NASA’s Curiosity Rover Finds Clues to How Water Helped Shape Martian Landscape

This illustration depicts a lake of water partially filling Mars' Gale Crater, receiving runoff from snow melting on the crater's northern rim.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/MSSS

This evenly layered rock photographed by the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover on Aug. 7, 2014, shows a pattern typical of a lake-floor sedimentary deposit not far from where flowing water entered a lake.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

This image from Curiosity's Mastcam shows inclined beds of sandstone interpreted as the deposits of small deltas fed by rivers flowing down from the Gale Crater rim and building out into a lake where Mount Sharp is now. It was taken March 13, 2014, just north of the "Kimberley" waypoint.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

This March 25, 2014, view from the Mastcam on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover looks southward at the Kimberley waypoint. In the foreground, multiple sandstone beds show systematic inclination to the south suggesting progressive build-out of delta sediments in that direction (toward Mount Sharp).

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

This image shows inclined beds characteristic of delta deposits where a stream entered a lake, but at a higher elevation and farther south than other delta deposits north of Mount Sharp. This suggests multiple episodes of delta growth building southward. It is from Curiosity's Mastcam.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

This image shows an example of a thin-laminated, evenly stratified rock type that occurs in the "Pahrump Hills" outcrop at the base of Mount Sharp on Mars. The Mastcam on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover acquired this view on Oct. 28, 2014. This type of rock can form under a lake.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Observations by NASA’s Curiosity Rover indicate Mars' Mount Sharp was built by sediments deposited in a large lake bed over tens of millions of years.

This interpretation of Curiosity’s finds in Gale Crater suggests ancient Mars maintained a climate that could have produced long-lasting lakes at many locations on the Red Planet.

"If our hypothesis for Mount Sharp holds up, it challenges the notion that warm and wet conditions were transient, local, or only underground on Mars,” said Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity deputy project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. “A more radical explanation is that Mars' ancient, thicker atmosphere raised temperatures above freezing globally, but so far we don't know how the atmosphere did that."

Why this layered mountain sits in a crater has been a challenging question for researchers. Mount Sharp stands about 3 miles (5 kilometers) tall, its lower flanks exposing hundreds of rock layers. The rock layers – alternating between lake, river and wind deposits -- bear witness to the repeated filling and evaporation of a Martian lake much larger and longer-lasting than any previously examined close-up.

"We are making headway in solving the mystery of Mount Sharp," said Curiosity Project Scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. "Where there's now a mountain, there may have once been a series of lakes."

Curiosity currently is investigating the lowest sedimentary layers of Mount Sharp, a section of rock 500 feet (150 meters) high dubbed the Murray formation. Rivers carried sand and silt to the lake, depositing the sediments at the mouth of the river to form deltas similar to those found at river mouths on Earth. This cycle occurred over and over again.

"The great thing about a lake that occurs repeatedly, over and over, is that each time it comes back it is another experiment to tell you how the environment works," Grotzinger said. "As Curiosity climbs higher on Mount Sharp, we will have a series of experiments to show patterns in how the atmosphere and the water and the sediments interact. We may see how the chemistry changed in the lakes over time. This is a hypothesis supported by what we have observed so far, providing a framework for testing in the coming year."

After the crater filled to a height of at least a few hundred yards and the sediments hardened into rock, the accumulated layers of sediment were sculpted over time into a mountainous shape by wind erosion that carved away the material between the crater perimeter and what is now the edge of the mountain.

On the 5-mile (8-kilometer) journey from Curiosity’s 2012 landing site to its current work site at the base of Mount Sharp, the rover uncovered clues about the changing shape of the crater floor during the era of lakes.

"We found sedimentary rocks suggestive of small, ancient deltas stacked on top of one another," said Curiosity science team member Sanjeev Gupta of Imperial College in London. "Curiosity crossed a boundary from an environment dominated by rivers to an environment dominated by lakes."

Despite earlier evidence from several Mars missions that pointed to wet environments on ancient Mars, modeling of the ancient climate has yet to identify the conditions that could have produced long periods warm enough for stable water on the surface.

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Project uses Curiosity to assess ancient, potentially habitable environments and the significant changes the Martian environment has experienced over millions of years. This project is one element of NASA's ongoing Mars research and preparation for a human mission to the planet in the 2030s.

"Knowledge we're gaining about Mars' environmental evolution by deciphering how Mount Sharp formed will also help guide plans for future missions to seek signs of Martian life," said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program at the agency's headquarters in Washington.

JPL, managed by the California Institute of Technology, built the rover and manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

For more information about Curiosity, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/msl

and

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/

ORIGINAL: NASA

December 8, 2014

Is The Record Cold Arctic Outbreak Tied To Global Warming?

Video

Do the Hot and Cold Spells Have a Meaning?

Can extreme weather events like this weekend's historic outbreak of cold Arctic air across the U.S. be caused by the warming of the Arctic?

Though it seems counterintuitive – global warming bringing about extreme cold – the answer may be yes, according to scientists like Weather Underground's Dr. Jeff Masters and Dr. Jennifer Francis, a research professor at Rutgers University's Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences.

The cause is believed to lie in the jet stream, the fast-flowing river of air high above the Earth that marks the boundary between cold, polar air to the North and warm tropical air to the South.

