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Slower On Ozone Hole Recovery
Researchers from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., have developed a new tool, a math-based computer model, to better predict when the ozone hole will recover. The Antarctic ozone hole is a massive loss of ozone high in the atmosphere (the stratosphere) that occurs each spring in the Southern Hemisphere. The ozone hole is caused by chlorine and bromine gases in the stratosphere that destroy ozone. These gases come from human-produced chemicals such as chlorofluorocarbons, otherwise called CFCs. The ozone layer blocks 90-99 percent of the sun's ultraviolet radiation from making contact with Earth. That harmful radiation can cause skin cancer, genetic damage, and eye damage, and harm marine life. For the first time, a model combines estimates of future Antarctic chlorine and bromine levels based on current amounts as captured from NASA satellite observations, NOAA ground-level observations, NCAR airplane-based observations, with likely future emissions, the time it takes for the transport of those emissions into the Antarctic stratosphere, and assessments of future weather patterns over Antarctica......... Posted by: Tyler Permalink Source An Important Part Of Successful Ecological Restoration
University of Washington students work with students, parents and teachers from a local elementary school
Credit: University of Washington Canvassing neighbors, finding and managing volunteers, preparing educational materials, posting signs and attending neighborhood meetings can be crucial to the success of the restoration projects undertaken by teams of students. "Through this process, we have watched students come to understand that science is necessary, but not sufficient for successful restoration," writes Warren Gold, associate professor at UW Bothell and lead author of the Education Forum piece, "Collaborative Ecological Restoration" in Science. The Restoration Ecology Network, established in 1999, is a three-campus program. Among its offerings is a yearlong series of courses that gives UW the chance to connect with the surrounding communities and students the chance for real-world experience working with local parks and agencies, utilities, non-profits and private firms, as per Kern Ewing, professor with the UW Botanic Gardens and a co-author on the piece in Science......... Posted by: Tyler Permalink Source Two Abrupt Global Climate Shifts
Lonnie Thompson
Their conclusions mark a massive climate shift to a cooler regime that occurred just over 5,000 years ago, and a more recent reversal to a much warmer world within the last 50 years. The evidence also suggests that most of the high-altitude glaciers in the planet's tropical regions will disappear in the near future. The paper is included in the current issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. Lastly, the research shows that in most of the world, glaciers and ice caps are rapidly retreating, even in areas where precipitation increases are documented. This implicates increasing temperatures and not decreasing precipitation as the most likely culprit. The scientists from Ohio State University's Byrd Polar Research Center and three other universities combined the chronological climate records retrieved from seven remote locations north and south of the equator. Cores drilled through ice caps and glaciers there have captured a climate history of each region, in some cases, providing annual records and in others decadal averages......... Posted by: William Permalink Source Akpatok Island
Posted by: Tyler Permalink Tracking Earth's Wobbles
Earth's irregular, shorter term wobbles, lasting a week or so, have been more difficult to study, partly because these motions are commonly masked by those of more prominent wobbles. Now, researchers in Belgium and France have taken advantage of a quirk in the pattern of large-scale motions and the advent of the Global Positioning System (GPS) to pin down short-term wobbles that occurred from November 2005 through February 2006. During this period, the Chandler wobble and the annual wobble essentially cancelled each other out, an event that occurs every 6.4 years, allowing the scientists to focus on the short-period wobbles. Over these three and a half months, the pole position traced small loops, ranging in size from that of a sheet of A4 [8-1/2x11 inch] paper down to that of a cell phone, and it remained within a one meter [yard] square during these four months......... Posted by: Tyler Permalink Source Wildfires Out West
According to reports from the National Interagency Fire Center on June 23, the Warm Fire was burning three miles south of the Jacob Lake tourist destination, and was threatening campgrounds, lake development, and historical sites. The fire was estimated to have burned 12,273 acres. The Warm Fire in northern Arizona continued to burn in the Kaibab National Forest on June 21, 2006. This image (to right) from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Aqua satellite shows a red outlined where MODIS detected actively burning fire. A plume of smoke drifts northeast toward Lake Powell......... Posted by: Tyler Permalink Source Intense Lightning Activity Around A Hurricane's Eye
