1. What Is Energy?

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 1

2001 November. Birth of a Large Iceberg in Pine Island Bay, Antarctica [223kb PDF NASA Lithograph] This lithograph shows the break-off of a large tabular iceberg from the Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica. This event occurred between November 4th and 12th, 2001, and provides powerful evidence of rapid changes underway in this area of Antarctica. The three images were acquired by the vertical-viewing (nadir) camera of the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument aboard NASA's Terra spacecraft. The dimensions of the iceberg are approximately 42 kilometers by 17 kilometers (26 miles by 11 miles).

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 1

2. Why Do Volcanoes Erupt?

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 2

2009 December 23, 2009. Sun, moon tug at San Andreas fault. John Wildermuth, SF Chronicle. Excerpt: Parts of the San Andreas fault are so sensitive to stress that the faint gravitational tug of the sun and the moon may be enough to cause tiny tremors 15 miles underground, a team of UC Berkeley seismologists has found. Water under extremely high pressure apparently acts as a lubricant for the rock, allowing even the smallest stresses to cause a measurable slippage. "For the first time we're getting a picture of what's going on beneath where earthquakes are happening," said Robert Nadeau of the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory, one of the authors of a report appearing Thursday in the journal Nature.
"... Unlike earthquakes, which can be large and generally short-lived jolts, the non-volcanic tremors deep underground may last for many tens of minutes at the level of a magnitude one earthquake, making them detectable only with sensitive instruments.
...Using years of readings from Parkfield and other sites, Nadeau, along with Roland Bürgmann, a UC Berkeley professor of earth and planetary science, and Amanda Thomas, a UC Berkeley graduate student, found that tremor activity varied with the effects of the sun, the moon and the ocean tides, which are driven by the moon.
...Since the strongest effects were seen when the pull of the moon and the sun was aligned with the direction of the fault's break (Los Angeles toward San Francisco in the case of the San Andreas Fault), the researchers reasoned that water trapped deep underground was the likely explanation for the tremors, lubricating the rock to make it move easier. The tremors so far have only been found in a relatively small number of fault zones, suggesting that underground water isn't found everywhere.

2009 April 13. Earthquakes’ Many Mysteries Stymie Efforts to Predict Them. By Kenneth Chang, The NY Times. Excerpt: Almost all earthquakes are small. A small segment of a fault, miles underground, jerks a little, the rumble imperceptible at the surface. But with a few quakes, the fault continues breaking, the ground jumps several feet and the world shakes in cataclysm.
“How does a rupture go from an inch a year to 3,000 miles per hour in a few seconds?” asked Ross S. Stein, a geophysicist at the United States Geological Survey.
No one knows.
This gap in knowledge makes earthquake prediction a frustrating and chancy exercise, and complicates the effort to calculate the risk that a human construction like a water reservoir or a geothermal power plant could inadvertently set off a deadly quake.
Last month, Giampaolo Giuliani, a technician who works on a neutrino experiment at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy, issued an urgent warning that a large earthquake was about to strike the Abruzzo region. The prediction was based on measurements he had made of high levels of radon gas, presumably released from rocks that were being ground up by the stresses of an incipient quake.
On April 6, a magnitude 6.3 earthquake hit L’Aquila in central Italy, killing almost 300 people. Mr. Giuliani claimed vindication for his prediction, which had been discounted by officials.
But earthquake experts like Dr. Stein are skeptical. Scientists studied radon as a possible earthquake warning signal as far back as the 1970s, and while they found convincing cases of radon releases before some earthquakes, ...the correlations were not strong enough or clear enough for useful predictions.
...“You can’t hang your hat on it unless it’s a reliable precursor and it happens before most earthquakes and it doesn’t happen at other times,” said Susan Hough, a seismologist at the geological survey.
To complicate matters, Mr. Giuliani’s prediction was off in time and place. He had predicted that the quake would hit a week earlier in a town 30 miles away....

2009 March 19. Underwater volcano erupts off Tongan coast. The Guardian. Video: Smoke fills the sky as an undersea volcano erupts off the coast of Ha'apai in Tonga.

2009 January 16. Heads Up for Earthquakes. ScienceMatters@Berkeley, Volume 6, Issue 40. Excerpt: ...Unlike hurricanes or volcanic eruptions, earthquakes can't be forecast days or weeks in advance. The next best solution, says seismologist Richard Allen, is an earthquake early warning system. "If there was an earthquake now, we'd want to know how much it's going to shake here, and how much time we have," says Allen, a Berkeley professor of earth and planetary sciences.
Allen is in the process of implementing an earthquake early warning system in temblor-prone California. Called ElarmS, the system is designed to detect the imminent arrival of a strong earthquake and then warn a vulnerable public.
...the ElarmS system operates much like a spider's silken web. An existing network of seismographs around the state continuously transmits earth movements to several central processing hubs. Just as a spider uses vibrations to judge the size and location of trapped insects, modeling programs at the centers use this ground shaking data to calculate how serious any tremor is likely to be. If the quake looks to be a whopper, the models will generate a map of the most serious shaking areas. Civil safety systems can then alert the public to the danger.
...As is, ElarmS has already proved its mettle. On October 30, 2007, just 20 days after ElarmS went online for testing in Northern California, the magnitude 5.4 Alum Rock earthquake rippled across urban San Jose. ElarmS accurately estimated the magnitude and the extent of ground shaking for San Francisco two seconds before the temblor reached city limits. Being in test mode slowed the system's responses. If ElarmS had been running normally, the warning time would have been closer to ten seconds-long enough for most people to reach safer ground....

