National Geographic has a good story on the melting of the World’s ice sheets, Global Melting, Big Thaw. Refering to the picture to the left (copyright National Geographic, used under Fair Use), they say “when meltwater surging across Greenland’s ice drains to the bedrock, the ice sheet slides faster to the sea—one of many feedback processes speeding global ice loss.”

The article starts by looking at the melting of mountain glaciers in the Andes, the mountain range that runs down the West coast of South America. For instance, the World’s highest ski resort, at 17,250 feet (5,260 meters), is in danger of needing to shut down. People used to ski on the glacier, but it has been retreating, and now is only about 200 meters long, not enough for a good ski run.
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Whither the Weather: Covering Acts of God

Hurricane Silvia struck the Southwesternern U.S. yesterday, uprooting homes, tearing up highways, and flattening entire towns that lay within its swath of destruction.

Government officials said there were 341 deaths, mostly dogs, mostly from heart attacks. The number of wounded from the disaster, which was classified as a class five event, was estimated at 1400.

“This is truly a sad day in the history of our great community,” Mayor Suzie Hambley said from the battered hospital during a press conference at Fort Meyers a few days after the tragedy. “But we will band together to rise again and rebuild to make Atlantic City the great metropolis it’s always been.”
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This is entirely from NASA: The Amazon’s Seasonal Secret. The entire is a good read, but I’m just going to focus on one image that isn’t the main focus of the article. So if you’re interested in the secret’s of the Amazon, visit the link above.

This map shows which of three key climate factors most limits plant growth in an area (red is water; green is sunlight; blue is temperature). The Amazon is strongly limited by the availability of sunlight: there is plenty of water and it’s always warm, but clouds often veil the Sun, slowing photosynthesis. (Image by Robert Simmon, NASA Earth Observatory, based on data provided by the University of Montana NTSG.)

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Previously in posts on the weather, I’ve talked about air masses, warm and cold fronts , and most recently cold-occluded fronts. Today I’ll be posting about warm-occluded fronts.

As with the cold-occluded front, in a warm-occluded front a cold front catches up to a warm front. The difference lies in the relative difference in temperature between the two cold air masses. In a warm-occluded front, the coldest airmass in below the warm front; it’s ahead of the cool airmass. This can be seen in the figure below - the very cold air mass is a very dark blue, and the cold air mass is a lighter blue. Obviously, the very light blue represents rain and the white represents clouds.

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