Portal:Earth sciences
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Geosciences (another word for earth sciences) are the category of sciences relating to the planet Earth. Notable fields of this are:
- Geology, the study of the Earth's lithosphere, mantle and core.
- Soil science, the study of the Earth's pedosphere.
- Oceanography, limnology and hydrology: studies of the Earth's hydrosphere.
- Atmospheric sciences.
- Glaciology, the study of the Earth's cryosphere.
Some notable interdisciplinary fields relating to geoscience are meteorology, geochemistry, geophysics, mineralogy, climatology, and paleoclimatology.
Portal archives are available here
March 18, 2006: Ocean warming has been found to result in stronger hurricanes. Article on Nature News
March 12, 2006: The University of Arizona and the California Institute of Technology are in the process of creating tricorders to identify gemstones. Eurek!Alert article
March 09, 2006: Cassini discovers geysers of water on Enceladus. NASA Press Release
March 2, 2006: Neighbouring vortices are found to suck energy from each other, not have a smaller one fuel a larger one, like previously thought. Article on ScienceNOW
- ...that Louis Agassiz was the first to scientifically propose that the Earth had been subject to a past ice age. More...
- ...that Diorite is a grey to dark grey intermediate intrusive igneous rock composed principally of plagioclase feldspar (typically andesine), hornblende, and/or pyroxene. More...
- ...that Black smokers are a type of hydrothermal vent found on the ocean floor. More...
- ...that the troposphere is the lowermost portion of Earth's atmosphere and the one in which most weather phenomena occur. More...
- ...that Tuff is a type of rock consisting of consolidated volcanic ash ejected from vents during a volcanic eruption. More...
- ...that Io is the most vulcanically active body in our solar system, due to the tides exerted upon the satellite by Jupiter. More...
An ice age is a period of long-term downturn in the temperature of Earth's climate, resulting in an expansion of the continental ice sheets, polar ice sheets and mountain glaciers ("glaciation"). Glaciologically, ice age is often used to mean a period of ice sheets in the northern and southern hemispheres; by this definition we are still in an ice age (because the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets still exist). More colloquially, when speaking of the last few million years, ice age is used to refer to colder periods with extensive ice sheets over the North American and Eurasian continents: in this sense, the last ice age ended about 10,000 years ago. This article will use the term ice age in the former, glaciological, sense; and use the term 'glacial periods' for colder periods during ice ages and 'interglacial' for the warmer periods.
During the last few million years, there have been many glacial periods, occurring initially at 40,000-year frequency but more recently at 100,000-year frequencies. There have been four major ice ages in the further past.
Feel free to add anything that you feel needs improvement.
There are currently many geoscience stubs in need of work, which you may find listed at: Geology stubs - Mineral stubs - Oceanography stubs - Atmospheric science stubs - Hurricane stubs - Geography stubs
Create a History of earth science or History of geology article, one of the main history of science needs. (pink)
Sub-categories of Earth Sciences:
Climate change - Climatology - Earth - Earth observation satellites - Earth scientists - Ecology - Environmental science - Geodesy - Geography - Geology - Glaciology - Hydrology - Limnology - Meteorology - Oceanography - Paleoclimatology - Palynology - Space science
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