# All Questions

731 questions
372 views

### Is it possible for a sting jet to form over a continental landmass?

Sting jets are thought to be responsible for some of the most damaging winds associated with extratropical cyclones in the mid-latitudes. So far they have only been confirmed in the European region, ...
313 views

### How reliable were early measurements of palaeomagnetic directions?

The methodology and equipment for palaeomagnetic studies in the 1960s and 1970s was often rather primitive by today's standards. For example, Doell and Cox (1967) imply that the standard procedure for ...
251 views

### How are Mauna Loa $\ce{CO2}$ monthly trends computed?

The problem I am trying to figure out how $\ce{CO2}$ concentration trends are computed in the data provided by the Earth Systems Research Laboratory Mauna Loa Observatory. The data contains monthly ...
211 views

### How to compute the earthquake occurrence probability under ETAS model

I have fitted an ETAS model (unmarked) with an independent exponential magnitude distribution to a set of earthquake data. However, I do not know how to calculate the probability of the earthquake ...
188 views

### How much heat is transported from the interior to the surface in the form of hydration enthalpy?

Heat is transferred from the interior to the surface through several methods. One is simply the conduction of sensible heat through the crust - I would guess this accounts for most of it. But some is ...
140 views

### What are the ground motion prediction equations for 3-D ruptures?

Ground motion prediction equations (GMPEs) estimate ground motion at any given site due to an earthquake at a distance. There are many such equations, each with different parameters. Can somebody ...
64 views

### Why were no interferometers launched on weather satellites between the '69-'72 IRIS-D and the 2002-onward AIRS?

As early as the late 1960s / early 1970s, Nimbus-3 carried Iris-B and Nimbus-4 carried Iris-D, both infrared spectroradiometers with a moderate spectral resolution. Subsequently, I believe it was not ...
631 views

### How will climate change affect the entropy budget of the atmosphere?

The entropy per unit mass of moist air can be defined as $$s=(1-q_t)(C_{pd} \ln{T}-R_d\ln{p_d})+q_tC_l\ln{T} + \frac{q_vL_v}{T}-q_vR_v\ln{\mathcal{H}}$$ And in statistical equilibrium, the entropy ...
285 views

### Did the Geothermal Power Plant contribute to Pahoa's Lava Fissures?

There was lava in the area near the wells that the Puna Geothermal Venture facility created. The plant has nine wells that run as deep as 8,000 feet, according to Wil Okabe, managing director for ...
124 views

### Using sodium chloride load as a point source pollutant variable in SWAT model?

I'm currently working with the Soil & Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). My task is to model the loading of sodium chloride into streams. One approach I would like to take is to use the point ...
124 views

### Will global climate change alter the interannual and/or intraseasonal variance of temperature and/or precipitation?

A quick skim of the regional chapters in AR5 shows predicted changes to average temperature and precipitation. If I understand (in rough terms) the modelling methodologies used, a variety of models (...
105 views

### Would a volcanic winter trigger an oceanic “spring”?

There is large amounts of observations supporting the effects of volcanic eruptions on climate: A long term subtle warming effect due to $CO_2$ and a short term, but more intense cooling effect due ...
140 views

### Did the formation of Panama trigger the beginning of Ice Ages?

I have been studying ocean currents and associated energy flows in the eastern Pacific and western Atlantic oceans. I also looked at El Nino cycles. I also noted when the large glacial periods ...
71 views

### How are scatterometer observations standardised before being fed into reanalysis models?

This very basic question occurred to me during a talk on reanalysis data sets. Often we know the observations produced by a particular instrument, say rain radar, are biased from one year to the next ...
76 views

### What field studies have developed or supported the Penman-Monteith equations for estimating evapotranspiration?

I'm trying to understand transpiration estimation methods. The FAO recommends a standard Penman-Monteith methodology for modeling evapotranspiration based on meteorological and vegetation parameters (...
128 views

