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Category: climatology – Page 45

A volcano in Iceland is erupting again, spewing lava and cutting heat and hot water supplies

GRINDAVIK, Iceland (AP) — A volcano in southwestern Iceland erupted Thursday for the third time since December, sending jets of lava into the sky, triggering the evacuation of the popular Blue Lagoon geothermal spa and cutting heat and hot water to thousands of people.

The eruption began at about 600 GMT (1 a.m. EST) along a three-kilometer (nearly two-mile) fissure northeast of Mount Sýlingarfell, the Icelandic Meteorological Office said. Several communities on the Reykjanes Peninsula were cut off from heat and hot water after a river of lava engulfed a supply pipeline.

The strength of the eruption had decreased by mid-afternoon, the Met Office said, though lava continued to spew from parts of the fissure and a huge plume of steam rose over a section of the crack where magma mixed with groundwater.

SpaceX launches billion-dollar environmental research satellite for NASA

SpaceX launched an environmental research satellite for NASA early Thursday, a nearly $1 billion spacecraft that survived multiple cancellation threats and is now poised to shed new light on climate change and the complex interplay of heat-trapping carbon, aerosols and sea life on global scales.

The Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem mission — PACE — “will dramatically advance our understanding of the relationship between aerosols and clouds, and the global energy balance,” said Karen St. Germain, director of NASA’s Earth sciences division. “This is one of the biggest sources of uncertainty in our ability to model the climate.”

She said PACE is “going to teach us about the oceans in the same way that Webb (the James Webb Space Telescope) is teaching us about the cosmos.” And that includes “a tremendous amount about ocean biology.”

How a ‘bomb cyclone’ helped fuel California’s deadly storm

The deadly storm that is walloping California with hurricane-force winds and record amounts of rainfall was fueled in part by the powerful weather phenomenon known as a “bomb cyclone,” according to the National Weather Service office in Monterey, Calif.

“For those keeping score, it also looks like it reached ‘bomb’ status,” a weather service forecast issued Sunday evening said.

The meteorologists who took over on Monday morning clarified that their colleagues were talking about “Bomb, meaning the intensity of the low pressure, not bomb meaning awesome.”

Algae Growth Linked to Atmospheric Dust: Insights from Pioneering Research

Dr. Janice Brahney: “Only recently have we started to see troubling outbreaks of toxic algal blooms in mountain environments. So, these changes are happening fast and are really concerning. It’s important we get to the bottom of this.”

What impact does atmospheric dust have on algae? This is what a recent study published in Global Change Biology hopes to address as a team of researchers from Utah State University (USU) investigated how increased dust concentrations in the Earth’s atmosphere could lead to larger algae blooms, impacting life on both land and in the oceans. This study holds the potential to help scientists better understand the acceptable amounts of dust and algae on the Earth and their impact on aquatic life, specifically in mountain ranges across the globe. The reason mountain headwater regions were the focus of the study was because they provide approximately 50% of the world’s population with fresh water.

“Only recently have we started to see troubling outbreaks of toxic algal blooms in mountain environments,” said Dr. Janice Brahney, who is an associate professor in the Watershed Sciences Department at USU and a co-author on the study. “So, these changes are happening fast and are really concerning. It’s important we get to the bottom of this. Toxic blooms in mountain lakes like the ones we’ve seen recently in remote mountain lakes are unprecedented.”

For the study, the researchers compared algae blooms and supplemented this with computer models to ascertain how atmospheric dust raining down onto the planet could impact aquatic communities, specifically with mountainous regions across the globe. In the end, the researchers found that increased atmospheric dust deposits not only increase algae populations, but also increase their tolerances for increased temperatures and pH, which are considered significant climate change factors.

Ford EV Drivers Will Get Free Tesla Supercharger Adapters

In May of last year, Ford CEO Jim Farley made a surprise announcement during an online event co-hosted by Tesla’s Elon Musk: the Blue Oval would adopt the Tesla-developed North American Charging Standard (NACS) port. Starting this spring, that unlikely pairing will become a reality, with Ford’s EVs (F-150 Lightning trucks, Mustang Mach-E SUVs, and E-Transit vehicles) plugging in to the Supercharger network.

Farley promised a fast charging adapter for its EV customers in the U.S. and Canada, and he indicated online this week that they’ll be available to order soon. The Ford boss didn’t nail down a date, promising more details are imminent.

“When we announced Ford EVs would get access to Tesla Superchargers, I said we’d send customers a Fast Charging Adapter. I’m pleased to confirm that eligible Mustang Mach-E & F-150 Lightning owners in the U.S. + Canada can reserve a complimentary adapter starting soon,” Farley says via X, formerly Twitter.

ESA’s Vigil space weather mission balances operational and scientific demands

“We have not forgotten our science colleagues. In fact, they are important partners for the mission,” Giuseppe Mandorlo, Vigil project manager, said Jan. 29 at the American Meteorological Society annual meeting here.

Vigil will provide space weather data from sun-Earth Lagrange point 5. Data gathered from L5 could provide notice of four to five days of solar winds streaming toward Earth.

Data from Vigil sensors coupled with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Follow-On (SWFO L1) mission destined for L1 promise to improve early warning of solar storms, Mandorlo said.

Scientists use artificial intelligence to achieve the seemingly impossible with hurricane simulations: ‘It performs very well’

“It performs very well. Depending on where you’re looking at along the coast, it would be quite difficult to identify a simulated hurricane from a real one,” Pintar said.

However, the system isn’t without flaws. The data it is fed does not account for the potential effects of rising temperatures, and the simulated storms produced for areas with less data were not as plausible.

“Hurricanes are not as frequent in, say, Boston as in Miami, for example. The less data you have, the larger the uncertainty of your predictions,” NIST Fellow Emil Simiu said.

New satellite capable of measuring Earth precipitation from space

Measuring the amount of precipitation that falls in a specific location is simple if that location has a device designed to accurately record and transmit precipitation data. In contrast, measuring the amount and type of precipitation that falls to Earth in every location is logistically quite difficult. Importantly, this information could provide a wealth of data for characterizing and predicting Earth’s water, energy and biogeochemical cycles.

Scientists from the China Meteorological Administration developed and launched a satellite created to measure Earth precipitation with radar while orbiting in space.

This is the first of two precipitation missions planned by the team to accurately measure the occurrence, type and intensity of any precipitation across the world, including over oceans and complex terrain. Specifically, the FY-3G satellite is designed to assess the 3-dimensional (3D) form of rainfall and other precipitation for weather systems at Earth’s middle and lower latitudes.

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