The Science Behind A Storm Surge

Hurricane Ike, still forming in the Gulf of Mexico, caused floods near Surfside Beach, Texas September 12, 2008. Hurricane Ike closed in on the Texas coast on Friday, pushing a wall of water that weather officials warned could bring certain death to those who did not heed mandatory evacuation orders.

From MSNBC:

As Hurricane Ike races toward Texas, it is pushing a mound of water in front of it that could inundate parts of the Gulf coast with up to 25 feet of water. The surge involves some incredible feats of physics, and in many hurricanes it’s the leading cause of death.

Galveston Island, Texas, destroyed at least once before by a major hurricane in 1900, began to see the Ike-related water creeping up along its beaches Thursday and by Friday, parts of the city of Galveston were flooded by the surge coming in from Galveston Bay.

And, "it's only going to get worse," said Lance Wood, the Science and Operations Officer for the Houston/Galveston National Weather Service (NWS) office.

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A Guide To Hurricanes

From Scientific American:

Fay, Gustav, Hanna, Ike: What's next for the U.S.? What causes nature's destructive storms? How do scientists study and predict them? How are they linked to global warming?

Scientific American has compiled an extensive and detailed examination of hurricanes and what the future may hold for us. The link to read this guide is here.

With Ike, Size Matters For Killer Storm Surge

From My Way News/AP

Hurricane Ike's gargantuan size - not its strength - will likely push an extra large storm surge inland in a region already prone to it, experts said Thursday.

Ike's giant girth means more water piling up on Texas and Louisiana coastal areas for a longer time, topped with bigger waves. So storm surge - the prime killer in hurricanes - will be far worse than a typical storm of Ike's strength, the National Hurricane Center said.

And because coastal waters in Texas and Louisiana are so shallow, storm surge is usually larger there than in other regions, according to storm experts. A 1900 hurricane following a similar track to Ike inundated Galveston Island, killing at least 8,000 people - America's deadliest storm.

"It's a good recipe for surge," said Benton McGee, supervisory hydrologist at the U.S. Geological Survey's storm surge center in Ruston, La. "We're already seeing water being piled up in the Gulf. On top of that you're going to have water forced into the bays along the coast."

The National Hurricane Center is forecasting a 20-foot surge - a rapid rising of water inundating areas and moving inland - for a large swath of Texas and the Louisiana coasts. Above that, the center predicts "large and dangerous battering waves." Waves could be 50 feet tall, said hurricane center spokesman and meteorologist Dennis Feltgen.

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Antarctic Sea Ice Increases Despite Warming

Cold, snowy, and stuck at the “bottom” of the Earth, Antarctica might seem like a dull place. But this big continent can produce a surprisingly dynamic range of conditions. One example of this range is temperature trends. Although Antarctica warmed around the perimeter from 1982 to 2004, where huge icebergs calved and some ice shelves disintegrated, it cooled closer to the pole.

From the New Scientist:

The amount of sea ice around Antarctica has grown in recent Septembers in what could be an unusual side-effect of global warming, experts say.

In the southern hemisphere winter, when emperor penguins huddle together against the biting cold, ice on the sea around Antarctica has been increasing since the late 1970s, perhaps because climate change means shifts in winds, sea currents or snowfall.

At the other end of the planet, Arctic sea ice is now close to matching a September 2007 record low at the tail end of the northern summer, in a threat to the hunting lifestyles of indigenous peoples and creatures such as polar bears.

"The Antarctic wintertime ice extent increased...at a rate of 0.6% per decade" from 1979 to 2006, says Donald Cavalieri, a senior research scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

At 19 million square kilometres, it is still slightly below records from the early 1970s of 20 million, he says. Since 1979 however, the average year-round ice extent has risen too.

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My Comment: OK .... because it is getting warmer .... we now have more ice in the Antarctic. Is it me, but is this a contradiction?

Sigh..... this article makes no sense. Shame on The New Scientist, they should know better that you need to have data before making explanations on explaining a climatic effect.

Painting Rooftops White Would Slow Global Warming

From Sustain A Blog:

Study: If we painted every rooftop in 100 major cities white, it would offset the entire planet’s carbon dioxide emissions for one year. That’s nearly 44 metric gigatons.

It makes sense. We all know white reflects heat (that’s why we wear white shirts and dresses on hot days), and we even knew that painting rooftops white lessens the need for air conditioning. But until now, we didn’t know that changing dark-colored surfaces to white would help fight against global warming.

The news broke yesterday at California’s Climate Change Research Conference. Hashem Akbari, attending the conference from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, announced that replacing dark shingles on an average-sized household rooftop with a lighter color would offset 10 metric tons of carbon dioxide—comparable to taking two mid-sized cars off the road for a year.

