legal regime applicable to the polar oceans. In Antarctica, states have had to grapple with the question of how to account for developments in the Law of the Sea, while preserving the compromise over sovereignty contained in the Antarctic Treaty. The Arctic also has presented challenges for the Law of the Sea, as illustrated by the continued attention given to special rules for polar shipping. The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea has led to substantial agreement on the legal regime of ocean spaces. The present volume explores the impact the Convention has had on the polar regions in this respect, including after its entry into force in 1994. To this end, it looks at a number of issue areas in the field of maritime delimitation (baselines, maritime zones, delimitation of maritime zones betweenm neighboring states) and jursidiction (environmental protection, navigation and fisheries) from a bipolar perspective. It is strongly suggested that the legal regime of the polar oceans will be further elaborated to more effectively deal with existing activities or to accommodate new activities. It is likely that the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea will continue to provide the basic legal framework for this exercise and that states will be careful not to unravel the delicate balance contained in it.

Download or read book Oceanography from Space written by and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Arctic in China s National Strategy written by Martin Kossa and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-02-02 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book locates the Arctic within the context of the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) national strategy of the Great Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation. Drawing on a range of sources published in Chinese and English, the author analyses Beijing’s Arctic scientific activities and technological capabilities, including the research infrastructure, long-term goals, and the significance for China’s understanding of the region, its Arctic identity, and international perceptions. Examining the region from the perspective of the Comprehensive National Security Outlook developed during the Xi Jinping era, the book focuses on military, economic, technological, and political components and considers the PRC’s official and academic discourses and the views of the region within bilateral relations with Arctic states, outlining a science, security, and governance nexus in China’s Arctic engagement. This volume will be of interest to scholars and students of Arctic geopolitics, Chinese studies, security studies, and foreign policy analysis. It will also appeal to policymakers and defence analysts in Arctic states and other regional stakeholders.

Download or read book The Polar Oceans and World Climate written by Joseph O. Fletcher and published by . This book was released on 1968 with total page 70 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The following topics are discussed with the aid of numerous quantitative graphs depicting energy exchange between the ocean and the atmosphere and energy loss to space. (1) The physical reasons why the presence or absence of ice on the sea influences climate-forming processes. (2) Some questions associated with pack ice in the Arctic Ocean: How much does it vary. What causes these variations and how do they influence global climate. If the pack ice were removed, would it reform or would the Arctic Ocean remain an open sea. (3) Variations in the extent of sea ice around the Antarctic continent, how it varies, and how these variations may influence global climate. (4) Long-term changes of global climate and extent of pack ice. (5) Possibilities for artificially influencing large-scale climatic processes by influencing the extent of ice on the sea. (Author).