Showing posts with label California. Show all posts
Showing posts with label California. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 19, 2020

The turbulent future of the planet - Will humanity survive?

How Earthquakes and Volcanoes Reveal the Beating Heart Smithsonian Magazine

America is the most powerful country on the planet, but also the most dangerous in terms of geological risks.

The time when the great Californian earthquake could start is unknown and unpredictable, but it is expected that the state of California will be devastated by an earthquake caused by the San Andreas fault. Cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco could be buried or sunk.

Recent Earthquakes Map that uses Google Maps

Over the next 100 years, due to rising ocean levels caused by melting glaciers at the North Pole, the east coast of the United States could be flooded, including coastal cities such as New York, Boston, Baltimore, and Miami could be submerged. so building a dam around a city like New York would be as high a priority as the wall with Mexico. It is also expected that following climate change, tornadoes, and hurricanes will become more frequent, even constant, as whole regions. in America, including coastal areas, could become uninhabitable.

Protecting coastal cities from rising sea levels could cost the US Daily Mail 

The Yellowstone supervolcano in Wyoming could erupt in the next thousand years, with the last eruption taking place 630,000 years ago. The eruption of this supervolcano could be fatal to America because the eruption is the equivalent of thousands of nuclear bombs, so hundreds of thousands of Americans in the vicinity of the volcano could be killed instantly. Volcanic ash will cover 500 miles in the first phase, then spread around the globe, resulting in a volcanic winter that will last several years.

Experts Raised 'Increased Warning' Over Active Volcanos Amid "High Tech Time 

Tens of millions of Americans will die, plus tens of millions more people worldwide due to the collapse of the global economy and compromised crops. Recovery could take decades.

Desertification is another major threat that could affect Mexico and South American states like Texas, with the risk of a drinking water crisis, which will aggravate uncontrollable immigration, while Canada and North American states are increasingly threatened by winters. cold and snowy, covered by a small local ice age.

The Yellowstone supervolcano is a disaster waiting to happen Washington Post

Europe is not doing well either, given that the climate tends to become tropical, with summers becoming increasingly dry and hot, which would mean an increase in cases of malaria and other epidemics, as well as the disappearance of plant and animal species adapted to the temperate environment.


Rising ocean and sea levels could lead to the fragmentation of coastal states such as Italy, Greece, Spain, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, which could be completely covered by water.

List of largest volcanic eruptions - Wikipedia

In Asian countries such as India and Iraq, but also in Africa, desertification will wreak havoc and the drinking water crisis, so uncontrollable mass immigration, escalating terrorism and local resource wars will become serious threats to the existence of the European Union that will not be able to cope.

In Italy, the imminent eruption of Vesuvius could lead to the destruction of the city of Naples, and half of Europe could be covered by a cloud of volcanic ash so that crops will be destroyed and the air transport system will be grounded. Indeed, Europe will be paralyzed for many years.



Thursday, February 23, 2017

A bizarre event in the Pacific Ocean can have devastating effects on the climate: ''The strangest meteorological event in decades'

American Geophysical Union

A vast patch of abnormally warm water in the Pacific Ocean - nicknamed the blob - resulted in increased levels of ozone above the Western US, researchers have found.

The blob - which at its peak covered roughly 9 million square kilometres (3.5 million square miles) from Mexico to Alaska - was assumed to be mainly messing with conditions in the ocean, but a new study has shown that it had a lasting affect on air quality too.

Ultimately, it all links back to the blob, which was the most unusual meteorological event we've had in decades," says one of the team, Dan Jaffe from the University of Washington Bothell.

The blob of warm water in the Pacific was first detected back in 2013, and it continued to spread throughout 2014 and 2015. While it was less obvious in 2016, there were some indications that it persisted well into last year too.


The vast, warm patch has been linked to several mass die-offs in the ocean during 2015, including thousands of California sea lions starving to death in waters more than 3 degrees Celsius (5 degrees Farenheit) above average, and an "unprecedented" mass death of seabirds in the Western US. 

In April 2015, the effects could also be seen on land, with a bout of strange weather in the US being linked to the higher ocean temperatures, and the increased temperatures saw a massive toxic algal bloom stretch along the entire US West Coast


"I can't truly give an explanation of what is going on right now," marine ecologist Jaime Jahncke from conservation group, Point Blue, said in late 2015.

Jaffe and his team have been monitoring ozone levels over the US since 2004, and happened to noticed a bizarre spike in 2015. They wondered if the crazy events linked to the blob that year could also have been driving this massive boost in ozone.

"At first we were like 'Whoa, maybe we made a mistake.' We looked at our sensors to see if we made an error in the calibration. But we couldn't find any mistakes," Jaffe says in a press statement.


"Then I looked at other ozone data from around the Pacific Northwest, and everybody was high that year."

