What is hail or a hailstone? Hail is a form of precipitation that occurs when updrafts in thunderstorms carry raindrops upward into extremely cold areas of the atmosphere where they freeze into balls of ice. Hail can damage aircraft, homes and cars, and can be deadly to livestock and people. How does hail form? Hailstones grow by colliding with supercooled […]
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“Colony collapse disorder” the mysterious, decade-long die-off among honeybees, is getting worse. A survey of about 5,000 beekeepers in the U.S. has found that they’ve lost about 42 percent of their colonies over just the past year. Even more alarming is the fact that honeybee deaths spiked in the summer, when bees are usually healthiest. “What we’re seeing with this […]
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Simple statement: 13 of the 15 warmest years ever recorded have occurred within the first 15 years of this century. Complicated question: what is the probability that this happened purely by chance? The latest calculated answer: it could be one in 5000, or it could be as unlikely as one in 170,000, or it could be somewhere in between. Conclusion: […]
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The H5N1 bird flu has been found to have made it’s way to Antarctica. This could cause widespread health concerns for the penguins and seals that populate the Arctic region and have never come in contact with the deadly H5N1 virus before. Concerns have been raised among the scientific community over the possibility of breeding failures within the region’s avian […]
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In its early days, Earth became hell. About 3.3 billion years ago, new research indicates, at least two massive asteroids 30 to 60 miles in diameter smashed into this planet, boiling the oceans and sending atmospheric temperatures soaring to an unimaginable 932 degrees Fahrenheit. Stanford University scientists have found evidence of this extreme era in a geological formation in South […]
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Earth may owe its existence to the planet Jupiter. New research shows that the giant planet played a key role in the formation of the solar system by barreling through it like a cosmic wrecking ball, destroying existing planets and creating debris that coalesced into new ones, including ours. Astronomers began examining this theory after finding that virtually all of […]
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Historic drought: Broiling heat baked much of the U.S. heartland this week, as the nation’s worst drought in more than 50 years devastated corn, soy, and other vital crops. More than 1,000 counties in 26 states have been declared natural disaster areas and 38 percent of the nation’s corn crop is in danger of withering in the field, the U.S. […]
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Just before Christmas… November 1915, while camping on the thawing ice of the Weddell Sea, Shackleton and his men saw their ship, Endurance, going down into the waters of this sea. “She’s going, boys!” Shackleton shouted the evening of November 21, 1915. “She went down bows first, her stern raised in the air. She then gave one quick dive and […]
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Climatologists have started to drill into the oldest ice core in Antarctica to find some air that may have been there around 1 million to 900,000 years ago. The teams are from Australia, China, and Europe in a friendly type competition to find samples of air that is about 1.5 million years old. They would like to find out what […]
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As a new generation of writers confronts global warming, a new book genre has emerged: “climate fiction”, or “cli-fi”. Russell: “In my secret heart, I hope that all these books that are now talking about climate change will help to move public opinion.” That’s Canadian novelist Craig Russell. In his recent book, Fragment, a shockwave sends a massive Antarctic ice […]
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