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As the sun moves through its 11-year cycle, it experiences active and quiet periods known as the solar maximum and solar minimum. While solar maximum can present itself in a host of different ways, a new study has found that microwaves emitted during the solar minimum have largely remained the same for more than half a century. Astronomers in Japan have been continuously monitoring solar microwaves across four-frequencies since 1957. This began at the Toyokawa Branch of the Research Institute of Atmospherics, Nagoya University, and was later relocated in 1994 to the NAOj Nobeyama Campus. In a new study, researchers...

A late-November freeze is predicted for Ireland and the UK, and snow is also likely on the way in the coming weeks for the region. According to weather experts, this winter could be one of the coldest on record for Ireland. Snow showers will “engulf” Ireland and the UK in late November, according to a forecast chart on the Express. Piers Corbyn, forecaster for WeatherAction, said: “Apart from some cold snaps, the first half of November is looking relatively average for the time of year with some milder periods. However, during the second half of the month there is a...

Denmark and other countries are determined to see through the 2015 Paris climate agreement, Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen said as environment ministers from 190 countries met in the German city of Bonn on Tuesday at the UN’s COP23 climate summit. Much of the discussion at the summit will revolve around US President Donald Trump’s announcement earlier this year that his country — which the world’s second-largest carbon dioxide emissions — would pull out of the December 2015 agreement. But other countries are determined to see the agreement through, regardless of the message sent by the United States, according...

The first snows of the season have begun to fall in Germany, as a cold front from the north moves across the country, bringing heavy rain, storms and snowfall at regions over 1,000 meters. The cold polar air has reached the north of Germany and is moving south, bringing heavy showers and the possibility of sleet and one or two storms, DWD predicts. Temperatures will reach highs of 5°C to 11°C, and most of the country will have cloudy skies throughout the day on Friday. There will be a fresh west wind with strong gusts in the north and particularly...

Signs are pointing toward a displacement of the polar vortex that may be accompanied by a significant storm with rain, snow and wind in the northeastern United States during the days prior to Thanksgiving.The polar vortex is a storm that typically hangs out within the Arctic Circle. Arctic air is usually locked up within the bounds of this storm.Occasionally, this storm gets dislodged or splits into multiple parts. When this happens, arctic air can push southward to the mid-latitude regions anywhere around the globe."One such southward displacement of arctic air is in progress and will sweep across the Upper Midwest...

Shares in Vestas, the world’s largest wind turbine manufacturer, tumbled more than 17 percent Thursday after the Danish firm tweaked its annual outlook and its quarterly net profit slid. At 8:30 GMT, its shares were down 17.3 percent to 436.1 kroner (€58.60), in a market down 1.9 percent overall. Net profit fell 18 percent in the third quarter to €253 million, while sales slid 5.5 percent to €2.7 billion. The operating profit margin, which excludes exceptional items, dropped two percentage points from the same period last year to 12.9 percent. […] Vestas’ shares already tumbled 11 percent last Friday after...

If all of Totten Glacier’s ice slid into the ocean, global sea level would rise by at least 3.5 meters [~11.5 feet] The wind is helping to awaken one of Antarctica’s sleeping giants. Warm ocean waters, driven inland by winds, are undercutting an ice shelf that holds back a vast glacier from sliding into the ocean, researchers report November 1 in Science Advances.Totten Glacier is East Antarctica’s largest glacier, with a drainage basin encompassing about 550,000 square kilometers, an area about the size of France. Its floating front edge, the Totten ice shelf, sticks out like a tongue over the...

In the winter, when Interstate 70 shuts down at exit 205 due to car crashes or a deluge of snow, Silverthorne police chief John Minor gives his officers the same piece of advice: “You better have your head on a swivel and your head in the game, because it’s about to get a little sporty.” For the officers and state patrollers who ride herd over the chaotic cattle drive of cars and semis during an interstate evacuation, being on high alert means the difference between life and death. “If you’re actually on the interstate staffing that closure just before the...

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (WSYR-TV) - It's time for the full moon of November. Tonight is the night to see it. The moon rises at 6:42 this evening in the eastern sky. Full moon tonight is at precisely 1:23 am, but it'll be close enough to full this evening, making for a bright Friday evening. Friday night will likely be our best chance to view the moon, as clouds will block the view Saturday evening. The Native American name for the November full moon is the Full Beaver Moon. Colonists also referred to the moon by this name, as it signified the...

A McKinney woman and her twin sister died in a freak accident in Mexico. Barbara Thomas, 67, and Beverly Skrimpsky, of Arizona, were swept into the ocean by a massive wave in Cabo San Lucas last Sunday. The twins were lifelong best friends who traveled the world. "They're special people. Anybody that knew them loved them," said Steve Thomas, Barbara's husband of 45 years. He says he went looking for his wife and her sister when they didn't return from a morning walk on the beach. He says he ended up running for his life. "All of a sudden a...

The concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere has hit a new high, the UN said Monday, warning that drastic action is needed to achieve targets set by the Paris climate agreement. “Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere surged at a record-breaking speed in 2016 to the highest level in 800,000 years,” the World Meteorological Organization said. “Globally averaged concentrations of CO2 reached 403.3 parts per million in 2016, up from 400.00 ppm in 2015 because of a combination of human activities and a strong El Niño event,” it said. The Greenhouse Gas Bulletin, the UN weather agency’s...

Guest essay by Eric Worrall Bill Nye seems to think he has failed to reach people with his demand for urgent action on climate change, but he blames others for creating the conditions which led to his failure. Bill Nye on his climate change education efforts: “I am a failure” “The Science Guy” looks back on his 1990s TV show, and why climate change education has not reflected policy change Between hosting “Bill Nye the Science Guy” and serving as CEO of The Planetary Society, Bill Nye’s career as a science educator means he is also, inherently, an activist when...

The RNLI and coastguard teams put their lives at risk to rescue the man who was brought to shore unharmedA windsurfer went into the sea in the middle of Storm Brian had to be rescued by the RNLI. Waves higher than buildings smashed the Welsh coastline as wind speeds reached 75mph. But the man took to the sea off the north-west coast of Wales and got into difficulty after his rig failed. Abersoch RNLI launched its inshore lifeboat and the coastguard rescue team was scrambled after receiving multiple reports that a man had got into trouble in rough seas. The...

FReeper help needed, please. Roughly a week or so ago, a FReeper posted an extensive list of relief supplies and ships that had already been delivered to Puerto Rico. Would someone please re-post that list here on this thread? (A link to the original source would be even better!) My granddaughter is in a college politics course, and the prof and students say they haven't heard of any real help the US has supplied to Puerto Rico. (Of course, their source is the MSM-CNN...)

In addition to the cars flipped, the roofs collapsed, and the streets flooded, this season’s unprecedented string of devastating hurricanes also hit a much grander target: a volcano. The Caribbean island of Montserrat, home to the active Soufrière Hills volcano, twice suffered blows: first an almost-direct hit by Category 5 Hurricane Irma, then a direct hit by Category 5 Hurricane Maria. The volcano’s peak this year was, thankfully, more noisy than explosive. No volcano-related calamities were reported from the storm. But the collision of the two disaster-movie terrors reveals the possibility of an unnerving scenario: What happens when a superstorm...

Day five of the maddeningly slow Jake Carrizal trial in Waco ended with a cliff hanger, like the previous four days.The day began with testimony from a polite, professional, retired cop named James Owens who used to work in the Waco police computer forensics lab. He was a consummate government employee. He took meticulous notes and photographed everything, He recorded the contents of phones belonging to defendant Christopher Jacob Carrizal and Bandidos Marshall Mitchell and Ray Allen. The prosecution tried to enter the original downloads from those phones into evidence. Casie Gotro, who is defending Carrizal, never saw the original...

From MICHIGAN TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITYIs it gonna blow? Measuring volcanic emissions from spaceLate last month, a stratovolcano in Bali named Mount Agung began to smoke. Little earthquakes trembled beneath the mountain. Officials have since evacuated thousands of people to prevent what happened when Agung erupted in 1963, killing more than 1,000 people.Before volcanoes erupt, there are often warning signs. Tiny earthquakes rarely felt by humans but sensed by seismographs emanate from the volcano. Plumes of water vapor rise from the crater. When the volcano begins to emit gases like carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide, eruption may be imminent.But getting close to the...

The German government is still striving to reduce climate-damaging emissions below the level it was in 1990 by 40 percent. But according to internal calculations by the Federal Ministry of the Environment (BMU) recently submitted to Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) newspaper, hard-working power plants and dirty diesel may ruin the government’s ambitious plans. Just a year ago, the German government had predicted a 2020 figure of between 37 and 40 percent. But in May, when the government had to send updated data to Brussels, a maximum of 35.7 percent was reported. And even this figure is now proving to be too...

7 Days, Magnitude 2.5+ U.S. 178 of 178 earthquakes in map area. This is a very low number for the 7 day window. It has been running in the high 200s for the past year.

While Hurricane Irma hit Florida as a ferocious category 4 storm last month, the sunshine state has withstood much stronger storms in the past. According to new research, category 5 hurricanes may have slammed Florida repeatedly 12,000 years ago, during a climatic shift called The Younger Dryas. While there were hurricane-suppressing cooler sea surface temperatures at the time, these conditions were outweighed by slowed ocean circulation - which plays a powerful role when it comes to generating hurricanes. The study, published in the journal Geology, involved analyzing turbidites: a type of undersea landslide deposit that can provide a record for...