The Earthquake That Will Devastate the Pacific Northwest. When the 2011 earthquake and tsunami struck Tohoku, Japan, Chris Goldfinger was two hundred miles away, in the city of Kashiwa, at an international meeting on seismology. As the shaking started, everyone in the room began to laugh. Earthquakes are common in Japan—that one was the third of the week—and the participants were, after all, at a seismology conference. Then everyone in the room checked the time. Seismologists know that how long an earthquake lasts is a decent proxy for its magnitude. When Goldfinger looked at his watch, it was quarter to three. It was March. Oh, shit, Goldfinger thought, although not in dread, at first: in amazement.
For a moment, that was pretty cool: a real-time revolution in earthquake science. In the end, the magnitude-9.0 Tohoku earthquake and subsequent tsunami killed more than eighteen thousand people, devastated northeast Japan, triggered the meltdown at the Fukushima power plant, and cost an estimated two hundred and twenty billion dollars. Hurricane Patricia as seen from space. Copyright: 2015 EUMETSAT Hurricane Patricia is about to barrel into the mid-Pacific coast of Mexico as a monster category 5 storm. The storm is so powerful that forecasters are calling it "the strongest ever recorded in the Western hemisphere," according to the Associated Press. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), hurricane hunters who are flying through the storm, and an international fleet of satellites are keeping close tabs on the situation.
The above image is a composite of several images taken by EUMETSAT weather satellites around 1 a.m. EDT on Friday, October 23, 2015. Because it was taken in the dark, it's 100% not true-to-life: It's infrared weather data layered on top of NASA's "blue marble" satellite images. The following image is a composite made in daylight by NOAA satellites. Hurricane hunters who are flying through Patricia are reporting sustained winds of 200 mph and even stronger gusts. NOAAHurricane Patricia's projected path as of 8 a.m. Washington state wildfires rage on, leaving 3 firefighters dead, 4 injured.
Wildfires continue to rage in Washington State this week, as two towns were evacuated in the eastern part of the state due to direct threat from the fires. Governor Jay Inslee also announced yesterday that three firefighters have perished while fighting the blaze, and an additional four were injured near the eastern Washington town of Twisp. The Washington state Department of Natural Resources reportedly told Seattle’s KING5 News that the Twisp fire exploded from 1,500 to 16,000 acres last night and officials are expecting the worst. The fire that forced Twisp residents to travel south for refuge is one of several wildfires burning in the eastern part of the state this week, which largely consists of prairie-like terrain. Okanogan County Sheriff Frank Rogers issued a statement that said the three firefighters who died were Forest Service employees based in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest.
Related: Firefighters say drones are getting in the way of battling California’s wildfires. Tropical Cyclone Chapala hits war-torn Yemen with heavy rain. Tropical Cyclone Chapala slammed into Yemen's central coast early Tuesday, lashing the area with maximum sustained winds of around 140 kph (85 mph). But the major concern is the extraordinary volume of rain the storm is expected to dump on the country's dry, rugged terrain, bringing a severe threat of mudslides. Yemen typically gets around 100 millimeters (4 inches) of rain per year. Chapala is forecast to unleash two to three times that amount in the space of just one day. The deluge is likely to cause "massive debris flows and flash flooding," CNN meteorologist Tom Sater warned. The storm made landfall not far from Al Mukalla, a port that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula seized earlier this year amid the chaotic conflict engulfing Yemen. 'We have no one to help us' The country isn't used to finding itself in the path of tropical cyclones.
Reliable records, which only go back about 30 years, show no landfalls by hurricane-strength tropical cyclones in Yemen. Major humanitarian crisis. July was the hottest month in Earth’s hottest year on record so far. For planet Earth, no other month was as hot as this past July in records that date back to the late 1800s, NOAA says. And the globe is well on its way to having its hottest year on record. NOAA, NASA and the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) have published data that show that it was the hottest July on record. Since July is on average the planet’s hottest month, temperatures this past month likely* reached their highest point in the history of instrumental records.
NOAA calculates that July’s average global temperature of 61.86 degrees was 0.14 degrees warmer than the previous warmest month on record, July 1998. NASA’s map of July temperatures shows the planet lit up in orange and red, signifying vast areas covered by above-normal warmth. “The average temperature for Africa was the second highest for July on record, behind only 2002, with regional record warmth across much of eastern Africa into central areas of the continent. July temperature difference from 1951-1980 average (NASA) Untitled. Scientists Say Climate Change Could Render the Middle East Almost Uninhabitable by 2100.
This is the grim future of the Middle East, according to a new paper from Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Elfatih Eltahir and Loyola Marymount University environmental scientist Jeremy Pal published online this week in the journal Nature Climate Change. The two researchers concluded that if humans do not make serious changes to the way they are pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere by the end of the century, areas of the Persian Gulf region and wider Arab world could experience heat and humidity waves to human life. Humans are capable of surviving in environments up to a "wet-bulb" temperature of 95 degrees Fahrenheit. (The "wet bulb" temperature is the lowest temperature that a warm object — like a human — can achieve via evaporative cooling — such as sweating, or being covered in water.)
Eltahir told the New York Times that 95 degree temperature translates to roughly 165 degrees Fahrenheit in a heat-index reading. John P. "Many of these threats are apparent now. Allegany Township Silos. Our Webinar on Silo-Busting and Sustainable Communities, in Tweets (with image) · tamirnovotny. Uptown Office Portfolio. Photo Gallery. Hurricane Felix. The Blue Marble. The Blue Marble is an image of planet Earth taken on December 7, 1972, by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft at a distance of about 29,000 kilometers (18,000 miles) from the surface.[1][2][3] It is one of the most reproduced images in history.[4][5] The image has the official NASA designation AS17-148-22727[6] and shows the Earth from the point of view of the Apollo crew travelling towards the Moon.
The translunar coast photograph extends from the Mediterranean Sea to Antarctica. This was the first time the Apollo trajectory made it possible to photograph the south polar ice cap, despite the Southern Hemisphere being heavily covered in clouds. In addition to the Arabian Peninsula and Madagascar, almost the entire coastline of Africa is clearly visible. The Asian mainland is on the horizon. The photograph[edit] History[edit] The photograph shown above shows the original orientation of the photo, with south at the top. [7] The photograph's official NASA designation is AS17-148-22727.
The Martian | Review. The Martian tells the story of Mark Watney (Matt Damon), a botanist/wise-ass serving on the Ares III mission to Mars. Early into their mission of collecting samples, a vicious storm rolls in that forces the crew to abort the mission and begin the return journey home. Unfortunately, during the storm a piece of debris rips off of their equipment and impales Watney, sending him flying out into the darkness. With all life signs showing negative, Commander Lewis (Jessica Chastain) has no other option but to save the remaining crew and escape the planet.
Turns out, Watney is much tougher to kill than Mars thought. With his oxygen supply dwindling, Watney manages to take shelter in the “HAB” (the crew’s habitat for the surface of Mars). The plot of The Martian is a captivating mesh of two stories: Mark Watney as he MacGyvers the shit out of his limited supplies and the team at NASA who work night and day to discover ways to help Watney survive.
The Martian.