NOAA — Hurricane Patricia is the strongest hurricane on record in the National Hurricane Center’s area of responsibility (AOR) which includes the Atlantic and the eastern North Pacific basins. The minimum central pressure estimated from the aircraft data, 880 mb, is the lowest ever for our AOR. Maximum sustained winds remain near 200 mph (325 km/h) with higher gusts. Patricia is a category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. Some fluctuations in intensity are possible today, but Patricia is expected to remain an extremely dangerous category 5 hurricane through landfall.
A Hurricane Warning continues from San Blas to Punta San Telmo, and a Hurricane Watch and Tropical Storm Warning from east of Punta San Telmo to Lazaro Cardenas. Preparations to protect life and property should now be completed now.
Patricia is centered as of 7 a.m. CDT about 145 miles (235 km) southwest of Manzanillo, moving toward the north-northwest near 12 mph (19 km/h). A turn toward the north is expected later this morning, followed by a turn toward the north-northeast this afternoon. On the forecast track, the core of Patricia will make landfall in the hurricane warning area this afternoon or evening.
Preparations to protect life and property should be rushed to
completion. Tropical storm conditions are now beginning to spread across portions of the warning area. Hurricane conditions are expected to first reach the hurricane warning area this afternoon.
NASA — Scientists using NASA’s repurposed Kepler space telescope, known as the K2 mission, have uncovered strong evidence of a tiny, rocky object being torn apart as it spirals around a white dwarf star. This discovery validates a long-held theory that white dwarfs are capable of cannibalizing possible remnant planets that have survived within its solar system.
“We are for the first time witnessing a miniature “planet” ripped apart by intense gravity, being vaporized by starlight and raining rocky material onto its star,” said Andrew Vanderburg, graduate student at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and lead author of the paper published in Nature.
As stars like our sun age, they puff up into red giants and then gradually lose about half their mass, shrinking down to 1/100th of their original size to roughly the size of Earth. This dead, dense star remnant is called a white dwarf.
Hubble Space Telescope: Captures New Image of Galaxy 72 Million Light-Years From Earth
The telescope, operated by NASA and the European Space Agency, was used to photograph NCG 4639, a barred spiral galaxy located in the Virgo constellation.
We are not saying that the Earth’s temperature is just going to rise. In general, as energy is added to a system, the fluctuations in the system increase. So, we expect more storms, more droughts, more wildfires, more floods, more fluctuations of all kinds. What we are saying is that weather conditions will become more volatile due to the impact of humans. (Extreme Weather Events)
— S. Mukherjee & D. Brouse (2004)
So many “1-in-1,000 year” rainfalls is unprecedented, said meteorologist Steve Bowen of Aon Benfield, a global reinsurance firm. “We have certainly had our fair share in the United States in recent years, and any increasing trend in these type of rainfall events is highly concerning,” Bowen said.
A “1-in-1,000 year event” means that there’s a 1 in 1,000 (or 0.1% chance) of it happening in any given year in a given location, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.
“Rising water from flooding can carry viruses, bacteria, chemicals and other submerged objects picked up as it moves through stormwater systems, across industrial sites, yards, roads and parking lots,” the South Carolina Emergency Response Team said.
Low level ozone (Tropospheric Ozone) is deadly to plants and animals. The huge increase in human respiratory problems and asthma is largely attributed to ozone.
NASA has released a new study on ozone pollution:
Levels of “background ozone” — ozone pollution present in a region but not originating from local, human-produced sources — are high enough in Northern California and Nevada that they leave little room for local ozone production under proposed stricter U.S. ground-level ozone standards, finds a new NASA-led study.
The researchers, led by Min Huang of George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, used a novel technique that combined data acquired from two instruments on NASA’s Aura spacecraft in the summer of 2008. The technique more accurately determines levels of background ozone and their relative contribution to total surface ozone levels. Integrating Aura satellite data into the study increased the estimates of background ozone by an average of 2.4 parts per billion (ppb) over previous estimates, an amount that varied by 4 to 11 ppb over the two states. Huang conducted the study while a postdoctoral scholar at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.
The new method of integrating satellite data may help provide states with a scientific basis to request exemptions to the federal air quality standards for ground-level ozone proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. EPA proposed lowering the standard from the current 75 ppb set in 2008 to between 65 and 70 ppb, following a review of public data on the negative health effects of ozone pollution. EPA is required to announce a final decision by Oct. 1.
