A new study has confirmed that waves generated by powerful storms can move massive seaside boulders that weigh hundreds of tons, and as global warming spurs stronger and more powerful storms, this finding illustrates the sheer force that our planet’s weather will challenge us–and the shape of our coastlines–with, in the decades to come.
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Unknowncountry’s Climate Watch section has been updated for winter 2017/2018. It discusses the extreme heat in the Southern Hemisphere and the extreme cold in the Northern Hemisphere, and explains why this is happening. It points out that Winter Storm Dylan that struck the US east coast in December was structurally a precursor storm to a much larger superstorm, which could develop in that area in the future.
A recent encounter between a human diver and a humpback whale has illustrated how concern for the safety of others can reach across species. Marine biologist Nan Hauser was on an expedition to the South Pacific’s Cook Islands to study whales for a film that she is making. But while diving with a humpback whale, her 25-tonne subject appeared to be attacking her, at least at first. But what she learned after extricating herself from the leviathan’s advances made her see the whole situation in a completely different light.
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As Earth’s climate continues to warm, some scientists are looking at doing more than simply reducing humanity’s outpouring of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere by devising ways to actively cool the planet back to temperatures that our civilization is comfortable with. One of the proposed techniques would be to spray massive amounts of sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere to create a cloud layer that would reflect a portion of the Sun’s rays back into space, emulating the cooling effect that the gases from a large volcanic eruption would have.read more