NASA to Launch New Earth-Observing Satellite
If the weather holds, NASA will launch its newest Earth-observing satellite from Vandenberg Air Force Base in southern California late Monday morning. An Atlas V rocket is scheduled to carry Landsat 8 into space just after 11 a.m. Pacific time. Once in orbit, the $855 million probe will begin capturing detailed images of Earth’s surface, adding to… Read More
Research Spawns Stunning Hurricane Sandy Animations
Mel Shapiro, an atmospheric scientist who studies how tropical storms and hurricanes transition into powerful extratropical storm systems, recently produced a series of astonishing animated visualizations showing the inner workings of Sandy as the storm moved up the Eastern Seaboard and eventually made landfall on the evening of Oct. 29. … Read More
Report Underscores Vulnerabilities of U.S. Coastlines
No part of the U.S. will escape the harsh consequences of climate change, which has already begun to cause trouble from Alaska to Florida, and from Maine to Hawaii, and which will worsen as the century goes on. But according to a report released January 28, the nation’s coastlines — Atlantic, Gulf, Pacific and Great Lakes — are likely to get the wo… Read More
Risks of Hurricane Sandy-like Surge Events Rising
Timothy M. Hall, a climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, and Adam Sobel, a researcher at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Observatory, set out to investigate how common Hurricane Sandy’s impact angle was under static climate conditions. Given that global average temperatures are rising, their findings supp… Read More
Scientist: East Coast Cities are ‘Sitting Ducks’ for Storms
Cities on the United States east coast are "sitting ducks" for the next big storm because of the destruction wrought by Hurricane Sandy, one of Barack Obama's top scientists warned on Tuesday. Marcia McNutt, who last week announced her resignation as director of the U.S. Geological Survey, told a conference … Read More
Rogue Geoengineering Could ‘Hijack’ World’s Climate
The world's climate could be hijacked by a rogue country or wealthy individual firing small particles into the stratosphere, claims a warning that comes not from a new Hollywood movie trailer but a sober report from the World Economic Forum (WEF).… Read More
Climate Change Moves to Forefront in Obama’s Address
"We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations," Obama said. He made a carefully calibrated appeal to Republicans, situating a transition from fossil fuels to clean energy in a religious and conservative framework of God and constitution.… Read More
Energy, Water, Land Intertwined & Threatened, Says Report
Water resources, energy and land use are so mutually dependent that climate-related disruptions to any one of them could lead to economically devastating ripple effects — especially as a growing population puts increasing strains on all three. That’s one conclusion of a recent report issued by a federal advisory committee charged with assessing how… Read More
