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Showing posts with the label NOAA

Science is Spooky Fridays!

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 The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has quite a collection of creepy creatures and strange science. There's even some Scary Stories as told by scientists, of times when they were conducting research. Six Shorts Mummies have long been a subject of Halloween costume and decor, even a horror movie or two.  What could be worse than a long-dead body shambling towards you? One that's turning to black ooze. The Chinchorro mummies are the oldest intentionally mummified human remains, and they're from the Atacama Desert in Chile. With climate change, the humidity is rising, and opportunistic microbes are taking advantage, which deteriorates the mummies' skin. About 100 mummies are housed at the Universidad de Tarapaca Museum, but others are still preserved in their original Arica region burial sites, and they cannot be protected with humidifiers and climate control.

Science is Fun Fridays!

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 Welcome to the Denmark Strait cataract, between Greenland and Iceland.  It is where we find the world's biggest waterfall, but it's underwater. It's roughly 300 miles across and falls 11,500 feet, sending a massive amount of water into the Atlantic Ocean every second - like, one and a half Great Pyramids of Giza worth of water. Per NOAA, "Cold water is denser than warm water, and in the Denmark Strait, southward flowing frigid water from the Nordic Seas meets warmer water from the Irminger Sea.  The cold, dense water quickly sinks below the warmer water and flows over a huge drop in the ocean floor, creating a downward flow." This is a vitally important part of the system of ocean currents known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or "a large global conveyor belt," which circulates water from north to south and back in a long cycle. It brings cooler waters and climactic stabilization as well as oxygen, nutrients, and organic matter cruci...

Animal Life - Good News

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  An orca was found stranded on the rocky shores of Prince of Wales Island in Alaska.  She had been unable to retreat as the tide went out.  Luckily, some boaters saw her and called the Coast Guard.  They and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration advised any bystanders to try and keep the whale wet. Volunteers walked onto the rocks and filled buckets of seawater to splash on the whale and to keep the seabirds away.  NOAA showed up to assist until the tide rose enough for an escape. She was able to rejoin her pod, who had remained nearby in the waters calling out to her. She's been identified as a juvenile, classified T146D, part of the West Coast Bigg's Killer Whales transient population. Given their hunting styles, they believe the whale was chasing a harbor seal into shallow waters. The Guardian Bigg's

Science is Fun Fridays!

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Hurricane Dorian has made landfall in North Carolina. On September 4, the Geostationary Lightning Mapper captured this video of the hurricane. NASA's Earth Science Disasters Program has used satellite imagery to create a damage assessment map of the Marsh Harbour area of the Bahamas. This helps officials direct help and assistance where needed, but also helps to understand storm impact. NOAA atmospheric scientist, James Kossin, reports that storms have been moving slower and stalling more over the past 70 years.  The evidence that this is linked to climate change is not as definitive as the evidence that storms are getting stronger and generating more rain due to climate change, but it's something to be aware of. Timothy Hall, a NASA Goddard Institute of of Space Studies scientist, wants people to consider more about a storm than just it's category - the more hazards were prepare for, such as stalling and the angle it hits the coast, the b...