The Role of Clouds on Earth's Climate

Modeling for climate change is an extremely complex process because Earth's climate is so complex. It is an interrelated system that involves the atmosphere, biosphere, land, and oceans. A change in one can cause a chain reaction in all the others. By studying ancient climate change patterns, scientists are better able to predict what might happen in future events. However, one factor that remains far from understanding is the role of clouds — how they will react to and influence a changing climate.

On the one hand, clouds provide shade for the surface of the planet and effectively reflect incoming solar radiation back into space. Therefore, a rise in cloudiness will result in a cooler planet. On the other hand, clouds are made up of water vapor which is in itself, a powerful greenhouse gas. This would mean that more clouds would trap more heat than would be reflected.

The question is not just how much cloud cover there is, but where it is and what type of cloud. Would a warming world create more dark, storm clouds (stratus)? More great, big, puffy clouds (cumulus)? More high, wispy clouds (cirrus)? How each type would influence, and be influenced by, higher temperatures remains unknown. However, according to Dave Randall, cloud modeler at Colorado State University, "We do know a lot about clouds. We just don't know enough. We're not in the infant stages of understanding any more; we're in first or second grade, and on the way to adolescence."

The consensus among climate modelers is that global warming would lead to more evaporation of the oceans, which would create more water vapor in the air and more clouds. Yet, more water in the atmosphere may not necessarily lead to more clouds, because higher temperatures would require more water vapor to become saturated. This means that more water vapor would be needed to form clouds, leading to the same amount of cloudiness that there would be otherwise.

The study of clouds is ongoing, and there are many projects in the works to better understand them. MIT scientist, Richard Lindzen has proposed the Iris Hypothesis, which states that increasing humidity as the Earth warms will create a shift from cirrus to cumulus clouds which better reflect sunlight. This would create a counterweight to global warming. There is also a real-world experiment called the GEWEX (Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment) Cloud System Study conducted by multiple government agencies. The GEWEX team observes clouds from aircraft, ships, and remote sensing instruments, and then compares them to models that simulate clouds on those same scales.

So far, the preliminary assessment suggests clouds will accelerate warming, but the results are far from definitive. Yet most scientists say that the case is getting stronger. Some say that even if clouds have a cooling effect, they would not be sufficient to halt rising temperatures. One thing that all scientists will freely admit, like all climate science, is that they do not understand everything. But if they are anywhere close to being right, we are in for a warmer future.

Telescope captures galactic super volcanic explosion

A spectacular “super volcano” that erupted trillions of miles away from earth has been clicked by a NASA telescope.

The staggering eruption was filmed by NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory and the National Science Foundation’s Very Large Array.

Astronomers said shock waves between a giant black hole and cooling gas, caused the mind boggling explosion, reports the Telegraph.

The explosion then blasted through the “massive” Messier 87 galaxy more than 50 million light years away. One light year is the equivalent of 5.9 trillion miles.

Researchers said the black hole powered the “galactic super-volcano” and prevented hundreds of millions of new stars from being formed.

They said that normally such stars would form in the galaxy when “superheated” gas cooled but this particular blast interrupted that process.

Nasa said the cosmic “eruption” was very similar to the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland, which shot plumes of ash and smoke into the atmosphere and caused chaos for world travel earlier this year.

“With Eyjafjallajokull, pockets of hot gas blasted through the surface of the lava, generating shock waves that can be seen passing through the grey smoke of the volcano,” a NASA spokesperson said.

Earth's Inner Core Might Be on the Move

Earth's solid inner core may be continually inching eastward relative to its liquid outer core, renewing itself by shedding its front while solidifying its back, a team of French scientists suggests.

"Within less than 100 million years, everything that has been crystallized on the west will have melted on the east," said lead researcher Thierry Alboussiere of Université Joseph Fourier in Grenoble.

The idea counters traditional theory that the big ball at the center of the Earth stands still, growing uniformly in all directions as the planet cools. It could shed light on the nature of the core — such as its age, apparent seismic mismatches, and a mysterious coating of dense fluid on its surface.

Seismic clues

About a billion years ago, the middle of the Earth began slowly solidifying from the inside out. The planet is hottest at its center, possibly even hotter than the surface of the sun, yet the core's iron is thought to be solid because of the extreme pressure that has raised its melting temperature. As it freezes, according to theory, the inner core takes in more iron, sending lighter elements up through the liquid outer core. This movement is thought to drive Earth's magnetic field.

Since scientists can't journey the roughly 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers) to the center of the Earth to see what's going on, insight of the 1,600-mile (2,570-km) wide innermost layer more or less stops there. But bits and pieces of indirect information come in all the time, through earthquakes.

The study is detailed in the Aug. 4 edition of the journal Nature.

Article continues: http://www.livescience.com/environment/earth-inner-core-shifts-eastward-100804.html

Solar tsunami from Sun may hit Earth on Tuesday

Tue, Aug 3 11:05 AM

Washington, August 3 (ANI): The Earth is in the path to be hit by a wave of violent space weather as early as Tuesday after a massive explosion of the sun, scientists have warned.

Astronomers witnessed the huge flare above a giant sunspot the size of the Earth, the explosion aimed directly towards Earth.

It sent a "solar tsunami" racing 93 million miles across space, which is likely to hit the planet on Tuesday.

The wave of supercharged gas is likely to spark spectacular displays of the aurora or northern and southern lights.

However, a really big solar eruption could shut down global communication grids and destroy satellites, if it reaches today.

A recent warning by NASA said that Britain could be at the receiving end of widespread power blackouts for a long time after the earth is hit by a once-in-a-generation "space storm".

