Several Ohio State earth scientists presented results of their latest research at last week's meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

Michael Bevis, Ohio Eminent Scholar in Geodynamics and earth sciences professor, reported on findings from a network of nearly 50 GPS stations planted along the Greenland coast to measure the bedrock's natural response to the ever-diminishing weight of ice above it.

These showed that a spike in Greenland ice loss lifted bedrock. An unusually hot melting season in 2010 accelerated ice loss in southern Greenland by 100 billion tons – and large portions of the island's bedrock rose an additional quarter of inch in response. His study has important implications for climate change.

Read more at: http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/greenlift.htm

C.K. Shum, professor and Distinguished University Scholar, and colleague Y. Tony Song, a research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, discovered that the destructive tsunami generated by the March 2011 Tōhoku-Oki earthquake was a long-hypothesized "merging tsunami" that doubled in intensity over rugged ocean ridges, amplifying its destructive power before reaching shore.

Satellites captured not just one wave front that day, but at least two, which merged to form a single double-high wave far out at sea – one capable of traveling long distances without losing its power. Ocean ridges and undersea mountain chains pushed the waves together, but only along certain directions from the tsunami's origin.

The discovery helps explain how tsunamis can cross ocean basins to cause massive destruction at some locations while leaving others unscathed, and raises hope that scientists may be able to improve tsunami forecasts.

Read more at: http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/doubletsunami.htm

Associate professor Wendy Panero, and doctoral student Cayman Unterborn conducted a laboratory experiment that recreated the temperatures and pressures of Earth's lower mantle to study how diamonds form there.

Then then used what they learned to construct computer models of the minerals that form in planets composed with more carbon than Earth.

Their study suggests that some stars in the Milky Way could harbor "carbon super-Earths" – giant terrestrial planets that contain up to 50 percent diamond. But if they exist, those planets are likely devoid of life as we know it.

Read more at: http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/diamondplanet.htm