pale blue dot
The sea ice cover blanketing the Arctic Ocean and nearby seas thickens and expands during the fall and winter each year. It reaches its maximum yearly extent in February or March. This year (2018), on March 17, the Arctic wintertime sea ice cover peaked at only 5.59 million square miles (14,478,033.54 km2), the 2nd lowest …
Continue reading “2018 Arctic Wintertime Sea Ice Extent is the Second Lowest On Record”
As a result of global warming, the seas warm and ice melts. Naturally, Earth’s oceans have risen steadily – or at least, it was thought so. According to a new study based on 25 years of NASA and European satellite data, rather than increasing steadily, global sea-level rise has been accelerating in recent decades. If this trend …
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According to the analyses of NASA and NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) data, the long-term global warming trend continued in 2017. According to NASA, Earth’s global surface temperatures in 2017 ranked as the second warmest since 1880. NOAA scientists concluded that 2017 was the third-warmest year in their record, in a separate, independent analysis. …
On Sunday, January 07, 2018, the residents of Aïn Séfra, a small town in Algeria, experienced a rare phenomenon: snow in Sahara, the world’s hottest desert. In the video below, published by the National Geographic, snow-dusted the desert’s sandy dunes. With temperatures touching 33.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 °C), this white blanket stayed briefly through the …
This is so cool! With this tool, called “Earth Wind Map”, an animated map of global wind, weather, and ocean conditions, you can see current wind speeds all over the Earth, in real-time!
On January 4, 2018, NASA has published an amazing GeoColor (see notes 1) image of the so-called “Bomb Cyclone”, a very powerful storm off the East coast of the United States. It was taken from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) GOES-16 satellite (previously known as GOES-R) (see notes 2).
The US government keeps a massive archive of ancient ice inside the National Ice Core Laboratory (NICL) in Denver, Colorado. This ice could hold important information about Earth and its climate throughout its history.
According to the scientists who drilled into the Chicxulub crater buried underneath the Yucatán Peninsula and the Gulf of Mexico, the dinosaur-killer asteroid hit the “worst possible place” (for the dinosaurs, of course). They summarized their findings so far in a BBC Two documentary titled “The Day The Dinosaurs Died”. The documentary was presented by …
External cameras on the International Space Station captured views during its overhead passes of Hurricane Irma. The most intense Atlantic hurricane observed in over a decade, Hurricane Irma was an extremely powerful tropical cyclone, which became a Category 5 hurricane on September 5. It reached peak intensity with 185 mph (295 km/h) winds on September 6. Its …
Continue reading “International Space Station Passes Over Hurricane Irma (Video)”
Our civilization emits so much CO2 into the Earth’s atmosphere, that only planting trees is not enough, according to a new study. Limiting global warming to below 2°C above compared to preindustrial times requires not only massive near-term greenhouse gas emissions reductions but also the application of “negative emission” techniques that extract already emitted carbon …
Continue reading “Only planting trees is not enough to prevent global warming, says study”
