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Filed under: predicciones meteorologicas,

Heavy fog continues to hover over parts of Sydney and Brisbane, causing disruptions to airports and ferries.

Two Sydney-bound international flights were diverted to Melbourne early on Friday morning, but by 8.30am (AEST) flight schedules were operating as normal, Sydney Airport spokesman Michael Samaran told AAP.

In Brisbane, a Qantas flight from Los Angeles was diverted to Noumea.

Brisbane Airport spokeswoman Rebecca McConochie said there were no departures or arrivals at the airport at 7.30am (AEST).

'Some planes are being diverted to other airports or are circling,' she told AAP.

'Visibility is down to 180 metres .. the fog is set in so heavily and there's no signs of clearing.'

Many domestic flights would be delayed because of the knock-on effect through the day, disrupting passengers.

'The best idea is for people to contact their airlines directly, because they will know specifically what's happening with each of the flights,' the spokeswoman said.

In Sydney's western and southern suburbs, visibility was down to 200 metres, the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) advised.

Just after 8am (AEST) there was still thick f...
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Filed under: meteors comets and asteroids

The 2009 State of the Climate report by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), with contributions from the UK’s Met Office – released this morning is attracting substantial media coverage.

As part of a full review of global climate over the past year, the report includes information on data from 10 key climate indicators, including tropospheric (lower atmosphere) temperature, sea level, glacier mass and summer arctic sea ice. According to NOAA’s media advisory, the report involved more than 300 scientists in 48 countries (including NZ) and confirms that the world is warming, with the past decade the warmest on record.

The full report is available online at NOAA’s website.

New Zealand scientists have sent the Science Media Centre the following comments on the report:

Prof Martin Manning, Director -  Climate Change Research Institute, Victoria University of Wellington comments:

“The IPCC Assessment Report that was completed in 2007 concluded that the evidence for global warming had become unequivocal. The new stud...
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Filed under: meteors comets and asteroids

MANILA, Philippines - At least three colleges and universities will start offering undergraduate programs in meteorology next school year in a bid to increase the number of weather forecasters in the country, Agham Partylist Rep. Angelo Palmones said.

Palmones said the Alyansa ng mga Grupong Haligi ng Agham at Teknolohiya para sa Mamamayan (AGHAM) is closely working with the Department of Science and Technology’s Science Education Institute in crafting the curriculum for the B.S. in Meteorology program.

The neophyte solon said their group has been talking with three universities in the country which will offer the said program.

He said faculty members and lecturers will come from the state weather bureau Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa), adding that scholarships will be given to 3rd and 4th year students.

The University of the Philippines-Diliman is the only higher education provider that has a meteorology program in the country and one of the few in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Palmones said Pagasa has lost some of its best weathermen who h...
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Filed under: 22 ep garden meteor

(CNN) — Authorities in several Midwestern states were flooded Wednesday night with reports of a gigantic fireball lighting up the sky, the National Weather Service said. The fireball was visible for about 15 minutes beginning about 10 pm, said the National Weather Service in Sullivan, Wisconsin, just west of Milwaukee. “The fireball was seen over the northern sky, moving from west to east,” said the NWS in the Quad Cities area, which includes parts of Iowa and Illinois. “Well before it reached the horizon, it broke up into smaller pieces and was lost from sight,” the service said. “Several reports of a prolonged sonic boom were received from areas north of Highway 20, along with shaking of homes, trees and various other objects including wind chimes,” it said. It said the fireball was seen across parts of Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin. CNN affiliate WISN-TV said that people in Ohio also saw it. Video from WISN showed a massive ball of light exploding across the sky. The Doppler Radar from the Quad Cities weather service appeared to capture a portion of the smoke trail from the fireball at just after 10 pm, the...
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Filed under: unmeteorologic