As the jet stream shifts position back and forth over North America throughout the year, it plays a major role in the weather patterns and temperatures we experience in the U.S. In recent years, the movement of the jet stream has changed significantly, bringing "weather whiplash" with strange, out-of-season weather events more frequently than in the recent past.

Francis has been a leading voice in recent years for research that points to rapid changes in the Arctic – including a dramatic decline over the past 30 years in Arctic sea ice extent, which exposes more of the Arctic Ocean to the sun's rays in the summer – as the likely culprit behind the jet stream's increasingly odd behavior.

Average Monthly Arctic Sea Ice Extent in November, 1978-2013

NSIDC Including 2013, the linear trend in November ice extent is –4.9 percent per decade relative to the 1981 to 2010 mean, or a loss of about 20,700 square miles per year. (Courtesy National Snow and Ice Data Center)

The cause is thought to be what scientists call Arctic amplification, the tendency of the polar region to experience more warming (and at a faster pace) than the rest of the Northern hemisphere. This heightened sensitivity is due to the Arctic's snow cover and sea ice, and the feedback loops triggered by their presence (or absence).

"As sea ice retreats, sunshine that would have been reflected back to space by the bright ice is instead absorbed by the ocean, which heats up, melting even more ice," Francis explained in a March 2012 article at Yale360.

"Extra heat entering the vast expanses of open water that were once covered in ice is released back to the atmosphere in the fall," she adds. "All that extra heat being deposited into the atmosphere cannot help but affect the weather, both locally and on a large scale."

Why? Because the Arctic is warming so quickly – about twice as fast as as the rest of the planet – the difference in temperature between the Arctic and the lower latitudes is narrowing.

That temperature difference drives the jet stream; when it shrinks, the jet stream slows and undulates more. It also moves more north-south than east-west (its usual flow), and can get stuck in patterns that last for much longer than they did even a few years ago.

And when that happens, the waves of the jet stream slow down and become larger and more sluggish. When they increase in size thanks to Arctic amplification, they move eastward more slowly, allowing the weather associated with them to stick around longer.

Still, not all climate scientists accept the linkages between long-term global warming, thinning Arctic sea ice, and weather events like this weekend's. The science around attributing weather events at lower latitudes to what happens in the Arctic is still very new, and scientists are far from consensus on whether such a link exists.

In August, a study published by Elizabeth Barnes of Colorado State University called into question Francis' research that links Arctic amplification with the recent changes in the jet stream. And In September, the National Academy of Sciences convened a workshop that drew dozens of climate scientists from around the world to discuss this topic.

But the possibility between what's occurring in the Arctic and what happens when extreme weather hits will undoubtedly continue to receive an increasing amount of attention.

For more, hear Dr. Jeff Masters and Jennifer Francis talk more about how Arctic warming is changing weather in the U.S. in this video:

ORIGINAL: Weather Channel

By Terrell Johnson

Jan 6, 2014

Alberta floods a wake up call to dangers of extreme weather: experts

ORIGINAL: Ottawa Citizen

By Elizabeth Payne, OTTAWA CITIZEN
 June 28, 2013

‘Water the new fire’ as a danger to property

Planners should learn from the Calgary floods and prepare better for devastating weather-related events, experts say. Photograph by: JONATHAN HAYWARD , THE CANADIAN PRESS

OTTAWA — The Alberta floods are Canada’s Hurricane Sandy moment, and should be a catalyst for badly needed changes to limit future damage from extreme weather, say experts on climate change adaptation.

“In many cases, the standards for where and how we build are completely out of date with a climatically changed future,” said Ian Mauro, Canada Research Chair in human dimension and environmental change at Mount Allison University. The Alberta floods, he said, should be a wake-up call that “we need to seriously rethink how we build structures, where we build structures and how we manage in emergency situations.”

Not only do cities and towns need to stop building in flood-prone areas, but infrastructure such as bridges need to be reassessed with extreme weather events in mind. The failing railway bridge over Calgary’s Bow River underlined the catastrophic potential of doing nothing, said Mauro.

“This is just the beginning,” he said. “this isn’t fearmongering, this is a call to action to inspire people to build resilient communities to be able to deal with impending superstorms of the future.”

Water, is considered the new fire — it now accounts for more property damage every year in Canada than from fire. But, while many building and zoning regulations were historically developed to lessen the risk of fire, the response to water damage has been inconsistent and weak.

Many Canadian cities and towns, for example, don’t even have up-to-date floodplain maps, basic information they need to understand flood risks, says the chair of the Climate Change Adaptation Project Canada.

Blair Feltmate, an associate professor of environment and business at the University of Waterloo, said there is an urgent need for new floodplain maps across Canada as a starting point.

“We are having more extreme weather than we’ve had historically and we have to know what will be the manifestation in terms of flooding and where the water will go. We need to know where we should build and where we should not build and we should not be building in areas where there is a high probability of flooding.”

The dangers of building in flood prone areas also need to be taken more seriously, he said. They are either poorly understood or cavalierly ignored in many parts of the country. “Municipalities have put more homes in places where there should not be homes. We can’t continue to do that.”

In some cases, he said, construction is allowed in flood prone areas because property owners and officials don’t believe there is any real danger. “We have management by disaster. In the absence of disaster, we assume disaster will not occur.”

Not only have many municipalities, including Calgary, allowed building in flood prone areas, but it is often premium property because of its proximity to water.

