Mont et mer

When I went to France in 1999 with my friend Cris, we went out of our way to see the famed Mont Saint-Michel, driving up the causeway from the mainland to the entrance even though I couldn't climb the many steps up and around it, which made its interior inaccessible. Recent visitors were barred altogether when a supertide turned the ancient monastery into an island. Called "the tide of the century," it actually should've been dubbed "the tide of the generation," since it occurs regularly every 18 years.

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Winter waves

Photographer Jonathan Nimerfroh captured evidence of just how brutal the winter in Massachusetts has been. Waves off the coast of the island of Nantucket southeast of Boston had begun to freeze. He describes, "They were perfect dreamy slush waves. What an experience to be absolutely freezing on the beach watching these roll in while I mind-surfed them..."

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Sand sculpture

What is has taken millions of years to do to sandstone, the wind has done on a miniature scale to frozen sand in a matter of days and weeks. The photo was taken at Silver Beach County Park in Saint Joseph, Michigan, U.S., on February 14, 2015, by Joshua Nowicki, who noted that the largest of the formations was only about 12" (30 cm) tall.

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Primordial precipitation

They may not look it, but these are the most remarkable trace fossils I have learned of yet. They are the fossilized craters of raindrops that fell as much as 500 million years ago when the Earth's sun was only 70% as strong as it is now and the atmosphere was denser.

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Ice pancakes

It's another instance of food metaphor. Dinner plate-sized rounds of ice floating down a river in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Biologist Jamie Urquhart of the River Dee Trust explains how they formed, "Bits of frozen foam got pushed around in the eddy, and in the ensuing collisions became roughly circular. The air temperature rising - being colder at night due to the clear-sky conditions but warmer in the day - means the discs may have grown at night, collecting new foam. Then during the day, when the discs softened in the sun, softening particularly around the edges, the collisions raised up the rims.”

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Gravity potato

I had no idea there was something called the Potsdam geoid – a.k.a. the "gravity potato" – let alone news about it. It has been revealed that the terrestrial gravity that the potato (IMAGE ABOVE) represents changes with time. The model, based on ground-based and satellite measurements compiled by the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, now includes seasonal fluctuations of water balance on the continents and climate-related variations including melting and growing ice masses. German researcher Frank Flechtner explains, "This allows the measurement of gravity in inaccessible regions with unprecedented accuracy, for example in Central Africa and the Himalayas."

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Cloud-filled canyon

For the second time in two years, visitors to the Grand Canyon in Flagstaff, Arizona, U.S., have been treated to a rare and strange weather event known as a temperature inversion. It occurs at night when skies are clear, winds are calm, and the ground rapidly loses heat stored during the day. A cold, moist air mass settled into the canyon last week, eventually creating a 500' (152 m) thick low stratus deck of clouds, along with fog that hovered at the canyon rim or spilled over. Grand Canyon National Park staff remarked on their Facebook page, "Almost looks like the tide coming in and going out" (VIDEO HERE).

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Build a better fogtrap?

In remote areas regions of countries including Chile, Peru, Guatemala, Namibia, Eritrea, Oman, and Nepal, fog collection is a relatively cheap and environmentally friendly source of water. Standard fog collectors using mesh have been proven to be very efficient in parts of America's Big Sur by Daniel Fernandez, a fog researcher at California State University, Monterey Bay (LINK TO TED TALK HERE). Another scientist, doctoral student Xin Heng at the University of Texas at Arlington, Is working on a new design based on a bird's beak. But climatologist Otto Klemm of the University of Münster, who has been interested in fog for the past 30 years, points out that innovation in this instance has some disadvantages. A solid apparatus may not be able to withstand the strong winds that mesh can. In addition, they may be more expensive and harder to maintain in remote regions. As he puts it, "The more engineering there is, the less is the chance that these will be applicable for poor people in semi-desert regions."

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Whether weather worshipped

A massive 3,300-year-old cult complex has been uncovered at the Tel Burna site in Israel. The courtyard alone measures 52' x 52' (16 x 16 m). Inside, researchers have discovered – among other things – a cylinder-shaped seal, goblets and chalices, broken figurines that look part-human and part-animal, and the noses of masks which were worn. The complex held huge jars likely imported from Cyprus and an Egyptian scarab (IMAGES HERE), with the possibility that they were used in the worship of the Canaanite storm god Baal. Says Israeli archaeologist Itzhaq Shai of Ariel University, "From the finds within the building, we can reconstruct the occurrence of feasts, indicated by several goblets and a large amount of animal bones. Some of these animal bones are burnt, probably indicating their use in some sacrificial activity. The presence of the pithoi [large jars] may indicate the collection of tithes, or at a minimum, the storage of foods for later use in cultic activities. Finally, the masks may suggest ceremonial processions that arrived or left from the complex, possibly before or after the conducting of feasts."

