Climate science
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As the earth gets warmer, the water cycle is getting amped up, with both more droughts and more floods. On the wet side of that swing, the statistics of flooding events is showing a trend towards more extreme values. This is important because a lot of our infrastructure, including how roads, dams, and sewers are…
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It is now generally agreed by scientists that liquid water used to exist on Mars, and that liquid contributed to some of the geological features that we can still see on the surface of Mars today. But there is no liquid water on Mars now, and even the amount of liquid water that remains in…
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Tom Skilling, WGN television meteorologist, gave this report on Facebook today about the volcanic eruption that is ongoing in the Caribbean: The Caribbean’s La Soufriere Volcano isn’t likely to have the cooling effect of 1991’s mammoth Mount Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines–but it’s released the most sulfur dioxide of any Caribbean volcano of the satellite…
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I love clouds, and so was very excited to see this in the news today. The Mars rover, Curiosity, has taken its first pictures of Martian clouds! They look a lot like cirrus clouds on earth, but it is not clear if they have the same chemical composition that earth clouds do. You can read…
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Now here’s something you don’t see every day. The American Geophysical Union has published an infographic comparing the size of raindrops on Earth to those expected on other planets (assuming they are warm enough to have rain instead of snow). The study factors in the force of gravity on each planet along with what we…
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Climate Change in Extension: Elevating and Amplifying Action, a virtual 3-day forum will take place April 19-21, 2021, starting at noon ET each day. The event will bring together Extension faculty, staff, federal representatives, administrators, interested partners, and constituents to address the question: What can/should the Cooperative Extension System do to advance climate change programming?…
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Today Climate.gov posted a Science Brief on recent research findings about the trends in tropical storm activity due to warming ocean temperatures associated with the changing climate. They describe how cyclone intensity has been measured and how it is increasing. They also describe likely changes in the tropical atmospheric conditions in the future and how…