Environment
Bridges That Build Themselves
The two oldest types of bridge are the arch bridge and the corbel bridge. It takes a lot of time and effort to build them, but they can last for thousands of years.
Rockfalls can make natural bridges over streams, but the 'design' is very inefficient. The water channels are easily blocked, with resultant flooding of the adjacent banks.
If I told you that a tornado could pick up rocks and drop them across a river so as to form a perfect arch bridge, you wouldn't believe me. I hope. The only way to build a stone arch bridge is to set up a…
"From Disaster to Catastrophe -- What's Obama's Endgame In the Gulf?" Fox News headline, July 15.
The headline suggests that there is a difference between a disaster and a catastrophe, and that catastrophes are worse. I suppose most people would agree, but it's interesting to delve a little deeper into what we mean by a catastrophe. The term is derived from Greek words having to do with 'growing down' which makes sense. In biological terms, a catastrophe might be defined as a natural or human impact on a population of organisms that exceeds one or more of the physical or chemical…
Arctic Heroes #2 - North Pole 1
The first ever weather station on an ice floe was North Pole 1, set up May 21 1937 by a team of Russians and manned by four heroes. The record of that event shows that there was more ice in 1937 than today, it was thicker, and it extended down the entire east coast of Greenland. But thick or not, once the floe moved into the Fram Strait it was in danger of breaking up.
Arctic conditions at the time were so bad that no less than five icebreakers were involved in a chain of events when three of them got trapped in the ice. The Malygin, Sedov and…
What Price Freedom Of Information ?
There has been a great deal of fuss over a few emails and the topic of freedom of information in relation to the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit.
At the core of the debate is the issue of whether or not specific information about a few tree rings and weather stations was already available - if you knew where to look - or was being deliberately kept back contrary to law.
I have yet to see even one blogger or commenter pick up on the fact that if the data had been provided it would have been provided on request at a price. By law.
The…
Rajasthan Patrika has reported that there is water for 3 to 4 days left for Jaipur and Ajmer. What will happen then. Will Jaipur and Ajmer survive for another 50 years or 5 years if no water is left.
All dams of Rajasthan drying up. One must see what is written on the wall. Come plant trees and save Rajasthan to become another Mohanjedaro and Harappa in times of history. I am on Octopus but its no match . No water no life.
बीसलपुर से जयपुर को नहीं मिलेगा पानी
अजमेर/जयपुर। बीसलपुर बांध से जयपुर शहर को की जा रही पेयजल आपूर्ति 16 जुलाई की रात 12 बजे से बंद कर दी जाएगी।
MODIS Rapidfire For Citizen Scientists - #4
This is part #4 of a brief explanation of the NASA/GSFC MODIS Rapid Response System - Rapidfire - together with a Howto for citizen scientists. The first part was MODIS Rapidfire For Citizen Scientists - #1
In this part, I describe some of the things to be seen in the MODIS images.
Before I go further, let me reiterate that the MODIS images come from satellites which look 90 degrees down at the surface of a sphere. The world's best camera cannot avoid distortions. The MODIS satellite imaging systems are nowhere near being the world…
Understanding Ice
Ice is just frozen water, right?
Wrong!
Now you will perhaps inquire with astonishment how it is possible that ice, which is the most brittle and fragile of substances, can flow in the glacier like a viscous mass; and you may perhaps be disposed to regard this as one of the wildest and most improbable statements that have ever been made by philosophers.Hermann von Helmholtz, 1865
It's very difficult to make absolutely pure ice, even in the lab. Most especially in natural conditions, when ice forms it includes all sorts of chemicals and particles - and they affect its…
Satellites are being used to look at practically everything you can think of. Well, maybe not. But if you take a single subject like ice, it is amazing how many ways you can look at it with a surprisingly large number of satellites.
A random visit to a session or two here at the ESA Living Planet Symposium in Bergen show a small selection of ways to look at ice from space.
GlobIce main purpose is to define, implement and validata a sea ice information system. This system will support the World Climate Research Program called CliC with validated sea ice motion, deformation and flux products…
Arctic Ice July 2010
In about a week the National Snow and Ice Data Center - NSIDC - will be publishing its analysis of June's sea ice. I expect them to report another record loss of sea ice.
My prediction for July is that Arctic sea ice loss will accelerate.
Measuring ice behaviourIce is a material with mechanical properties. In order to understand what it is doing at any moment and what it will do in future, one must understand its properties. Sea ice is a special case of ice as a particulate material. The fluidity of a particulate mass is a matter of basic physics…