### Waves on sandy beach separating differently-sized rocks?

I recently went to a beach, and I noticed that the sand seemed to have a few distinct regions. I'm wondering what would cause this, and how it works. One region is the part of the beach which is ...
233 views

### What is the finest horizontal grid spacing that Eulerian grid-cell air-dispersion models should use?

My colleagues run the Advanced Research Weather Research & Forecasting (WRF) model in predictive mode, and then test the skill of the model anywhere from 12 - 84 hours out from the initialization ...
122 views

### Is there a distinction between gap winds and channelled flow?

I have seen gap flows mentioned in the literature, for example [Gohm et al. 2004, Zängl 2002, Mayr et al. 2007]. Whiteman 2000 defines a gap as a "major erosional opening through mountain ranges" and ...
86 views

### Argument for designing an ocean monitoring network based on satellite-derived chlorophyll-a concentration?

The idea is to design an integrated marine monitoring network by surveying in parallel the chlorophyll-a and the other oceanography parameters, which are either trophically related with the ...
94 views

### How much does the Meridional Overturning Circulation strengthen the Gulf Stream?

While the Gulf Stream is a western boundary current (WBC), one professor told me that the Gulf Stream is stronger than it should be just by using theoretical calculations of WBC. How much is the heat+...
83 views

### In quasi-geostrophic frontogenesis, what happens if the potential vorticity is negative?

In particular, what happens if the Sawyer–Eliassen equation cannot be solved? I know that a condition for the Sawyer–Eliassen equation to have a solution is $F^2 N^2 - S^4 >0$, which means that the ...
198 views

### Modeling swirling storms

I'm looking to demonstrate the rotational behaviour of swirling storms with a numerical simulation. So far it includes pressure-gradient, Coriolis acceleration, frictional forces and the acceleration ...
135 views

### What meteorological factors contribute to springtime Trans-Pacific air-pollution events?

The transport of tropospheric ozone, ozone precursors, carbon monoxide, etc from Asia to North America is an active area of research (see J.L. Ambrose, et al., 2011) These types of events occur ...
243 views

### What are black-hole ocean eddies?

How are they formed? Why are they so stable? What finally breaks them apart and what is their typical lifespan? Why are fluid particles trapped inside it and advected towards the center? How do they ...
106 views

### A faster way to measure the rock magnetic S-ratio?

The S-ratio is commonly used in rock magnetic and enviromagnetic studies to quantify the relative abundances of minerals with high and low remanent coercivities. As most frequently defined (e.g. by ...
71 views

### Predicting volcanic eruptions by experimentally proven volatile outgassing observations

In the abstract for the article Forecasting Etna eruptions by real-time observation of volcanic gas composition (Aiuppa et al. 2007), the authors assert that real time monitoring of volcanic volatiles,...
85 views

### Is there conclusive evidence to refute an earlier oxygenation of the Earth's atmosphere?

The Great Oxygenation Event (sometimes called the Great Oxidation Event (GOE), as in the journal Nature) occurred around 2.2 to 2.45 billion years ago (Frei et al. 2009). However, in the article A ...
162 views

### Alternative WMS servers for GOES-East satellite imagery

I'm having some difficulty finding a WMS (web mapping server) for North America GOES-East satellite imagery that matches my needs (visible and IR4, timely, with no alteration of grey-scale pixel ...
90 views

### How can I find a large petrology dataset?

I need a large dataset of the oxide components of peridotitic rocks and their manual classification for a project of mine. The only one that I managed to find was from the EarthChem database and it is ...
75 views

### Iowa State GOES Visible Data - misaligned EPSG:4326

The WMS server of Iowa State is serving data for the GOES-13 satellite in the visible channel. As best as I can tell, the data is misaligned with other data sources. For example, in a WMS client, ...
133 views

### Relation of El Niño to Monsoons

Scientists are forecasting a weak to moderate El Niño event to emerge in the coming months, what causes this to happen? Once developed, how will the El Niño conditions effect progressive monsoon ...
24 views

