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1500 questions
12
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Two severe cyclones connected by a monsoonal trough
At the time of writing, areas around the Northern Territory (TC Lam) and Queensland (TC Marcia) in Australia are in the path of severe cyclones (category 4 at the moment, with the Queensland one - TC Marcia predicted to reach category 5 - Category…
user889
12
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1 answer
What is the area with the largest velocity vertical shear in the ocean?
While there are areas with really strong tidal currents in the ocean, these currents tend to be primarily barotropic. My question relates to the largest vertical difference in velocity and it is likely to be baroclinic in nature. What is the…
arkaia
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When will the Final Ice Age happen?
As the Sun's luminosity slowly rises, the Earth's surface temperature will climb. Will Earth ever be too warm to have any more glacial periods? If so, when will that be?
Edit: The existing answer misunderstood the question. I'd like some boundary…
Kaia Leahy
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12
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Numerical weather forecasting - resources for a programmer?
There is a community wiki question over at A good book or source for climate science and meteorology basics? that talks about meteorology basics.
Building on that, but with a slightly different focus, are there "standard texts" for a computer…
BradHards
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1 answer
Is there a name for this type of ice crystal?
Recently, I took the following picture:
I have read about this phenomenon and I think it is caused by water vapour that is pressed out of the ground and then freezes due to low temperature. However, I cannot recall the name of this phenomenon and I…
RoflcoptrException
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2 answers
Will the Southern Ocean act as a net source or sink for atmospheric $\ce{CO2}$ in the future?
Some estimates claim that currently about one third of current human annual emissions of $\ce{CO2}$ are absorbed by the oceans. Some authors have calculated that about half of the global ocean total absorption occurs in the Southern Ocean. They also…
arkaia
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12
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3 answers
Nuclear testing and the Anthropocene, a chemostratigraphic link?
The Anthropocene is described by Wikipedia as
an informal geologic chronological term for the proposed epoch that began when human activities had a significant global impact on the Earth's ecosystems
Due to its informal nature and not wide…
user889
12
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1 answer
Snow from Fire: Could graupel, or even snow, fall from pyrocumulus clouds?
Pyrocumulus clouds often form in areas that experience prolonged fire conditions, particularly forest fires, but are also associated with volcanic eruptions and even nuclear explosions. This question focuses on forest fire origins.
An example of…
user889
12
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1 answer
What geophysical knowledge have we learned by the construction of IceCube?
The IceCube is a particle detector at the South Pole that records neutrino interactions. It has lead to many fascinating new discoveries in the field of astrophysics (e.g., 1, 2) and it was awarded "Breakthrough of the Year 2013" by Physics World.…
arkaia
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12
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1 answer
Barite and Acantharians
Acantharians are planktonic protists (abundant in today oceans), sister-group to polycystine Radiolarians, that have the particularity of biomineralizing complex skeletons in strontium sulfate SrSO4 (i. e. celestine).
Those protists have no (as far…
plannapus
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3 answers
Why does Earth's outer-core rotate in the opposite direction to the inner-core?
Is it true that Earth's outercore rotates in the opposite direction to Earth's inner-core? Is there a plausible explanation for why this phenomenon occurs and what is the available evidence supporting this notion?
Kenshin
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1 answer
Why is heavy precipitation from atmospheric rivers more likely to hit the West Coasts than the East Coasts?
As an example of an atmospheric river, see http://www.wired.com/2014/03/california-atmospheric-river-rain/.
These events have been known to hit areas like California and Bergen, Norway.
InquilineKea
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2 answers
Does anyone know of a DBMS with global geospatial search?
We need to store coverage areas and search by location over arbitrarily large areas. It has to be able to handle polar searches and coverage areas that span multiple hemispheres. No GIS can do this. Informix has the Geospatial Datablade, but it…
kwknowles
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How do mantle plumes travel from the core of Earth to the crust?
As mantle plumes begin in the core and move towards the crust, I would have thought that the heat in the mantle plume would disperse to the surrounding mantle, and the plume would cease to exist by the time it reaches the crust, a large distance…
Kenshin
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Can concretions form in non-sedimentary rocks?
Most modern works (e.g. Nichols 2009; Allaby & Allaby 1999) seem to restrict the definition of ‘concretion’ specifically to formations in sedimentary rocks. I have recently come across a taxonomy of concretions in Crimes (1966), which includes…
pcm
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