Tag Archives: geography

Dot Earth Blog: Countdown to a Hotter Climate – Tropics First

by Myrna Posted on October 10, 2013

A new modeling study finds that by mid-century many places on Earth, starting in the tropics, will have a fundamentally warmer climate. Read this article: Dot Earth Blog: Countdown to a Hotter Climate – Tropics First Related Articles By 2047, Coldest Years May Be Warmer Than Hottest in Past By 2047, Coldest Years May Be Warmer Than Hottest in Past, Scientists Say Despite Climate Concern, Global Study Finds Fewer Carbon Capture Projects

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Dot Earth Blog: Countdown to a Hotter Climate – Tropics First

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Countdown to a Hotter Climate – Tropics First

by Myrna Posted on October 10, 2013

A new modeling study finds that by mid-century many places on Earth, starting in the tropics, will have a fundamentally warmer climate. View original article – Countdown to a Hotter Climate – Tropics First Related Articles Your Dot: On Walking Dogs and Warming Trends By 2047, Coldest Years May Be Warmer Than Hottest in Past, Scientists Say By 2047, Coldest Years May Be Warmer Than Hottest in Past

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Countdown to a Hotter Climate – Tropics First

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Early Agriculture Nearly Tanked Ancient Europe’s Population

by LilianX28 Posted on October 2, 2013

A recreation of an ancient English farm. Photo: Gordontour

The rise of agriculture changed the world. And we don’t just mean the human world. At its onset, long before the Green Revolution paved the way for vastly improved yields, people were notoriously bad at using the land. To produce our food we used to cut down a staggering number of trees. Deforestation in the western world, driven by land clearing for farming, actually peaked hundreds or thousands of years ago. And, without things like fertilizer or irrigation, or the massive intertwined agricultural system we have today, local shocks—a fire, a drought, a flood—could cut vital food supplies for years.

So, while the rise of agriculture allowed human populations to blossom, it also opened the door for catastrophic collapses. Science News:

Researchers already knew that agriculture in Europe appeared in modern-day Turkey around 8,500 years ago, spreading to France by about 7,800 years ago and then to Britain, Ireland and Northern Europe approximately 6,000 years ago. Farming led to more plentiful, stable food supplies, fueling population growth. But little is known about long-term population trends among ancient European cultivators.

New research looking at the sizes of human populations in ancient Europe found that while agriculture helped populations grow, the burgeoning civilizations were not sustainable.

In most sections of Europe, populations at some point declined by as much as 30 to 60 percent compared with peaks achieved after farming began, Shennan’s team concludes. That population plummet is similar to the continental devastation wreaked by the Black Death, an epidemic that peaked in Europe between 1348 and 1350.

The scientists, says BBC History, are fairly certain that ancient climate change was not the cause of the collapses. The research is a nice reminder that any technology that lets you outpace your natural limits can also send you crashing back down when it fails.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Are We Headed for Another Dust Bowl?

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Early Agriculture Nearly Tanked Ancient Europe’s Population

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An Underwater Volcano the Size of New Mexico Is the World’s Largest

by Abby Bath Posted on September 6, 2013

A 3-D image of Tamu Massif on the sea floor. Photo: Will Sager

A massive volcano the size of New Mexico or the British Isles lurks deep beneath the Pacific, about 1,000 miles east off the coast of Japan. Called the Tamu Massif, scientists just confirmed that it is not only the world’s largest volcano (sorry, Manua Loa) but also one of the largest documented volcanoes in the solar system.

Researchers began studying the Tamu Massif, which is part of an underwater mountain range, about 20 years ago. But until now, they couldn’t determine whether it was a single giant or a cluster of multiple smaller volcanoes. A team from Texas A&M University (“Tamu”—get it?) confirmed the Tamu Massif was a single volcanic entity by studying its past patterns of lava flows and analyzing geochemical samples from the volcano.

National Geographic describes what we know about the volcano:

Tamu Massif is a rounded dome that measures about 280 by 400 miles (450 by 650 kilometers), or more than 100,000 square miles. Its top lies about 6,500 feet (about 2,000 meters) below the ocean surface, while the base extends down to about 4 miles (6.4 kilometers) deep.

Made of basalt, Tamu Massif is the oldest and largest feature of an oceanic plateau called the Shatsky Rise in the northwestern Pacific Ocean. The total area of the rise is similar to Japan or California.

Luckily for us, the volcano was only active for a few million years, NatGeo points out, going “extinct” about 145 million years ago.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Underwater Volcano
Volcano Obsession

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An Underwater Volcano the Size of New Mexico Is the World’s Largest

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Can a giant ice wall stop Fukushima radiation from leaking into the sea?

by PierresHood Posted on August 9, 2013

Can a giant ice wall stop Fukushima radiation from leaking into the sea?