There are examples of municipalities that have bought buildings and changed zoning rules to keep infrastructure away from water, but those are rare.

Bruce Reid of the Rideau Valley Conservation Authority said a federal-provincial program to update flood plane maps has not been funded for years. The authority has managed to update many of its flood estimates, he said, even though some of the maps are out of date.


Some of the push to update infrastructure and policies to adapt to a changing climate is coming from the insurance industry. Impact Financial, which funds the University of Waterloo-based Climate Change Action Project, is paying for the construction of bioswales — landscaped storm water drains — in cities across Canada as demonstration projects in the hopes that governments will build more if they work.


© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

People Get Ready: 'Unprecedented' Weather Glimpses Century Ahead

ORIGINAL: Common Dreams
by Common Dreams
July 3, 2013

Latest report from WMO says first decade of century was hottest, wettest on record with more to come

- Jon Queally, staff writer

It was a decade of 'unprecedented' extreme weather, caused by warmer oceans, hotter temperatures, and an atmosphere saturated with moisture. And there's more where that came from.The rate of rising oceans has doubled, the heat temperatures for both land and water are on the rise, the melting of the Arctic ice is speeding up, and both the weather extremes the world is experiencing and the overall global warming trends are simply 'unprecedented.'

That's the assessment contained in the World Meteorological Organization's latest report, The Global Climate 2001-2010, A Decade of Climate Extremes, which examined the first decade of the 21st century. The report, released Wednesday, arrived with this warning: we better get ready for more.

"Carbon-dioxide concentration [...] reached an average global value of 389 parts per million by the end of the decade, the highest value recorded for at least the past 10,000 years."

"Rising concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases are changing our climate, with far reaching implications for our environment and our oceans, which are absorbing both carbon dioxide and heat,” said WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud.

The decade between 2001 and 2010, according to the report, was both the hottest and the wettest since modern records were started in 1850.

According to the report, "Carbon-dioxide concentration [...] reached an average global value of 389 parts per million by the end of the decade, the highest value recorded for at least the past 10,000 years."

The group, which takes a global look at weather events and their relationship to macro trends in atmospheric and ocean patterns, says looking at a complete decade of data is the best way to make accurate analysis of a climate system as complex as the Earth's.

“A decade is the minimum possible timeframe for meaningful assessments of climate change,” said Jarraud. “WMO’s report shows that global warming was significant from 1971 to 2010 and that the decadal rate of increase between 1991-2000 and 2001-2010 was unprecedented."

On an annual basis, he continued, regional and global trends may go up and down, but on a "long-term basis the underlying trend is clearly in an upward direction."

The WHO also released this video summary of their report:

___________________________

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Four energy policies can keep the 2 °C climate goal alive

ORIGINAL: IEA
10 June 2013

Image: IEA

IEA report shows how to stop growth in energy-related emissions by 2020 at no net economic cost
Warning that the world is not on track to limit the global temperature increase to 2 degrees Celsius, the International Energy Agency (IEA) today urged governments to swiftly enact four energy policies that would keep climate goals alive without harming economic growth.

“Climate change has quite frankly slipped to the back burner of policy priorities. But the problem is not going away – quite the opposite,” IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven said in London at the launch of a World Energy Outlook Special Report, Redrawing the Energy-Climate Map, which highlights the need for intensive action before 2020.

Noting that the energy sector accounts for around two-thirds of global greenhouse-gas emissions, she added: “This report shows that the path we are currently on is more likely to result in a temperature increase of between 3.6 °C and 5.3 °C but also finds that much more can be done to tackle energy-sector emissions without jeopardising economic growth, an important concern for many governments.”

New estimates for global energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2012 reveal a 1.4% increase, reaching a record high of 31.6 gigatonnes (Gt), but also mask significant regional differences. In the United States, a switch from coal to gas in power generation helped reduce emissions by 200 million tonnes (Mt), bringing them back to the level of the mid‑1990s. China experienced the largest growth in CO2 emissions (300 Mt), but the increase was one of the lowest it has seen in a decade, driven by the deployment of renewables and improvements in energy intensity. Despite increased coal use in some countries, emissions in Europe declined by 50 Mt. Emissions in Japan increased by 70 Mt.

The new IEA report presents the results of a 4-for-2 °C Scenario, in which four energy policies are selected that can deliver significant emissions reductions by 2020, rely only on existing technologies and have already been adopted successfully in several countries.

“We identify a set of proven measures that could stop the growth in global energy-related emissions by the end of this decade at no net economic cost,” said IEA Chief Economist Fatih Birol, the report’s lead author. “Rapid and widespread adoption could act as a bridge to further action, buying precious time while international climate negotiations continue.”

In the 4-for-2°C Scenario, global energy-related greenhouse-gas emissions are 8% (3.1 Gt CO2‑equivalent) lower in 2020 than the level otherwise expected.
Targeted energy efficiency measures in buildings, industry and transport account for nearly half the emissions reduction in 2020, with the additional investment required being more than offset by reduced spending on fuel bills.
Limiting the construction and use of the least-efficient coal-fired power plants delivers more than 20% of the emissions reduction and helps curb local air pollution. The share of power generation from renewables increases (from around 20% today to 27% in 2020), as does that from natural gas.
Actions to halve expected methane (a potent greenhouse gas) releases into the atmosphere from the upstream oil and gas industry in 2020 provide 18% of the savings.
Implementing a partial phase-out of fossil fuel consumption subsidies accounts for 12% of the reduction in emissions and supports efficiency efforts.

