Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach A 2015 paper by Xiaochun Zhang and Ken Caldeira has come to my attention. Inter alia, the abstract says: For example, the global and time‐integrated radiative forcing from burning a fossil fuel exceeds the heat released upon combustion within 2 months. Over the long lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere,…
This winter’s exceptional rain season is leading to stunning sites sights in California.~ctm From Space.com California’s ‘Superbloom’ of Wildflowers Looks Spectacular from Space! By Elizabeth Howell 3 days ago Science & Astronomy The Landsat 8 satellite, a collaboration between NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey, saw “an explosion” of wildflowers that covered green areas of…
At relatively balmy temperatures, heat behaves like sound when moving through graphite, study reports From MIT: Exotic ‘second sound’ phenomenon observed in pencil lead The next time you set a kettle to boil, consider this scenario: After turning the burner off, instead of staying hot and slowly warming the surrounding kitchen and stove, the kettle…
A provocative hypothetical question: What if the Moon was not there? Video follows. This giant rock lights up the night and can even change colors. So what would we do without it? Would we all need night vision goggles? How would it affect the ocean tides? Our seasons? Or our sleep cycles? Or would the…
From the website Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science at Columbia University comes this hilarious but real bit of data analysis. Looking at short trends in the global surface temperature data, the analysis shows that global temperature has not increased under Republican presidents, only Democrats. It’s probably spurious correlation, but still very entertaining. – Anthony…
Guest essay by Eric Worrall Quartz claims that internal combustion engine vehicle drivers are bullying Tesla owners by parking their ICE vehicles in Tesla charging station bays. Tesla owners are being “ICE-ed” out of charging stations by trucks By Michael J. Coren December 25, 2018 First, there was rolling coal. Now there’s ICE-ing. As electric…
Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach In the comments to my post called “Inside the Acceleration Factory“, we were discussing how good the satellite measurements of sea surface heights might be. A commenter said: Ionospheric Delay is indeed an issue. For Jason, they estimate it using a dual frequency technique. As with most everything in the…
Researchers on CERN’s multipurpose Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector have spotted downright weird bumps in their most recent data. The team at CMS think they might have discovered a mysterious particle with twice the mass of a carbon atom. The find comes from two separate pieces of analysis from the CMS team. In both, the…
The cause? A strange radiation anomaly over the Atlantic ocean. The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi NPP satellite captured this night image of the South Atlantic. The red dot several hundred kilometers off the coast of Brazil is a thermal anomaly—an area of Earth’s surface flagged by the satellite as being unusually warm. Of…
by Kathryn Hansen NASA Earth Observatory Every month on Earth Matters, we offer a puzzling satellite image. The October 2018 puzzler is above. Your challenge is to use the comments section to tell us what we are looking at and why it is interesting. How to answer. You can use a few words or several paragraphs. You might simply tell us…