Earth, Environment, and Geosciences
- 'Frightening': Over 1 in 3 of World's Tree Species Face Extinctionwww.commondreams.org 'Frightening': Over 1 in 3 of World's Tree Species Face Extinction | Common Dreams
"Trees directly underpin the survival of a staggering array of species—including us," said one scientist.
- Saving the Environment: A Young Marxist Speaks!
YouTube Video
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cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/6119411
> Good presentation.
- Trying to reverse climate change won’t save us, scientists warnwww.theverge.com Trying to reverse climate change won’t save us, scientists warn
“Climate change comes with irreversible consequences.”
- Atmospheric rivers are shifting poleward, reshaping global weather patternstheconversation.com Atmospheric rivers are shifting poleward, reshaping global weather patterns
These powerful ‘rivers in the sky’ provide a huge share of annual precipitation in many regions, including California. They can also melt sea ice, with global climate implications.
- Dramatic images show the first floods in the Sahara in half a centurywww.theguardian.com Dramatic images show the first floods in the Sahara in half a century
More than year’s worth of rain fell in two days in south-east Morocco, filling up lake that had been dry for decades
- Hurricane Milton Comes Ashore in Florida - RAMMB-CIRA Satellite Library (Lightning!!)satlib.cira.colostate.edu Hurricane Milton Comes Ashore in Florida - RAMMB-CIRA Satellite Library
On October 9, 2024, Hurricane Milton slammed into Florida’s west coast. The powerful storm brought numerous, damaging tornadoes across southern Florida where over 100 tornado warnings were issued. More imagery of Milton can be found on its event page.
- Herd of tauros to be released into Highlands to recreate aurochs effectwww.theguardian.com Herd of tauros to be released into Highlands to recreate aurochs effect
Large, cattle-like tauros will shape landscape and strengthen wildlife as huge, extinct herbivore once did
- 'Severe' geomagnetic storm to slam Earth Thursday, with auroras possible as far south as California and Alabamawww.livescience.com 'Severe' geomagnetic storm to slam Earth Thursday, with auroras possible as far south as California and Alabama
A powerful solar outburst is likely to trigger a "severe" geomagnetic storm on Thursday, with auroras potentially visible as far south as California and Alabama, NOAA predicts.
- Every tornado warning in Florida in the past 48 hours and counting
Live alerts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-V_YnmER0Y
OP: https://www.reddit.com/r/florida/comments/1g025gi/every_tornado_warning_in_florida_in_the_past_48/
- SEE IT: A NOAA hurricane hunter plane flies into Hurricane Miltonm.youtube.com - YouTube
Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOAA_Hurricane_Hunters
- Timelapse of hurricane Milton from the International Space Station
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- Three Storms Churn in an Active Atlanticearthobservatory.nasa.gov Three Storms Churn in an Active Atlantic
The active 2024 hurricane season comes to a head with several simultaneous hurricanes—an unusual sight for October.
- EyeWall Replacement Cycle (EWRC) animation from Hurricane Milton
https://www.cnn.com/weather/live-news/hurricane-milton-florida-10-08-24#cm20i25sq00003b6nkmk91f0f
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_at4+shtml/092140.shtml?tswind120#contents
Keep safe folks!
- ‘Just horrific': John Morales becomes emotional over Milton's explosive growthwww.nbcmiami.com ‘Just horrific': John Morales becomes emotional over Milton's explosive growth
Just before his noontime segment on air, Hurricane Specialist John Morales realized that Milton had become a Category 5 monster storm.
- Antarctic 'greening' at dramatic rate, satellite data showphys.org Antarctic 'greening' at dramatic rate, satellite data show
Vegetation cover across the Antarctic Peninsula has increased more than 10-fold over the last four decades, new research shows.
Vegetation cover across the Antarctic Peninsula has increased more than 10-fold over the last four decades, new research shows.
The Antarctic Peninsula, like many polar regions, is warming faster than the global average, with extreme heat events in Antarctica becoming more common.
The new study—by the universities of Exeter and Hertfordshire, and the British Antarctic Survey—used satellite data to assess how much the Antarctic Peninsula has been "greening" in response to climate change.
It found that the area of vegetation cover across the Peninsula increased from less than one square kilometer in 1986 to almost 12 square kilometers by 2021.