2008 January 17. NASA Tsunami Research Makes Waves in Science Community. Excerpt: PASADENA, Calif. - A wave of new NASA research on tsunamis has yielded an innovative method to improve existing tsunami warning systems, and a potentially roundbreaking new theory on the source of the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. In one study, published last fall in Geophysical Research Letters, researcher Y. Tony Song of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., demonstrated that real-time data from NASA's network of global positioning system (GPS) stations can detect ground motions preceding tsunamis and reliably estimate a tsunami's destructive potential within minutes, well before it reaches coastal areas. The method could lead to development of more reliable global tsunami warning systems, saving lives and reducing false alarms. ..."Tsunamis can travel as fast as jet planes, so rapid assessment following quakes is vital to mitigate their hazard," said Ichiro Fukumori, a JPL oceanographer not involved in the study. "Song and his colleagues have demonstrated that GPS technology can help improve both the speed and accuracy of such analyses."
...Scientists have long believed tsunamis form from vertical deformation of seafloor during undersea earthquakes. However, seismograph and GPS data show such deformation from the 2004 Sumatra earthquake was too small to generate the powerful tsunami that ensued. Song's team found horizontal forces were responsible for two-thirds of the tsunami's height, as observed by three
satellites....

Alfred Wegener proposed the theory of continental drift - long before the idea was commonly accepted.

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 2

3. What Heats the Earth's Interior?

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 3

2006 November 13. THE DARKENING SEA. By ELIZABETH KOLBERT, "The New Yorker" Issue of 2006-11-20. What carbon emissions are doing to the ocean. ...In the nineteen-nineties, researchers ... collected more than seventy thousand seawater samples ... analysis of ...which was completed in 2004, ... nearly half of all the carbon dioxide that humans have emitted ...has been absorbed by the sea. ...carbonic acid ...can change the water's pH. Already, humans have pumped enough carbon into the oceans...to produce a .1 decline in surface pH. Since pH ... is a logarithmic measure, a .1 drop represents a rise in acidity of about thirty per cent. The process is ... "ocean acidification," ... term coined in 2003 by two climate scientists, Ken Caldeira and Michael Wickett, ...at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. ...Caldeira ...to brief some members of Congress... was asked, 'What is the appropriate stabilization target for atmospheric CO2?' " ... "And I said, 'Well, I think it's inappropriate to think in terms of stabilization targets. I think we should think in terms of emissions targets.' And they said, 'O.K., what's the appropriate emissions target?' And I said, 'Zero.' "If you're talking about mugging little old ladies, you don't say, 'What's our target for the rate of mugging little old ladies?' You say, 'Mugging little old ladies is bad, and we're going to try to eliminate it.' ...Coral reefs are under threat.... When water temperatures rise too high, corals lose...the algae that nourish them. (The process is called "bleaching," because without their zooxanthellae corals appear white.) ...The seas have a built-in buffering capacity: if the water's pH starts to drop, shells and shell fragments that have been deposited on the ocean floor begin to dissolve, pushing the pH back up again. This buffering mechanism is highly effective, provided that acidification takes place on the same timescale as deep-ocean circulation. (One complete exchange of surface and bottom water takes thousands of years.) ...Currently, CO2 is being released into the air at least three times and perhaps as much as thirty times as quickly ...so fast that buffering by ocean sediments is not even a factor....

2005 November 23. HOW DOES RADIOACTIVE DECAY WORK?, Teaching Quantitative Skills in the Geosciences, Jennifer M. Wenner, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, SERC, The concepts of spontaneous decay, isotopes, and half-lives are discussed as well as how geoscientists make use of radioactive decay in dating beds and deposits. This page is paired with another which tackles the mathematical issues behind exponential growth and decay equations to allow educators to teach both the abstract concept and the concrete example.

2005 February. The Virtual Physics Lab session is about the particle model of matter and looks at examples of the behavior of matter on a macroscopic level that are best explained by assuming matter was made of particles.

2005 February. USGS Animation of recent earthquakes worldwide

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 3

4. How Does the Sun Shine?

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 4

2009 Feb 11. Solar Dynamics Observatory successfully launched Feb 11. Mission Science Objectives--The scientific goals of the SDO Project are to improve our understanding of seven science questions:
1. What mechanisms drive the quasi-periodic 11-year cycle of solar activity?
2. How is active region magnetic flux synthesized, concentrated, and dispersed across the solar surface?
3. How does magnetic reconnection on small scales reorganize the large-scale field topology and current systems and how significant is it in heating the corona and accelerating the solar wind?
4. Where do the observed variations in the Sun's EUV spectral irradiance arise, and how do they relate to the magnetic activity cycles?
5. What magnetic field configurations lead to the CMEs, filament eruptions, and flares that produce energetic particles and radiation?
6. Can the structure and dynamics of the solar wind near Earth be determined from the magnetic field configuration and atmospheric structure near the solar surface?
7. When will activity occur, and is it possible to make accurate and reliable forecasts of space weather and climate?

2009 Sep 17. Solar Cycle Driven by More than Sunspots. NSF Press Release 09-171. Excerpt: Challenging conventional wisdom, new research finds that the number of sunspots provides an incomplete measure of changes in the Sun's impact on Earth over the course of the 11-year solar cycle. The study, led by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the University of Michigan, finds that Earth was bombarded last year with high levels of solar energy at a time when the Sun was in an unusually quiet phase and sunspots had virtually disappeared....

2009 Jul 20. Is the Sun Missing Its Spots? [photos show sunspots near solar maximum on July 19, 2000, and near solar minimum on March 18, 2009. Some global warming skeptics speculate that the Sun may be on the verge of an extended slumber.] By Kenneth Chang, The NY Times. Excerpt: The Sun is still blank (mostly).
Ever since Samuel Heinrich Schwabe, a German astronomer, first noted in 1843 that sunspots burgeon and wane over a roughly 11-year cycle, scientists have carefully watched the Sun's activity. In the latest lull, the Sun should have reached its calmest, least pockmarked state last fall.
Indeed, last year marked the blankest year of the Sun in the last half-century - 266 days with not a single sunspot visible from Earth. Then, in the first four months of 2009, the Sun became even more blank, the pace of sunspots slowing more....