NOTE: I have been unable to upload photographs, so please follow the links to see the images.

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Round rainbow

Colin Leonhardt of Birdseye View Photography was in a helicopter flying between the setting sun and a downpour when he captured a phenomenon rarely seen from the ground. Science aside, instead of just the top portion of the rainbow being visible, he could see the entire 360° circle (surrounded by a second fainter round rainbow) above Cottesloe Beach near Perth, Australia.

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Barometric bloodsuckers

On display at the Great Exhibition in the Crystal Palace in London in 1851 was a strange-looking device (REPLICA ABOVE). It was invented by English physician George Merrywether, who originally referred to it as "An Atmospheric Electromagnetic Telegraph, conducted by Animal Instinct." He had been inspired by the lines of a poem entitled Signs of Rain by fellow physician Edward Jenner:

The leech disturbed is newly risen

Quite to the summit of his prison.

Since leeches do in fact become agitated by an approaching storm, Merrywether harnessed 12 of them in separate bottles. When the barometric pressure changed they tried to climb out of the bottles, triggering small hammers to strike a bell. The more times the bell was struck, the greater the likelihood of a storm. The tempest prognosticator remains Merrywether's main legacy, even though the device failed to catch on.

 

Thanks, Sue!

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Hay there

No, this is not a cloud photo taken through a dirty lens. It shows huge clumps of dry grass falling from the sky last weekend in parts of the U.K. including Devon, Gloucestershire, Mid Wales, and Lancashire. Electrical engineer Chris Grew, 59, outside at the time with his wife and 16-year-old daughter near Devizes, Wiltshire, offers a first-hand account: "It really was quite a peculiar thing to see. We were sitting having lunch in the garden when at first we saw just a few little bits coming down. Soon it was huge great lumps coming down, covering the garden, the cars, and the caravan. It was all over the place." The fall of hay (PHOTOS HERE) was not quite as mysterious as the rain of apples on Coventry in 2011. Apparently the past couple of weeks of mild weather dried up the ground and warmed up the air, giving farmers an opportunity to cut grass for hay. Clumps were then carried upward, possibly by convection, and swept through the air by warm thermals, later falling back down on the surprised residents.

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Mongol monsoons

Often my posts about past weather patterns are based on evidence from prehistoric times that lends further credence to global climate change. But scientists at West Virginia University have discovered tree-ring data that explains in part a series of historic events. Amy Hessl and her colleagues in the Department of Geology and Geography have found evidence of an unusual stretch of warmth and wetness in Mongolia that lasted from 1211 to 1225 A.D. That span matches exactly the time when the founder of the Mongol Empire, Genghis Khan (1162?-1227), was successfully conquering an area stretching from East Asia to Eastern Europe, and including parts of northern India and the Middle East. The mild temperatures and unprecedented rain would have promoted the growth of abundant grass on the Mongolian steppe, which would have increased the number of grazing animals. It would have supported the great herds of livestock that fed the members of Genghis Khan's army and the number of horses – 5 apiece – that his soldiers (IMAGE ABOVE) were said to have had. Observes Hessl, "Nature set the table, and Genghis Khan came to eat."

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Monet moment

During a 3-week winter trip to the Normandy coast in the 19th c., French impressionist Claude Monet painted Étretat: Sunset (IMAGE ABOVE), a landscape showing a low-setting sun, a seaside cliff, and a needle-shaped rock formation. Through fieldwork and the techniques of forensic astronomy, researchers from Texas State University have revealed specific details about the painting. Not only did they determine exactly where Monet stood at his easel, they figured out exactly when. Astrophysicist Donald Olson and his team used planetary software to calculate, based on Monet's vantage point and the position of the crescent moon and sun in the painting, the narrow 4-day window during which the master work must have been completed. After studying Monet's correspondence and historical weather and tidal data, they narrowed the precise date to February 5th, 1883, at 4:53 PM local time. Olson has analyzed paintings by Edvard Munch, Vincent Van Gogh, and others over the years and defends himself from mixed reaction by art historians: "You can't ruin a painting's mystique through technical analysis."

