Climatology
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
Chilean Earthquake Moved City Ten Feet
The February 27 magnitude-8.8 earthquake in Chile moved the city of Concepción, located 65 miles south of the epicenter, at least 10 feet to the west, according to a new analysis.Just think about it: There was enough power in that earthquake to move an entire city—people, buildings and all the land...
March 09, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
A Whale of a Carbon Sink
Living organisms are a great place to store carbon. Trees are the most common organisms to be used as carbon sinks, but other things might be even better. Whales are particularly good for this because they are large—blue whales are the largest animals on Earth—and when they die, they sink to the bo...
March 01, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Q and A: Rick Potts
The Smithsonian anthropologist turned heads when he proposed that climate change was the driving force in human evolution
March 2010 |
By Beth Py-Lieberman
Barrow, Alaska: Ground Zero for Climate Change
Scientists converge on the northernmost city in the United States to study global warming's dramatic consequences
March 2010 |
By Bob Reiss
Snow and Hurricanes, the El Niño Connection
Living in a city where "snow" is the latest four-letter-word to be added to the list of obscenities, I was rather frightened to read the phrase "permanent El Niño" in today's issue of the journal Nature. That's because it's El Niño—not some kind of crazy global cooling—that's been responsible for o...
February 25, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Riled up About Geoengineering
One of the most contentious sessions at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting this past weekend in San Diego was on geoengineering, the study of ways to engineer the planet to manipulate climate. Intentional ways to do so, I should say—as many of the speakers pointed out, ...
February 23, 2010 |
By Laura Helmuth