2009 May 29. New Solar Cycle Prediction. By Dr. Tony Phillips, Science@NASA. An international panel of experts has issued a new prediction for the solar cycle that takes into account the surprisingly deep solar minimum of 2008-2009. Find out when they think solar maximum will return.

2007 April 24. NASA Releases 3D Images of Sun. By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS. Excerpt: GREENBELT, Md. (AP) -- NASA released the first three-dimensional images of the sun Monday, saying the photos taken from twin spacecraft may lead to better predictions of solar eruptions that can affect communications and power lines on Earth. ... 'Wow!''' scientist Simon Plunkett said as he explained the images to a room full of journalists and scientists wearing 3D glasses. The images from the STEREO spacecraft (for Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory) are available on the Internet and at museums and science centers nationwide. The twin spacecraft, launched in October, are orbiting the Sun, one slightly ahead of the Earth and one behind. The separation, just like the distance between our two eyes, provides the depth perception that allows the 3D images to be obtained. That depth perception is also particularly helpful for studying a type of solar eruption called a coronal mass ejection. Along with overloading power lines and disrupting satellite communications, the eruptions can endanger astronauts on spacewalks. Scientists would like to improve predictions of the arrival time from the current day or so to a few hours, said Russell Howard, principal investigator for the Naval Research Laboratory project. See http://www.nasa.gov/stereo

2005 May 24. Solar Fireworks Signal New Space Weather Mystery. NASA RELEASE 05-132. The most intense burst of solar radiation in five decades accompanied a large solar flare on January 20. It shook space weather theory and highlighted the need for new forecasting techniques, according to several presentations at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting this week in New Orleans. The solar flare, which occurred at 2 a.m. EST, tripped radiation monitors all over the planet and scrambled detectors on spacecraft. The shower of energetic protons came minutes after the first sign of the flare. This flare was an extreme example of the type of radiation storm that arrives too quickly to warn interplanetary astronauts. "This flare produced the largest solar radiation signal on the ground in nearly 50 years," said Dr. Richard Mewaldt of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif. ... "But we were really surprised when we saw how fast the particles reached their peak intensity and arrived at Earth." Normally it takes two or more hours for a dangerous proton shower to reach maximum intensity at Earth after a solar flare. The particles from the January 20 flare peaked about 15 minutes after the first sign. ...The Transitional Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE) ... has identified a possible source of the magnetic stress that causes solar flares. The sunspots that give off the very largest (X-class) flares appear to rotate in the days around the flare. "This rotation stretches and twists the magnetic field lines over the sunspots", Nightingale said. "We have seen it before virtually every X-flare that TRACE has observed since it was launched and more than half of all flares in that time." However, rotating sunspots are not the whole story. The unique flare came at the end of a string of five other very large flares from the same sunspot group, and no one knows why this one produced more sudden high energy particles than the first four. "It means we really don't understand how the sun works," Lin said. "We need to continue to operate and exploit our fleet of solar-observing spacecraft to identify how it works."

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 4

5. What Is Light?

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 5

2008 Jul 24. NASA Satellites Discover What Powers Northern Lights. NASA RELEASE: 08-185. Excerpt: GREENBELT, Md. -- Researchers using a fleet of five NASA satellites have discovered that explosions of magnetic energy a third of the way to the moon power substorms that cause sudden brightenings and rapid movements of the aurora borealis, called the Northern Lights. The culprit turns out to be magnetic reconnection, a common process that occurs throughout the universe when stressed magnetic field lines suddenly snap to a new shape, like a rubber band that's been stretched too far. "We discovered what makes the Northern Lights dance," said Dr. Vassilis Angelopoulos of the University of California, Los Angeles. Angelopoulos is the principal investigator for the Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms mission, or THEMIS....

2008 Mar 20. SPRING IS AURORA SEASON. NASA Earth Observatory News. For reasons not fully understood by scientists, the weeks around the vernal equinox are prone to Northern Lights. In other words, spring is aurora season. Observations from NASA spacecraft are shedding new light on this old mystery.

2007 December 11. THEMIS Discoveries. A fleet of NASA spacecraft, launched less than eight months ago, has made three important discoveries about spectacular eruptions of Northern Lights called "substorms" and the source of their power. NASA's Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms (THEMIS) mission observed the dynamics of a rapidly developing substorm, confirmed the existence of giant magnetic ropes and witnessed small explosions in the outskirts of Earth's magnetic field. The discoveries began on March 23, when a substorm erupted over Alaska and Canada, producing vivid auroras for more than two hours. A network of ground cameras organized to support THEMIS photographed the display from below while the satellites measured particles and fields from above. "The substorm behaved quite unexpectedly," says Vassilis Angelopoulos, the mission's principal investigator at the University of California, Los Angeles. "The auroras surged westward twice as fast as anyone thought possible, crossing 15 degrees of longitude in less than one minute. The storm traversed an entire polar time zone, or 400 miles, in 60 seconds flat." ...Angelopoulos was quite impressed with the substorm's power and he estimated the total energy of the two-hour event at five hundred thousand billion Joules. That's equivalent to the energy of one magnitude 5.5 earthquake . Where does all that energy come from?
THEMIS may have found the answer. "The satellites have found evidence of magnetic ropes connecting Earth's upper atmosphere directly to the sun," said David Sibeck,
project scientist for the mission at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "We believe that solar wind particles flow in along these ropes, providing energy for geomagnetic storms and auroras."
A magnetic rope is a twisted bundle of magnetic fields organized much like the twisted hemp of a mariner's rope. Spacecraft have detected hints of these ropes before, but a single spacecraft was insufficient to map their 3D structure. THEMIS' five identical micro-satellites
were able to perform the feat. "THEMIS encountered its first magnetic rope on May 20," said Sibeck."It was very large, about as wide as Earth, and located approximately
40,000 miles (70,000 km) above Earth's surface in a region called the magnetopause." The magnetopause is where the solar wind and Earth's magnetic field meet and push against one another like sumo wrestlers locked in combat. There, the rope formed and unraveled in just a few minutes, providing a brief but significant conduit for solar wind energy...