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Beach balls

What we have here are large ice boulders, some weighing as much as 75 lbs (34 kg), that form periodically on Lake Michigan. U.S. Park Ranger Amie Lipscomb explains that when large sheets of ice break into smaller chunks, the waves tumble them, rounding and smoothing their edges. At the same time, new layers of ice are added, resulting in the striking beach ball-sized ice formations in the image above, lapping up on the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Suttons Bay photographer Ken Scott braved wind gusts and temperatures in the negative digits last week to capture the phenomenon on video (WATCH IT HERE). The strange scenery tends to go hand-in-hand with some of the biggest winter storms. Scott remarks, "That's when some of the best shows are."

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Cold camels

On Friday, it snowed in Cairo for the first time in 112 years! Other areas of the Middle East were also blanketed (or bucketed) with a rare snowfall, Allowing the residents to make snowmen, have snowball fights, and admire icicles (SLIDESHOW HERE). But with nearly 3' (1 m) of the white stuff in Jerusalem, closing roads, stranding motorists, and causing power outages; severe weather in Turkey, Jordan, and the West Bank; and the snow and sub-freezing conditions making things even more difficult for tens of thousands of Syrian refugees in Lebanon, I guess cold camels were the least of their concerns.

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Aurora from above

We've seen beautiful photographs, like those above, of the Northern and Southern lights. And some of us have seen in person the Aurora Borealis (I have, from an airplane on my way to Seattle) and the Aurora Australis. But how about a view of the latter from space, animated, compliments of NASA?

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Water, world

In April, a video clip from 2005 was circulating in which Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, chairman of Nestlé, claimed that water should not be understood as a human right but a commodity with a market value like any other food. "Personally I believe it's better to give a foodstuff a value so that we're all aware that is has a price," he says, although Nestlé claims the remarks – which appear to support the idea of privatizing the world's water supply – have been taken out of context. Water right is a contentious issue, and the idea that a for-profit company can siphon water off the aquifer in drought-prone areas to bottle and sell is anathema to me and my Mom. My Dad and I often discuss how damming and diverting the Colorado River to serve the growing cities of the southwestern U.S. has reduced its flow to critical proportions. The graphic above, prepared by the U.S. Geological Survey, demonstrates dramatically why there is not enough water to go around. Although the planet is approximately 8,000 miles (12,500 km) in diameter, all the water on Earth would fit into a sphere 860 miles (1,385 km) wide. And that includes water in the oceans and the atmosphere. A sphere representing all of the liquid fresh water in groundwater, swamp water, rivers, and lakes Is a small proportion of that. And one that represents fresh water in all the world's lakes and rivers, the surface water that sources almost all of our daily needs, is so tiny as to be barely visible on the graphic.

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Ice twice

You may have seen footage on the news lately of lake ice being pushed into homes, but – like me – you may not have realized that there were 2 "ice tsunami" events in different locations over the weekend:

Lake Mille Lacs, 100 mi north of Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A., Saturday, May 11th, breakfast-time. Winds as strong as 40 mph pushed a wall of ice onto the southeastern shorelines. The ice – 30' tall in some places –advanced on the homes and a resort on a 10-mile stretch of the lake (VIDEO HERE). Resident Darla Johnson describes, “You could hear it right through the doors, that’s what alerted us to all of it. And we turned around and you could just see it. It’s creepy because it starts coming towards you and you’re like ‘What is that!’”
Dauphin Lake, 200 mi northwest of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Friday, May 10th, dinner-time. Winds up to 35 mph pushed ice floes from the lake onto the shore of the Ochre Beach neighborhood and into the houses, completely destroying 6 and damaging another 14. “Bang! The ice came right through the living room,” says homeowner Dana Billows of the event which lasted a mere 15 minutes (PHOTOS AND VIDEOS HERE).

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Arctic methane

The beauty of this photograph belies the fact that it represents a disaster waiting to happen. Large amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas, are stored under the Arctic permafrost. It's release is a natural process, but with the advancing rate of global climate change, it is expected to release in amounts that will be catastrophic. Some scientists call it "a bomb" and it will only accelerate global warming, which will result In droughts and subsequent food emergencies across the northern hemisphere. I don't think it is alarmist to suggest that the rapid melting of the polar ice cap, which serves as an air-conditioner to the world, has serious consequences beyond the unfortunate habitat loss for polar bears.

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