Cloud Blog

Mammatus clouds are clouds that carry air filled with ice crystals and rain to the top of the cloud. The cloud then spreads horizontally. The air filled with precipitation is heavier than the surrounding air, so the cloud sinks. Another type of cloud is a Lenticular cloud. Lenticular clouds are clouds that form right angles at high altitudes. When moist air collects around places with high altitude, the side with less wind creates waves of air, making the cloud. Roll clouds form when a downdraft rushes cold air, lifting warm air at a high velocity. Another type of cloud is a Noctilucent cloud. Noctilucent clouds form from water vapor and dust. They form mainly from the contents given off during volcanic activity.

My favorite type of cloud would be the Roll clouds. I think they are quite simple to understand.

http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/guides/mtr/cld/cldtyp/oth/mm.rxml

http://www.crystalinks.com/lenticular.html

http://www.weatherscapes.com/album.php?cat=clouds&subcat=roll_cloud

Harald Edens

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noctilucent_cloud

Snow Blog

Thundersnow is a thunderstorm that storms snow instead of rain. This happens because the Earth's troposphere has dryer, colder air. The dry air forms a storm, but the cold air freezes the rain into snow. Rime is frozen fog, forming ice on an object. This happens when fog freezes onto the side of an object that is hit by wind. Firn is snow that lasts throughout the summer season. When it snows, the snow gets compacted and air leaves. This compacts snow so greatly that it forms a block of ice. Watermelon snow is snow that has a red or pink color. This happens because snow has a pigment in it called carotenoid pigment. This pigment dies the algae in snow to protect it from U.V. radiation and the cold.

http://www.theweatherprediction.com/habyhints/334/

Jeff Haby

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_rime

January 4, 2010

http://www.answers.com/topic/firn

Susan Mayhew 2004

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-watermelon-snow.htm

S.E. Smith 2003-2010

The UNFCC and the Kyoto Protocol

The goal of this week's conference was to have solutions made to the intentions that the COP 15 set up. The Kyoto Protocol is different from the UNFCC (United Nations Framework on Climate Change Conference) because the Convention encouraged countries to stabilize GHG emissions, the Protocol made them to do so. Three steps that can help prevent climate change would be to limit the amount of electricity we use in our homes, limit the waste we produce, and monitor the transportation we choose to use. One thing that I can do to help in this effort would be to change a light bulb in my house to a compact fluorescent light bulb. This would prevent emitting carbon dioxide into the air.

http://unfccc.int/2860.php
http://unfccc.int/kyoto_protocol/items/2830.php
http://earth911.com/blog/2007/04/02/what-can-i-do-to-help-prevent-climate-change/
by Earth911

What Killed The Dinosaurs?

I believe an asteroid killed the dinosaurs. There is more evidence supporting this argument, than the other theory of drastic temperatures, due to greenhouse gasses, killing the dinosaurs. We discovered that the time a massive asteroid hit the earth was the same time that the dinosaurs became extinct. Also, melted rock that is only found in asteroids was discovered to have exploded on the earths biosphere, after moving through the atmosphere, and spread more than 100 miles from its origin. We also found fractured crystals which are only caused by an explosion, at the origin of the explosion. Also, dinosaurs seemed to have disappeared abruptly. If there were drastic temperature changes, then there would be more fossils.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/extinction/dinosaurs/asteroid.html
2001, WGBH Educational Foundation, and Clear Blue Sky Productions, Inc.
http://www.cotf.edu/ete/ESS/ESSspheres.html
2004, Wheeling Jesuit University

Air Quality

I compared Wayne Counties air to the air in Cook County, Illinois and San Diego County, California. The air was worse in Wayne than in Cook County. San Diego County was much worse than Wayne County. Surprisingly, when I compared Michigan's total air quality with the quality of New York's air, they were about the same. I thought that New York would have the most pollution. When I compared Michigan's air with Washington's air, i discovered that Washington's air was of better quality. I chose to visit Atlantic, New Jersey. The best time to visit would be any month. The only bad time to be there would be to visit would be December. This surprises me. I thought that the air quality would be worse during the summer, because of the amount of tourism they have that time of year. Today, on November 22nd, 2009 at 10:50, the best AQI is tied at 44 for the cities of Traverse City, Ludington and Houghton Lake. The city in Michigan with the worst AQI would be the city of Saginaw with 60.

http://airnow.gov/index.cfm?action=airnow.local_state&stateid=23&tab=1
http://www.epa.gov/aircompare/compare-trip.htm
A cross-agency U.S. Government Web site

Black Holes

Black holes are born when a massive star explodes, then forms a supernova. A fact about black holes is that they evaporate over time. Astronomers used to believe that black holes were impossible to destroy. We do not know what is inside of black holes. There are three types of black holes. One type is called a stellar-mass black hole. This type of black hole is heavier than the sun. Also, there are supermassive black holes. These black holes are about as heavy as a small galaxy. Another type of back hole is said to exist with a mass between stellar-mass and supermassive holes. My favorite type of black hole is the supermassive black hole. It is amazing to me that it has the mass of a small galaxy! Astronomers are researching the theory that black holes spin. They believe this because the things that black holes are made of spin, so the black hole as a whole, should spin. Another misconception is that black holes are possibly electrically charged. These are questions that Astronomers are trying to find a solution to.

http://hubblesite.org/explore_astronomy/black_holes/encyc_mod3_q4.html
Roeland van der Marel, STScI

Big Sunspot

People are interested in the group, Sunspot 1029 because it is the most active sunspot of 2009. It has trippled its amount of flairs in the last 10 months. The "deep solar minimum" has been described to be like the stock market. You don't believe it can go any lower, until it does. The number of sunspots is lowering. This is related to the Sunspot 1029 group, because sunspots are supposed to fluxuate dramatically over 10 year time spans, but we are worried that it is droppping too low. We care about sunspots on earth because they can affect the Earth's climate. They give off a solar wind, which affects our communications with space and satellites.




http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/980506a.html

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/01apr_deepsolarminimum.htm
http://spaceweather.com/