- X-rays advance understanding of Earth's core-mantle boundary and super-Earth magma oceansphys.org X-rays advance understanding of Earth's core-mantle boundary and super-Earth magma oceans
Researchers at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have revealed new details about Earth's core-mantle boundary and similar regions found in exoplanets.
- Weather radar shows birds trapped inside the eye of Hurricane Helene.www.vox.com Weather radar showed a strange blue mass in the eye of Hurricane Helene. What was it?
As Helene made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region, birds were stuck inside its eye, where the wind is calmer. The tropical storm could disrupt fall bird migration.
Birds are incredible navigators, capable of traveling thousands of miles each year to the same location. But sometimes even they end up in the wrong place at the wrong time — like inside a hurricane.
As Hurricane Helene was making landfall in Florida as a powerful Category 4 storm, radar spotted a mass in the eye of the storm that experts say is likely birds and perhaps also insects.
Seabirds likely fled the storm’s extreme winds — which reached 140 miles per hour — and ended up in the eye, where it’s calm. Once inside, they essentially got trapped, unable to pierce through the fierce gusts of the eye wall.
Storms like Helene can blow seabirds like petrels, jaegers, and frigatebirds far inland. Exhausted, they end up in unfamiliar habitats where they can’t easily find food. “It’s a challenging situation,” said Andrew Farnsworth, a bird migration expert at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. “We know that birds do die in these things.”
- ‘We can feel our ancestors’: one First Nation’s fight to save Canada’s old forests; The Wet’suwet’en Nation never signed treaties with the Canadian or provincial governments, yet their land was leasedwww.theguardian.com ‘We can feel our ancestors’: one First Nation’s fight to save Canada’s old forests
The Wet’suwet’en Nation never signed treaties with the Canadian or provincial governments, yet their land was leased to timber companies
cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/3534540
> >As the helicopter approached Caas Tl’aat Kwah (also known as Serb Creek), a 1,600-hectare (about 3,953-acre) watershed, the forest became a blanket of deep green, cleaved only by yellow-green wetlands threaded with glacial blue streams. > > >“We want to conserve it for future generations,” said Charlotte Euverman, the Wet’suwet’en woman leading a fight to save this area, which includes a traditional feasting site. “We have to leave them something.” > > >Like most First Nations here, Wet’suwet’en never signed treaties with the Canadian or provincial governments. Nevertheless, the latter took the land and leased forested acreage to logging companies. Today just 20% of British Columbia’s old-growth forests remain. > > >In 2020, after decades of activist pressure, the province identified about a quarter of the remaining old growth as at high risk for logging and recommended a pause while deciding their fate. Yet today, logging has been deferred in less than half of the high-risk area > > >Now Caas Tl’aat Kwah is in the crosshairs of a debate over the scope of First Nations’ agency, biodiversity loss and protection – and the role industrial logging plays in amplifying Canada’s forest fires, the effects of which are being felt across the globe. > > >In summer 2023, more than 150,000 sq km (58,000 sq miles) burned across the country, an all-time record, carrying smoke across the continent and air pollution all the way to Europe and China. > > >Caas Tl’aat Kwah is not yet accessible by road, so the helicopter ride was the first opportunity for Nation member Sandra Harris to see it, despite the fact that her great-grandfather, Jack Joseph, once had a cabin there. The pilot set the helicopter down upon a boggy meadow, and DeWit, who is acting director of the Office of Wet’suwet’en, led the way through the trees to a newer cabin, where he gave a framed photo of Joseph pride of place. > > >Harris explained the significance of seeing the land, saying: “We have a lot of stress in our lives with racism, working with colonial systems that are so unkind to our ways.” The land is healing, she said. > > >“Today, we can feel our ancestors,” Harris said. “We remember our stories when we are able to put our feet on the land … There’s lots of good medicine there for us.” > > >Conventional wisdom has long held that increased fire severity is due not just to climate change but also dense overgrowth from fire suppression. The prescription has been to thin forests and set controlled burns. But a growing number of scientists now say that approach fails to recognize the role of industrial logging in increased fire severity: it kills complex communities of life that stabilize the water cycle. > > Full Article !kkkanada
- A new study unpacks the last 485 million years of Earth's temperature historywww.salon.com A new study unpacks the last 485 million years of Earth's temperature history
Among other things, the study demonstrates how carbon dioxide in the atmosphere influences temperatures
- Antarctica's Ozone Hole Is Healing And Set To Recover Fully By 2066www.iflscience.com Antarctica's Ozone Hole Is Healing And Set To Recover Fully By 2066
The ozone layer is looking as fit as a fiddle at the moment.
