bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Walter S. Sullivan (1918–1996)
Authors: Russell Christopher T. 
Published: October 2006

On March 19, 1996, the scientific community lost one of its greatest champions and chroniclers, Walter S. Sullivan. He died in his home in Riverside, Conn.Sullivan was the first recipient of the American Geophysical Union's Award for Excellence in Science Journalism, which appropriately bears his name. Born on January 18, 1918, he joined The New York Times as a copy boy in 1940. After serving in the Navy during World War II, he became a foreign correspondent for the Times in 1946, only making a definitive switch to science reporting 10 years later, immediately before the International Geophysical Year, whose story he eloquently detailed. He joined AGU in 1957 and remained a member until his death. In 1962, he became the science news editor of the Times and, from 1964 until his retirement in 1987, he was the overall science editor. He continued his science writing into retirement, coming into the office to write an occasional article until shortly before his death.
Satellite‐derived sea surface temperature data available on‐line
Authors: Smith Elizabeth 
Published: October 2006

A joint NOAA/NASA data set of sea surface temperature (SST) called “Pathfinder” was compiled in response to the question: What can be done to further global change research? It is now available online for use by the Earth science community at http://podaac‐www.jpl.nasa.gov/.The project was conceived as part of the U.S. Global Change Research Program activities and is part of NASA's Mission to Planet Earth. It tapped the archives of existing satellite data, reprocessing all of the global coverage data acquired since 1981 by the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometers (AVHRR). The result is a data set of high‐resolution, global‐gridded fields of SST, produced using improved AVHRR calibration corrections and community consensus algorithms for the correction of water vapor and clouds.
Fresh data on tsunami earthquakes roll in
Authors: Carlowicz Michael 
Published: October 2006

“One of the difficulties of studying ‘tsunami earthquakes’ is that they occur so rarely, and we've had to work with old data,” notes Kenji Satake of the Geological Survey of Japan. “We needed modern data. [Now] such an earthquake has occurred.”On February 21, 1996, at 12:51 GMT, a tsunami earthquake shook the ground and then stirred the waters along the coast of central Peru, near Chimbote. A tsunami, or seismic sea wave, that was 60 cm high in the Pacific crested at 5 m along the shore. The run‐up destroyed at least 50 houses with a series of waves well out of proportion to the seismic energy released.
Researchers study impact of Hurricane Opal on Florida coast
Authors: Stone Gregory W. , Armbruster Charles K. , Xu J. P. , Grymes John M. , Huh Oscar K. 
Published: October 2006

On October 4, 1995, over 2000 km of coast‐line stretching from southwest Florida to Louisiana was struck by storm‐generated waves as Hurricane Opal moved northward across the Gulf of Mexico toward landfall east of Pensacola Beach, Florida (Figure 1).Approximately 12 hours before landfall on October 4, Opal neared category 5 strength (measured on the Saffir/Simpson scale) with sustained wind speeds of over 65 m s−1. Storm surge levels of ∼5 m were estimated across the Northwest Florida shelf by the National Hurricane Center (NHC), resulting in the overwash of most of Santa Rosa Island, the most extensively affected section of coast in the Gulf.
Observations suggest Earth's inner core spins faster than the Earth itself
Authors: Carlowicz Michael 
Published: October 2006

The inner core and the rest of the Earth are perpetually racing one another, and it seems the inner core is winning by a stunning distance. This proposition, once wholly abstract and theoretical, now has firm grounding in quantifiable observation.That the solid inner core of Earth should rotate—and faster than its surroundings—has been suspected, modeled, and postulated for about a decade, but never verified. Now two seismologists from the Lamont‐Doherty Earth Observatory, Xiaodong Song and Paul Richards, have announced that seismological records provide the evidence geophysicists need to confirm that the inner core is spinning.
Avissar appointed Editor of JGR—Atmospheres
Authors: Anonymous  
Published: October 2006