The report also finds that the energy sector is not immune from the physical impacts of climate change and must adapt. In mapping energy-system vulnerabilities, it identifies several sudden and destructive impacts, caused by extreme weather events, and other more gradual impacts, caused by changes to average temperature, sea level rise and shifting weather patterns. To improve the climate resilience of the energy system, it highlights governments’ role in encouraging prudent adaptation (alongside mitigation) and the need for industry to assess the risks and impacts as part of its investment decisions.

The financial implications of climate policies that would put the world on a 2 °C trajectory are not uniform across the energy sector. Net revenues for existing renewables-based and nuclear power plants increase by $1.8 trillion (in year-2011 dollars) collectively through to 2035, offsetting a similar decline from coal plants. No oil or gas field currently in production would need to shut down prematurely. Some fields yet to start production are not developed before 2035, meaning that around 5% to 6% of proven oil and gas reserves do not start to recover their exploration costs. Delaying the move to a 2 °C trajectory until 2020 would result in substantial additional costs to the energy sector and increase the risk of assets needing to be retired early, idled or retrofitted. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) can act as an asset protection strategy, reducing the risk of stranded assets and enabling more fossil fuel to be commercialised.

To download the WEO special report Redrawing the Energy-Climate Map, click here.

To read Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven's comments at the report's launch, please click here.

To see the presentation that accompanied the report's launch, please click here.


Accredited journalists who would like more information should contact ieapressoffice@iea.org.

About the IEA
The International Energy Agency is an autonomous organisation which works to ensure reliable, affordable and clean energy for its 28 member countries and beyond. Founded in response to the 1973/4 oil crisis, the IEA’s initial role was to help countries co-ordinate a collective response to major disruptions in oil supply through the release of emergency oil stocks to the markets. While this continues to be a key aspect of its work, the IEA has evolved and expanded. It is at the heart of global dialogue on energy, providing reliable and unbiased research, statistics, analysis and recommendations.

Homepage photo: © Shutterstock.com

IBM's Smarter Approach to Contextual Cities

ORIGINAL: Forbes

Shel Israel, Contributor

6/03/2013

NOTE–I am writing a book called Age of Context with Robert Scoble. It is expected to be complete in October. Following is an excerpt from a chapter called Contextual Cities and the New Urbanists.

Herman Hollerith was born in Buffalo in the late 1800s. He studied to be a mining engineer and wound up teaching at MIT. It is said he tinkered a lot, and in 1890, he invented the first electric tabulating machine.

Finding that it could count heads with unprecedented speed, the US Census Bureau became Hollerith’s first customer. He thought the new machine might provide him with a business opportunity, so he founded the Tabulating Machine Company [TMC].

Over the next few years, TMC merged with several other companies, one the maker of a cheese-slicing device. When Thomas J. Watson became president in 1915, he focused on making machines for businesses worldwide. Watson was fond of the literal and straightforward. He renamed the merged entity International Business Machines, or IBM for short.

IBM, the most enduring of all technology companies, has a long history of reinventing itself as times change. It has transcended from tabulating machines to mainframes, to PCs, to providing software and services for large organizations.

IBM does quite well in its current business, but so do several other companies and to outsiders each seems to closely resemble the other.

Perhaps it was with that in mind that in 2006, the company set up a series of meetings with employees, partners and customers called ‘innovation jams.’ To see its own future, IBM stepped back to look at global issues, such as population, pollution, economics and health.

They started examining how their current team of over 425,000 employees in about 200 countries could use their existing skills to make a better world and in so doing, strengthen the company’s software and services position.

Among IBM’s assets is that it understands data and uses it to devise anticipatory systems that predict unforeseen events. IBM has taken that and is applying it to its Smarter Planet initiative, addressing the complex global issues of health, banking and cities.

The Smarter Cities initiative is now a global business for IBM, with projects all over the world. When they examine urban centers, they watch for emerging patterns from which IBM can glean insights for municipal clients. Pattern recognition lets them identify problems sooner, and resolve them faster.

Although the practice is just a few years old, IBM has already accumulated a few impressive accomplishments. While the company is globally focused, we asked them specifically about US-based projects. Here are our favorites of the ones they submitted:

• Memphis. Police say that IBM’s predictive analytics have helped them identify criminal hot spots that allow them to anticipate where—and when– serious crimes are likely to occur. Based on the data, they reallocated patrol cars and other resources, reducing major and violent crime by as much as 30 percent. Pattern recognition also helps police understand trends that previously went unnoticed. For example, they now know that on rainy nights, car theft rises.
• San Francisco. IBM’s use of data and embedded sensors has reduced pollution emanating from the city’s thousand miles of sewer lines. Public utilities reports that IBM’s preventive intelligence has helped reduce repair costs by 11 percent.
• Chattanooga-Hamilton County. The county uses IBM predictive analytics to understand how adverse patterns develop. This allows them to identify at-risk children earlier, so educators can adjust personal attention and curriculum a factor in increasing the graduation rate by eight percent. One facility, the Howard School of Academics and Technology reported a 200 percent increase in the graduation rate over the program’s first six years.
• Miami-Dade County. IBM has helped the 35 Dade County municipalities to share data, thus making it easier to collaborate in a wide array of areas including water, transportation, and law enforcement. They are also sharing contextual technologies to make government more transparent. A new water project alone is expected to save the county $1 million per year.

