Jan 14 2011

How Hot Can It Get?

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In the ancient past temperatures on Earth appeared to have been much warmer than today. It is possible that temperatures may rise as high as then based on current climate change projections. The new study, by National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) scientist Jeffrey Kiehl, will appear as a Perspectives piece in this week’s issue of the journal Science. Building on recent research, the study examines the relationship between global temperatures and high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere tens of millions of years ago. It warns that, if carbon dioxide emissions continue at their current rate through the end of this century, atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse gas will reach levels that last existed about 30 million to 100 million years ago, when global temperatures averaged about 29 degrees F higher than now (in the high eighties F).
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Jan 14 2011

NOAA’s Weatherman in the Sky

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Forecasting the weather can be a tricky business, especially in winter. When a winter storm approaches, forecasts can range widely across the board from light flurries to a blizzard. As many know, the jet stream over the North American continent moves west to east. That is why the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is dispatching its state of the art aircraft to gather atmospheric data over the North Pacific Ocean, the region where North America's weather originates.
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Jan 14 2011

Contaminated eggs: industrial farming leading to dioxin-type food scares

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The latest food scare - the contamination of British eggs with the cancer causing chemical dioxin - can be linked to our reliance on complex food chains and industrial production methods, report Joanna Blythman and Tom Levitt.
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Jan 14 2011

Climate Changes Linked to Fall of Roman Empire

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Think small variations in temperature and precipitation levels don't have much of an impact? Guess again. A prolonged period of wet weather spurred the spread of the Bubonic plague in medieval times, according to a new study. And a 300-year spell of unpredictable weather coincided with the decline of the Roman Empire.
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Jan 14 2011

El Nino seen triggering next world warmth record

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Last year tied with 2005 as the warmest on record, according to U.S. agencies, but is likely to be overtaken soon by the next year with a strong El Nino weather event, experts said on Thursday. A gradual build-up of greenhouse gases from human activities is heating the planet but natural events such as El Nino, which every few years warms the surface of the eastern and central Pacific Ocean, can have a far bigger immediate impact. "It will take an El Nino year to break the record, so possibly the next one," said professor Phil Jones of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Britain.
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Jan 14 2011

Hanny’s Voorwerp

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Hanny's Voorwerp which is Dutch for Hanny's object, is an astronomical object of unknown nature. It was discovered in 2007 by Dutch school teacher Hanny van Arkel, while she was participating as an amateur volunteer in the Galaxy Zoo project. Photographically, it appears as a bright blob close to spiral galaxy IC 2497 in the constellation Leo Minor. The object, now referred to as a "voorwerp", is about the size of our Milky Way galaxy and has a huge central hole over 16,000 light years across. The voorwerp is false colored green, a standard color to represent the presence of several luminous emission lines of glowing oxygen. It has been shown to be at the same distance from Earth as the adjacent galaxy, both about 650 million light-years away. Hanny's Voorwerp may be a small part of a 300,000-light-year-long streamer of gas, located about 650 million light-years from Earth. Scientists suggested that a quasar in a nearby galaxy, known as IC 2497, was shining on Hanny's Voorwerp, lighting up the oxygen in the streamer with a greenish glow. The only problem was that no quasar could be seen.
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Jan 13 2011

High-Speed Rail Potential in US “Megaregions”

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High speed rail is considered the holy grail of mass transit planning, and touted as a necessity for advanced economies. America is often derided for not having any high speed rail networks, while other advanced nations in Europe and Asia have them well established. A new report from the group America 2050 outlines the areas of the United States which have the greatest potential to support a high speed rail network.
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Jan 13 2011

DC Power: Not Just for the Energizer Bunny Anymore

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During the late 1800s Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse were engaged in an intense industrial rivalry. Edison's electrical inventions ran on DC (direct current). Westinghouse tried to convince governments and business that AC (alternating current) was the way to go for the development of large-scale power distribution systems. In their book American Entrepreneur: The Fascinating Stories of the People Who Defined Business in the United States, Larry Schweikart and Lynne Pierson Doti retell how the battle got pretty nasty.
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Jan 13 2011

Weather Rarity: Snow in 49 States

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Get out the toboggans and winter gloves: There's snow on the ground in 49 out of 50 U.S. states – including Hawaii. The only state that isn't at least partially a winter wonderland today is Florida, according to the National Weather Service (NWS). The agency estimates that 70.9 percent of the country is currently covered by snow.
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Jan 13 2011

Wolves, bears blamed for decline of elk in Yellowstone

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Wolves and grizzly bears are mostly to blame for a steep population decline in a signature elk herd in the northern range of Yellowstone National Park, government scientists said on Wednesday. The elk population in the northern section of the park is prized by sportsmen who hunt outside Yellowstone boundaries in Montana and by the millions who pour into the park each year to see wildlife. Annual counts of the northern Yellowstone elk population show it has plummeted by more than 70 percent since 1995, falling from 16,791 to fewer than 5,000 today.
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