Roni Avissar, of the Department of Environmental Science at Cook College, joins Mary Anne Carroll as editor of JGR—Atmospheres for a term beginning January 1, 1997, and ending December 31, 2000. He received his B.S. in soil and waterscience in 1980, an M.S. (summa cum laude) in micrometeorology in 1982, and a Ph.D. in mesoscale meteorology in 1987 from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. He currently works as an associate professor at Rutgers University.He is an active member of two AGU committees: the AGU Precipitation Committee and the Large‐Scale Field Experiment Committee. His editorial experience as associate editor for JGR—Atmospheres for the past 3 years has well prepared him for his new role.
Marcel Nicolet (1912–1996)
Authors: Anonymous  
Published: October 2006

A pioneer in the study of atmospheric chemistry and a truly international scientist, Marcel Nicolet died of pneumonia on October 8. A member of AGU since 1959, he was awarded the William Bowie Medal in 1984 for his contributions to the study of the chemistry of Earth's upper atmosphere and for his service from 1953 to 1960 as Secretary General of the Special Committee of the International Geophysical Year.In the citation for his Bowie Medal, Nicolet was praised for his role in determining photoionization and photodissociation coefficients; elucidating the mechanism for infrared airglow formation; predicting the presence of the atmospheric helium layer; and predicting the presence of NO, NO2, HNO3, HO2, and H2O2 in the atmosphere before they were measured. He also founded in 1964 the Institute for Space Aeronomy in Belgium.
Virtual library
Authors: Carlowicz Michael 
Published: October 2006

If you have a computer and a grasp of algebra, you can learn physics. That is one of the messages behind the release of Physics—The Root Science, a new full‐text version of a physics textbook available at no cost on the World Wide Web.The interactive textbook is the work of the International Institute of Theoretical and Applied Physics (IITAP) at Iowa State University, which was established in 1993 as a partnership with the United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). With subject matter equivalent to that of a 400‐page volume, the text is designed to be completed in one school year. The textbook also will eventually include video clips of experiments and interactive learning modules, as well as links to appropriate cross‐references about fundamental principles of physics.
Edward P. Ney (1920–1996)
Authors: Jones Tom 
Published: October 2006

On July 9, 1996, Edward P. Ney, whose research spanned many disciplines across physics, astronomy, and geophysics, succumbed to a long battle with congestive heart disease at his home in Minneapolis at the age of 75.Ney was a member of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was regents' professor emeritus of physics and astronomy at the University of Minnesota, where he had been a member of the faculty since 1947. Although he retired from teaching in 1990, Ney remained active in research until his death.
Lessons from the lava lamp
Authors: Advocate Dev L. 
Published: October 2006

As far as I know, no one has written a paper on the physics of lava lamps. This is a pity since lava lamps may be telling us something about the Earth. Of course, the physics of the lava lamp would have to be simplified: “Consider a spherical lava lamp…”.A geophysicist does not take a lava lamp apart to understand how it works. She observes it from outside and infers the physics. R.U. Shure, after hours of observation, concludes the following: The active material in the lamp appears to be a wax that is denser than the oil it is in when it is cold but buoyant when it is hot. The thermal expansion of the two fluids must be quite different so that there is a density cross‐over when density is plotted against temperature. The wax rises to the surface when it is hot, cools off, becomes dense, and then sinks to the bottom where it is heated by the underlying lamp. The wax is therefore stable at the top or the bottom of the system, presumably because it is much denser or much lighter than the surrounding oil. It therefore does not have time to mix, even though the fluid in the lamp is clearly convening. (Surface tension may be important, as it was in the Benard experiments, of Rayleigh‐Benard fame. The theoretical basis was provided by Lord Rayleigh, who ignored surface tension.)
Cool connection
Authors: Carlowicz Michael 
Published: October 2006