Speaking of roadways, they’re part of the problem too. Because of its cheap nature, most roads are paved with black asphalt instead of light grey concrete, which causes roads to absorb an inordinate amount of heat. Repaving roads with lighter-colored materials would have a similar impact to painting rooftops.

California already mandates that newly-built large buildings have light-colored rooftops, but the law was intended to decrease air conditioning costs. Akbari hopes to enlist the United Nations in an effort to convince major cities to make their roadways and rooftops more pale.

Read a full summary of the report here.

Black Hole's 'Birth Scream' Heard Across Universe

From FOX News:

Six months ago, satellite telescopes spotted an exceptionally bright burst of energy that would have been the most distant object in the universe ever visible to the naked eye, if anyone had noticed it.

Even though no humans have reported seeing it directly, the gamma-ray burst, an explosion that signals the violent death of a massive star, is changing theories of how these events look.

Gamma-ray bursts are typically accompanied by intense releases of other forms of radiation, from X-rays to visible light.

This burst, dubbed GRB 080319B, was first detected by the Swift satellite on March 19, while the spacecraft was serendipitously looking at another gamma-ray burst in the same area of the sky.

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9 Big Questions On NASA Infighting

From Popular Mechanics:

As if a new administration and the rise of the private space industry weren't enough, it's suddenly become an even more critical time for NASA, with its ambitious plans to send manned missions to the moon and Mars while facing mounting fiscal and political realities. The Orion spacecraft at the heart of the agency's next-gen Constellation exploration program is being designed to resupply the International Space Station and fly to the moon, but the space shuttle fleet is due to retire in 2010 and Orion won't be ready to fly in time. The plan is to use Russia's spacecraft to make the supply runs, but that nation's war with Georgia has cast doubt on that plan. Grumbling from engineers and officials inside NASA is joining a chorus of outside critics, so we asked four-time shuttle astronaut Tom Jones to help make sense of the turmoil. —Jennifer Bogo

In the internal e-mail written by NASA administrator Michael Griffin, which was leaked to the Orlando Sentinel recently, he articulates a catch-22 in the space program: If we continue to fly the shuttle past its retirement date, it harms our long-term prospects of manned travel by competing for funds with the Constellation program. But if we retire the shuttle as planned, our short-term prospects are impaired by the tenuous situation with Russia. Have we painted ourselves into a corner?

Remember, Griffin was ordered to stop flying the shuttle in 2010. You know, get it off the stage as soon as possible. Then he was told, "Bring on Orion as quickly as you can after that." The original plan, about four years ago, was for Orion to be ready by 2012. But Congress has been given budgets every year by the president that have not included the funds to do these things at the pace they need. So the two-year gap turned into a five-year gap. Congress figured there was no downside: Just let it slip and, big deal, we have a long gap. That was all fine when it was five or six years in the future, but now the Russians have turned unfriendly, and we don't know where that's going to go. And suddenly a bunch of people are saying, "There's this big, long gap, and it's unacceptable, and, NASA, why didn't you take care of this?"

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Why Ike Could Be Texas' Worst Nightmare

The unnamed Category 4 hurricane that slammed into Galveston, Texas Sept. 8, 1900 remains the deadliest ever to hit the United States, having killed at least 8,000 people (estimates vary) and leveling virtually the entire town. Credit: NOAA

From Live Science:

As Hurricane Ike revs up again over the Gulf of Mexico, residents of coastal Texas, especially Houston and Galveston, are preparing for the arrival of the monstrous storm, which could be the most devastating that the Lone Star State has seen Hurricane Alicia came ashore in 1983, causing nearly $6 billion in damage and 21 fatalities.

Ike is huge. Hurricane-force winds extend out 120 miles (195 kilometers) from the storm's center, and tropical storm-force winds reach out 275 miles (445 km), both measurements exceeding what's seen with many storms. Ike could reach major hurricane status as a Category 3 before it makes landfall late Friday or early Saturday morning somewhere along the Texas coast.

And right now it looks like that somewhere will be the Houston/Galveston area.

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Fifty Years Of Earth-Observation Satellites

Views such as this one are made possible by satellites orbiting the planet, a feat they have been performing for the past half-century. Although such satellites were initially put in place for military uses, most current ones are used to observe the Earth, and they have provided a wealth of information about the world. This image of an aurora was compiled from data collected in July 2000 by NASA’s Polar satellite, which ceased operation earlier in 2008. The data were recorded in ultraviolet light, as the event occurred during daylight hours. False color from blue to red corresponds to increasing magnetic activity.