Contextual City Startups

IBM has also served as a global recruiter, mentor and partner for startups focused on solving city problems with contextual technology. A few who are associated with IBM to various degrees include:

• Bitcarrier, a Barcelona-based startup has created a contextual traffic platform, comprised of sensors, Wifi, and just a little intelligence,” Ricardo Fernandez, the company’s chief operating officer told us. The platform gathers data from up to 20 million points daily across a city’s grid, shown on municipal traffic ‘heat maps.’ Managers use the information to reroute traffic, simultaneously reducing traffic, noise and air pollution. The sensors replace cameras, increasing privacy and reducing costs by up to 90 percent, Fernandez estimated. Traffic administrators can respond quickly to accidents and other surprises. Bitcarrier also improves public transportation systems. City buses adjust so they don’t drive around half-empty, and extra buses can be dispatched more quickly. Most cities cannot adjust traffic signals to accommodate events such as a concert because they run on data that is up to three-years-old and can’t adjust to current information. When we talked in March 2013, Bitcarrier was in use in Panama City, Helsinki, Barcelona, Madrid and Zaragosa, Spain and in late discussions with several additional cities.   
  
  
  
• Libelium was also a Spanish-based finalist in IBM SmartCamp, a global series of IBM-sponsored startup competitions. Libelium is Latin for dragonfly. CEO Alicia Asin explained that the company is focused on the Internet of Things that we described in Chapter 1. The company deploys insect-like swarms of tiny sensors called motes, which report on changes in a wide range of activities impacting safety, efficiency, vegetation growth and sustainability. It is an open sensor platform that was being used by over 2000 developers in April 2013. Libelium technology helps vineyards decide on which varietals of grapes to grow based on environmental conditions. Libelium’s main business is creating smart parking systems, mostly in urban areas, all over the world. Magnetic sensors are installed under pavement to determine whether a car is parked in a space or not. The system sees the GPS of a car looking for parking and can direct it to the nearest open spot via a mobile app. According to Asin, the smart parking system is politically popular because it pays for itself by ensuring cars pay to park or get fined. The efficiency reduces air and noise pollution. ibelium’s most dramatic sensor effort was in Fukushima, Japan following the 2011 nuclear disaster. Upon the government’s request, Libelium designed a sensor panel that was installed in and around areas suspected of radiation contamination. Each panel served as an autonomous, wireless Geiger counter, which then broadcasted realtime information into a cloud-based open network. Citizens published radiation readings from their locations to the site, and those measurements appeared on a map alongside values from inside contaminated zones. “After a couple of weeks, we had a radiation map of Japan. It represented a common thought for people to share and be helpful to all,” Asin said. “It’s where I came to understand the power of citizens in a Smart Cities program.” Moving forward, the system will help the country respond faster and more effectively if another tsunami strikes. 
  
  
  

  

  
  

  Smart Water
  Project in Valencia

  Ensuring quality in
  drinking water

• Nooly, the Israeli-based hyper-local sensor-based weather detection service we told you about in our contextual car chapter, is another early-phase company working with IBM in various cities. Unlike conventional weather forecasts, Nooly covers small distances and sees weather changes one or two hours before they hit, including hurricanes, snowstorms or flooding. According to CEO Yaron Reich, Nooly can warn cities when weather is about to cause traffic snarls and where accidents are likely to happen. Cities can use the short lead-time to make fast routing adjustments. Reich sees places where Nooly sensors could even save lives. The sensors could detect a flash flood and underground crews could be warned to evacuate to avoid drowning. Likewise, Nooly can serve as a tool for first responders such as firefighters who need to understand wind, rain, and other factors. Less dramatically, Nooly can help cities save money and provide more efficient services. While municipal power consumption is usually predictive along seasonal patterns, they cannot account for heat waves or frost where quick grid adjustments can save energy and costs. Likewise, Nooly can predict evaporation rates in public parks during excessively hot days and can adjust watering systems accordingly. 
  
• Waze, the Israeli startup, we talked about in the previous chapter, can help cities get smarter about changing traffic light patterns to reduce traffic. Users help each other route around trouble spots, reducing travel times for people, but also helping urban traffic run more efficiently. By providing realtime data that can help traffic managers reroute traffic around trouble spots and show the best place to find parking, restrooms, or motorist amenities.
  

Mapa de las aguas subterráneas del planeta

ORIGINAL: Ecoticias

POR: ECOTICIAS.COM

22/02/2013

Investigadores de la Universidad Rutgers (New Jersey, EE UU) y de la Universidad de Santiago de Compostela (USC) han desarrollado un mapa mundial de la profundidad de estas aguas subterráneas que publica la revista Science.

Las aguas subterráneas próximas a la superficie tienen mucha importancia para los ecosistemas terrestres al ayudar a mantener el caudal de los ríos o el suelo húmedo en épocas de ausencia de lluvia, por citar dos ejemplos. A mayores, son aspectos con incidencia en el clima. A pesar de su importancia, poco se sabía de la distribución de la capa freática, franja que separa el suelo oxigenado, próximo a la superficie del terreno, de los acuíferos.