According to a pair of paleoclimatologists from the Lamont‐Doherty Earth Observatory, the vast armadas of icebergs that floated across the North Atlantic periodically during the last Ice Age were the work—more specifically, the lack of work—of winds in the equatorial Atlantic.Andrew Mclntyre and Barbara Molfino, of the Lamont‐Doherty Earth Observatory, recently advanced the theory that the cyclical waning of winds in the tropics allowed warm equatorial waters to flow north and break up the edges of the massive ice sheets that blanketed North America. Essentially, equatorial winds relaxed in synchronicity with the recurrent changes in the Earth's orbital cycle, allowing a large reservoir of warm tropical water—which is typically pushed into the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico by the winds—to flow eastward and into the Gulf Stream. Those waters moved north with the current and warmed the North Atlantic ocean enough to trigger melting along the edges of the ice sheets.
1997 Fellows Citations
Authors: Anonymous  
Published: October 2006

AGU congratulates the thirty‐five distinguished sceintists who were selected by a committee of their peers to be AGU Fellows in 1997. This selection was based on the individuals' attainment of acknowledged eminence in a branch of geophysics.The number of Fellows selected annually is limited to no more than 0.1% of the AGU membership. The new Fellows are listed below along with citations recognizing their specific achievements.
Knowledge holes
Authors: Friebele Elaine 
Published: October 2006

According to a new Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program report, our understanding of the Arctic and how changes to its pristine environment might alter global environments is quite meager. “This report reveals serious gaps in our present knowledge, which prevent us from making firm predictions on how the Arctic will respond to future changes,” said E.C. Weatherhead, a researcher at the NOAA Air Resources Laboratory in Boulder and author of the report's chapter on climate change, ozone, and UV radiation.The Arctic climate can influence weather around the world, according to Weatherhead. The degree of glacial melting in the Arctic affects sea level and governs ocean circulation that transports colder water from the Arctic to lower latitudes. In addition to the long‐term decline of ozone in the Arctic stratosphere, short‐term episodes of ozone depletion have been observed.
Changes in tax laws could affect universities
Authors: Anonymous  
Published: October 2006

A major item on the agenda of the U.S. Congress during July is the passage of legislation implementing the budget agreement worked out between the President and Congress.There are two components to be considered: changes in program spending and taxes. Attention is now focused on the massive tax bill, the first of this size to be considered since 1981. Congress is considering several important changes that would alter the conduct of education, and related matters, at universities. The House and Senate have passed different versions of the bill (H.R. 2014), which now must be reconciled by a conference committee. Although many issues in the tax bill may be resolved by July 18, issues needing more attention may not be settled until the end of July, and all indications point to the House—Senate conference being long and difficult, with major battles over tobacco taxes, family tax credits, capital gains, and corporate taxes, among other issues.
Science budget bills wind through U.S. Congress
Authors: Showstack Randy 
Published: October 2006

With the U.S. economy booming and the science community pushing for across the board increases for federal research and development programs, science budgets are faring well in the House and Senate. When Congress returns to Washington in September following a summer recess, its priorities include finalizing four major, nondefense budget bills that affect science. These bills could provide significant funding increases for fiscal year 1998.How do these number compare to the new balanced budget agreement? According to analysts, the budget for the next fiscal year actually increases, with precipitous cuts delayed for several years. Although the outlook for long‐term funding may be grim, science budgets look good for this year.
Intercomparison makes for a better climate model
Authors: Meehl Gerald A. , Boer George J. , Covey Curt , Latif Mojib , Stouffer Ronald J. 
Published: October 2006

Global coupled climate models are elaborate numerical/physical formulations of the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere, and land which are “coupled” together and interact to simulate the three‐dimensional distribution of the climate over the globe. Such models are used to make projections of future climate change due to human activity. Simulation results are widely used to identify vulnerabilities and to study societal impacts that have policy implications. It is clearly important for the scientific community to systematically assess the simulation capabilities of these models.The climate modeling community is doing so in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) which is an assessment of the “state‐of‐the‐art” in global coupled climate modeling. This activity is being organized by the World Climate Research Programme under the auspices of the Climate Variability and Predictability (CLIVAR) project.
Radarsat survey provides accurate map of Antarctica
Authors: Showstack Randy 
Published: October 2006

