Tag: Earth

Hurricane Beryl makes landfall as Category 1 hurricane along eastern Texas (video)

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The strongest hurricane to occur this early in the year made landfall in Matagorda, Texas, early Monday morning (July 8) at a Category 1 level on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. At 4:00 a.m. local time, Hurricane Beryl roared inland with maximum sustained winds of 80 miles per hour (129 kilometers per hour), bringing with it a , dangerous rise in seawater level — up to seven feet (two meters) in some spots along the Gulf coastline in eastern Texas.  The storm also brought “considerable” flash and urban flooding inland…

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Boiling rocks from Earth’s crust tore an ocean into Mongolia 410 million years ago

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Over 400 million years ago, an upwelling of hot rock from Earth’s mantle wrenched apart the crust in Mongolia, creating an ocean that survived for 115 million years.  The geological history of this ocean could help researchers understand Wilson cycles, or the process by which supercontinents break apart and come together. These are slow, broad-scale processes that progress by less than an inch per year, said study co-author Daniel Pastor-Galán, a geoscientist at the National Spanish Research Council in Madrid.  “It’s telling us about processes in the earth that are…

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Giant river system that existed 40 million years ago discovered deep below Antarctic ice

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Geologists digging into the massive ice sheet of West Antarctica have discovered the remains of an ancient river system that once flowed for nearly a thousand miles. The discovery offers a glimpse into the Earth’s history and hints at how extreme climate change could alter the planet, according to their findings, published June 5 in the journal Science Advances.  “If we think about a potentially severe climate change in the future, we need to learn from periods in Earth’s history where this already happened,” Johann Klages, study co-author and a sedimentologist at the Alfred…

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4,000-year-old ‘Seahenge’ in UK was built to ‘extend summer,’ archaeologist suggests

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A mysterious Bronze Age wooden circle known as “Seahenge” on England’s east coast was built more than 4,000 years ago in an effort to bring back warmer weather during an extreme cold spell, a new study suggests. The theory is a new attempt to explain the buried structure — a rough circle about 25 feet (7.5 meters) across, made from 55 split oak trunks surrounding a “horseshoe” of five larger oak posts around a large inverted oak stump — that was controversially dug up and moved into a museum in…

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June solstice 2024 brings changing seasons to Earth on June 20 — What to know

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Summer will officially arrive in the Northern Hemisphere on Thursday (June 20) at 4:51 p.m. EDT (2051 GMT) — the June Solstice.   At that moment, the sun will reach the point at which it’s farthest north of the celestial equator. To be more precise, when the solstice occurs, the sun will appear to be shining directly overhead for a point on the Tropic of Cancer (latitude 23.5 degrees north) in the eastern Pacific Ocean, roughly 1,100 statute miles (1,800 kilometers) southwest of Los Angeles.   From mid-northern latitudes, we…

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NASA-Led Mission to Map Air Pollution Over Both U.S. Coasts

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2 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) This summer between June 17 and July 2, NASA will fly aircraft over Baltimore, Philadelphia, parts of Virginia, and California to collect data on air pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions.   The campaign supports the NASA Student Airborne Research Program for undergraduate interns. Two NASA aircraft, including the P-3 shown here, will be flying over Baltimore, Philadelphia, Virginia and California between June 17 and July 2, to collect data on air pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions. Credit: (NASA/ Zavaleta)…

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Alaska’s rivers are turning bright orange and as acidic as vinegar as toxic metal escapes from melting permafrost

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Dozens of Alaskan rivers have turned bright orange in recent years because melting permafrost has released high levels of toxic metals into the waterways, a worrying new study reveals. The colorful contamination, which can be seen from space, is a potential ecological nightmare — and is likely to get even worse in the coming years, researchers say. In the new study, which was published May 20 in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, researchers identified at least 75 orange rivers and streams in a Texas-size area of Alaska’s Brooks mountain…

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NASA Analysis Confirms a Year of Monthly Temperature Records

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5 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) This visualization shows monthly global surface temperatures from 1880 to May 2024. The last 12 months (June 2023 through May 2024) hit record highs for each respective month. Download this visualization from NASA Goddard’s Scientific Visualization Studio: https://svsdev.gsfc.nasa.gov/5311 NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio May 2024 was the warmest May on the books, marking a full year of record-high monthly temperatures, NASA scientists found. Average global temperatures for the past 12 months hit record highs for each respective month – an…

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Astronomy has a bullying and harassment issue: ‘Results presented in this report are bleak’

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After surveying 661 employees affiliated with astronomy and geophysics professions, the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) has stressed an “urgent” need to address bullying and harassment across the fields.  In short, 44% of respondents reported suffering in the workplace during the two years preceding the survey, and 65% of those respondents said reported concerns were either “ignored” or that their reports were unsatisfactorily handled. To be clear, the survey was conducted in 2020, and a soft-launch of the data was released in 2021. However, a full-fledged analysis of the results that…

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2024 hurricane season should be busy, NOAA says

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With La Nina conditions evolving in the Pacific and near-record warm waters in the Atlantic, scientists expect the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season to be a busy one. Forecasters at the Climate Prediction Center (CPC), part of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Weather Service, release an outlook every year ahead of hurricane season that includes what kind of storm activity they predict between June 1 and Nov. 30.  CPC researchers say there’s an 85% chance that this year’s hurricane season will be more active than normal, with…

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