Background ozone can be produced from natural local sources such as wildfires, and transported via winds from distant sources, such as the stratosphere or another region or country.
Monthly-mean maximum daily 8-hour average background ozone concentration in parts per billion in California and Nevada, estimated by integrating data from NASA’s Aura spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/George Mason University
The NASA study found that, on average, background ozone sources generated about 48.3 ppb, or 77 percent, of the total ozone in the study region of California and Nevada. The findings are particularly important in Northern California and Nevada, where wildfires and ozone transported to the region from abroad can cause background ozone to exceed 60 ppb. The lowest background ozone levels were seen in Southern California, where topography helps trap local emissions.
“Our study shows background ozone plays a significant role in Western U.S. ozone levels under high-ozone conditions, and varies considerably by region, with higher values in many rural regions,” said Kevin Bowman, study co-author and principal investigator of Aura’s Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) instrument at JPL. “Some regions in the West have high background ozone levels that leave less than 10 parts per billion for local ozone production under the EPA’s most aggressive proposed ground-level ozone standards.”
To more accurately determine which sources are contributing the ozone, the team developed a multi-scale pollution assimilation system that ingests global ozone data from Aura’s TES instrument with nitrogen dioxide data from Aura’s Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI). Data from independent aircraft, ozonesondes (balloon-borne instruments that measure the concentration of ozone at various altitudes) and surface monitoring sites tested the system’s predictions. The team estimated the contribution of local and background ozone at surface monitoring sites when ozone levels exceeded EPA thresholds.
Ninety percent of ozone is found in Earth’s stratosphere, where it protects us from harmful ultraviolet radiation. The rest is found in Earth’s lower atmosphere, the troposphere, where it acts as a greenhouse gas. At ground level, however, ozone is a key component of smog, produced when nitrogen oxides photochemically react with sunlight in the presence of volatile organic compounds. Ground-level ozone also affects human and ecosystem health. Nitrogen dioxide, the most important ingredient in the production of ozone, comes primarily from cars and industrial emissions, as well as natural sources, such as wildfires.
Critics of EPA’s proposed new standard argue it would throw many areas out of compliance, resulting in economic burdens, and that much of the ozone in their regions comes from non-local pollution. When a county or area is found to be out of compliance, it must act to reduce its ozone emissions. Proponents of the new standard argue the reductions are essential to protect public health. EPA is not allowed to consider economic costs in its decision.
Contributions of background ozone (green bars) and local, human-produced emissions to ozone levels greater than 65 parts per billion (horizontal red dash line) at surface sites in various regions. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/George Mason University
The Clean Air Act allows states to request an exemption to the ozone standard if they can show that the cause of an air-quality violation is due to ozone from outside the country or from natural causes. To date, only Wyoming has been granted an exceptional event clearance by EPA due to high background ozone levels.
“By assimilating NASA satellite data on ozone and nitrogen dioxide, our study improves calculations of total and background ozone levels from both non-local ozone and wildfires, data that may prove useful to policymakers,” said Huang. “Our method can potentially be applied broadly to predict air quality in other time periods and locations. We plan to conduct follow-up studies over longer time periods, especially during higher wildfire periods.”
Bowman points to a recent NASA study that showed pollution entering the western United States from Asia has offset expected reductions in mid-tropospheric ozone from local sources. “The partitioning between background and local human sources will likely change in the future, as emissions from outside the United States continue to increase, and contributions from drought-related wildfires grow due to climate change. These changes will require additional reductions in local human-produced emissions to meet EPA standards.”
Bowman said the results highlight the importance of a new international constellation of low-Earth orbiting and geostationary satellites that will continuously observe pollution over Asia, Europe and North America, including NASA’s planned Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) mission. “This constellation will be a game changer in quantifying global sources of local pollution,” he said.
Study results were published recently in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres. Other participating institutions include the University of Iowa, Iowa City; NOAA, College Park, Maryland; University of Colorado, Boulder; and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland. JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
There is a lot of misleading information trending in social-media about Nestle and the California drought. The facts of the matter are:
Most of the water in California is used for agriculture. Nearly 50 billion cubic metres (13 trillion gallons) of water is used in California each year. Nestle bottled water plants only use 705 million gallons a year. Almond growers use about as much water each year as the entire city of Los Angeles. What percentage of California’s water is used by agriculture? 80 %.