2004 July 13. Will Compasses Point South?. By WILLIAM J. BROAD -- The Earth's magnetic field is collapsing and may eventually reappear with opposite polarity. But what effect will that have on us?

2003 December 3. Cracks in the Earth's Magnetic Sheild - California-sized cracks in our planet's magnetic field can remain open for hours, allowing the solar wind to gush through and power stormy space weather--this according to new observations from Earth-orbiting satellites.

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 5

6. Energy Flow In the Atmosphere

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 6

2009 August 9. Global warming could change Earth's tilt. By Rachel Courtland, NewScientist. Excerpt: Warming oceans could cause Earth's axis to tilt in the coming century, a new study suggests. The effect was previously thought to be negligible, but researchers now say the shift will be large enough that it should be taken into account when interpreting how the Earth wobbles.
The Earth spins on an axis that is tilted some 23.5° from the vertical. But this position is far from constant – the planet's axis is constantly shifting in response to changes in the distribution of mass around the Earth. "The Earth is like a spinning top, and if you put more mass on one side or other, the axis of rotation is going to shift slightly," says Felix Landerer of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
...The effect is relatively small. "The pole's not going to drift away in a crazy manner," Landerer notes, adding that it shouldn't induce any unfortunate feedback in Earth's climate.
But he says the motion is strong enough that it needs to be taken into account when interpreting shifts in Earth's axis. Tracking the motion of the poles could help place limits on the total amount of sea level rise over decades....

2008 May 19. Study Says Global Warming Not Worsening Hurricanes. By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS. Excerpt: WASHINGTON (AP) -- Global warming isn't to blame for the recent jump in hurricanes in the Atlantic, concludes a study by a prominent federal scientist whose position has shifted on the subject. Not only that, warmer temperatures will actually reduce the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic and those making landfall, research meteorologist Tom Knutson reported in a study released Sunday.
... new study, based on a computer model, argues ''against the notion that we've already seen a really dramatic increase in Atlantic hurricane activity resulting from greenhouse warming.''
The study, published online Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience, predicts that by the end of the century the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic will fall by 18 percent.
The number of hurricanes making landfall in the United States and its neighbors -- anywhere west of Puerto Rico -- will drop by 30 percent because of wind factors.
The biggest storms -- those with winds of more than 110 mph -- would only decrease in frequency by 8 percent. Tropical storms, those with winds between 39 and 73 mph, would decrease by 27 percent.
It's not all good news from Knutson's study, however. His computer model also forecasts that hurricanes and tropical storms will be wetter and fiercer. Rainfall within 30 miles of a hurricane should jump by 37 percent and wind strength should increase by about 2 percent, Knutson's study says. ...On the Net: Nature Geoscience: http://www.nature.com/naturegeoscience National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: http://www.noaa.gov/ ....

2008 January. High Peaks, Dirty Snow. By Allen Best, Forest Magazine, Winter 2008
The winter dust storms in Colorado's San Juan Mountains have their own, somewhat predictable schedule. ...Since they began documenting the storms several years ago, scientists have recorded up to eight dust storms per year among the mining towns of Telluride, Silverton and Ouray.... digging pits into the snowpack in the San Juan Mountains reveals something that is rather like an angel-food cake layered with chocolate. The "chocolate," of course, is the dust, and it's more than a mere oddity. Research conducted during the past several years has traced much of the dust to nearby deserts of the American Southwest. Some evidence already collected suggests that the relocation of the dust is not natural, but rather the result of disturbances of fragile desert soils in Arizona and New Mexico. Scientists studying sediments in high mountain lakes seek to determine whether such dust storms existed centuries ago, before livestock herding, four-wheeling and massive road building began in the Southwest. The working hypothesis is that today's dust is something new.
What is clear is that the changing climate-warmer, with earlier springs-is causing the mountain snow to melt more rapidly across the
West. Peak runoff in springtime occurs three to four weeks earlier than it has in the recent past. New research in the San Juans points to the dust storms as causing additional acceleration of the melting, by about a month....Every child who has used black buttons to make the eyes of a snowman would know the principle, if not its name. Albedo is the extent to which a surface will reflect heat, i.e., solar energy. A darker surface will absorb the solar radiation, causing snow to melt faster and the button eyes to disappear. In this case, the albedo of the clean snow left it standing two to three inches above the darker, dirtier snow....the budding snow scientist, ...Tom Painter ...did ... fully realize the potentially significant role of this vagrant dust in the hydrology of the mountain snowpack-and the further role it may play in causing the planet's warming to accelerate....

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 6

7. What Causes Thunderstorms and Tornadoes?

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 7

2008 Sep 15. Photos from hurricane Ike.

2008 Apr 15. Measuring a Hurricane by Sound Underwater. By HENRY FOUNTAIN, NY Times. Excerpt: There are a couple of ways to forecast the destructive potential of a hurricane so that people in harm's way can take adequate precautions. Satellite images of cloud patterns can be analyzed to estimate peak wind speeds, but the estimates are often way off the mark. Specialized aircraft can fly into a storm to measure the winds directly, but the flights are costly. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology propose a third way: listening to a storm underwater.
In a paper to be published in Geophysical Research Letters, Nicholas C. Makris and a former graduate student, Joshua D. Wilson, report a strong correlation between the intensity of sound recorded by an undersea microphone in the mid-Atlantic and the wind power of a hurricane that passed over it. They say that such microphones, known as hydrophones, could be a safe and relatively inexpensive means of estimating hurricane force....

