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New! google calander integration!
you’ll see over on ther right a feed which should remind you of what homeworks will be due etc!
Coming soon - bookable time for working on problems etc!
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Gravity-mapping satellite will help predict climate change
Scientists are preparing to launch a new satellite to make more precise measurements of the Earth’s gravitational field and so help improve predictions about global warming.
The €330m (£265m) project aims to provide an extremely accurate map of the planet’s gravitational field. Its main mission is to help climate scientists improve their predictions by enabling them to produce a more precise picture of the ocean currents.
By comparing the surface shape of the oceans with the undulations in the gravitational field, scientists can arrive at a more accurate picture of the oceans’ currents - the flows that transport vast amounts of heat around the planet and so have a profound impact on the global climate.
The satellite will complete a map of the gravitational field once every 70 days and stay in operation for about 18 months.
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Massive Canadian Arctic ice shelf breaks away…
Reproduced from the new scientist blog;
A huge 55-square-kilometre ice shelf in Canada’s northern Arctic broke away last month and the remaining shelves have shrunk at a “massive and disturbing” rate. These are the latest signs of accelerating climate change in the remote region, scientists said on Tuesday.
They said the Markham Ice Shelf, one of just five remaining ice shelves in the Canadian Arctic, split away from Ellesmere Island in early August. They also said two large chunks totalling 120 square km had broken off the nearby Serson Ice Shelf, reducing it in size by 60%.
“The changes … were massive and disturbing,” says Warwick Vincent, director of the Centre for Northern Studies at Laval University in Quebec.
Temperatures in large parts of the Arctic have risen far faster than the global average in recent decades, a development that experts say is linked to global warming.
“These substantial calving events underscore the rapidity of changes taking place in the Arctic,” says Derek Mueller, an Arctic ice shelf specialist at Trent University in Ontario.
End of an era
“These changes are irreversible under the present climate and indicate that the environmental conditions that have kept these ice shelves in balance for thousands of years are no longer present,” he said.
Mueller said the total amount of ice lost from the shelves along Ellesmere Island this summer totalled 215 square km – more than three times the area of New York’s Manhattan island.
The figure is more than 10 times the amount of ice shelf cover that scientists estimated on 30 July would vanish from around the island this summer.
“Reduced sea ice conditions and unusually high air temperatures have facilitated the ice shelf losses,” says Luke Copland of the University of Ottawa.
“Extensive new cracks across remaining parts of the largest remaining ice shelf, the Ward Hunt, mean that it will continue to disintegrate in the coming years,” he said.