While in the autumn of 2018 the Boston sea coast area and New England in general have been enjoying some of the most comfortable weather in years, this hasn’t been the pattern for all of the coastal U.S. or elsewhere in the world. Hurricane Michael is expected to be the most powerful storm ever to come ashore in the Florida panhandle, and recently hurricane Florence broke many long-standing records for rainfall and storm damage in the Carolinas and north into Virginia. Very slight changes in the development of the hurricane season could mean that similar conditions of both coastal surges and on-shore flooding could very likely affect the Boston and New England area in the coming years.
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More recent, comprehensive and continuing discussions of climate issues affecting Boston, New England and beyond helpful sources are available online through:
NASA Goddard
Published on Sep 27, 2018
Arctic sea ice reached its annual minimum extent Sept. 19, and then again on Sept. 23, 2018.
NASA works with the National Snow and Ice Data Center to track sea ice in the Arctic as it grows to a maximum extent through the winter and shrinks back to to its minimum extent in September. This year’s minimum sea ice extent reached 1.77 million square miles — tied as the sixth lowest sea ice minimum since consistent satellite records began. Music: Haunting Memories by Emmanuel David Lipszyc [SACEM], Franck Lascombes [SACEM], Sebastien Lipszyc [SACEM] Complete transcript available.
This video is public domain and along with other supporting visualizations can be downloaded from the Scientific Visualization Studio at: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/13075
Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Kathryn Mersmann
Two days before Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, the NASA-Japan Global Precipitation Measurement Core Observatory satellite captured a 3-D view of the storm. At the time Maria was a Category 1 hurricane. The 3-D view reveals the processes inside the hurricane that would fuel the storm’s intensification to a category 5 within 24 hours. For the first time in 360-degrees, this data visualization takes you inside the hurricane. The precipitation satellite has an advanced radar that measures both liquid and frozen water. The brightly colored dots show areas of rainfall, where green and yellow show low rates and red and purple show high rates. At the top of the hurricane, where temperatures are colder, blue and purple dots show light and heavy frozen precipitation. The colored areas below the dots show how much rain is falling at the surface.
Created by: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Data Sources: • NASA/GPM Dual Precipitation Radar (DPR) precipitation rate and drop size distribution data • NASA/GPM GPM Microwave Imager (GMI) ground precipitation data • NASA/Bluemarble land imagery • NOAA/GOES16 cloud data • Hipparcos/Telescope/Tycho 2 Catalogue
This video is public domain and along with other supporting visualizations can be downloaded from the Scientific Visualization Studio at: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/13079
NASA | NASA Sees Holiday Lights from Space
It’s official — our holiday lights are so bright we can see them from space. Thanks to the VIIRS instrument on the Suomi NPP satellite, a joint mission between NASA and NOAA, scientists are presenting a new way of studying satellite data that can illustrate patterns in holiday lights, both during Christmas and the Holy Month of Ramadan. These new tools can provide new insights into how energy consumption behaviors vary across different cultural settings.
Duration: 00:04:29
2014-12-29
In December of 1968, the crew of Apollo 8 became the first people to leave our home planet and travel to another body in space. But as crew members Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders all later recalled, the most important thing they discovered was Earth.
Using photo mosaics and elevation data from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), this video commemorates the 45th anniversary of Apollo 8’s historic flight by recreating the moment when the crew first saw and photographed the Earth rising from behind the Moon. Narrator Andrew Chaikin, author of A Man on the Moon, sets the scene for a three-minute visualization of the view from both inside and outside the spacecraft accompanied by the onboard audio of the astronauts.
The visualization draws on numerous historical sources, including the actual cloud pattern on Earth from the ESSA-7 satellite and dozens of photographs taken by Apollo 8, and it reveals new, historically significant information about the Earthrise photographs. It has not been widely known, for example, that the spacecraft was rolling when the photos were taken, and that it was this roll that brought the Earth into view. The visualization establishes the precise timing of the roll and, for the first time ever, identifies which window each photograph was taken from.
