The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully launched NASA’s newest Earth-observation satellite, the PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, Ocean Ecosystem) mission.
The rocket lifted off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Thursday, February 8, at 1:33 a.m. EST.
GRINDAVIK, Iceland (AP) — A volcano in southwestern Iceland erupted Thursday for the third time since December, sending jets of lava into the sky, triggering the evacuation of the popular Blue Lagoon geothermal spa and cutting heat and hot water to thousands of people.
The eruption began at about 600 GMT (1 a.m. EST) along a three-kilometer (nearly two-mile) fissure northeast of Mount Sýlingarfell, the Icelandic Meteorological Office said. Several communities on the Reykjanes Peninsula were cut off from heat and hot water after a river of lava engulfed a supply pipeline.
SpaceX launched an environmental research satellite for NASA early Thursday, a nearly $1 billion spacecraft that survived multiple cancellation threats and is now poised to shed new light on climate change and the complex interplay of heat-trapping carbon, aerosols and sea life on global scales.
The Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem mission — PACE — “will dramatically advance our understanding of the relationship between aerosols and clouds, and the global energy balance,” said Karen St. Germain, director of NASA’s Earth sciences division. “This is one of the biggest sources of uncertainty in our ability to model the climate.”
Continue reading “SpaceX launches billion-dollar environmental research satellite for NASA” »
It’s possible to start a subscale deployment in just a few years. The climate effects would be tiny, but the geopolitical impact could be significant.
The deadly storm that is walloping California with hurricane-force winds and record amounts of rainfall was fueled in part by the powerful weather phenomenon known as a “bomb cyclone,” according to the National Weather Service office in Monterey, Calif.
“For those keeping score, it also looks like it reached ‘bomb’ status,” a weather service forecast issued Sunday evening said.
The meteorologists who took over on Monday morning clarified that their colleagues were talking about “Bomb, meaning the intensity of the low pressure, not bomb meaning awesome.”
Dr. Janice Brahney: “Only recently have we started to see troubling outbreaks of toxic algal blooms in mountain environments. So, these changes are happening fast and are really concerning. It’s important we get to the bottom of this.”
What impact does atmospheric dust have on algae? This is what a recent study published in Global Change Biology hopes to address as a team of researchers from Utah State University (USU) investigated how increased dust concentrations in the Earth’s atmosphere could lead to larger algae blooms, impacting life on both land and in the oceans. This study holds the potential to help scientists better understand the acceptable amounts of dust and algae on the Earth and their impact on aquatic life, specifically in mountain ranges across the globe. The reason mountain headwater regions were the focus of the study was because they provide approximately 50% of the world’s population with fresh water.
“Only recently have we started to see troubling outbreaks of toxic algal blooms in mountain environments,” said Dr. Janice Brahney, who is an associate professor in the Watershed Sciences Department at USU and a co-author on the study. “So, these changes are happening fast and are really concerning. It’s important we get to the bottom of this. Toxic blooms in mountain lakes like the ones we’ve seen recently in remote mountain lakes are unprecedented.”
Continue reading “Algae Growth Linked to Atmospheric Dust: Insights from Pioneering Research” »
In May of last year, Ford CEO Jim Farley made a surprise announcement during an online event co-hosted by Tesla’s Elon Musk: the Blue Oval would adopt the Tesla-developed North American Charging Standard (NACS) port. Starting this spring, that unlikely pairing will become a reality, with Ford’s EVs (F-150 Lightning trucks, Mustang Mach-E SUVs, and E-Transit vehicles) plugging in to the Supercharger network.
Farley promised a fast charging adapter for its EV customers in the U.S. and Canada, and he indicated online this week that they’ll be available to order soon. The Ford boss didn’t nail down a date, promising more details are imminent.
“When we announced Ford EVs would get access to Tesla Superchargers, I said we’d send customers a Fast Charging Adapter. I’m pleased to confirm that eligible Mustang Mach-E & F-150 Lightning owners in the U.S. + Canada can reserve a complimentary adapter starting soon,” Farley says via X, formerly Twitter.
Mustang Mach-E and F-150 Lightning pickup owners can now reserve complimentary adapters—but the real win is access to one of the largest and most developed charging networks in the world.
“We have not forgotten our science colleagues. In fact, they are important partners for the mission,” Giuseppe Mandorlo, Vigil project manager, said Jan. 29 at the American Meteorological Society annual meeting here.
Vigil will provide space weather data from sun-Earth Lagrange point 5. Data gathered from L5 could provide notice of four to five days of solar winds streaming toward Earth.
Data from Vigil sensors coupled with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Follow-On (SWFO L1) mission destined for L1 promise to improve early warning of solar storms, Mandorlo said.
“It performs very well. Depending on where you’re looking at along the coast, it would be quite difficult to identify a simulated hurricane from a real one,” Pintar said.
However, the system isn’t without flaws. The data it is fed does not account for the potential effects of rising temperatures, and the simulated storms produced for areas with less data were not as plausible.
“Hurricanes are not as frequent in, say, Boston as in Miami, for example. The less data you have, the larger the uncertainty of your predictions,” NIST Fellow Emil Simiu said.
