Remember the difference between weather and climate? We know what happens when the weather changes—it’s obvious. Climate is another story. Read on. When it rains, you put on a raincoat or take your umbrella when you go out. It snows: time for high boots, a heavier coat, scarf, and warm gloves. And sunny days, well,
Weather and climate are similar but different. For the most part, they are very distinct phenomena. Below, we talk about the weather first, and then delve into the climate. Weather We measure what’s going on in our atmosphere over a short period of time—usually in a particular place on a particular day—by assessing the weather. Could be
Mercury, innermost planet of our Solar system (zodiac-astrology-horoscopes.com) Sunday night, May 25, you may want to take a look at the planet Mercury. It’s the best night all year for viewing our feisty little sunmost neighbor from Earth’s northern hemisphere. On this date, Mercury will reach its elongation—the farthest point it travels to the east
There are the good wildfires, and there are the bad. Unfortunately, the latter often overwhelm the beneficial ones. We’ll go on with stories from San Diego in a minute—it’s a long story of an actually short time—but here’s a word about the bright side first. Whoopi Goldberg had a thought that’s worth repeating: When you
Yup. Hope you all are enjoying this Monday…. Thanks to I F*cking Love Science on Facebook for this one!
Tonight’s the first annular solar eclipse of 2014 (April 28-29), but almost nobody will be able to see it. The ring of fire will be visible only from the uninhabited region of Wilkes Land in Antarctica, the southern edge of Indonesia, and the South Indian Ocean. Australians will experience a partial solar eclipse, as may
I don’t watch a heap of news, so I was surprised to hear that people are expecting 2012 to end thanks to a massive solar flare as a result of the oncoming solar maximum. Thankfully, even as I heard about it, I was reliably informed by scientists from NASA that such an event is a ‘physical impossibility’.
Active Region (AR) 1302 is slowly coming into position where it directly faces the Earth. The region contains a “behemoth” sunspot — several times larger than the Earth — named sunspot 1302.
The sunspot has already been the source of two ‘X-class’ solar flares (‘X’ signifying the most extreme known); the first, measuring an X1.4, on September 22, and the second, an X1.9, coming just three days later on Sept. 24. Are more X-class flares on the way, and on their way towards Earth?
Scientists predict that our Sun is heading into a period of minimal activity, and in a study released Tuesday, researchers believe that this minimum may increase the probability of unusually cold winter temperatures throughout the United Kingdom.
On Feb. 6th, NASA’s twin STEREO probes moved into position on opposite sides of the sun, and they are now beaming back uninterrupted images of the entire star—front and back. “For the first time ever, we can watch solar activity in its full 3-dimensional glory,” says Angelos Vourlidas, a member of the STEREO science team
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FklwzRihv6Y BBC had created a pretty great feature recently, Science Under Attack. “Nobel Prize winner Sir Paul Nurse examines why science appears to be under attack, and why public trust in key scientific theories has been eroded,” the YouTube page for the first video above says. Sir Paul Nurse, head of the Royal Society, a
In determining whether humans are the sole cause for the warming currently taking place in our atmosphere, accurate data is needed for how much energy the sun is putting into that same atmosphere, and according to a new study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, scientists have made a big step towards accurate determining
Sometimes old knowledge makes for “new” news, even viral news. Case in point:sky-watchers have known for more than two millennia that the Earth has a irregular wobble in its orbit — what’s known as precession — which over time makes its orientation to the constellations, and to our sun, change. This precessional change means that,
Life in the universe can be difficult for inhabited planets, especially when you’re directly in the path of a massive coronal mass ejection (CME) shot out from your own life-sustaining star. Even without a massive network of interconnecting power lines sweeping across the planet, these solar storms can wreak havoc; but add in that same
I recently got tipped off to a great website and project, the GE ecomagination photo project. The simple deal with this project is, as a friend wrote to me, “for every photo uploaded to flickr, a donation will be made to communities in need of clean water, solar light, and wind turbine powered electricity.” Sounds
NASA reported last year that “if anything,” the Sun contributed “a very slight overall cooling in the past 25 years.” Despite that many man-made global warming deniers will try tell you that it is because of sunspots that we are seeing so much global warming. Another major 2007 study on the Sun found that “over
In his alarm-ringing NY Times op-ed on Climate Change, professor Homer-Dixon* draws a comparison with the 2008 financial “meltdown” which finally led to new financial regulations, even though warnings of a housing bubble (and an emerging recession) were being made prior to the crisis. He advocates societies designing a contingency plan (‘Plan Z’ ) to deal with the immediate after-effects of one or more climate change disasters.
The Earth’s upper atmosphere expands and contracts a bit naturally. But a recent record-breaking collapse has scientists confused.
Our Sun is experiencing the most prolonged period of minimal sunspot activity in nearly a century. The puzzling absence of these spots, whose build-up commonly signals the occurrence of large solar storms and flares, has space scientists and solar physicists searching for explanations.
ESA
Could a link between a lull in solar activity and jet streams over the Atlantic Ocean be the result for why the UK is suffering colder winters while the rest of the world warms? [social_buttons]According to a new report published in the Institute of Physics Publishing’s Environmental Research Letters points out that we are moving
[social_buttons] Burning high in the sky, he sits and watches us, just doing his job. Wearing an ironic pair of sunglasses, he keeps us warm during the day, bronzes our skin by the beach, and makes earth inhabitable. He does quite a bit for us, despite his dwelling 93 million miles away. But with concerns
[social_buttons] Scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California have suggested a plan to drastically reduce global warming, by painting the world white. If implemented successfully, it would be the equivalent of taking the world’s 600 million cars off the road for 18 years. Hashem Akbari and Surabi Meno, along with Art Rosenfeld, California
The headlines are out, 1966 was the last time North America and much of Siberia have seen so much snow. An article in Canada’s National Post summarized weather around the northern hemisphere and concluded that arctic ice is back, heavier than ever in some areas, and China is reeling from its worst winter in a