The key to the new work is a set of vertical stereo photographs taken by a camera mounted in the Command Module’s rendezvous window and pointing straight down onto the lunar surface. It automatically photographed the surface every 20 seconds. By registering each photograph to a model of the terrain based on LRO data, the orientation of the spacecraft can be precisely determined.
By registering each photograph to a model of the terrain based on LRO data, the orientation of the spacecraft can be precisely determined. This video is public domain and can be downloaded at: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/goto?4129
The Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had planted 115 million saplings so far and raised 300 million more saplings in 4285 private and 312 public sector nurseries for planting in the year 2017 under “Billion Tree Tsunami Project” (BTTP) at a cost of Rs 1576 million.
The number of tree plantation will reach to 250 million by March this year and an amount of Rs 9826 million had been approved under phase II of the project that was started in 2015 and will be completed in 2018 by planting one billion trees in the province. These facts were disclosed in a briefing about BTTP given to the Chairman Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Imran Khan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Pervez Khattak during their visit to the remote Makhniyal village of Haripur district.
They visited by the area to view the tree plantation being carried out by the KP Environment and wildlife department in collaboration with local communities. The Secretary Environment Syed Nazar Hussain Shah and representatives of the International Monitoring Organization, World Wildlife Fund (WWF), gave the briefing. Provincial ministers, Muhammad Arif, Mushtaq Ahmad Ghani and Ishtiaq Urmar were present on the occasion. The PTI leader Yousaf Ayub, the Commissioner and DIG Hazara, Deputy Commissioner Haripur and others were also present on the occasion.
Presenting findings of the monitoring report the WWF officials disclosed that had scientifically monitored 50% of the implemented target of BTTP in 28 Forest and 10 watershed divisions where 82% survival rate of the newly planted sapling was found.
The WWF representatives appreciated the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Government’s, initiative for growing one billion trees and controlling deforestation and termed BTTP an ambitious, sincere and committed initiative for protecting ecological environment and also urged the need to replicate the project in the whole country.
The Consultant of the project, Amin Aslam Malik highlighted the significance of BTTP and told that due to this project KP government’s efforts for protecting environment by growing more forests was acknowledged by Global Foreign Forest Region while it also brought bright prospects for securing hydro carbon quota for the province.
On this occasion the PTI chairman Imran Khan and the Chief Minister Pervez Khattak viewed the pine tree plantation enclosure established at the far flung mountains of Makhniyal village and appreciated the endeavours of the Provincial Environment department as well as the local communities and other stakeholders for making the project a success.
They also met with son of a “Negeban” (volunteer forest guard) who was killed by the timber mafia who wanted to cut trees in the areas. The Chief Minister announced compensation for family of the Nageban. He also assured to grant special bonus to employees of the environment department for successful implementation of BTTP.
The Chairman PTI Imran Khan on this occasion lauded the Chief Minister Pervez Khattak, Advisor to CM for Environment Ishtiaq Urmar and the Environment department for achieving much more than the target set under Phase-I of the project. The PTI Chief and the Chief Minister also set free some eagles on this occasion which were confiscated by the Wildlife department during a smuggling attempt
From 2011 to 2016, with support from the World Bank-supported Shandong Ecological Afforestation Project, trees and shrubs were planted on 13,800 hectares of saline land in Dongying, China. Forest cover increased by 1.7%.
Richard Engel looks at how countries like India are pushing for a greener future, and China is leading the way in wind and solar manufacturing and the jobs that come with it, while Donald Trump holds the U.S. back with a focus on coal.
Welcome to Transition Studies. To prosper for very much longer on the changing Earth humankind will need to move beyond its current fossil-fueled civilization toward one that is sustained on recycled materials and renewable energy. This is not a trivial shift. It will require a major transition in all aspects of our lives.
This weblog explores the transition to a sustainable future on our finite planet. It provides links to current news, key documents from government sources and non-governmental organizations, as well as video documentaries about climate change, environmental ethics and environmental justice concerns.
The links are listed here to be used in whatever manner they may be helpful in public information campaigns, course preparation, teaching, letter-writing, lectures, class presentations, policy discussions, article writing, civic or Congressional hearings and citizen action campaigns, etc. For further information on this blog see: About this weblog. and How to use this weblog.
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