The real cause of the problem is Human Induced Climate Change. As droughts increase in frequency and intensity, the sea level is rising. So not only are the droughts a problem, but salt water intrusion is also a problem. As these problems worsen, the solution is not to blame bottled water companies. Nor is the solution to build desalination plants. Not only do desalination plants contribute to global warming, they also are devastating to the ocean. “Fish and other marine organisms are killed on the intake screens (impingement); organisms small enough to pass through, such as plankton, fish eggs, and larvae, are killed during processing of the salt water .” [Heather Cooley, Newsha Ajami, Matthew Heberger, The Pacific Institute December 11, 2013]
The solution is for humans to take responsibility for the climate change and take action.
US federal judge, George King, ruled that the original copyright was only granted for specific arrangements of the music, not the song itself.
The original copyright was filed in 1935 under the name Good Morning To All by Mildred and Patty Hill. Warner/Chappell acquired the copyright in 1988; however, the Judge said, “The Hill sisters gave Summy Co the rights to the melody, and the rights to piano arrangements based on the melody, but never any rights to the lyrics.”
The extreme weather conditions have fueled wildfires in Northern California.
“I’m in shock. I want to cry. I’m looking at my neighbors’ places, and they’re all gone, and I’m still here,” Middletown homeowner Jim Maurer said. “We’re just shaking our heads.”
The AP reports: The fire and another in the Gold Rush country of the Sierra Nevada foothills, about 120 miles to the southeast, are the worst of a dozen burning in the state. Between them, they have destroyed at least 720 homes and hundreds of other structures and displaced 23,000 people, fire officials said.
Citing dry conditions from four years of drought, Mark Ghilarducci, director of the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, called this summer’s fires some of the most volatile he’s seen in 30 years of emergency response work.
A free music video about the attacks on New York City and Washington DC in DivX, MPEG4, MPEG2, Real Player and OggVorbis file formats.
The week before September 11, 2001 I was part of a peace project that met at the World Trade Towers. A week later I watched.
Those perpetuating the conspiracy myth tend to leave out the other two sites. The plane that came down in Pennsylvania was occupied by the former quarterback of West Chester University. He is the one that yelled “Let’s roll!” (before the passengers tried to take the plane back.) He has become a local hero. There are also witnesses in Washington at the the Pentagon. If you have a doubt, try explaining Cantor Fitzgerald.
Q: What causes the most illness in the United States?
A: Bad air quality
The leading causes of bad air quality are Particulate Matter, Ground Level Ozone, Sulfur Dioxide (SO2) and Nitrogen Oxide (NOx).
Asthma is a chronic lung disease that affects an estimated 16.4 million adults and 7.0 million children in the United States, regardless of age, sex, race, or ethnicity.(1) Although the exact cause of asthma is unknown and it
cannot be cured, bad air quality is believed to be the main cause. In particular, low level ozone is causing an increase in asthma-like symptoms.(2) What many people believe are food allergies are just symptoms of respiratory and immune system damage caused by ozone.
Low level ozone (tropospheric ozone) is highly volatile and is created in large part due to vehicle emissions. “Ground level ozone is a serious problem in cities with lots of traffic, such as Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Houston and New York City. In 2013, according to the American Lung Association, nearly four in 10 people in the United States (38 percent) lived in areas with unhealthful levels of ozone.” (3) The use of ethanol in gasoline is causing a dramatic increase in low level ozone.(4)
The EPA monitors ozone levels and issues action alert days. “Action days are usually called when the AQI gets into the unhealthy ranges. Different air pollution control agencies call them at different levels. In some places, action days are called when the AQI is forecast to be Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups, or Code Orange. In this case, the groups that are sensitive to the pollutant should reduce exposure by reducing prolonged or heavy exertion outdoors. For ozone this includes: children and adults who are active outdoors, and people with lung disease, such as asthma. For particle pollution this includes: people with heart or lung disease, older adults and children.”(5)
“When ozone levels are very high, everyone should be concerned about ozone exposure.”(6)