Meteora

2002—2004 Following the success of Hybrid Theory and Reanimation, Linkin Park spent a significant amount of time touring around the United States. The band members began to work on new material amidst its saturated schedule, spending a sliver of their free time in their tour bus' studio. The band officially announced the production of a new studio album in December 2002, revealing its new work was inspired by the rocky region of Meteora in Greece, where numerous monasteries have been built on top of the rocks. Meteora features a mixture of the band's previous nu metal and rapcore styles with newer innovative effects, including the induction of a shakuhachi (a Japanese flute made of bamboo) and other instruments. Linkin Park's second album debuted on March 25, 2003 and instantly earned worldwide recognition, going to #1 in the US and UK, and #2 in Australia.Meteora sold more than 800,000 copies during its first week, and it ranked as the best selling album on the Billboard charts at...
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Filed under: predicciones meteorologicas

Similar to the famous Meteor Crater in Arizona (pictured above), the Kamil Crater was apparently created by the high-speed impact of an iron meteorite. Scientists estimate it is thousands of years old. There are some 175 known impact craters on the Earth, but most are barely noticed due to erosion. Very few are as clear and obvious as the ones in Arizona and the new one discovered in Egypt.

The Earth is routinely struck by meteors. But most burn up or explode high in the atmosphere. The Barrington Crater in Arizona is said to have been formed some 50,000 years ago by a massive iron meteor, perhaps 150 feet wide and weighing 300,000 pounds. The crater itself is nearly one mile wide and some 570 feet deep.

The pristine impact crater discovered in Egypt is much smaller. The Kamil Crater is only about 45 meters wide (roughly 140 feet) and some 16 meters deep (about 50 feet). Scientists estimate the crater is less than 5,000 years old due to it’s pristine condition and the climate of the Sahara Desert.

Filed under: meteonorm

PSYCHOPATH.

Reading this New Yorker piece by John Seabrook, I hit the sentence "The word 'psychopath' (literally, 'suffering soul') was coined in Germany in the eighteen-eighties" and of course turned immediately to the OED, where I found that the entry had been revised as recently as September of last year. It says "after PSYCHOPATHIC adj., PSYCHOPATHY n. Compare Russian psixopat (1888 or earlier), French psychopathe (1894), German Psychopath (1898 or earlier)." I was naturally interested to see the earliest attested form was Russian, and a little googling got me this Russian webpage ("Диссоциальное расстройство личности"), which says "по данным О. В. Кербикова (1955) в России термин «психопат...
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Filed under: predicciones meteorologicas

Thanks to Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour’s (R) prodigious fundraising, which continued apace even the very same day the oil slick reached Mississippi, the Republican Governors Association was able to raise an astonishing $19 million last quarter.

CAP’s Josh Dorner has a ThinkProgress review of RGA documents recently filed with the Internal Revenue Service, which reveal a significant portion of last quarter’s haul—more than $2,000,000—came from oil and gas industry interests, including:

$1,000,000 from infamous right-wing oil billionaire and tea party-funder David Koch.

$250,000 from Devon Energy

$150,000 from Chevron

$100,000 from ExxonMobil

$100,000 from Hunt Oil

$25,000 from Marathon Oil

$25,000 each from Bollinger Shipyards and the president of Gilbert Cheramie Boat, both of which provide support services to the offshore oil drilling industry.

Barbour is no stranger to raking in huge sums of money from Big Oil and other polluters. He raised some $1.8 million in campaign cash from the oil and gas indus...
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Filed under: what do fallen meteorites look like

If a large meteorite struck the ocean, massive tsunamis would be formed, hundreds and maybe thousands of feet tall (hundreds of m). These would run up on coastlines, washing away the rubbish from the earth-quakes of a few moments or hours before. Impacts that hit water cause devastation over a larger area than impacts that hit land because of the far-traveling effects of the tsunamis. Impacts that have an energy release of 1,000 megatons (907 megatonnes) should generate tsunamis about 15 feet (5 m) tall and travel more than 600 miles (1,000 km). For impacts that are significantly larger than this (above 10,000 mega-tons, or 9,070 megatonnes) the damage from the tsunami is much greater, and covers a much larger area than the damage from the explosion of the impactor itself. The tsunami associated with the Chicxulub impact on the yucatán Peninsula may have initially been thousands of feet (hundreds of m) high, washing over much of the Gulf Coast of the United States and Mexico, and devastating the Caribbean. Just when you thought we had the end of the dinosaurs all sussed out, along comes someone with a new theory. Two guys writing in Trends in Ecology and ...
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Filed under: beads made of meteorite