### Would the subsurface event leading to tree death at West Tern Lake in Yellowstone be visible in thermal imaging?

The New York Times article It’s Warm and Stealthy, and It Killed Yellowstone Trees and Turned Soil Pale describes an even that took place over the past few decades where a small and well-defined ...
131 views

### Rock ID: brown, magnetic inclusion in Carpathian amethyst geode

What I believe is an amethyst geode (roughly 6" = 15.24 cm across) from somewhere in the Carpathian Mountains contains an oval-shaped inclusion of material with what look like pits of green ...
189 views

### How much heat flow is needed to maintain plate tectonics?

The Earth is emitting about 47 terawatts of heat energy, producing a heat flow of 0.0921 W/m$^2$ due to radiogenic and primordial heat energy. The heat flow drives mantle convection which in turn ...
76 views

### Does a registry for fallen meteors exist?

Is there any kind of like an officially monitored list of falling asteroids, meteors, etc and objects entering earth's atmosphere?
81 views

### What are the most similar Earth analogues to Mars' seasonally recurring slope linea?

Recurring Slope Lineae (RSL) on Mars are suggested to be water that seasonally melts from underground ice and sublimates through the sand and dust to darken the surface. Slowly flowing downhill to ...
151 views

### Basalt vs. columnar basalt

I recently visited a cliff on the south coast of Ulva in the Inner Hebrides where there are ~10m thick flows of columnar basalt. The columnar basalt forming most of the cliff is sandwiched between ...
420 views

### Monitoring air pollution with Landsat satellite data

I'm trying to build an air pollution model. So far I have built one for point sources. Now I'm looking at monitoring air pollution with satellite images, based on the idea that every basic pollutant ...
313 views

### What geological structure(s) is responsible for the recent Queensland earthquakes?

Recently, south-east Queensland has been rattled by 2 moderate earthquakes - a 5.3 a couple of days ago (News report) and a 5.7 tremor just a few hours ago as of writing this post (News Report). These ...
77 views

### Availability of mean squared slope or wave spectra data for the sea surface

The mean squared slope is a property of the sea surface that is often sensed by microwave radars [1] [2]. While spatial data for sea surface salinity, sea surface height, and significant wave height ...
138 views

### El Niño Spring Barrier - optimal time to run a long range climate forecast

In an answer to this question - What is the predictability of El Niño/La Niña? Isopycnal Oscillation talks about a "decrease in skill during the boreal spring as SST anomalies are ...
98 views

### Oceanic-atmospheric coupling between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean basins

The two great basins - Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean have their respective oscillations Indian Ocean Dipole and El Nino Southern oscillation that affect the climate of the regions as well as the ...
426 views

### Calculating Monthly Accumulation value of the Clearness Index KT

I have an hourly data file of a particular location which contains the following variables (extracted from the Meteonorm7.0 data base, for a typical one year of data): GlobHor (W/m2): Horizontal ...
88 views

### Question about earthquake data attribute codes

I have some earthquake data with an attribute field call M and has values c, h , l , m or w. There is another one called Magnitude so I assume its not that. Any ideas what M represents and what the ...
58 views

### Rock identification?

This stone is part of a rock mass found in one of the plains of Iran. There are no rocky mountains around these rocks. I'm geologist and I guess it's part of the meteorite, what do you think? Color: ...
63 views

### Global Land and Sea Surface Temperature Data

We are a spin-off from TU Munich and currently working on equipping a CubeSat with a thermal imager. The imager should be able to acquire thermal/ir images with resolution of about 200m/px. In the ...
71 views

### Science behind the groundhog day myth

The myth goes that if a groundhog sees his shadow on Feb 2, six more weeks of winter are yet to come, but if he doesn't, spring is just around the corner. I am wondering if there is any science ...
116 views

### Do Siberia and Canada have a rasputitsa?

The rasputitsa is a muddy season that happens twice per year in West Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. It happens in mid-October to late November due to rains, and mid-March to late April due to thaws (...