Investigadores de la Universidad Rutgers (New Jersey, EE UU) y de la Universidad de Santiago de Compostela (USC) han desarrollado un mapa mundial de la profundidad de estas aguas subterráneas que publica la revista Science. El trabajo cubre incluso zonas sin datos “para así poder inferir patrones espaciales y procesos a partir de un modelo hidrológico de aguas subterráneas forzado por el clima, la topografía y el nivel del mar actuales”, señalan los expertos.

Según sus resultados, entre el 22 y el 32% de la superficie emergida global se encuentra influida por una capa freática poco profunda, incluyendo aproximadamente el 15% de zonas con agua superficial alimentada por las aguas subterráneas, y entre un 7 y un 17% de áreas con la capa freática accesible a las raíces de las plantas.

Estos datos permiten afirmar, según Gonzalo Míguez, investigador de la USC, que la capa freática es lo suficientemente poco profunda en una fracción significativa –de entre el 22 y el 32%– de los continentes como para influir en los ecosistemas terrestres directamente.

Cuando esta capa es poco profunda interactúa de diversas maneras con las zonas superficiales: proporcionando agua a ríos y lagos y manteniendo ecosistemas acuáticos en períodos secos. Asimismo, impide el drenaje del terreno y crea las condiciones de suelo saturado que caracterizan a los humedales, e incluso proporcionando agua a las plantas para la fotosíntesis en condiciones de sequía.

Principales resultados

Los resultados del modelo aplicado permiten observar una serie de patrones espaciales a escala global, regional y local. En el primero caso, el nivel del mar es dominante y un cinturón de zonas con aguas subterráneas someras rodea los continentes, más ancho allí donde hay llanuras costeras.

En la escala regional, la influencia del clima se manifiesta de manera que las regiones más secas tienden a tener una capa freática más profunda que las húmedas.

A modo de ejemplo, los investigadores señalan el caso de los desiertos destacándolos cómo zonas donde, en general, no hay muchos lugares con aguas subterráneas someras. También apuntan la influencia del terreno, ya que las zonas más llanas, con un drenaje más lento, presentan grandes extensiones de humedales, como la zona de la Amazonía central y otras zonas bajas de Sudamérica.

En el caso de la escala más local, el estudio destaca que la topografía domina a la influencia del clima y así, “debido al flujo del agua subterránea de las zonas altas a las bajas, los valles tienden a presentar capas freáticas poco profundas, incluso en zonas relativamente áridas o desiertos (oasis)”. En conjunto, el investigador de la USC considera que los resultados sugieren que las aguas subterráneas tienen “una extendida y estructurada influencia a escala global en la hidrología y ecosistemas terrestres”.

La capa freática y el clima

Las implicaciones de un mejor conocimiento en torno a la capa freática son múltiples, de las cuales los investigadores han querido destacar su incidencia en el clima.

Los humedales son la fuente principal de metano en la atmósfera, uno de los gases de invernadero más potentes. Además, cuando la energía del sol se concentra en la evaporación de agua del suelo y en realizar la fotosíntesis no se invierte en calentar el terreno y, por lo tanto, las temperaturas en la zona baja de la atmósfera son menores.

En el artículo se presentan observaciones de la profundidad de la capa freática de 1.603.781 pozos, a partir de archivos gubernamentales e información publicada en la literatura científica. Existen datos abundantes de América del Norte y en varios países europeos así como en Australia, pero muy escasa en relación a Asia y especialmente de África.

Para cubrir estas últimas zonas no observadas, los investigadores utilizaron un modelo hidrológico de aguas subterráneas forzado por clima, el terreno y el nivel actual del mar. El objetivo era obtener una imagen global a alta resolución (~1 km), sin tener en cuenta las complejidades geológicas locales, de la profundidad de la capa freática en equilibrio con el clima, la topografía y el nivel del mar, es decir, “en estado natural, sin intervención humana debida a las extracciones para regadío u otros usos”, explica el docente de la USC.

El desarrollo del modelo presentado en la revista Science es fruto de una larga y estrecha colaboración entre la profesora Y. Fan y Gonzalo Míguez Macho, y han contado con apoyo del Centro de Supercomputación de Galicia (Cesga).

Sinc – ECOticias.com– innovaticias.com

Why do venomous animals live in warm climates?

ORIGINAL: ScienceDump

02/10/2013 - 14:13

Why it is that Australia has so many venomous animals that can kill you while Canada has virtually none. But it's not just Australia - it seems like all beautiful, warm places are cursed with venomous native species.

Global Warming

ORIGINAL: Earthy Issues

Climate is the temperature, humidity, precipitation, winds, radiation, and other meteorological conditions characteristic of a locality or region over an extended period of time.

Climate change is any long-term significant change in the “average weather” that a given region experiences. Average weather may include average temperature, precipitation and wind patterns .

The term Global Warming refers to the observation that the atmosphere near the Earth's surface is warming. This warming is one of many kinds of climate change that the Earth has gone through in the past and will continue to go through in the future. It is reasonable to expect that the Earth should warm as the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere increases. It is known for certain that atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are rising dramatically due to human activity. It is less well known exactly how the increases in these greenhouse gases factor in the observed changes of the Earth's climate and global temperatures.

