India to flag off first scientific expedition to South Pole

During their 40-day journey, the scientists will conduct experiments, gather atmospheric data and collect ice cores from the frozen continent in their bid to understand the changes in the environment over past 1,000 years.Besides Ravindra, Ajay Dhar, Javed Beg, Thamban Meloth, Asit Swain, Pradip Malhotra, Krishnamurthy and Surat Singh will be part of the team.

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NASA launches Environment monitoring system in Nepal

Charles F. Bolden, the Administrator of NASA, launched SERVIR HIMALA, a state-of-the-art earth monitoring system in Kathmandu, Nepal. It integrates satellite and other geospatial data to address pressing environmental and climate change issues affecting the planet.

Initiated by NASA and USAID, SERVIR has been recognised by the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) as an early achiever of the GEO vision. SERVER works to bring people and their environment into harmony, said Bolden, who was in Kathmandu to address a symposium on the theme, ''Earth Observation: Bridging the Data Gap for Adaptation to Climate Change in the Hindu-Kush”

"SERVIR includes three regional centres which are working together to address pressing environmental issues affecting our planet," he said. "The first is in Central America, and the Caribbean, based in Panama; the second is in East Africa and is based in Kenya; and now the third is in the Himalayan region, based in Nepal."

SERVIR Himala has already been helping map the recent flooding in Pakistan through USAID support and NASA satellite data, he said.

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Super-computer Provides First Glimpse Of Earth's Early Magma Interior

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Brazil Unveils Deforestation Plan

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Malaysia uses satellite to fight illegal logging: report

Malaysia is zooming in on forests with a satellite in order to fight illegal logging which its government says is harming the major timber exporting country, a report said. Darus Ahmad, deputy director-general with the Malaysian Remote Sensing Agency, said the "eye in the sky" programme was put in place in October. "There is always criticisms that our forests are diminishing," he was quoted as saying by the New Sunday Times newspaper. Darus said that using satellite images the authorities can establish a national forest inventory of the country's total area of forest cover.

They can then check whether logging in a particular area is legal or not, he said, adding that the facility was currently available in the western peninsular part of Malaysia only.

Darus also said the system can be used to prevent air pollution by detecting forest fires and illegal land clearing. In the 1990s alone, Malaysia lost more than 13 percent of its forests, with much of the deforestation on the island of Borneo, which it shares with Indonesia and Brunei. The World Wildlife Fund at the time estimated that illegally logged trees made up about one third of Malaysia's timber exports.

Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi last year pledged not to indiscriminately approve logging licences, amid mounting concern that clearances are threatening endangered species and tribal communities. Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak, who also heads the National Forestry Council, later warned that illegal logging could undermine Malaysia.

"It can jeopardise our efforts to preserve biodiversity, flora and fauna and have an impact on global warming. At the international level, illegal logging portrays a negative image of our country," he said.

"It can harm our national economy as the timber industry produces 23 billion ringgit (6.8 billion dollars) worth of wood-based products a year," he added.

The European Union market accounts for about 30 percent of Malaysia's annual timber exports.


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Earth’s Ionosphere drops to a new low

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Geoid of the Earth

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Japan launches voluntary CO2 market

Japan on Tuesday launched a voluntary carbon market based on companies' pledged emissions cuts and hopes thousands of firms will sign up to what could become a forerunner of a mandatory cap-and-trade scheme.

The scheme, once it's up and running by next year, is expected to be the nation's broadest emissions market. But some said the scheme still fell short of what Japan needed to make deep emissions cuts and could backfire.

The trial over-the-counter market is aimed at accelerating further cuts in the private sector via new technologies to save energy and reduce or remove emissions from the atmosphere, Environment Minister Tetsuo Saito told reporters.

"It's based on a voluntary (cap) because we'd like to see as many companies as possible joining in as we start. But we're aiming to make it a cap-and-trade scheme eventually," he said.

"We're hoping to accept applications from thousands or even tens of thousands of companies, ranging from big companies to medium to small ones as well as mainstay companies in each region," he added.

Japan, the world's fifth-largest greenhouse gas emitter, has been reluctant to impose a mandatory cap on companies' emissions because of past efforts by industry to clean up and become more efficient.

Japan is one of the world's most energy-efficient countries. But like all rich nations, it has come under increasing pressure from developing nations to pledge deeper cuts to its emissions as part of a broader U.N.-led fight against climate change.

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World's Biggest Atlas

Copies of the largest world atlas ever produced have gone on sale at an earth-shattering price of £2,000 each.

Dubbed “the ultimate book about our world”, the luxurious, limited edition Earth is hand-bound in leather with gilded edges and silver-plated corners.

The atlas and its case together weigh 30kg – more than the maximum many airlines set passengers for their baggage allowance.

The 576 pages contain 154 maps and 800 photographs backed with detailed descriptions of every country’s geography, history and culture. Lying closed, the atlas takes up a third of a square metre with four gatefolds opening out to two square metres each.

Ten cartographic experts at the British map company Global Mapping spent eight months compiling Earth with more than 100 overseas colleagues including fellow map makers, geographers and oceanographers. They worked with detail from a continuously updated world database of digital mapping.

Global Mapping’s Alan Smith said: “We all had to keep to the same, consistent specification to make sure everything tied in universally from the way we shaded hills to the presentation of political geography. The sheer physical size of the atlas is amazing. The overall content, including the maps, text and photographs, is very much more detailed than any other atlas ever produced.”