From American Scientist:

Views from space have led to countless advances on the ground in both scientific knowledge and daily life

A half a century ago, the launch of Sputnik-1 saw the start of an era where we began to launch artificial satellites into orbit to tell us what we look like from above. Hundreds of Earth-observing satellites have followed, and this extensive remote sensing has provided both iconic views and unprecedented insights into our planet. Tatem, Goetz and Hay review the development of these satellites over the past 50 years, as well as the data they have produced, which has lead to a greater understanding of Earth's terrestrial, aquatic and atmospheric processes. They examine current trends and speculate on what the next 50 years of satellite remote sensing may bring.

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The Microchip's 50th Birthday Party

The first integrated circuit invented by Jack Kilby. Kilby won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2000 for his work.

Happy 50th Birthday: Microchip Celebrates Five
Decade Milestone -- Daily Mail

When Jack Kilby demonstrated the first working integrated circuit in Texas in 1958, he could have had no idea how his invention would change the world.

Now 50 years later, microchips are integral to modern-day life in devices as wide-ranging as computers to credit cards, cameras to cookers.

Kilby's design used a strip of germanium, rather than silicon, with one transister and other components glued on to a glass slide.

In July, the electrical engineer had not been allowed to go on holiday because he had only recently joined the company Texas Instruments. Kilby used the time to create his ground-breaking design, which tackled the problem of connecting large numbers of electronic components in circuits in a cost-effective way.

Jim Tully, vice president at the technology analyst Gartner said the microchip slashed the cost in producing electronics, which allowed the technology to spread rapidly through all areas of society.

'Integrated circuits are so woven into our lives that it would be hard to imagine a world without them,' Tully said.

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Eight Organisms That Make You Go 'Eww'

From MSNBC:

Skunk. The mere mention of the black and white mammal is enough to make people plug their noses. That's because these creatures are legendary for deterring predators with an oily, foul-smelling spray emitted from glands on either side of their anus. Eww. Some species can shoot the fetid substance more than ten feet and whatever it hits may forever carry the stench. As a defense mechanism, scientists say the stinky spray is quite effective: Most would-be skunk predators stay away unless they have nothing else to eat. Even humans are well trained to keep their distance.

When the skunk in this photo got its head stuck in a jar of salad dressing, a police officer cracked it off with a pellet gun fired from 40 feet away.

Click here for the other nine.

U.N. Agency Eyes Curbs On Internet Anonymity

From CNET News:

A United Nations agency is quietly drafting technical standards, proposed by the Chinese government, to define methods of tracing the original source of Internet communications and potentially curbing the ability of users to remain anonymous.

The U.S. National Security Agency is also participating in the "IP Traceback" drafting group, named Q6/17, which is meeting next week in Geneva to work on the traceback proposal. Members of Q6/17 have declined to release key documents, and meetings are closed to the public.

The potential for eroding Internet users' right to remain anonymous, which is protected by law in the United States and recognized in international law by groups such as the Council of Europe, has alarmed some technologists and privacy advocates. Also affected may be services such as the Tor anonymizing network.

"What's distressing is that it doesn't appear that there's been any real consideration of how this type of capability could be misused," said Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C. "That's really a human rights concern."

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U.S. Makes 1st Antarctic Night Landing

From CBS News:

(AP) A U.S. Air Force pilot has landed a plane in Antarctica in the dark for the first time using night-vision goggles, a feat that could lead to more supply flights to scientific bases in the frozen continent during its dark winter months, officials said Friday.

The C-17 Globemaster cargo airplane landed in a driving snowstorm on the six-mile ice runway at the U.S. Antarctic research center at McMurdo Station, after months of practice runs by pilots using the goggles.

The Air Force plane took off from Christchurch, New Zealand, and flew nearly six hours before landing Thursday night. It returned to Christchurch early Friday.

Air Force Lt. Col. Jim McGann said the airplane's own lights - reflecting off of traffic cones - allowed it to land without electrical runway lights that are too hard to maintain in the frozen environment.

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Meat: Making Global Warming Worse

From Time Magazine:

Need another reason to feel guilty about feeding your children that Happy Meal — aside from the fat, the calories and that voice in your head asking why you can't be bothered to actually cook a well-balanced meal now and then? Rajendra Pachauri would like to offer you one. The head of the U.N.'s Nobel Prize–winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Pachauri on Monday urged people around the world to cut back on meat in order to combat climate change. "Give up meat for one day [per week] at least initially, and decrease it from there," Pachauri told Britain's Observer newspaper. "In terms of immediacy of action and the feasibility of bringing about reductions in a short period of time, it clearly is the most attractive opportunity." So, that addiction to pork and beef isn't just clogging your arteries; it's flame-broiling the earth, too.

