Earth, Environment, and Geosciences
- phys.org Shrinking sea ice means more-intense storms on Alaska's coast, analysis suggests
While reliably snow-blanketed holidays might seem a thing of the past in Maryland and other parts of the East Coast—including Boston, which set a record this year for the longest stretch with no major snowfall—a new University of Maryland study reveals a much more urgent winter climate shift in a su...
- www.theguardian.com ‘No sign’ of promised fossil fuel transition as emissions hit new high
Despite nations’ pledges at Cop28 a year ago, the burning of coal, oil and gas continued to rise in 2024
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British & Exotic Mineralogy: All 2,242 illustrations from James Sowerby’s compendium of knowledge about mineralogy in Great Britain and beyond, drawn 1802–1817 and arranged by color.
c82.net British & Exotic MineralogyAll 2,242 of James Sowerby’s illustrations from his compendium of knowledge about mineralogy in Great Britain and beyond published between 1802 and 1817 and arranged by color.
- cimss.ssec.wisc.edu Parade of tropical cyclones across the western Pacific
Total Precipitable Water fields over the western Pacific on 10/11 November 2024, above, show 4 tropical cyclones at different stages of development across the West Pacific. The screenshot from the Joint Typhoon Warning Center, below, shows the 4 storms: Yinxing, about to make landfall in Vietnam, To...
- www.huffingtonpost.co.uk What Happens If… We Actually Exceed 1.5°C In Global Warming?
An ever-pressing question as COP29 gathers.
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'Frightening': Over 1 in 3 of World's Tree Species Face Extinction
www.commondreams.org 'Frightening': Over 1 in 3 of World's Tree Species Face Extinction | Common Dreams"Trees directly underpin the survival of a staggering array of species—including us," said one scientist.
- www.theverge.com Trying to reverse climate change won’t save us, scientists warn
“Climate change comes with irreversible consequences.”
- theconversation.com Atmospheric rivers are shifting poleward, reshaping global weather patterns
These powerful ‘rivers in the sky’ provide a huge share of annual precipitation in many regions, including California. They can also melt sea ice, with global climate implications.
- www.theguardian.com Dramatic images show the first floods in the Sahara in half a century
More than year’s worth of rain fell in two days in south-east Morocco, filling up lake that had been dry for decades
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Hurricane Milton Comes Ashore in Florida - RAMMB-CIRA Satellite Library (Lightning!!)
satlib.cira.colostate.edu Hurricane Milton Comes Ashore in Florida - RAMMB-CIRA Satellite LibraryOn October 9, 2024, Hurricane Milton slammed into Florida’s west coast. The powerful storm brought numerous, damaging tornadoes across southern Florida where over 100 tornado warnings were issued. More imagery of Milton can be found on its event page.
- www.theguardian.com Herd of tauros to be released into Highlands to recreate aurochs effect
Large, cattle-like tauros will shape landscape and strengthen wildlife as huge, extinct herbivore once did
- www.livescience.com 'Severe' geomagnetic storm to slam Earth Thursday, with auroras possible as far south as California and Alabama
A powerful solar outburst is likely to trigger a "severe" geomagnetic storm on Thursday, with auroras potentially visible as far south as California and Alabama, NOAA predicts.
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Every tornado warning in Florida in the past 48 hours and counting
Live alerts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-V_YnmER0Y
OP: https://www.reddit.com/r/florida/comments/1g025gi/every_tornado_warning_in_florida_in_the_past_48/
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SEE IT: A NOAA hurricane hunter plane flies into Hurricane Milton
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOAA_Hurricane_Hunters
- earthobservatory.nasa.gov Three Storms Churn in an Active Atlantic
The active 2024 hurricane season comes to a head with several simultaneous hurricanes—an unusual sight for October.
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EyeWall Replacement Cycle (EWRC) animation from Hurricane Milton
https://www.cnn.com/weather/live-news/hurricane-milton-florida-10-08-24#cm20i25sq00003b6nkmk91f0f
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_at4+shtml/092140.shtml?tswind120#contents
Keep safe folks!
- phys.org Antarctic 'greening' at dramatic rate, satellite data show
Vegetation cover across the Antarctic Peninsula has increased more than 10-fold over the last four decades, new research shows.
Vegetation cover across the Antarctic Peninsula has increased more than 10-fold over the last four decades, new research shows.
The Antarctic Peninsula, like many polar regions, is warming faster than the global average, with extreme heat events in Antarctica becoming more common.
The new study—by the universities of Exeter and Hertfordshire, and the British Antarctic Survey—used satellite data to assess how much the Antarctic Peninsula has been "greening" in response to climate change.
It found that the area of vegetation cover across the Peninsula increased from less than one square kilometer in 1986 to almost 12 square kilometers by 2021.
- phys.org X-rays advance understanding of Earth's core-mantle boundary and super-Earth magma oceans
Researchers at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have revealed new details about Earth's core-mantle boundary and similar regions found in exoplanets.
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Weather radar shows birds trapped inside the eye of Hurricane Helene.
www.vox.com Weather radar showed a strange blue mass in the eye of Hurricane Helene. What was it?As Helene made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region, birds were stuck inside its eye, where the wind is calmer. The tropical storm could disrupt fall bird migration.
Birds are incredible navigators, capable of traveling thousands of miles each year to the same location. But sometimes even they end up in the wrong place at the wrong time — like inside a hurricane.