Only 3,000 hand-numbered copies of Earth have been made – one for every 3.3 million people in the world. The atlas is expected to appeal to specialist collectors, libraries, rich individuals with a penchant for mapping and companies seeking lavish, once-in-a-lifetime corporate gifts. Taking the exclusive level even higher, one thousand copies from the print run have had their covers redone in gold leather with gold plated corners at the request of distributors in the Middle East.

Earth is the brainchild of Australian map publisher Gordon Cheers who has already received several hundred orders for copies. He described it as “a time capsule of where we are in the world today”.

The atlas may be impressive but its 30kg weight still pales into insignificance when compared to the mass of the planet itself – estimated at an unpronounceable 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg.

Earth can be order via Worlds Biggest Atlas

Global Mapping publishes a range of wall maps and supplies maps for travel guides, book packaging, planning applications and many other activities in business, government and leisure. Based in Northamptonshire, the company has a wealth of experience in mapping for print, CD, GIS and Internet.
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The Birth of Eart's Moon: Giant Impact Theory

At the time Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago, other smaller planetary bodies were also growing. One of these hit earth late in Earth’s growth process, blowing out rocky debris. A fraction of that debris went into orbit around the Earth and aggregated into the moon.

The Giant Impact, as pictured in a painting by William K. Hartmann on the cover of Natural History Magazine in 1981. Copyright William K. Hartmann

Half an Hour After the Giant Impact, based on computer modeling by A. Cameron, W. Benz, J. Melosh, and others. Copyright William K. Hartmann

Five Hours After Impact, based on computer modeling by A. Cameron, W. Benz, J. Melosh, and others. Copyright William K. Hartmann

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Cut greenhouse gases to save coral reefs: scientists

To keep coral reefs from being eaten away by increasingly acidic oceans, humans need to limit the amount of climate-warming greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, a panel of marine scientists said on Wednesday.

"The most logical and critical action to address the impacts of ocean acidification on coral reefs is to stabilize atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration," the scientists said in a document called the Honolulu Declaration, for release at a U.S. conference on coral reefs in Hawaii.

Ocean acidification is another threat to corals caused by global warming, along with rising sea levels, higher sea surface temperatures and coral bleaching, the scientists said.

Coral reefs are a "sentinel ecosystem," a sign that the environment is changing, said one of the experts, Billy Causey of the U.S. National Marine Sanctuary Program.

"Although ocean acidification is affecting the health of our oceans, the same thing -- increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere -- is going to in fact be affecting terrestrial environments also," Causey said by telephone from Hawaii.

Coral reefs offer economic and environmental benefits to millions of people, including coastal protection from waves and storms and as sources of food, pharmaceuticals, jobs and revenue, the declaration said.

But corals are increasingly threatened by warming sea surface temperatures as well as ocean acidification.

Oceans are getting more acidic because they have been absorbing some 525 billion tons of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide over the last two centuries, about one-third of all human-generated carbon dioxide for that period.

The carbon dioxide combines with sea water to form carbonic acid.

Marine researchers have long recognized acidification in deep ocean water far from land, but a study published this year in the journal Science found this same damaging phenomenon on the Pacific North American continental shelf from Mexico to Canada, and quite likely elsewhere around the globe.

The water became so corrosive that it started dissolving the shells and skeletons of starfish, clams and corals.

Stabilizing carbon dioxide emissions was the Honolulu Declaration's top long-term recommendation. The key short-term recommendation was to nurture coral reefs that seem to have natural resilience against acidification.

This could be adopted immediately by managers of protected marine areas, Causey said.

The Honolulu Declaration will be presented to the United Nations and to other global, regional and national forums.
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Geoid

The geoid is that equipotential surface which would coincide exactly with the mean ocean surface of the Earth, if the oceans were in equilibrium, at rest, and extended through the continents (such as with very narrow canals). According to C.F. Gauss, who first described it, it is the “mathematical figure of the Earth,” a smooth but highly irregular surface that corresponds not to the actual surface of the Earth’s crust, but to a surface which can only be known through extensive gravitational measurements and calculations. Despite being an important concept for almost two hundred years in the history of geodesy and geophysics, it has only been defined to high precision in recent decades, for instance by works of P. Vaníček and others. It is often described as the true physical figure of the Earth, in contrast to the idealized geometrical figure of a reference ellipsoid.

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The Atomic Bombs, End of World War II and Begining of Nuclear Age

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Satellite Imagery Shows Arctic Ice Still Unmelted

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Expanding Earth

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Horse latitudes

Horse latitudes or Subtropical High are subtropic latitudes between 30 and 35 degrees both north and south. This region, under a ridge of high pressure called the Subtropical ridge, is an area which receives little precipitation and has variable winds mixed with calm. The term "Horse Latitudes" may owe its name to the fact that early colonialist sailors would accidentally come too close to the center of the Atlantic Ocean while crossing it and get stuck in this belt of calm weather where winds tend to lift off the water instead of blowing across it, along with little current. The confused sea, muggy heat, and rolling and pitching of waves (variably stilled and aerated by winds) often slowed colonial ships for days to weeks due to lack of propulsion. The crew would throw horses overboard in order to conserve water and food. This also reduced the weight of the ship, thereby lightening the load and increased the speed of the ship in the low winds.

The consistently warm, dry conditions of the horse latitudes also contribute to the existence of temperate deserts, such as the Sahara Desert in Africa, the southwestern United States and northern Mexico, and parts of the Middle East in the Northern Hemisphere, and the Atacama Desert, the Kalahari Desert, and the Australian Desert in the Southern Hemisphere.

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