Head in a Cloud

Yikes.

I didn’t expect to see stories in the news on the Arctic Sea Ice extent this early in the season, since the minimum sea ice extent does not occur until around September. But as of now, it looks as though the melt is tracking last years record loss.

This will be interesting to monitor… For those who are interested, the progress of the sea ice can be monitored here from a webpage set up by the National Snow and Ice Data Center here in Boulder.

Recently I ran into an interesting website, www.eoearth.org. On this website there is various information and one page in particular talked about Climate Change (collection). While reading this webpage I ran into another link for a timeline. Well I do love my history so I clicked on it, it actually is quite informative and shows how long climate research has really been going on. Take a look!

Have you ever wondered how much other planets in our solar system are like Earth? Venus is especially much like Earth because they have similar characteristics such as chemical make-up, mass, distance from the sun, and size. Many Scientists have theorized that Venus and Earth started out the same and over time, have changed into the state they are in now. European Scientist have more evidence to prove that theory with the recent mission to Venus. Evidence of even more similar characteristics such as strong atmospheric winds, lightning storms, and cloud vortexes over it’s polar regions according to the article “Venus Craft Reveals Lightning, Supports Watery Past” by James Owen from the National Geographic (November 2007).

[Read more →]

From the young child trying to figure out why there are no two snowflakes that look exactly the same to the scientist who attempts to answer such questions, ice has been a fascination to anyone who has seen it. The physics behind the delicate shapes has been a great source of study. Such historical figures as Yohannes Kepler and René Descartes have helped to advance this field of research. It is strange to think that such a small thing as a snowflake can bring about such incredible science as was evident in the article “Snow and Ice Crystals” by Yoshinori Furukawa and John S. Wettlaufer from the journal Physics Today (December 2007). [Read more →]

To help better explain the gap between theoretical and observed precipitation droplet growth times, Xue et al. attempted to quantify the effects of turbulent motions on collision and coalescence. In “Growth of Cloud Droplets by Turbulent Collision-Coalescence” from the February 2008 Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, several different model parameterizations for collision kernels were compared in attempt to more accurately portray the time span of droplet growth. Prior to this study, numerous attempts had been made to overcome this deficiency. At first, most used a qualitative approach. When others tried a quantitative approach, they failed to take into account things such as the gravitational force in addition to turbulence, and fell short.

[Read more →]