Ohmygoddard!... It's Science

This TUMBLR feed is intended to highlight current and/or intriguing content that pertains to my Earth Systems History (GY2100) and Oceanography (OCE2001) courses.

[ohmygoddarditsscience]

I’m less taken by the content of the article than by the animation that visualizes the atmospheric connection between continent-scale pollution sources.

( Air pollution in Asia may be changing weather patterns in the United States)

[ohmygoddarditsscience]

Study Predicts Antarctica Ice Melt if All Fossil Fuels Are Burned

Burning all the world’s coal, oil and natural gas would lead to temperature increases that would melt Antarctica’s ice sheet and raise sea level more than 200 feet, a new study found.

[ohmygoddarditsscience]

(via Richard Alley Dances to Explain Ice Ages, CO2 and Global Warming - YouTube)

[ohmygoddarditsscience]

(via A Rocky First Review for a Climate Paper Warning of a Stormy Coastal Crisis - The New York Times)

This is a really fascinating overview of the controversy surrounding a new climate change paper, open-source scientific publishing and the nature of scientific progress.

[ohmygoddarditsscience]

6 Graphs That Showed Landmark Discoveries—but Were Later Debunked - Facts So Romantic - Nautilus

It begins with the smallest anomaly. The first exoplanets were the slightest shifts in a star’s light. The Higgs boson was just…

Science is messy..... very very messy

[teded]

Climate change vocabulary lesson:

Radiative Forcing (RF): Radiative forcing is a temporary imbalance between the energy received from the sun and the energy radiated back out to space, like the imbalance caused by an increase of greenhouse gases. To correct the imbalance, Earth warms up or cools down.

By measuring this temperature change, we can begin to measure Earth’s “climate sensitivity”, which will help us predict how temperatures will change in the future.

To learn how scientists at CERN are studying clouds in relation to climate change, watch the TED-Ed Lesson Cloudy climate change: How clouds affect Earth’s temperature - Jasper Kirkby

Animation by Cedric Richer

[teded]

When we measure things, most people are only worried about how accurate, or how close to the actual value, they are. Looking at the process of measurement more carefully, you will see that there is another important consideration: precision. But, what exactly is precision and how can it...

[ohmygoddarditsscience]

This is a super cool, and relaxing, visualization of global ocean surface currents. OCE2001 students take note - gyres are not as simple and defined as the red and blue arrows in the text book figure re: gyre circulation suggests.  There is  some relatively small scale variation in the exact path of ocean currents (which is what makes this visualization so strikingly beautiful) BUT generally speaking the overall pathway of ocean currents does follow the simplified graphic in your text. Viewed together, the NASA ”perpetual ocean” visualization and your text book figure showing gyre circulation should catalyze a deeper understanding of the ocean circulation system, and the earth system in general - that a phenomenon that seems chaotic and unpredictable on a small scale can in fact be quite predictable and and systematic from a much broader perspective in space (“spatial”) and/or time (”temporal”). 

[ohmygoddarditsscience]

Animated Life: Pangea

This animated documentary tells the story of polar explorer Alfred Wegener, the unlikely scientist behind continental drift theory.

[ohmygoddarditsscience]

After six years of planetary observations, scientists at NASA say they have found convincing new evidence that ancient Mars had an ocean.

[ohmygoddarditsscience]

In an El Niño, prevailing winds slacken, allowing a buildup of warm water in the eastern Pacific that can disrupt high-atmosphere winds and other elements that affect weather. Researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had suggested last year that an El Niño was likely but that it would probably be weak.

[ohmygoddarditsscience]

http://www.nature.com/srep/2014/140904/srep06196/fig_tab/srep06196_F2.html

[ohmygoddarditsscience]

"Researchers have solved a longstanding mystery that has befuddled scientists and tourists alike: why rocks on a dry lake bed in Death Valley National Park in California occasionally move."

NYTimes piece here: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/02/science/death-valley-mystery-why-rocks-move.html

Actual PLOSONE article here: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0105948

[ohmygoddarditsscience]

A little "growth-mindset" inspiration

[ohmygoddarditsscience]

C-IMAGE Patrick Schwing Profile

What is science?  For this local researcher it's all about curiosity, experimentation, single-celled protists, home brewing and making music.

David Levin from Mind Open Media talks to C-IMAGE post-doc Patrick Schwing about his research, and a couple of his other obsessions!

[ohmygoddarditsscience]

When the Earth Had Two Moons - Issue 13: Symmetry - Nautilus

For more than half a century, the moon had been mocking the best minds in science, and for Erik Asphaug enough was enough. The taunting…

[ohmygoddarditsscience]

Giant Prehistoric Bird Crushed Seeds, Not Little Horses

If the huge bird were still alive, Gastornis would be an ornithophobe's nightmare. Equipped with an extraordinarily deep beak, this six-foot-tall bird was among the largest creatures to roam the fo...

This blog post should be of particular interest to GLY2100 students.  The article describes some pretty savvy paleontological detective work that overturns a long held assumption about Gastornis - a flightless monster bird!  Note the use of trace fossils to support the argument.