To see if there was a connection, the team mapped the lifespan of the blob in unprecedented detail, using multiple satellites positioned all over the globe to track temperature fluctuations on the Pacific Ocean's surface between 2014 and 2016.

American Geophysical Union
They then went back and compared the events to sea-surface temperature records dating back to 1910, and what they found was unlike any natural phenomenon ever seen in recorded history.

"This phenomenon is something new," one of the team, Chelle Gentemann from Earth and Space Research in Seattle, told National Geographic

"From that entire record, this event is unprecedented in magnitude and duration. There's just nothing like it in our historical record."

They found that the effects of the blob on land - warmer temperatures, low cloud cover, and calmer air - actually combined to produce extra ozone, and by June 2015, this had pushed ozone levels to between 3 and 13 parts per billion higher than average over the northwestern US.

Certain areas with already high ozone levels, such as Salt Lake City and Sacramento, saw their ozone pushed above federally allowed limits.

"Washington and Oregon was really the bullseye for the whole thing, because of the location of the winds," Jaffe explains.

"Salt Lake City and Sacramento were on the edge of this event, but because their ozone is typically higher, those cities felt some of the more acute effects."

So how does something in the ocean affect our ozone levels?  

Under normal conditions, winds along the West Coast run along the surface of the ocean, and push the top layer away from the coast. This allows the colder water below to take its place, bringing vital nutrients with it, and balancing out the temperature.

But the team found that during the blob's peak, the increased temperatures on the surface of the ocean had caused the air above heat up and stagnate. This weakened the coastal winds so much, they were no longer able to push the warm top layer of the Pacific away from the shoreline.

And with no upwelling of cool water, the high temperatures remained, and together with a lack of clouds, this allowed the chemical reaction that produces ozone - solar ultraviolet radiation (sunlight) breaking down oxygen molecules - to kick things up a notch.

"Temperatures were high, and it was much less cloudy than normal, both of which trigger ozone production," says Jaffe.

"And because of that high-pressure system off the coast, the winds were much lower than normal. Winds blow pollution away, but when they don't blow, you get stagnation and the pollution is higher."

While the ozone spike was only temporary, the team says we should take this as a warning for the future - researchers already knew there was a connection between higher atmospheric temperatures and ozone production, but now we know that sea-surface temperatures can affect it too.


And with ozone pollution known to cause serious respiratory dysfunction, including aggravating pneumonia, asthma, and bronchitis, we'd better be prepared for when something like the blob rears its head once more.


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The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Sciencealert . Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Bizarre phenomenon in California ! 'Giant Rivers' in the sky causing chaos among residents

Credit : NASA
This month, the percentage of California still stuck in a drought dropped by 22 percent in a single week, as the wettest winter in decades saw an onslaught of storms deliver record-breaking rains across the state.

Now, researchers have connected the chaos to a strange phenomenon known as atmospheric rivers - narrow corridors of concentrated moisture suspended in the atmosphere, which can hold up to 15 times more water than the amount that flows through the Mississippi River.

If you're unfamiliar with atmospheric rivers, or are wondering if that's just a fancy name for "rain", they're actually a unique movement of moisture through Earth's atmosphere, responsible for most of the horizontal transport of water vapour outside the tropics.

Credit: NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory


These suspended moisture plumes, which can stretch 400 to 600 km wide (250 to 370 miles), have been linked to all seven floods on California's Russian River between 1996 and 2007, and likely played a role in the 'Snowmageddon' event that blanketed the East Coast in 2010.

All 10 of Britain's largest floods since the 1970s have also been attributed to atmospheric rivers, and late last year, researchers linked them to their first ever mass die-off event, when nearly 100 percent of wild oysters in northern San Francisco Bay mysteriously disappeared in 2011.


Now, scientists led by Duane Waliser, an atmospheric scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, have found that massive atmospheric rivers are responsible for up to 75 percent of all extreme wind and rainfall events on the world's coasts, and half of the strongest wind gusts recorded in nearly two decades.

Credit: Scientific American Blogs

The team also linked them to up to 65 percent of the extreme rain and snow events in the Western United States - such as the storm that hit Northern California on Monday - and say they could also be the cause of 80 percent of major floods in the state.


Last month, a state of emergency was called in various California countries due to devastating storms linked to atmospheric rivers, and just recently, the five-year drought dropped to less than a quarter of the state in a single week, with rainfall hitting almost 200 percent above average in certain parts of the Bay Area.

And the phenomenon is showing no signs of slowing down, with a flood warning affecting 14 million people in California to remain in place until at least Thursday.

The US National Weather Service (NWS) is now saying that storms to come could cause floods in areas that have not been flooded in decades, and are warning locals in Northern California to be ready to evacuate at 15 minutes notice.