Explorers of Antarctica have trudged with dog sleds, wintered in boats trapped in ice, and daringly flown across the coldest, windiest, highest, driest, and most desolate continental expanse. Their names are legendary: Ross, Scott, Amundsen, Byrd. And now add Radarsat.Taking about 5,500 microwave images over 18 days—from September 26 through October 14—a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) on this Earth‐orbiting satellite completed the first‐ever, real‐time and high‐resolution radar survey of Antarctica last week. The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) satellite, orbiting 800 km above Antarctica, accomplished this task by performing an unusual 180° yaw, or rotational maneuver, for NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Crustal deformation measured in Southern California
Authors: Shen Zheng‐kang , Dong Danan , Herring Thomas , Hudnut Kenneth , Jackson David , King Robert , McClusky Simon , Sung Li‐yu 
Published: October 2006

Studies at the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) are suggesting that postseismic deformation is significant and long lasting. This seems the case, at least, in a region whose dimension is comparable to the fault rupture length. Researchers at SCEC found strong spatial correlation between the high strain rates and the past large earthquakes at the epicentral areas of the 1952 Kern County, 1971 Imperial, and 1992 Landers earthquakes.Southern California spans a plate boundary composed of hundreds of faults, major and minor, over a region hundreds of km wide. Measuring the crustal deformation field across this broad and complex plate boundary poses a great challenge. The Crustal Deformation Working Group of the SCEC orchestrated a major effort to provide, for the first time, a unified geodetic crustal deformation field covering southern California.
Upgrading a beginning geophysics course: Taking the “small‐is‐beautiful approach”
Authors: Stein Seth , DeLaughter John E. 
Published: October 2006

Considerable attention is now directed toward improving Earth science curricula, as illustrated by both presentations at national scientific meetings and discussions in the literature. Much of the discussion addresses large‐scale changes, such as the development of new degree programs [e.g., Stein, 1996]. Such reforms can be very successful but require lengthy interactions with university bureaucracies.A complementary approach is to upgrade individual courses or groups of courses. This approach has the advantage of being doable by individual faculty members, without bureaucracy, and on small (or nonexistent) budgets. We have been taking such a “smallis‐beautiful” [Schumacher, 1973] or “faster, camcheaper, better” approach to upgrading our introductory geophysics course. Our discussions with colleagues elsewhere have shown that there is interest in this effort. Therefore we will summarize the effort here in the hope of encouraging discussions of similar experiments.
Mars Pathfinder: Lander is silent, but data tell many tales
Authors: Edgett Ken 
Published: October 2006

ARES VALLIS, MARS—Silence. Ares Vallis has been silent for most of its history, and it is a silent place once again. The data gathered from this valley by Mars Pathfinder, however, are not silent, and they still have many stories to tell (Fig. 1).“I am proud to announce the completion of the Mars Pathfinder Extended Mission,” said project manager Brian Muirhead of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in a November 4, 1997, press conference. Pathfinder's last science data transmission occurred on September 27. Attempts to communicate with the lander throughout October were fruitless, except for brief signals on October 2 and 7. Despite the apparent end of the spectacular mission, data analysis has barely begun.
Investigating the lake effect on weather
Authors: Friebele Elaine 
Published: October 2006

Scientists from 20 universities began an intensive 2‐month investigation of Midwest meteorology in December.The Lake‐Induced Convection Experiment (Lake‐ICE) will use airplane‐borne sensing devices and dozens of ground‐based stations to determine how the Great Lakes affect arctic air masses in winter and how the heat and moisture from the lakes circulate on several scales.
Scientists question whether large meteorite hit Greenland
Authors: Showstack Randy 
Published: October 2006

Southern Greenland is especially remote and desolate during the winter months. Since mid‐December, more than 1 m of snow has fallen over the ice cap, and the sun lights up the sky for just five hours during the shortest days.But some Danish scientists hope that somewhere near 61°25″N, 44°26″W, and not far from the tiny town of Qaqortoq, lie the remains of a large meteorite that lit up the early morning sky for a few very bright moments on December 9, before it disappeared and possibly impacted on the Earth at approximately 5:11 a.m. local time (8:11 UT). If the meteor disintegrated before reaching the Earth's surface, as most do, some scientists at least hope to find bits of extraterrestrial ash from which they might learn more about the origin and make‐up of the Solar System.
Scientists keep watchful eye on Long Valley Caldera
Authors: Showstack Randy 
Published: October 2006