2007 November 5. To show how insolation is affected by latitude. From: Stephen J. Edberg
... to show how insolation is affected by latitude: Take a pair of thermometers, each taped to some cardboard, outside on a sunny day. Prop one up so that the cardboard's plane is normal to the direction of the Sun. Lay the other one on the ground. Give them a chance to equalize: the propped thermometer will be much warmer than the one on the ground.
Caveats: This demonstration is much more effective on cold sunny days than on warm sunny days. It is better done early or late in the day when the Sun is closer to the horizon, not around noon.
You can actually do this indoors on a rainy day if you use a good spotlight or projector, equidistant from the two thermometer bulbs. If you have some small thermometers you can tape them to different latitudes on a globe and try the experiment with a spotlight, projector, or desk lamp. (Make sure you use a tungsten bulb, not fluorescent or LED.)

2007 May 29. Will Warming Lead to a Rise in Hurricanes? By CORNELIA DEAN. NY Times. Excerpt: When people worry about the effects of global warming, they worry more about hurricanes than anything else. In surveys, almost three-quarters of Americans say there will be more and stronger hurricanes in a warming world. By contrast, fewer than one-quarter worry about increased coastal flooding. ...Researchers hope to better predict storms like Katrina.... There is no doubt that as the world warms, seas will rise, increasing the flood risk, simply because warmer water occupies more space. (And if the Greenland or Antarctic ice sheets melt, the rise will be far greater.) It seems similarly logical that as the world warms, hurricanes will be more frequent or more powerful or both. After all, they draw their strength from warm ocean waters. But while many scientists hold this view, there is far less consensus, in part because of new findings on other factors that may work against stronger, more frequent storms. "Global warming is as real as it gets," Richard A. Anthes, president of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, .... But as for its link to hurricanes, Mr. Anthes said, "I don't think it's been proved conclusively." ...One question meteorologists and climate experts can answer quickly is an obvious one: What happened to the hurricane season of 2006? Viewed from the perspective of the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, it was a bust (or a boon). Not a single hurricane struck the United States. But last year a persistent Bermuda high, sitting unusually far out in the Atlantic, and air currents from an unexpected and quick-forming El Niño system ... diminished the storms' potential to strike the United States. ...even though there were only slightly fewer named storms than average (9 instead of 11), about as many became hurricanes as on average (5 instead of 6) and, as in an ordinary year, 2 hurricanes with winds of more than 111 miles per hour, the standard for Category 3 on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale.
...53 percent of Americans live within 50 miles of a coast....

2006 December 11. NASA AIRCRAFT CAPTURES WINDY DETAILS IN HURRICANE'S UPS AND DOWNS. NASA Earth Observatory News. - In 2005, scientists using NASA aircraft measured the internal structure of Hurricane Dennis, giving clues about the evolution of a hurricane's warm inner core and other factors related to their formation.

2006 September 27. NASA LAUNCHES HURRICANE DATA PORTAL FOR SCIENTISTS, EDUCATORS, AND APPLICATION USERS - A new hurricane web portal is designed for viewing and studying hurricanes with a variety of measurements from satellite-based NASA instruments. NASA Earth Observatory.

2006 September 26. NASA TECHNOLOGY CAPTURES MASSIVE HURRICANE WAVES. NASA research is helping to increase knowledge about the behavior of hurricane waves that pose a serious threat to mariners and coastal communities. NASA Earth Observatory.

2006 September 19. Are humans causing stronger hurricanes?Excerpt: a continuing controversy ... Are humans causing stronger hurricanes? A study released on September 11, 2006 ruled out "natural causes" as the primary reason why ocean waters have warmed where hurricanes form over the last 100 years. Tom Wigley, a climate scientist and study co-author, told Earth & Sky that "the changes cannot be caused by natural fluctuations, which just leaves human factors as the dominant cause." Wigley said those human factors include greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels.

2006 September. The Gathering Storm. Catalyst Magazine, Union of Concerned Scientists. By Brenda Ekwurzel. Excerpt: By now, everyone has heard of the possible relationship between hurricanes and global warming. What does the science really tell us and what can we do about it? Rapid population growth in coastal regions has placed many more people and structures in the path of storms, increasing the potential for casualties, property damage, and financial hardship when these storms make landfall. And as reported by the media in the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, global warming may be making matters worse. Recent scientific evidence suggests a link between the destructive power (or intensity) of hurricanes and higher ocean temperatures driven in large part by our changing climate.
...Scientists have recently looked at potential correlations between ocean temperatures and storm trends worldwide over the past several decades. One study, which combined each storm's duration and maximum wind speed, found that the destructive power of storms has increased around 70 percent in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans over the last 30 years. Another study revealed that the percentage of hurricanes classified as Category 4 or 5 (the most intense storms) worldwide has increased over the same period, correlating with the concurrent rise in sea surface temperatures in the regions where storms typically originate ....
In a third independent approach, researchers analyzed surface wind and temperature records between 1958 and 2001 and confirmed the marked increase in storm intensity around the world. Still more studies are continuing to test the connection between storm intensity and warmer temperatures even as insurance agencies are revising their risk analysis for coastal regions....

2006 September. "Large human influence" found in hurricane-breeding waters, say scientists. Earth & Sky Blog.

Hurricanes

• Hurricanes http://hurricanes.noaa.gov/
• Hurricanes: A Compendium of Information
• For GSS Energy Flow, chapter 7 right column
• NASA's Hurricane Resource Page - This site provides a wide variety of information regarding recent and historic hurricanes. A collection of links feature information including the latest images and animations from recent hurricanes, in depth web pages about hurricanes, educational tools and products, hurricane topics and the latest hurricane news.
• NASA Hurricane Education - Link to NASA educational tools on hurricanes including posters, visualizations and graphics, and classroom activities.
• NASA's Earth Observatory page on Hurricanes: The Greatest Storms On Earth
• Hurricane Data Portal
  