As Hurricane Helene was making landfall in Florida as a powerful Category 4 storm, radar spotted a mass in the eye of the storm that experts say is likely birds and perhaps also insects.
Seabirds likely fled the storm’s extreme winds — which reached 140 miles per hour — and ended up in the eye, where it’s calm. Once inside, they essentially got trapped, unable to pierce through the fierce gusts of the eye wall.
Storms like Helene can blow seabirds like petrels, jaegers, and frigatebirds far inland. Exhausted, they end up in unfamiliar habitats where they can’t easily find food. “It’s a challenging situation,” said Andrew Farnsworth, a bird migration expert at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. “We know that birds do die in these things.”
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‘We can feel our ancestors’: one First Nation’s fight to save Canada’s old forests; The Wet’suwet’en Nation never signed treaties with the Canadian or provincial governments, yet their land was leased
www.theguardian.com ‘We can feel our ancestors’: one First Nation’s fight to save Canada’s old forestsThe Wet’suwet’en Nation never signed treaties with the Canadian or provincial governments, yet their land was leased to timber companies
cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/3534540
> >As the helicopter approached Caas Tl’aat Kwah (also known as Serb Creek), a 1,600-hectare (about 3,953-acre) watershed, the forest became a blanket of deep green, cleaved only by yellow-green wetlands threaded with glacial blue streams. > > >“We want to conserve it for future generations,” said Charlotte Euverman, the Wet’suwet’en woman leading a fight to save this area, which includes a traditional feasting site. “We have to leave them something.” > > >Like most First Nations here, Wet’suwet’en never signed treaties with the Canadian or provincial governments. Nevertheless, the latter took the land and leased forested acreage to logging companies. Today just 20% of British Columbia’s old-growth forests remain. > > >In 2020, after decades of activist pressure, the province identified about a quarter of the remaining old growth as at high risk for logging and recommended a pause while deciding their fate. Yet today, logging has been deferred in less than half of the high-risk area > > >Now Caas Tl’aat Kwah is in the crosshairs of a debate over the scope of First Nations’ agency, biodiversity loss and protection – and the role industrial logging plays in amplifying Canada’s forest fires, the effects of which are being felt across the globe. > > >In summer 2023, more than 150,000 sq km (58,000 sq miles) burned across the country, an all-time record, carrying smoke across the continent and air pollution all the way to Europe and China. > > >Caas Tl’aat Kwah is not yet accessible by road, so the helicopter ride was the first opportunity for Nation member Sandra Harris to see it, despite the fact that her great-grandfather, Jack Joseph, once had a cabin there. The pilot set the helicopter down upon a boggy meadow, and DeWit, who is acting director of the Office of Wet’suwet’en, led the way through the trees to a newer cabin, where he gave a framed photo of Joseph pride of place. > > >Harris explained the significance of seeing the land, saying: “We have a lot of stress in our lives with racism, working with colonial systems that are so unkind to our ways.” The land is healing, she said. > > >“Today, we can feel our ancestors,” Harris said. “We remember our stories when we are able to put our feet on the land … There’s lots of good medicine there for us.” > > >Conventional wisdom has long held that increased fire severity is due not just to climate change but also dense overgrowth from fire suppression. The prescription has been to thin forests and set controlled burns. But a growing number of scientists now say that approach fails to recognize the role of industrial logging in increased fire severity: it kills complex communities of life that stabilize the water cycle. > > Full Article !kkkanada
- www.iflscience.com Antarctica's Ozone Hole Is Healing And Set To Recover Fully By 2066
The ozone layer is looking as fit as a fiddle at the moment.
- www.newscientist.com Greenland landslide caused freak wave that shook Earth for nine days
Seismologists were mystified by a strange signal that persisted for nine days in 2023 – now its source has been identified as a standing wave caused by a landslide in Greenland
- theconversation.com India’s new mega-dam will roil lives downstream with wild swings in water flow every day
The hydropower dam is part of a huge effort to boost India’s homegrown energy. But it will radically disrupt the lives and livelihoods of indigenous communities in the flood plains downstream.
- www.motherjones.com Coral reefs are getting sick, and this human medicine might help
Antibiotics, it turns out, are a useful tool for keeping Caribbean ecosystems alive.
- grist.org As ‘doomsday’ glacier melts, can an artificial barrier save it?
Relatively warm ocean currents are weakening the base of Antarctica’s enormous Thwaites Glacier, whose demise could raise sea levels by as much as 7 feet. To separate the ice from those warmer ocean waters, scientists have put forward an audacious plan to erect a massive underwater curtain.
- www.newyorker.com Studying Stones Can Rock Your World
To think like a geologist is to contemplate timescales that stagger the imagination—and lay bare the planetary forces behind our earthly existence.
- apnews.com Workers breach key Klamath dams, allowing salmon to swim freely for the first time in a century
Workers have breached the final dams on a key section of the Klamath River, clearing the way for salmon to swim freely through a major watershed near the California-Oregon border for the first time in more than a century as the largest dam removal project in U.S. history nears completion.
- grist.org Thawing Alaskan permafrost is unleashing more mercury, confirming scientists' worst fears
A new study reveals mercury levels in melting Arctic permafrost that pose disproportionate dangers for Indigenous peoples.