By the numbers, Pachauri is absolutely right. In a 2006 report, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) concluded that worldwide livestock farming generates 18% of the planet's greenhouse gas emissions — by comparison, all the world's cars, trains, planes and boats account for a combined 13% of greenhouse gas emissions. Much of livestock's contribution to global warming come from deforestation, as the growing demand for meat results in trees being cut down to make space for pasture or farmland to grow animal feed. Livestock takes up a lot of space — nearly one-third of the earth's entire landmass. In Latin America, the FAO estimates that some 70% of former forest cover has been converted for grazing. Lost forest cover heats the planet, because trees absorb CO2 while they're alive — and when they're burned or cut down, the greenhouse gas is released back into the atmosphere.

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Russia May Build Own Particle-Colliding Machine

From RIA-Novosti:

MOSCOW, September 11 (RIA Novosti) - A day after the Large Hadron Collider was successfully switched on in Switzerland, a Russian scientist said Russia could build its own collider.

Viktor Matveev said that scientists around the world are currently considering a proposal by their Russian colleagues to build a new collider.

The idea was put forward by scientists from the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, who suggested that a new device be built in the Moscow Region.

He said that a delegation of international scientists had visited the proposed site and concluded that, "It is one of the best places in the world for construction of that kind."

Matveev also said that the idea for the collider "came from Russia," and that the world's first collider had been built by scientists in the West Siberian city of Novosibirsk.

He went on to say that the collider, which could be even more powerful than the European version, would boost Russian scientific progress and allow young researchers to take part in the projects to follow.

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Websites Shed Light On How Humans Value Fresh Ideas

From New Scientist:

Analysing the rise and fall of websites is the perfect way to shed light on the old debate over whether talent or experience matters most, say mathematicians.

The question crops up everywhere, from job interviews to presidential races, says Vwani Roychowdhury, but it's hard to examine the problem using hard figures.

However, the same way of thinking can be applied to websites, which also succeed or fail based on many millions of human decisions. In fact, the web may be one of the few places it is possible to quantify the balance between the two, say the researchers.

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With Hurricane Ike, Size Matters For Killer Storm Surge

From My Way/AP:

Hurricane Ike's gargantuan size - not its strength - will likely push an extra large storm surge inland in a region already prone to it, experts said Thursday.

Ike's giant girth means more water piling up on Texas and Louisiana coastal areas for a longer time, topped with bigger waves. So storm surge - the prime killer in hurricanes - will be far worse than a typical storm of Ike's strength, the National Hurricane Center said.

And because coastal waters in Texas and Louisiana are so shallow, storm surge is usually larger there than in other regions, according to storm experts. A 1900 hurricane following a similar track to Ike inundated Galveston Island, killing at least 8,000 people - America's deadliest storm.

"It's a good recipe for surge," said Benton McGee, supervisory hydrologist at the U.S. Geological Survey's storm surge center in Ruston, La. "We're already seeing water being piled up in the Gulf. On top of that you're going to have water forced into the bays along the coast."

Read more ....

Sleek Probe To Map Earth’s Gravity

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 10, 2008) — The European Space Agency is launching a new satellite to map variations in the Earth’s gravity field with unprecedented accuracy. The satellite will give UK scientists vital information about ocean circulation and sea level change needed to improve climate forecast models.

The Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) is the first of three Earth Explorer core missions in ESA’s Earth Observation Envelope Programme. Data from GOCE will allow scientists to create a detailed model of the Earth's gravity field, or geoid.

“GOCE will yield details of the Earth's gravity field to an accuracy and resolution that is simply unobtainable by existing terrestrial and space techniques,” says Professor Philip Moore from Newcastle University, who specialises in gravity research.

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Why Female Spiders Eat Their Mates

From MSNBC:

Small males are easier to catch and are more likely to be prey

In many spider species, females eat the males after sex. Studies have suggested various complex evolutionary reasons involving costs and benefits to the species, sperm competition and esoteric sexual selection schemes.

Turns out the motivation for this creepy cannibalism is much simpler.

It's all about size. If males are small, they're easier to catch and therefore more likely to be prey, say Shawn Wilder and Ann Rypstra from Miami University in Ohio. Big females eat their puny mates simply because a) they're hungry and b) they can.

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Converting Fibre Into Fuel Without Using Enzymes

From Fibre To Fuel In A Flash -- Nature

Chemists convert cellulose to potential biofuel without enzymes.
A genuine revolution in biofuels is currently hindered by the difficulty of converting the most recalcitrant parts of plants, primarily the cellulose of their fibres, into useful fuel. Two chemists in California now claim that it might be remarkably easy to do just that with little more than a strong acid to break down the cellulose.

Mark Mascal and Edward Nikitin of the University of California, Davis say their new process is the most efficient way yet described for converting cellulose into small, energy-rich organic molecules, using no more than basic textbook chemistry.

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