Understanding what happens to a material as it undergoes phase transformations – changes from a solid to a liquid to a gas or a plasma – is of fundamental scientific interest and critical for optimizing commercial applications. For metal nanocrystals, assumptions about the size-dependence of phase transformations were made that now need to be re-evaluated. A team of researchers at the U.S.
Heavens
The northwestern Pacific has generated its fourteenth tropical cyclone and NASA's Aqua satellite flew over the eastern side of the storm early on Aug. 26.
Tropical Storm Kong-Rey formed from low pressure System 91W. It is located east of the northeast Philippines and bringing the region gusty winds, rains and rough seas today, Aug 26.
The Rim Fire in northeastern California continues to burn on the Stanislaus National Forest, Yosemite National Park, and the Bureau of Land Management and State responsibility land. This fire began on August 17, 2013 and its cause is still currently under investigation. Over 224 square miles have been affected as of Sunday, August 25. It is still only 7 percent contained. Inaccessible terrain, strong winds, and dry conditions all present at this fire make for very difficult fire fighting. The ability for this fire to create havoc spreads far and wide, beyond even the area its consuming.
Tropical Depression Pewa dissipated in the northwestern Pacific Ocean early on Aug. 26, 2013. NASA satellite data on the previous day showed that rainfall had greatly diminished in the depression.
On Aug. 25, Tropical Depression Pewa's circulation had expanded and the storm weakened. Forecasters at the Joint Typhoon Warning Center expected Pewa would dissipate over the next day. Earlier thoughts were that Pewa might hang together and become an extra-tropical storm, but it appears that the life is leaving the storm.
The Rim Fire began in California on August 17, 2013. The cause of the fire is still under investigation. This fire is treacherous and has tripled in size in the last few days to now over 106,000 acres. The fire had been 5% contained, but the fire jumped fire lines and is currently only 2% contained.
ANN ARBOR — University of Michigan researchers and their University of Hawaii colleagues say they've solved the longstanding mystery of how mercury gets into open-ocean fish, and their findings suggest that levels of the toxin in Pacific Ocean fish will likely rise in coming decades.
Mercury—a common industrial toxin—is carried through the atmosphere before settling on the ocean and entering the marine food web.
Now, exciting new research from the University of Michigan and the University of Hawai'i at Manoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) combines biogeochemistry and direct marine ecology observations to show how the global mercury cycle is colliding with ocean fish—and the human seafood supply—at different depths in the water.
One of two of NASA's Global Hawk unmanned aircraft flew over the remnants of Tropical Storm Erin and investigated the Saharan Air Layer in the Eastern Atlantic Ocean on Aug. 20 and 21. The instruments aboard the Global Hawk sampled the environment of ex-Erin and revealed an elevated dust layer overrunning the storm.
The melting of sea ice in the Arctic is well on its way toward its annual "minimum," that time when the floating ice cap covers less of the Arctic Ocean than at any other period during the year. While the ice will continue to shrink until around mid-September, it is unlikely that this year's summer low will break a new record. Still, this year's melt rates are in line with the sustained decline of the Arctic ice cover observed by NASA and other satellites over the last several decades.
New Rochelle, NY, August 15, 2013—Existing urban water systems are at the end of their design lifetimes. New, innovative solutions are needed, and these must combine technology and engineering with an understanding of social systems and institutions. The current issue of Environmental Engineering Science, the Official Journal of the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors, focuses on Re-inventing Urban Water Systems.
Cloud top temperatures warmed up on NASA infrared imagery, indicating that the uplift in Tropical Storm Pewa was waning. By Aug. 23, Pewa was reduced to a tropical depression. Infrared imagery also showed that wind shear has pushed Pewa's precipitation away from the storm's center.
The ninth tropical depression of the Eastern Pacific Ocean hurricane season strengthened into Tropical Storm Ivo on Aug. 23 as NASA's TRMM satellite passed overhead. Ivo is expected to bring heavy surf and rainfall to southern Baja California over the next couple of days.
NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission/TRMM satellite captured the rainfall rates occurring in Tropical Storm Ivo on Aug. 23 at 0815 UTC/4:15 a.m. EDT. TRMM noticed some thunderstorms were reaching heights of 7.4 miles /12 km, and the heaviest rainfall was falling at a rate of 1.18 inches/30 mm per hour.
A new statistical framework
Rethinking the traditional, ad hoc approach, Pedersen and Weng have proposed a new state-space model for analyzing fish movement data collected by marine observation networks. Their new model was recently published in the scientific journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution. Its goal is to quantify the uncertainty associated with this imperfect locating system, and to improve its accuracy.
A view of the Pacific Ocean from NOAA's GOES-West satellite caught Tropical Storm Pewa moving through the Northwestern part of the ocean and two developing low pressure areas, one designated System 94E, several hundred miles off the Mexican coast.
NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Typhoon Trami during the time it was making landfall in eastern China and captured an infrared view of the storm.
Typhoon Trami made landfall late on Aug. 21, and the storm was captured in infrared light by the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder/AIRS instrument that flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite. The AIRS image, taken on Aug. 21 at 17:59 UTC/1:59 p.m. EDT showed that the most powerful thunderstorms were tightly wrapped around the storm's center during landfall.