- Greenland landslide caused freak wave that shook Earth for nine dayswww.newscientist.com Greenland landslide caused freak wave that shook Earth for nine days
Seismologists were mystified by a strange signal that persisted for nine days in 2023 – now its source has been identified as a standing wave caused by a landslide in Greenland
- India’s new mega-dam will roil lives downstream with wild swings in water flow every daytheconversation.com India’s new mega-dam will roil lives downstream with wild swings in water flow every day
The hydropower dam is part of a huge effort to boost India’s homegrown energy. But it will radically disrupt the lives and livelihoods of indigenous communities in the flood plains downstream.
- Coral reefs are getting sick, and this human medicine might helpwww.motherjones.com Coral reefs are getting sick, and this human medicine might help
Antibiotics, it turns out, are a useful tool for keeping Caribbean ecosystems alive.
- As ‘doomsday’ glacier melts, can an artificial barrier save it?grist.org As ‘doomsday’ glacier melts, can an artificial barrier save it?
Relatively warm ocean currents are weakening the base of Antarctica’s enormous Thwaites Glacier, whose demise could raise sea levels by as much as 7 feet. To separate the ice from those warmer ocean waters, scientists have put forward an audacious plan to erect a massive underwater curtain.
- Studying Stones Can Rock Your Worldwww.newyorker.com Studying Stones Can Rock Your World
To think like a geologist is to contemplate timescales that stagger the imagination—and lay bare the planetary forces behind our earthly existence.
- Workers breach key Klamath dams, allowing salmon to swim freely for the first time in a centuryapnews.com Workers breach key Klamath dams, allowing salmon to swim freely for the first time in a century
Workers have breached the final dams on a key section of the Klamath River, clearing the way for salmon to swim freely through a major watershed near the California-Oregon border for the first time in more than a century as the largest dam removal project in U.S. history nears completion.
- Thawing Alaskan permafrost is unleashing more mercury, confirming scientists' worst fearsgrist.org Thawing Alaskan permafrost is unleashing more mercury, confirming scientists' worst fears
A new study reveals mercury levels in melting Arctic permafrost that pose disproportionate dangers for Indigenous peoples.
- California sees ‘winter wonderland’ in summer for first time in 20 yearswww.theguardian.com California sees ‘winter wonderland’ in summer for first time in 20 years
Unusually strong and rare snow system dusted Sierra Nevada mountain range early Saturday
This summer, Californians have had to endure blistering heatwaves, raging wildfires – and now snow.
An unusually strong and rare snow system dusted California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range early Saturday, the first time snow has fallen in August in the so-called Golden State in more than 20 years.
About 3in fell in Lassen Volcanic national park, according to the weather service. But most areas just got a dusting with summertime temps returning 24 hours later.
The rare summer snowstorm nonetheless caused a record amount of rainfall in Redding, Red Bluff and Stockton in northern California on Saturday, the weather service said.
The “anomalous cool conditions” spread over much of the western US through Sunday morning, according to the weather service’s Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.
- This coral reef has given scientists hope for years. Now they’re worried.www.vox.com This coral reef has given scientists hope for years. Now they’re worried.
Coral around the Dutch island has recovered from past bleaching and hurricanes. Now it faces disease and severe marine heat, putting its strength to the test.
- An asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs, not a comet, new study findsarstechnica.com An asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs, not a comet, new study finds
Analysis of ruthenium isotopes showed the impactor was a carbonaceous-type asteroid.
- Humans know very little about the deep sea. That may not stop us from mining it.grist.org Humans know very little about the deep sea. That may not stop us from mining it.
With a newly elected leader, the International Seabed Authority must decide the future of more than half of the world’s ocean floor.
- Famous Stonehenge stone came from Scotland not Waleswww.bbc.com Stonehenge: Central Altar Stone from Scotland not Wales
Stonehenge's famous Altar Stone came from Scotland not Wales as previously thought, new analysis shows.
- NOAA Affirms Expectations for Extraordinarily Active Hurricane Seasoninsideclimatenews.org NOAA Affirms Expectations for Extraordinarily Active Hurricane Season - Inside Climate News
The federal agency issued a slight revision down from its May forecast, which called for the most named storms the agency had ever predicted.