Climatology
Colorado River One of Many Imperiled Waterways
First, check out my story on the Colorado River in the October issue of Smithsonian:From its source high in the Rocky Mountains, the Colorado River channels water south nearly 1,500 miles, over falls, through deserts and canyons, to the lush wetlands of a vast delta in Mexico and into the Gulf of C...
September 30, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Hurricanes' Dangerous Rip Currents
The U.S. East Coast is likely to miss out on most of the destructive forces of Hurricanes Danielle and Earl this week, with both just skimming by off the coast. But a miss on land doesn't mean that the storms have no effect. In fact, they've both brought powerful waves and, more worrisome, rip curr...
September 02, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Time to Stop Measuring Fuel Economy in MPG?
Today, if you go to buy a new car, you'll find a sticker like the one on the right giving you a bunch of data on fuel economy: the miles per gallon you'll get on the highway and in the city and the estimated annual fuel cost (based on 15,000 miles driven over a year and gas costing $2.80 per gallon...
September 01, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
The Tornado That Saved Washington
On the night of August 24, 1814, British troops led by Rear Admiral Sir George Cockburn marched on Washington, D.C. and set fire to most of the city. Dolley Madison famously saved the Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington and a copy of the Declaration of Independence before she fled to nearb...
August 25, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Hurricanes and the Color of the Oceans
Little kids draw the ocean as blue, but the seas are more complex in color than that. They can be a rich turquoise, like the shallow waters of the Bahamas, or a dark greeny blue, nearly black, out in the middle of the deep oceans. Depth and life, specifically phytoplankton, both influence the ocean...
August 16, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Flowers May Adapt Faster than Thought to Climate Change
One of the big worries about climate change is that organisms will be unable to migrate or adapt quickly enough to deal with all the coming changes to their environments, which could lead to a lot of extinctions. But a new study led by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, which appears in Molecular Biol...
August 13, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Plane May Be Better Than Car in Climate Equation
Generally I feel pretty good about my carbon footprint. I live in a tiny apartment that doesn't use much energy to cool in the summer or heat in the winter. I gave up my car and walk or take public transportation to get most places. I try to be conscious of how my choices affect the world around me...
August 11, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
The Problem with Space Junk
There's a lot of space junk—or, as NASA calls it, "orbital debris"—circling high above our heads: around 19,000 objects larger than 10 centimeters, 500,000 between 1 and 10 cm in size, and tens of millions of pieces smaller than 1 cm. Generally, all that junk isn't much of a problem. If it falls to...
August 05, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Rising Seas Endanger Wetland Wildlife
For scientists in a remote corner of coastal North Carolina, ignoring global warming is not an option
August 2010 |
By Abigail Tucker
Electric Cars Won't Save Us from Climate Change
GM announced yesterday that their electric car, the Chevy Volt, will cost $41,000. The car can go 40 miles on its battery, after which a gas-powered generator will charge the battery and extend the vehicle's range another 340 miles. The Volt isn't the only choice for electric-car enthusiasts: the N...
July 28, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
More Heat Waves on the Horizon
You know you're in a heat wave when a high of 92 degrees comes as a relief. But at least heat waves this hot—temperatures reached an official high of 102 degrees last week here in Washington—don't happen every year. Right?Well, that break between years of extremely high-temperature summers may get ...
July 12, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Italian Scientists May Face Trial for Not Predicting 2009 Earthquake
Earthquakes are scary for many reasons. They can be devastating, leveling whole cities and killing millions. They can cause massive tsunamis. And though scientists can make predictions of where earthquakes are likely to occur, we never know when the Big One will happen.That last bit, however, hasn'...
July 06, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Coral Atolls Rise With the Seas
The plight of Pacific Islanders has been the center of the debate over the human toll of climate change. Last month, the Federated States of Micronesia filed an objection against one the dirtiest power plants in Europe, arguing that unchecked carbon emissions could eventually drown this nation of 6...
June 03, 2010 |
By Brendan Borrell
Plenty of Warming in the Ocean's Upper Layer
"If you want to know if the globe has warmed, you want to look at the upper ocean," says John Lyman, a NOAA/University of Hawaii oceanographer. That's because the oceans have a very large heat capacity (about 1000 times that of the atmosphere) and take up about 80 to 90 percent of any excess heat f...
May 19, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
One in Five Lizard Species Could Be Extinct by 2080
How much heat can a lizard endure? That sounds like the question a fourth-grader might ask (and then try to answer, tragically, by adding a couple more heat lamps to his pet lizard's tank), but it's a real concern in this era of climate change. Lizards are cold-blooded creatures and while they need...
May 14, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Icebergs Contribute to Sea Level Rise
When you learned about Archimedes back in elementary school, your teacher probably told you that a floating object displaces an amount of water equal to its own weight. Although an ice cube pokes up out of the water, when it melts, the level of the water should stay the same. Extrapolate this conce...
April 29, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
A Letter From Earth
Dear members of the species Homo sapiens,Hi. I'm Earth. While I'm pleased and flattered that you have chosen to honor me on every April 22 for the last 40 years, I am seriously concerned and, frankly, very angry that most of you seem to forget me for the rest of the year. I periodically try to remi...
April 21, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
The Icelandic Volcano: A Mere Inconvenience in Historical Terms
Volcanoes erupt every week around the world (just check out the weekly reports from Smithsonian's Global Volcanism Program and you'll see what I mean), but most of them don't cause problems. Those that do, including the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull that shut down European airspace for days, a...
April 20, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Changing Climate May Have Led to Angkor's Downfall
From the 9th to the 13th centuries, Angkor was the center of the Khmer Empire and the largest city in the world. Roads and canals connected the sprawling complex, which included hundreds of temples. But it didn't last.Today, two million people each year visit the site in Cambodia, though much of it...
March 30, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Turn Off the Lights!
One of the most wonderful memories I have from a sailing trip is being miles and miles from shore on a moonless night and seeing the thousands of stars twinkling in the sky. It's something that most people in the developed world never see; most of the stars are drowned out by light pollution. As yo...
March 26, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