The major greenhouse gases are: 

• water vapor, which causes about 36–70% of the greenhouse effect on Earth (not including clouds) 
• carbon dioxide, which causes 9–26% 
• methane, which causes 4–9% 
• ozone, which causes 3–7%. 

It is not possible to state that a certain gas causes a certain percentage of the greenhouse effect, because the influences of the various gases are not additive. (The higher ends of the ranges quoted are for the gas alone; the lower ends, for the gas counting overlaps.) 

Other greenhouse gases include, but are not limited to, nitrous oxide, sulfur hexafluoride, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and chlorofluorocarbons. 

Human beings can contribute to global warming and climate change by polluting and cutting down rainforests, but humans can not control the climate or change it. The climate system is very complex and has many variables and components. Human beings do not control all the variables and components or the Planet Earth.

Any organization or person that is saying things like "we can solve the climate crisis" or "we can stop global warming" are making statements that are just "Advertising Slogans" impossible to accomplish. 

To actually "stop global warming" or "solve the climate crisis" human beings would have the ability to control the following to name a few: 

• The Sun 
• Volcanic Activity 
• The Weather 
• The Atmosphere 
• All Human Activities 
• The Oceans 

No matter how aggressively heat-trapping emissions are reduced, some amount of climate change and resulting impacts will continue. Consequently, there is a need for adaptation and mitigation. 

“Adaptation” – improving our ability to cope with or avoid harmful impacts or taking advantage of newly favorable conditions

Mitigation is defined as -to lessen in force or intensity, as wrath, grief, harshness, or pain; moderate- to make less severe. At best human beings can slightly modify climate change. 

“Mitigation” – reducing the amount of climate change, for example, by reducing heat-trapping emissions or increasing their removal from the atmosphere

We should try to be the best protectors of the planet as much as we are capable and adapt to and prepare for the changes in the Earth's Climate that are inevitable. 

NASA:Clouds and Earth's Radiation Budget 

Credit:NASA 

There are three main factors that directly influence the energy balance of the earth and it's temperature: 

• The total energy influx, which depends on the earth's distance from the sun and on solar activity 
• The chemical composition of the atmosphere 
• Albedo, the ability of the earth's surface to reflect light. 

Solar Variability: Striking a Balance with Climate Change NASA Video 

Climate System

• Climate Global Analysis Annual 2011
• Climate Analysis Annual 2010
• Global Temperatures
• Global Measured Extremes of Temperature and Precipitation
• Earth's Climate Timeline

Stratospheric Water Vapor is a Global Warming Wild Card

Greenhouse Effect

Greenhouse Gases

• CO2
• CO2 Production by Nation
• Water Vapor

Global Warming

Climate System

Climate Change

Global Temperatures

Current Extreme Weather & Climate Change

Planet's plant life 'recycles' carbon dioxide faster than previously estimated

Unresolved questions about Earth's climate

Credit: 

GRACE Goddard Space Flight Center NASA, UNEP, EPA, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, NOAA, University of Colorado, CIA, U.S. Department of Energy 

Data compiled from The British Antarctic Study, NASA, Environment Canada, UNEP, EPA and other sources as stated and credited Researched by Charles Welch-Updated daily This Website is a project of the The Ozone Hole Inc. a 501(c)(3) Nonprofit Organization http://www.theozonehole.com

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© Charles Welch 2012 

'El Ártico perderá su hielo en verano dentro de 4 años'

ORIGINAL: El Mundo (España)

Carlos Fresneda (Corresponsal) | Londres

18/09/2012

Según uno de los mayores expertos mundiales

Océano Ártico durante la temporada de verano. | EM

El experto Peter Wadhams, de la universidad de Cambridge, lanza la voz de alarma

Advierte que el colapso ya está en marcha y se consumará entre 2015 y 2016

Foto: NY Times

El hielo del Ártico puede desaparecer por completo en verano en el 2015 o en el 2016, de acuerdo con el profesor de la Universidad de Cambridge Peter Wadhams, uno de los mayores expertos mundiales en la evolución de las capas polares.

Wadhams ha dirigido un mensaje urgente al diario 'The Guardian' en el que advierte de la inminencia de un 'desastre global' por la desaparición del hielo en las latitudes nórdicas y critica la falta de acción de los Gobiernos ante las señales cada vez más visibles del cambio climático.

"No podemos aplazar la acción ante el cambio climático unas décadas", advierte el científico de Cambridge. "Debemos actuar urgentementeno sólo para disminuir las emisiones de CO2, sino para estudiar otras formas de ralentizar el calentamiento global, como algunas de las soluciones de geoingeniería que ya se han propuesto".

Pérdida de un millón de kilómetros cuadrados de hielo

Wadhams ha pasado varios años estudiando el grosor de las capa de hielo del Artico a partir de los datos enviados periódicamente por submarinos. Ya en el 2007 predijo el inminente resquebrajamiento de la capa de hielo y la aceleración en la reducción de la superficie ocupada por el hielo, que pasó de un mínimo de 4,1 millones de kilómetros cuadrados ese año a 3,5 millones este año.

"Llevo muchos años prediciendo el colapso", advierte Wadhams en 'The Guardian'. "La causa principal es simplemente el calentamiento global: con temperaturas más elevadas se forma menos hielo durante el invierno y se derrite más rápidamente en verano".