Atmosphere/Weather/Climate

• National Weather Service Interactive Weather Information Network
• NOAA Climate Prediction Center
• NOAA National Climatic Data Center
• National Weather Service Headquarters
• NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory —http://www.srh.noaa.gov/mlb/enso/mlbnino.html
• NOAA ENSO Home Page (El Nino)
• Unisys Weather (mapped images of forecast models)
• NOAA Storm Prediction Center
• Naval Pacific Meteorology and Oceanography Center, Joint Typhoon Warning Center
• WSI Corp Intellicast—http://www.intellicast.com
• National Drought Mitigation Center
• Global Fire Monitoring Center
• NOAA National Hurricane Center
• Environment Canada— http://weather.ec.gc.ca/
• NOAA National Oceanographic Data Center
• NCAR Forecast Models— http://www.rap.ucar.edu/weather/
• National Ice Center (polar ice conditions, icebergs)
• Colorado State Arctic Oscillation Web Site (Arctic updates)
• Univ. of Washington Pacific Decadal Oscillation Web Site
• Columbia University North Atlantic Oscillation Web Site
• The Weather Underground— http://www.underground.com
• Cable TV Weather Channel — http://www.weather.com
• USA Today Newspaper (forecasts)
• World Meteorological Organization— http://www.wmo.ch
• National Weather Service Forecast Office
• NOAA North Central River Forecast Center
• University of Minnesota/State Climatology Office

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 7

8. El Nino

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 8

2008 May 1. Next decade 'may see no warming'. By Richard Black, Environment correspondent, BBC News website. The Earth's temperature may stay roughly the same for a decade, as natural climate cycles enter a cooling phase, scientists have predicted. A new computer model developed by German researchers, reported in the journal Nature, suggests the cooling will counter greenhouse warming. However, temperatures will again be rising quickly by about 2020, they say.
Other climate scientists have welcomed the research, saying it may help societies plan better for the future.
...The key to the new prediction is the natural cycle of ocean temperatures called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), which is closely related to the warm currents that bring heat from the tropics to the shores of Europe.
The cause of the oscillation is not well understood, but the cycle appears to come round about every 60 to 70 years.
..."One message from our study is that in the short term, you can see changes in the global mean temperature that you might not expect given the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)," said Noel Keenlyside from the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University.
His group's projection diverges from other computer models only for about 15-20 years; after that, the curves come back together and temperatures rise.
...Modelling of climatic events in the oceans is difficult, simply because there is relatively little data on some of the key processes, such as the meridional overturning circulation (MOC) - sometimes erroneously known as the Gulf Stream - which carries heat northwards in the Atlantic.
...Looking forward, the model projects a weakening of the MOC and a resulting cooling of north Atlantic waters, which will act to keep temperatures in check around the world, much as the warming and cooling associated with El Nino and La Nina in the Pacific bring global consequences....

2008 Mar 1. HEAVY RAIN FLOODS SOUTH AMERICA. NASA Earth Observatory News. Persistent, heavier-than-normal rains throughout February and March 2008 triggered flooding across parts of northern and central South America. La Niña conditions in the Pacific may have caused the unusual rainfall.

2008 April 4. Global temperatures 'to decrease'. By Roger Harrabin, BBC News environment analyst. Excerpt: La Niña caused some of the coldest temperatures in memory in China. Global temperatures this year will be lower than in 2007 due to the cooling effect of the La Niña current in the Pacific, UN meteorologists have said. The World Meteorological Organisation's secretary-general, Michel Jarraud, told the BBC it was likely that La Nina would continue into the summer. This would mean global temperatures have not risen since 1998, prompting some to question climate change theory. But experts have also forecast a record high temperature within five years. 'Variability'
La Niña and El Niño are two great natural Pacific currents whose effects are so huge they resonate round the world. El Niño warms the planet when it happens, La Niña cools it. This year, the Pacific is in the grip of a powerful La Niña. It has contributed to torrential rains in Australia and to some of the coldest temperatures in memory in snow-bound parts of China.
Refers to the extensive cooling of the central and eastern Pacific ...Increased sea temperatures on the western side of the Pacific means the atmosphere has more energy and frequency of heavy rain and thunderstorms is increased. ....Typically lasts for up to 12 months and generally less damaging event than the stronger El Niño.

2008 January 10. NASA Observes La Niña: This 'Little Girl' Makes a Big Impression Excerpt: Cool, wet conditions in the Northwest, frigid weather on the Plains, and record dry conditions in the Southeast, all signs that La Niña is in full swing. With winter gearing up, a moderate La Niña is hitting its peak. And we are just beginning to see the full effects of this oceanographic phenomenon, as La Niña episodes are typically strongest in January. A La Niña event occurs when cooler than normal sea surface temperatures form along the equator in the Pacific Ocean, specifically in the eastern to central Pacific. The La Niña we are experiencing now has a significant presence in the eastern part of the ocean. The cooler water temperatures associated with La Niña are caused by an increase in easterly sea surface winds. Under normal conditions these winds force cooler water from below up to the surface of the ocean. When the winds increase in speed, more cold water from below is forced up, cooling the ocean surface. "With this La Niña, the sea-surface temperatures are about two degrees colder than normal in the eastern Pacific and that's a pretty significant difference," says David Adamec of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "I know it doesn't sound like much, but remember this is water that probably covers an area the size of the United States. It's like you put this big air conditioner out there - and the atmosphere is going to feel it." While this "air conditioner" may be located in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, it has a great influence on the weather here in the United States and across the globe. ...The Northwest generally experiences cooler, wetter weather during a La Niña. On the Great Plains, residents normally see a colder than normal winter and southeastern states traditionally experience below average rainfall. ...The increased circulation that brings up cold water from below also brings up with it nutrients from the deeper waters. These nutrients feed the organisms at the bottom of the food chain, starting a reaction that increases life in the ocean. NASA's SeaWiFS satellite documented this increase in hytoplankton during the last La Niña period in 1998. La Niña and El Niño episodes tend to occur every three to five years. La Niñas are often preceded by an El Niño, however this cycle is not guaranteed. The lengths of La Niña events vary as well. "We need to watch to see if this La Niña diminishes, because they can last for multiple years....