By Lisa Hymas

Shutterstock

The Fukushima ice wall would not look anything like this.

It’s been almost two and a half years since the meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant and the place is still a huge, scary mess.

Here’s how The New York Times introduced this week’s grim news from the plant:

First, a rat gnawed through exposed wiring, setting off a scramble to end yet another blackout of vital cooling systems at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Then, hastily built pits for a flood of contaminated water sprang leaks themselves. Now, a new rush of radioactive water has breached a barrier built to stop it, allowing heavily contaminated water to spill daily into the Pacific.

It turns out that radioactive water has been spilling into the sea almost since the initial disaster, at a rate of 75,000 gallons, or 300 tons, a day.

So now Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, which owns the plant, has a plan to build an underground wall of frozen earth to stop the radioactive water leakage. NPR explains:

[T]o understand, you need to know the geography of Fukushima. There are three melted down reactors, and they’re all right on the coast. To the west, you have mountains. To the east, you have ocean. And so what’s happening is groundwater flows downhill. It flows down through the ruins of the plant and then flows out to the sea. …

So now, TEPCO has proposed literally creating a wall of ice around the plant. And what they’re talking about is not a wall above ground, but freezing the ground around the plant to stop water from flowing in. …

So the basic idea is that they run piping into the ground and they put coolant in the piping and that freezes the earth around the pipes, and it all sort of gradually forms together into a wall. This is something that civil engineers see sometimes, but it’s not that common. And certainly, the way they’re talking about using it in Fukushima is unprecedented. This wall will be nearly a mile around according to TEPCO. It would require more than 2 million cubic feet of soil to be frozen. But if it worked, then it may be the only way to keep water from flowing into the plant and contaminated water from flowing out.

The New York Times points out another challenge: “the wall will need to be consistently cooled using electricity at a plant vulnerable to power failures. The original disaster was brought on by an earthquake and tsunami that knocked out electricity.”

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, fed up with continued ineptitude and deception from TEPCO, said this week that his government will get involved in the cleanup. It’s not clear what that involvement will look like, but it may include helping to fund the frozen wall — no small thing, as it’s expected to cost between $300 million and $400 million.

Lisa Hymas is senior editor at Grist. You can follow her on Twitter and Google+.

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Scientists Map Britain’s Most Famous Underwater City

by Laura Posted on May 13, 2013

Dunwich beach, across which storms pulled the ancient city. Image: modagoo

In 1066, the town of Dunwich began its march into the sea. After storms swept the farmland out for twenty years, the houses and buildings went in 1328. By 1570, nearly a quarter of the town had been swallowed, and in 1919 the All Saints church disappeared over the cliff. Dunwich is often called Britain’s Atlantis, a medieval town accessible only to divers, sitting quietly at the bottom of the ocean off the British Coast.

Now, researchers have created a 3D visualization of Dunwich using acoustic imaging. David Sear, a professor at the University of Southampton, where the work was done, described the process:

Visibility under the water at Dunwich is very poor due to the muddy water. This has limited the exploration of the site. We have now dived on the site using high resolution DIDSON ™ acoustic imaging to examine the ruins on the seabed – a first use of this technology for non-wreck marine archaeology.

DIDSON technology is rather like shining a torch onto the seabed, only using sound instead of light. The data produced helps us to not only see the ruins, but also understand more about how they interact with the tidal currents and sea bed.

Using this technology gives them a good picture of what the town actually looks like. Ars Technica writes:

We can now see where the local churches stood, and crumbling walls pinpoint the ancient town’s remits. A one kilometer (0.6 mile) square stronghold stood in the center of the 1.8km2space (about 0.7 square miles), with what looks like the remains of Blackfriars Friary, three churches, and the Chapel of St Katherine standing within it. The northern region looks like the commercial hub with lots of smaller buildings largely made of wood. It’s thought that the stronghold, as well as its buildings and a possible town hall, may date back to Saxon times.

Professor Sears sees this project as not just one of historical and archaeological importance, but also as a forecast of the fate of seaside cities. “It is a sobering example of the relentless force of nature on our island coastline. It starkly demonstrates how rapidly the coast can change, even when protected by its inhabitants. Global climate change has made coastal erosion a topical issue in the 21st Century, but Dunwich demonstrates that it has happened before. The severe storms of the 13th and 14th Centuries coincided with a period of climate change, turning the warmer medieval climatic optimum into what we call the Little Ice Age.”

So, in a million years, when aliens come to look at our planet, it might look a lot like Dunwich.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Underwater World
Underwater Discovery

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Scientists Map Britain’s Most Famous Underwater City

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