We weathered the Ice Age while similar species disappeared. Specialists still struggle to understand why.
Category: climatology – Page 49
Devastation followed by desperation in Acapulco after Hurricane Otis rips through
ACAPULCO, Mexico (AP) — First came the devastation, then people’s desperation.
Hurricane Otis blasted the Mexican tourist port of Acapulco like no other storm before in the Eastern Pacific. As a monstrous Category 5 meteor, with its 165 mph (266 kph) winds, it destroyed what it found in its path: large residential buildings, houses, hotels, roads and stores.
Fallen trees and power line poles covered practically all the streets in this city of more than 1 million people. The walls and the roofs of buildings and houses were left partially or totally ripped off, while some cars were buried under debris.
Ancient Landscape Not Seen For 14 Million Years Discovered Beneath Antarctic Ice
An ancient landscape that has remained hidden beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) for at least 14 million years has been revealed by a new satellite data and radar imaging study. According to the researchers, the preservation of this primordial scenery attests to the fact that the EAIS has remained relatively unchanged for eons, yet this stability could soon be threatened by an unprecedented rise in global temperatures.
The study authors used satellite data to identify undulations in the ice sheet’s surface that provided clues as to the nature of the terrain beneath. Using radio-echo sounding techniques, they were then able to image the landscape covered by the ice over an area of 32,000 square kilometers (12,355 square miles).
“The land underneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet is less well known than the surface of Mars,” explained study author Professor Stewart Jamieson in a statement. “And that’s a problem because that landscape controls the way that ice in Antarctica flows, and it controls the way it might respond to past, present and future climate change.”
Japan’s Sakurajima Volcano Erupts in A Spectacle of Fire, Smoke, and Volcanic Lightning
In the early hours of October 24, 2023, the southern peak of Sakurajima roared, dramatically punctuating the Kagoshima City skyline. The volcanic eruption, Japan’s second-largest this year, sent a plume of smoke spiraling 3,400 meters above the crater. This follows another eruption on October 19, which reached an even greater height of 3,600 meters. A Spectacle of Fire and Lightning The eruption was not just a spectacle of fire and smoke…
NOAA scientists link exotic metal particles in the upper atmosphere to rockets, satellites
NOAA scientists investigating the stratosphere have found that in addition to meteoric ‘space dust,’ the atmosphere more than seven miles above the surface is peppered with particles containing a variety of metals from satellites and spent rocket boosters vaporized by the intense heat of re-entry.
The discovery is one of the initial findings from analysis of data collected by a high-altitude research plane over the Arctic during a NOAA Chemical Science Laboratory mission called SABRE, short for Stratospheric Aerosol processes, Budget and Radiative Effects. It’s the agency’s most ambitious and intensive effort to date to investigate aerosol particles in the stratosphere, a layer of the atmosphere that moderates Earth’s climate and is home to the protective ozone layer.
Using an extraordinarily sensitive instrument custom-built at NOAA in Boulder, Colorado, and mounted in the nose of a NASA WB-57 research aircraft, scientists found aluminum and exotic metals embedded in about 10 percent of sulfuric acid particles, which comprise the large majority of particles in the stratosphere. They were also able to match the ratio of rare elements they measured to special alloys used in rockets and satellites, confirming their source as metal vaporized from spacecraft reentering Earth’s atmosphere.
Tesla Megapack installed at California water treatment plant
A new Tesla Megapack has been installed at a water treatment plant in San Luis Obispo, California, according to a new report.
The City of San Luis Obispo installed a Tesla Megapack energy storage unit at its water treatment facility, as reported by Paso Robles Daily on Monday. The battery is part of the city’s commitment to “leading by example in climate action work” and its initiative to reach carbon neutrality on city operations by 2030.
“The installation of the Tesla battery system at our water treatment plant is a testament to our city’s commitment to sustainability, innovation, and resilience. I’m proud of the work our team has done to make this vision a reality,” said City Utilities Director Aaron Floyd.
Researchers use new new cobalt-modified nano material to make fuel cells more robust, sustainable
There is an urgent need to address climate change, making the development of sustainable energy alternatives more important than ever. While proton-exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) have shown great promise for energy production, particularly in the transportation industry, there is a long-standing problem with their durability and cost.
A Western research team has addressed the issue with a new cobalt-modified nanomaterial making PEMFCs more robust, readily sourced and environmentally sustainable demonstrating just a two percent loss in efficiency rate following 20,000 cycles in a durability test.
The new nanomaterial is used to enhance oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), the process that forms water in the fuel cell allowing a higher current for more efficient power generation. The cobalt-modified nanomaterial also reduces the reliance on platinum to construct these fuel cells. A costly precious metal, and mined primarily in South Africa, only a few hundred tons of platinum are produced annually.
Newly Discovered Spirals of Brain Activity May Help Explain Cognition
That’s one idea for how the brain organizes itself to support our thoughts, feelings, and emotions. But if the brain’s information processing dynamics are like waves, what happens when there’s turbulence?
In fact, the brain does experience the equivalent of neural “hurricanes.” They bump into one another, and when they do, the resulting computations correlate with cognition.
These findings come from a unique study in Nature Human Behavior that bridges neuroscience and fluid dynamics to unpack the inner workings of the human mind.
Scientists begin building AI for scientific discovery using tech behind ChatGPT
An international team of scientists, including from the University of Cambridge, have launched a new research collaboration that will leverage the same technology behind ChatGPT to build an AI-powered tool for scientific discovery.
While ChatGPT deals in words and sentences, the team’s AI will learn from numerical data and physics simulations from across scientific fields to aid scientists in modeling everything from supergiant stars to the Earth’s climate.
The team launched the initiative, called Polymathic AI earlier this week, alongside the publication of a series of related papers on the arXiv open access repository.
For The First Time Ever, Humans Have Bent Lightning
For the first time, scientists have managed to deflect lightning, to the relief of anyone afraid of thunder and lightning storms but probably the chagrin of Zeus. They managed to show that lasers can act as virtual lightning rods, redirecting the direction in which bolts jump.
The Franklin lightning rod was a major scientific advance of its day, preventing millions of fires and electrocutions and demonstrating humanity’s capacity to control forces we had long feared as belonging to the gods. Nevertheless, it’s been 270 years, and it remains the basis of our lightning protection: maybe it’s time for an upgrade.
That is what Dr Aurélien Houard of ENSTA Paris and co-authors propose in a paper pubpished in Nature Photonics, demonstrating that laser pulses can change the direction of a lightning strike.