However, as per Dr. Richard Blakeslee of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Ala., "Generally there's not a lot of lightning in the hurricane eye-wall region. So when people detect a lot of lightning in a hurricane, they perk up -- they say, okay, something's happening." In 2005, researchers did perk up, because a very strong Hurricane Emily had some of the most lightning activity ever seen in a hurricane. Researchers are now trying to determine if the frequency of lightning is connected to the hurricane's strength. In July of that year, NASA lightning scientists joined hurricane specialists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and 10 universities for a month-long Tropical Cloud Systems and Processes (TCSP) field experiment in Costa Rica. The purpose of the mission was to determine what weather, climate and other factors that helped create tropical storms and hurricanes. They also wanted to learn about what makes these storms strengthen. All of these organizations study lightning in hurricanes to get a better understanding of the strengthening or weakening (intensification) of the storms......... Posted by: Tyler Permalink Source Healthy Coral Reefs Of Madagascar Resisting Damage
The survey of a previously unexplored region in March 2006 by scientists from Conservation International and its partners documented a much greater variety of life than expected, including one fish species believed new to science and 17 others noted for the first time in the waters off Madagascar. These findings, combined with results of a similar survey in 2002 along northwest Madagascar's coast, increased to 829 the total number of fish species in Malagasy waters. The two Rapid Assessment Program (RAP) expeditions also recorded the highest coral diversity of the western Indian Ocean and the Red Sea, making the region one of the richest in Indian Ocean marine biodiversity. The latest results provide further information on the unique marine biodiversity of Madagascar for President Marc Ravalomanana's government, which has pledged to triple the island nation's total protected areas to 6 million hectares (23,000 square miles), including 1 million hectares (3,800 square miles) of marine protected areas. "In the end, these expeditions have doubled the number of marine species known to the region," said Sheila McKenna, director of marine biodiversity for CI's Center for Applied Biodiversity Science. "That demonstrates the need to protect these areas"......... Posted by: Tyler Permalink Source Hurricanes And Happiness
Not surprisingly, average happiness levels in the U.S. dipped significantly right after Katrina hit. But within two weeks-three for residents of the battered South Central region-average levels of happiness had rebounded to pre-storm levels. The study is a pilot project designed to provide high-frequency data on happiness by U-M economists Miles Kimball and Helen Levy, together with Osaka University economists Fumio Ohtake and Yoshiro Tsutsui. "Just because happiness rebounded quickly after Katrina doesn't mean we should underestimate the importance of the event," said Kimball, a researcher at the U-M Institute for Social Research. "That's just the nature of happiness; people adjust psychologically and cognitively to all kinds of events, from winning the lottery to the news that they have cancer. It's called hedonic adaptation". Published as a working paper earlier this year by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the study tracked the week-by-week responses from July 29 to October 24, 2005 to the following question, widely used to measure positive and negative feelings:........ Posted by: Tyler Permalink Source Cluster Makes An Effervescent Discovery
Their discovery could allow scientists to finally understand the interaction between the solar wind and the Earth's magnetic field. This exciting new view of near-Earth space has been made possible by ESA's four-spacecraft flotilla, Cluster, and Double Star, ESA's collaborative space mission with China. The spacecraft encounter the bubbles every time they are on the day-lit side of the Earth, at altitudes of between 13 and 19 Earth radii. The bubbles, known as density holes, are regions of space where the density of gas suddenly falls by ten times but the temperature of the remaining gas leaps from 100 000 ºC to 10 000 000 ºC. When Cluster first flew through the bubbles, George Parks, University of California, Berkeley, thought that they were just instrumentation glitches. "Then I looked at the data from all four Cluster spacecraft. These anomalies were being observed simultaneously by all the spacecraft. That's when I believed that they were real," says Parks. Somewhat similar bubbles have occasionally been encountered in the past by other spacecraft. They were called hot flow anomalies but Parks decided the bubbles he saw are significantly different......... Posted by: Tyler Permalink Source |
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