"This has been a very active winter, atmospheric river-wise," Jeff Zimmerman from the NWS, who wasn't involved in the study, told NPR. "We've probably had 10 or more ... this winter."

To put that into perspective, an average year will usually only have five to seven atmospheric rivers.


Waliser and his team measured the influence of atmospheric rivers by analysing data from storms around the globe in regions outside the tropics from 1997 to 2014.

Credit: Curbed SF

When they focussed on the top 2 percent windiest storms, they found that "atmospheric rivers are typically associated with 30, and even up to 50 percent, of those very extreme cases", and almost the same amount of the wettest storms, Christopher Joyce reports for NPR.


And perhaps even more worrying, winds associated with atmospheric rivers were found to be twice the speed of the average storm - strong enough to topple even the great Pioneer Cabin Tree - a 1,000-year-old Californian sequoia that finally fell last month.

"Not only do [atmospheric rivers] come with this potential for flooding hazards," Waliser told NPR, "they also come with potential for high impact winds and extremes that can produce hazardous conditions."


While atmospheric rivers are naturally occurring phenomena, climate change is expected to intensify the severe precipitation events caused by atmospheric rivers in the future, because of increased evaporation rates and greater atmospheric water-holding capacity.

So as the state recovers from fighting a five-year drought - that's still not over, despite the record rains - it now has to deal with oppressive storms, and scientists are saying this crazy winter is likely a sign of things to come.


"The current situation in California - specifically, the dramatic swing from extreme drought to water overabundance and flooding - is indeed a preview of California's likely climate future," one of the team, climate scientist Daniel Swain from UCLA, told Mashable.

"There is now quite a bit of evidence that future droughts here will be warmer and more intense, yet will be interrupted by increasingly powerful 'atmospheric river' storms capable of causing destructive flooding.

Other articles on the same theme:





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The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Sciencealert . Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Rare Ghost Shark was filmed for the first time in Gulf of California - PHOTO, VIDEO

It looks like something out of a horror movie, with two dead eyes peering out of a pale patchwork of flesh, but that's a perfectly happy 'ghost shark' - otherwise known as a spookfish - cruising about in the deep sea off the coast of California.

The species, which features retractable sex organs on its forehead, has never been seen on film before.

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The individual has been identified by researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) as Hydrolagus cf. trolli - known commonly as the pointy-nosed blue chimaera.


Chimaeras: Strange Fish With a Cartilaginous Skeleton Owlcation

The "cf." in its species name indicates that its physical characteristics closely match the official species description for Hydrolagus trolli, but without DNA evidence, they can't be sure.



In fact, there's also the possibility that this isn't just the first ever footage of a live Hydrolagus trolli - it could be showing us an entirely new species of ghost shark.

But because these fish are usually too large, fast, and agile to be caught by deep-sea roving vehicles, it's going to be incredibly difficult to find out for sure.

"If and when the researchers can get their hands on one of these fish, they will be able to make detailed measurements of its fins and other body parts and perform DNA analysis on its tissue,"

"This would allow them to either remove the cf. from their species description, or assign the fish to a new species altogether."

The footage was captured by an autonomous rover in the Gulf of California back in 2009, and researchers have only just released it to the public.

The creature is a chimera - an order of deep-sea fish that split off from sharks in the evolutionary tree nearly 400 million years ago, and has remained isolated ever since.

Chimaeras live on the ocean floor at depths of up to 2,600 metres (8,500 ft), and they have a permanent set of 'tooth plates' to grind their prey into pieces, unlike the conveyer belt of replaceable teeth found in sharks.


But perhaps their most creepy characteristic are the deep grooves cut into their flesh that make them look like something a serial killer stitched together:


Photo: MBARI
Until now, the pointy-nosed blue chimaera has only ever been identified in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, particularly around Australia, New Zealand, and New Caledonia, from specimens dredged up in fishing nets.

This new footage now suggests that the species has a much wider range than anyone had expected, and hints that it could range even further away from its known haunts have made researchers hopeful that it's not rare - just good at hiding.

In reality, those grooves are called lateral line canals, and they form a system of open channels on the heads and faces of ghost sharks.

They're thought to contain sensory cells that help these creatures detect movement in the pitch-black water.


You can see another view of them here, including the rows of dots that are also thought to be tiny sensory organs:


Photo: MBARI


"Similar looking, but as yet unidentified, ghost sharks have also been seen off the coasts of South America and Southern Africa, as well as in the Indian Ocean," Fulton-Bennett reports.

"If these animals turn out to be the same species as the ghost sharks recently identified off California, it will be further evidence that, like many deep-sea animals, the pointy-nosed blue chimaera can really get around."

The sighting has been described in Marine Biodiversity Letters


You can see more footage of a ghost shark below - this species has a distinctive purple hue, and a serious parasite problem:




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The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Sciencealert . Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.