Month: December 2004

Some great science to look forward to on Mars in 2009, if the massive thing successfully lands!

NASA is planning a rover with three times the mass (600 kilograms) and twice the number of instruments (10) as those currently on Mars, the long-lived Spirit and Opportunity. These use remote sensing and instruments that can scratch away surfaces to analyse the geology of the Red Planet. But MSL will contain two “laboratories” in which samples can be collected, crushed and analysed.

One is a 30-kilogram package of tools called the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) that includes an updated version of an instrument first flown on the Viking mission. Called a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer, it segregates molecules according to their mass, then identifies them. It will be able to search for the patterns of carbon isotopes that on Earth tend to be produced by life.

It seems that even insurers are getting worried about global warming, I’ll quote the whole thing:

The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has announced that 2004 is expected to be the fourth warmest year worldwide since records began.

And the insurance industry says this year will face unprecedented claims for damage from weather-related disasters.

Both sets of figures were released as ministers from 180 countries heard a message from the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan urging an end to doubts and delays on action to combat climate change.

The WMO reported that the average temperature of the world’s surface for 2004 was expected to be 0.44C higher than the mean for the period 1961-1990, making it the fourth hottest year since 1861, just behind 2003, but still well below the all-time record year of 1998.

Continue reading “Climate change hits bottom line”