2006 September 23. Nature provides "ecosystem services". Earth & Sky Radio Show.

2006 September 19. El Nino mystery solved, monsoon forecasts improved. Earth & Sky Radio Show.

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 8

9. How Does Energy Flow in Living Systems?

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 9

2009 October 15. Deep-Sea Microbes May Answer Long-Standing Question About Earth's Nitrogen Cycle. NSF Release 09-201. Excerpt: ...Although lightning, combustion, and other non-biological processes can create reduced nitrogen, far more is generated by nitrogen-fixing microorganisms such as bacteria, in particular, photosynthetic aquatic cyanobacteria. These organisms produce the bulk of the nitrogen available to living things in the ocean.
When researchers add up all known sources of fixed nitrogen--biological and otherwise--in the global nitrogen cycle, and compare it to the sinks (biological uptake for growth and energy), they come up short. More nitrogen appears to be used than is being made. The "nitrogen budget," in effect, does not balance.
The question has been whether the nitrogen cycle is out of balance, or whether the known inventories of sources and sinks are incomplete, says Victoria Orphan, a geobiologist at Caltech.
Orphan, along with Caltech graduate student Anne Dekas and Caltech postdoctoral researcher Rachel Poretsky, suggest the answer is, at least in part, an incomplete catalogue of the sources of fixed nitrogen.
...The team studied ocean sediment samples in methane cold seeps 20 miles off northern California at a depth of 1,800 feet. The area, known as the Eel River Basin, is in a region that supports high levels of natural methane seepage at the sea-floor.
... tiny microbial conglomerations ... averaging 500 cells each, consist of two types of anaerobic microorganisms living in a unique symbiotic relationship fueled by methane. ... a bacterium ... reduces the chemical sulfate into sulfide ...to generate energy. The second is a methane-oxidizing archaeon ...Working together, these two symbionts are responsible for consuming the majority of the naturally-released methane in the deep sea.
Although these symbiotic associations themselves are not new--the conglomerations were found about a decade ago--the scientists discovered something unexpected: the methane-consuming archaea were actively fixing nitrogen, and sharing it with their bacterial neighbors.
This is the first time nitrogen fixation has been documented in methane-oxidizing archaea, say the scientists....

2009 May 28. Serving Suggestion. By Karen Solomon, OnEarth (NRDC ISSUE: Summer 2009) Excerpt: With Sasha and Malia growing arugula in the White House garden, and with more and more farmers' markets on our streets, it seems shocking that prefab Tater Tots and canned fruit cocktail should continue to rule the lunchrooms of our public schools.
Until October 2005, the Berkeley Unified School District in California was no exception. Its 9,000 students were served the usual highly processed, highly subsidized heat-and-serve dreck that passed for the noontime meal. That is, until Ann Cooper became director of nutrition services, making a radical shift from chicken nuggets to real chicken, fresh produce instead of ketchup packets, and whole-grain, real bean and cheese nachos with not a can of cheese sauce in sight. Now Cooper, who first made a name for herself on the celebrity-chef circuit, is taking her mission and her menu to school cafeterias nationwide.
"High-fat, high-sugar, high-salt diets with very few fruits and vegetables and no whole grains will lead to a generation of kids who, for the first time, will die at a younger age than their parents," says Cooper, citing Centers for Disease Control statistics that a third of our nation's children are overweight or obese. Because minority students are most affected by what's on the daily cafeteria tray, real lunch reform is "the social justice issue of our time," Cooper says. "We can't spend another dollar per day per child to feed them healthy food?" she yells in exasperation. "We can either pay for lifelong wellness now, or pay later for a tsunami of diabetes. And these kids can't learn if they're not well nourished."...

2008 July 18. Saharan dust storms sustain life in Atlantic Ocean. Eureka Alert. Excerpt: Research at the University of Liverpool has found how Saharan dust storms help sustain life over extensive regions of the North Atlantic Ocean.
Working aboard research vessels in the Atlantic, scientists mapped the distribution of nutrients including phosphorous and nitrogen and investigated how organisms such as phytoplankton are sustained in areas with low nutrient levels.
They found that plants are able to grow in these regions because they are able to take advantage of iron minerals in Saharan dust storms. This allows them to use organic or 'recycled' material from dead or decaying plants when nutrients such as phosphorous – an essential component of DNA – in the ocean are low...
"These findings are important because plant life cycles are essential in maintaining the balance of gases in our atmosphere. In looking at how plants survive in this area, we have shown how the Atlantic is able to draw down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through the growth of photosynthesising plants."

2005 April 21. NASA RELEASE: 05-100. NASA Study Finds Snow Melt Causes Large Ocean Plant Blooms. A NASA funded study has found a decline in winter and spring snow cover over Southwest Asia and the Himalayan mountain range is creating conditions for more widespread blooms of ocean plants in the Arabian Sea. The decrease in snow cover has led to greater differences in both temperature and pressure systems between the Indian subcontinent and the Arabian Sea. The pressure differences generate monsoon winds that mix the ocean water in the Western Arabian Sea. This mixing leads to better growing conditions for tiny, free-floating ocean plants called phytoplankton. ...When winter and spring snow cover is low over Eurasia, the amount of solar energy reflected back into the atmosphere is less. A decline in the amount of snow cover means less of the sun's energy goes towards melting of snow and evaporation of wet soil. As a result the land mass heats up more in summer creating a larger temperature difference between the water of the Arabian Sea and the Indian subcontinent landmass. The temperature difference is responsible for a disparity in pressure over land and sea, creating a low pressure system over the Indian subcontinent and a high pressure system over the Arabian Sea. This difference in pressure causes winds to blow from the Southwest Arabian Sea bringing annual rainfall to the subcontinent from June to September. In the Western Arabian Sea, these winds also cause upwelling of cooler nutrient-rich water, creating ideal conditions for phytoplankton to bloom every year during summer. ... while large blooms of phytoplankton can enhance fisheries, exceptionally large blooms could be detrimental to the ecosystem. Increases in phytoplankton amounts can lead to oxygen depletion in the water column and eventually to a decline in fish populations. More info.