Even when Dave Hill's beeper does not sound in the middle of the night to feed him new alphanumeric data about earthquake magnitudes, quantities, and locations, the U.S. Geological Survey scientist often is roused from sleep just by the thought of the swarms of quakes rumbling in the Long Valley caldera in eastcentral California, 320 km east of his home near Menlo Park.Hill, the agency's chief scientist monitoring volcano‐tectonic activity in the caldera, says most of the quakes are too slight to feel, even when you stand right above them. But he says the quakes and inflation of a resurgent dome within the caldera indicate magma is pushing to the surface.
Lunar craft looks for water; takes Shoemaker along
Authors: Showstack Randy 
Published: October 2006

The Lunar Prospector, launched on January 6, could help answer long‐standing questions about the Moon's resources, evolution, and core, as it maps the Moon's surface and its gravitational and magnetic fields during a 1‐year polar orbiting mission, NASA says.However, Prospector's neutron spectrometer, one of five instruments onboard the spacecraft, is receiving most of the attention. That device will scan for water ice in the deep craters of the Moon's south pole. Radar mapping instruments onboard the United States' 1994 military probe Clementine had suggested the possible presence of water on the Moon.
Auroral Workshop generates U.S.‐Finnish teamwork
Authors: Moldwin Mark 
Published: October 2006

Forty scientists from the United States and Finland met last spring at a workshop to develop collaborative studies of magnetospheric‐ionospheric coupling and to synthesize multiple ground‐based and space‐based data sets.The workshop also provided an opportunity to compare the output of new U.S. and Finnish Global Magnetohydrodynamic models with ground‐based and satellite observations. Some of the missions and facilities that are providing new data within the United States and Finland include the Global Geospace Science/national Solar‐Terrestrial Program Polar and Wind satellites, Interball, the Fast Auroral Snapshot Explorer, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, Ulysses, the Svalbard Radar, the new Super Dual Auroral Radar Network (SuperDARN) station, digital all sky cameras, and the Magnetosphere Imager (MI) array in Finland. The workshop began with a discussion of dayside magnetospheric‐ionospheric coupling. Dayside ionospheric transient signatures were divided into three types: auroral forms and convection velocity spikes, magnetic and convection events, and twin convection vortices. The three classes differ in size, location, repetition rates, and Interplanetary Magnetic Field (IMF) dependencies. Scientists are addressing whether the transient classes are related, what the transients' role is compared to that of permanent cusp features, and how transients affect mag‐netospheric energetics.
Interest in complexity in brittle and granular systems grows
Authors: Scholz Christopher H. 
Published: October 2006

In recent years both physicists and geophysicists have become increasingly interested in macroscopic patterns and features that spontaneously form in space and time during the deformation of brittle and granular media. Such features include faults and shear bands in the shearing of brittle and ductile solids and in the deformation of granular media, spontaneous grain size segregation during flow, and a variety of other patterns formed during oscillatory motion. Often these features exhibit self‐similarity, and their populations have fractal‐size distributions.These spontaneous formation—or self‐organizing—phenomena are hallmarks of what has become known as the physics of complexity. The study of complexity is in its exploratory phase, past its infancy, but nowhere near the point where a general understanding of these phenomena has been achieved. The youth of this topic makes it one of the hottest topics in both geophysics and condensed‐matter physics.
Now Voyager
Authors: Showstack Randy 
Published: October 2006

Deep in space, more than 20 years after its launch on September 5, 1977, and long after most people have forgotten about it, Voyager I will take over the mantle as the most distant human‐made object in the solar system on February 15, according to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Somewhere beyond 10 billion km from Earth, the spacecraft finally will outdistance Pioneer 10.Voyager I, racing through the solar system at 17.4 km/s, is expected to reach another milestone in about the year 2003, when it passes through the “termination shock” on its way to the heliopause. That invisible boundary separates our solar system from interstellar space and marks the outermost edge of the Sun's magnetic field.