The melting of Arctic ice, coupled with other factors such as the push to discover more oil reserves to exploit, is spurring new efforts to map the Arctic. A US team recently completed a survey of a huge underwater peninsula, known as the Chukchi Cap, on the northern side of Alaska and found that it […]
The Woods Hole Research Center has been working on the “National Biomass and Carbon Dataset for the year 2000 (NBCD2000) and have just released datasets from the first nine project mapping zones. All NBCD2000 data products can be downloaded on a zone-by-zone basis from the NBCD2000 project website. The datasets are free, but you do […]
Have humans brought about a new Geological age? Seeing as we’re in a department that shares space with not only Geography but Geology, I occasionally scan for any new Geology news. Apparently this theory has been around for five years or so, but I just ran across it, so I’m reporting now. The idea is […]
Baghdad got its first snow in 100 years on Friday! The snow didn’t accumulate much, so the Baghdad government won’t have to add “snow plows” to its load of materials, but it was a once in a lifetime site. People of all ages remarked they had never seen snow, nor had ever heard of anyone […]
National Geographic is reporting that we can expect a season of intense solar flares for the next few weeks and months. This is all part of a normal 11 year cycle in solar flare activity, but it can lead to some distinct headaches in our tech heavy world. As the article notes, this is the […]
Japan has set a target to increase it’s number of solar powered houses to 14 million by 2030. It’s a fairly lofty goal. The exceptionally noteworthy part of this is that Japan is focusing on reducing the costs of panels, increasing the power output, and increasing the ease of installation. Since Japan produces roughly half […]
So we have entered the winter season here in the northern hemisphere (welcome to summer down south). I prefer the winter months during this season, mostly cause the thought of Saint Nick in his swimming trunks is just not for me…nope, no way.
In other Google news, they have decided to invest some of their billions into renewable energy sources, like solar and wind. The plan is to make renewable sources cheaper than coal sources. It’s an ambitious goal, but it’s good to see even companies not in the energy sector realize the importance of growing our renewable […]
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center has released a video today showing visually the ice loss in the Arctic Sea from 1979-2007. The video is pretty impressive showing the degree of loss over the last 30 years or so. The video is linked on the right hand side along with some flat photo images.
A story to round out Blog Action Day about current research along the Northwest Passage that will likely soon have new environmental finds. The BBC has had a press crew on the vessel (the Amundsen) that has been passing through the Northwest Passage and they have been showing some of the video on BBC World […]