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 9

10. Energy from Space and Mass Extinctions

Archive of Articles for Chapter 10

2007 September 20. Meteorite likely caused crater in Peru. By MONTE HAYES Associated Press Writer. The Associated Press Excerpt: Peruvian astronomers said Thursday that evidence shows a meteorite crashed near Lake Titicaca over the weekend, leaving an elliptical crater and magnetic rock fragments in an impact powerful enough to register on seismic charts….
The Earth is constantly bombarded with objects from outer space, but most burn up in the atmosphere and never reach the planet's surface. Only one in a thousand rocks that that people claim are meteorites turn out to be real, according to Jay Melosh, an expert on impact craters and professor of planetary science at the University of Arizona….
Such impacts are rare, and astronomists still want to do other tests to confirm the strike…. Meteorites are actually cold when they hit Earth, astronomists say, since their outer layers burn up and fall away before impact…..
More details emerged when astrophysicist Jose Ishitsuka of Peru's Geophysics Institute reached the site about 6 miles from Lake Titicaca. He confirmed that a meteorite caused a crater 42 feet wide and 15 feet deep, the institute's president, Ronald Woodman, told The Associated Press on Thursday.
Ishitsuka recovered a 3-inch magnetic fragment and said it contained iron, a mineral found in all rocks from space. The impact also registered a magnitude-1.5 tremor on the institute's seismic equipment - that's as much as an explosion of 4.9 tons of dynamite, Woodman said….
Peasants living near the crater said they had smelled a sulfurous odor for at least an hour after the meteorite struck and that it had provoked upset stomachs and headaches….
Meteor expert Ursula Marvin said that if people were sickened, "it wouldn't be the meteorite itself, but the dust it raises...."

2007 March 16. The Sky Is Falling. Really. By RUSSELL L. SCHWEICKART (a former Apollo astronaut, is the chairman of the B612 Foundation, which promotes efforts to alter the orbits of asteroids). Tiburon, Calif. Americans who read the papers or watch Jay Leno have been aware for some time now that there is a slim but real possibility - about 1 in 45,000 - that an 850-foot-long asteroid called Apophis could strike Earth with catastrophic consequences on April 13, 2036. What few probably realize is that there are thousands of other space objects that could hit us in the next century that could cause severe damage, if not total destruction.

2007 January 6. What Landed in New Jersey? It Came From Outer Space. By KAREEM FAHIM. Excerpt: The object that tore through the roof of a house in the New Jersey suburbs this week was an iron meteorite, perhaps billions of years old and maybe ripped from the belly of an asteroid, experts who examined it said yesterday. ...it landed - and ruined a second-floor bathroom - the meteorite is only the second found in New Jersey, said Jeremy S. Delaney, a Rutgers University expert who examined it. ...from looking at it, Dr. Delaney and other experts were able to tell that the object it had been part of - perhaps an asteroid - cooled relatively fast. It is magnetic, and reasonably dense, they determined. The leading edge - the one that faced forward as it traveled through the earth's atmosphere - was much smoother, while the so-called trailing edge seemed to have caught pieces of molten metal. ..."The worth of a meteorite like this is almost completely determined by where it fell," said Eric Twelker, a geologist and a dealer in meteorites, who buys and sells perhaps a hundred of them a month on http://meteoritemarket.com, his Web site. He was speaking of the premium placed on meteorites with a compelling back story, like the football-size rock that crashed into a parked Chevrolet in Peekskill, N.Y., in 1992.

2006 November 14. Ancient Crash, Epic Wave. By SANDRA BLAKESLEE, NY Times. Excerpt: Did catastrophe fall from above in 2807 B.C.? Mega-tsunamis following meteor impacts left their mark, researchers say. At the southern end of Madagascar lie four enormous wedge-shaped sediment deposits, called chevrons, that are composed of material from the ocean floor. Each covers twice the area of Manhattan with sediment as deep as the Chrysler Building is high. On close inspection, the chevron deposits contain deep ocean microfossils that are fused with a medley of metals typically formed by cosmic impacts. And all of them point in the same direction - toward the middle of the Indian Ocean where a newly discovered crater, 18 miles in diameter, lies 12,500 feet below the surface. The explanation is obvious to some scientists. A large asteroid or comet, the kind that could kill a quarter of the world's population, smashed into the Indian Ocean 4,800 years ago, producing a tsunami at least 600 feet high, about 13 times as big as the one that inundated Indonesia nearly two years ago. The wave carried the huge deposits of sediment to land. Most astronomers doubt that any large comets or asteroids have crashed into the Earth in the last 10,000 years. But the self-described "band of misfits" that make up the two-year-old Holocene Impact Working Group say that astronomers simply have not known how or where to look for evidence of such impacts along the world's shorelines and in the deep ocean. ...Peter Bobrowski, a senior research scientist in natural hazards at the Geological Survey of Canada, said "chevrons are fantastic features" but do not prove that megatsunamis are real. There are other interpretations for how chevrons are formed, including erosion and glaciation... It is up to the working group to prove its claims, he said. ...Bruce Masse, an environmental archaeologist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico ...thinks he can say precisely when the comet fell: on the morning of May 10, 2807 B.C. Dr. Masse analyzed 175 flood myths from around the world, and tried to relate them to known and accurately dated natural events like solar eclipses and volcanic eruptions. ...14 flood myths specifically mention a full solar eclipse, which could have been the one that occurred in May 2807 B.C. Half the myths talk of a torrential downpour, Dr. Masse said. A third talk of a tsunami. Worldwide they describe hurricane force winds and darkness during the storm. All of these could come from a mega-tsunami. Of course, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, Dr. Masse said, "and we're not there yet."

Weather Photography has images of many types of weather/atmospheric phenomena.

Archive of Articles for Chapter 10

Hard Copy Articles:
Bahcall, John, How the Sun Shines, Mercury Magazine Sep-Oct 2001, p. 28.

TOP