"Al principio, esta tendencia pasó inadvertida y llegamos a creer que habría hielo en invierno durante otros 50 años", asegura el científico, quearremete incluso contra las más recientes proyecciones de hielo hasta el 2030. "En los veranos del 2015 o del 2016 el Artico se puede quedar sin hielo: el colapso final hacia está sucediendo y probablemente se completará en esas fechas".

"La desaparición del hielo tendrá un lado positivo, como la mayor facilidad para el transporte y acceso a las reservas de petróleo y gas", concluye Wadhams. "Pero las implicaciones serán terribles, pues contribuirá al calentamiento del agua y a la aceleración del cambio climático, con el derretimiento del permafrost (el subsuelo helado) y la liberación de grandes cantidades de metano".

The Big Heat

ORIGINAL: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2012/07/23/120723taco_talk_kolbert

by Elizabeth Kolbert

JULY 23, 2012

Corn sex is complicated. As Michael Pollan observes in “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” the whole affair is so freakishly difficult it’s hard to imagine how it ever evolved in the first place. Corn’s female organs are sheathed in a sort of vegetable chastity belt—surrounded by a tough, virtually impenetrable husk. The only way in is by means of a silk thread that each flower extends, Rapunzel-like, through a small opening. For fertilization to take place, a grain of pollen must land on the tip of the silk, then shimmy its way six to eight inches through a microscopic tube, a journey that requires several hours. The result of a successfully completed passage is a single kernel. When everything is going well, the process is repeated something like eight hundred times per ear, or roughly eighty thousand times per bushel.

It is now corn-sex season across the Midwest, and everything is not going well. High commodity prices spurred farmers to sow more acres this year, and unseasonable warmth in March prompted many to plant corn early. Just a few months ago, the United States Department of Agriculture was projecting a record corn crop of 14.79 billion bushels. But then, in June and July, came broilingly high temperatures, combined with a persistent drought across much of the midsection of the country.

“You couldn’t choreograph worse weather conditions for pollination,” Fred Below, a crop biologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, told Bloomberg News recently. “It’s like farming in Hell.” Last week, the U.S.D.A. officially cut its yield forecast by twelve per cent, citing a “rapid decline in crop conditions since early June and the latest weather data.” Also last week, because of the dryness, the U.S.D.A. declared more than a thousand counties in twenty-six states to be natural disaster areas. This was by far the largest such designation the agency has ever made. In the past month, as the severity of the situation has become apparent, corn prices have risen by more than forty per cent. Since so much corn is used to feed livestock, it’s likely that the increase will translate into higher prices for dairy products and beef—although, as many have pointed out, beef prices were already rising, owing to last year’s devastating drought in Texas.

Up until fairly recently, it was possible—which, of course, is not the same as advisable—to see climate change as a phenomenon that was happening somewhere else. In the Arctic, Americans were told (again and again and again), the effects were particularly dramatic. The sea ice was melting. This was bad for native Alaskans, and even worse for polar bears, who rely on the ice for survival. But in the Lower Forty-eight there always seemed to be more pressing concerns, like Barack Obama’s birth certificate. Similarly, the Antarctic Peninsula was reported to be warming fast, with unfortunate consequences for penguins and sea levels. But penguins live far away and sea-level rise is prospective, so again the issue seemed to lack “the fierce urgency of now.”

The summer of 2012 offers Americans the best chance yet to get their minds around the problem. In late June, just as a sizzling heat wave was settling across much of the country—in Evansville, Indiana, temperatures rose into the triple digits for ten days, reaching as high as a hundred and seven degrees—wildfires raged in Colorado. Hot and extremely dry conditions promoted the flames’ spread. “It’s no exaggeration to say Colorado is burning,” KDVR, the Fox station in Denver, reported. By the time the most destructive blaze was fully contained, almost three weeks later, it had scorched nearly twenty-nine square miles. Meanwhile, a “super derecho”—a long line of thunderstorms—swept from Illinois to the Atlantic Coast, killing at least thirteen people and leaving millions without power.

Referring to the fires, the drought, and the storms, Jonathan Overpeck, a professor of geosciences and atmospheric sciences at the University of Arizona, told the Associated Press, “This is certainly what I and many other climate scientists have been warning about.” He also noted, “This is what global warming looks like at the regional or personal level.”

Or, at least, what it looks like right now. One of the most salient—but also, unfortunately, most counterintuitive—aspects of global warming is that it operates on what amounts to a time delay. Behind this summer’s heat are greenhouse gases emitted decades ago. Before many effects of today’s emissions are felt, it will be time for the Summer Olympics of 2048. (Scientists refer to this as the “commitment to warming.”) What’s at stake is where things go from there. It is quite possible that by the end of the century we could, without even really trying, engineer the return of the sort of climate that hasn’t been seen on earth since the Eocene, some fifty million years ago.

Along with the heat and the drought and the super derecho, the country this summer is also enduring a Presidential campaign. So far, the words “climate change” have barely been uttered. This is not an oversight. Both President Obama and Mitt Romney have chosen to remain silent on the issue, presumably because they see it as just too big a bummer.

And so, while farmers wait for rain and this season’s corn crop withers on the stalk, the familiar disconnect continues. There’s no discussion of what could be done to avert the worst effects of climate change, even as the insanity of doing nothing becomes increasingly obvious. ♦

ILLUSTRATION: TOM BACHTELL