"It looks like the first eruption was so large that it changed the magnetic fields throughout half the Sun's visible atmosphere and provided the right conditions for the second eruption," said Dr Lucie Green, of the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, Surrey.

"This means we have a very good chance of seeing major and prolonged effects, such as the northern lights at low latitudes," she added. (ANI)

Air Products and Chemicals

Environmentalism has done a tremendous job of awakening the American public over the last ten years to many of the fundamental issues of our times. It is now apparent that, with the explosion of emerging market economies, the energy needs of the world are going to exponentially grow over the next 20 years. Along with the topic of energy, atmospheric gases have come into central focus in the American public. The issue of globalwarming, whether one believes completely in its claims or not, has raised American awareness to level where it's now clear that we cannot continue to release emissions and pollutants into the atmosphere in uncontrolled amounts and expect it to not affect our world.

One such company in the U.S. industrial gases sector that is heavily involved in renewable energy is Air Products and Chemicals(NYSE: AIR PRODUCTS AND CHEMICALS). AIR PRODUCTS AND CHEMICALS specializes in supplying atmospheric gases, process and specialty gases, performance materials, and equipment and services worldwide. AIR PRODUCTS AND CHEMICALS is very active in the followingmarkets:

• Merchant Gases—AIR PRODUCTS AND CHEMICALS delivers gases in bulk supply, usually by tanker or tub trailer, to a large number of industrial and medical customers. Common gases include oxygen, nitrogen, argon, helium, and hydrogen.

• Tonnage Gases, Equipment and Energy — This is similar to the merchant market, except the same gases are supplied to large petroleum refining, chemical and metallurgical customers. Instead of delivering the gases, once a long-term contract is established between the customer and AIR PRODUCTS AND CHEMICALS, the company generally builds a facility very close to the customer’s facility and then delivers the product through a pipeline. This aspect of AIR PRODUCTS AND CHEMICALS’ business is heavily dependent on long-term contracts, and creates, therefore, a steady stream of business year after year.

• Electronics and Performance Materials — AIR PRODUCTS AND CHEMICALS supplies specialty and tonnage gases to the electronics industry for the manufacturing of compound semiconductors and other electronic apparatuses.

• Healthcare — This is a very large part of AIR PRODUCTS AND CHEMICALS’ business, as it provides home respiratory therapies, medical equipment and infusion services to hundreds of thousands of patients worldwide.

This is a brief overview of the focus of AIR PRODUCTS AND CHEMICALS over the course of its recent business history. Due to its business presence in many foreign countries, AIR PRODUCTS AND CHEMICALS’ profitability each year can be affected by volatile moves in the Forex market.

What are the new developments at AIR PRODUCTS AND CHEMICALS?

In order to understand new developments at AIR PRODUCTS AND CHEMICALS, one must understand the development of the Cap and Trade laws in America. Currently, legislation is passing through Congress that may enact Cap and Trade laws. Basically, these laws will limit the amount of emissions and pollutants companies are allowed to release into the atmosphere. Based on its size and industry, a company will be given a certain number of credits each year that will reflect what level of emissions and pollutants it can release into the atmosphere. Once a company’s credits are expired, it must purchase more from another company who has not used of its credits. The idea behind this law is that it will encourage companies to be proactive in cutting down pollution.

One way that companies will be able to cut down on emissions is by capturing carbon and sequestering it in underground vaults. For example, an underground piping system would first capture the carbon being produced at a company and then transport that carbon to underground vaults where it could be re-used in oil fields and other areas. Underground piping systems are already being created to make this happen.

One of the most exciting developments at AIR PRODUCTS AND CHEMICALS is its expansion into the market of providing services to capture and sequester carbon. In fact, in June of 2010, AIR PRODUCTS AND CHEMICALS announced it had been selected to receive $253 million of funding from the United States Department of Energy (DOE) under the Industrial Carbon Capture and Sequestration (ICCS) Program for its ICCS project in Fort Arthur, Texas. This funding is expected to expand this project through September 2015.

This project will enable AIR PRODUCTS AND CHEMICALS to design, build, and operate a system in order to capture CO₂ from its two steam methane reformers that are currently located in the Valero Refinery in Port Arthur. Once the CO₂ is captured and sequestered, it will be transported via a pipeline in order to be used for enhanced oil recovery.

The ability for AIR PRODUCTS AND CHEMICALS to position itself as a leader and innovator in the carbon capturing and sequestering movement is a major plus for the company. As the cap and trade legislation bears down, and stricter laws come into being concerning emissions and pollutant control, AIR PRODUCTS AND CHEMICALS will have already positioned itself as a leader in the field and may benefit tremendously over the long term. Also, the very nature of this business is long-term. This issue of pollution and emissions is not going to be fading into the distant memory of America. If anything, it will only grow over the next 20 years, so AIR PRODUCTS AND CHEMICALS should be positioned nicely to take advantage of this movement.

Trial shows an AIDS gel can protect women

REUTERS - A trial of women in South Africa shows that a gel made using Gilead Sciences Inc's HIV drug tenofovir lowered the rate of HIV infections in women by 39 percent over two and a half years.

It is the first trial to show a microbicide might protect women from the deadly and incurable virus, which has killed 25 million people since the AIDS pandemic started in the 1980s and which infects 33 million today.

Here are some facts about the trial:

* The trial was run by the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa or CAPRISA at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa.

* It enrolled 889 South African women aged 18 to 40 who were HIV-negative, sexually active, and at high risk of becoming infected with HIV.

* All were given packets of applicators filled with gel and told to insert one dose up to 12 hours before sex and a second no more than 12 hours afterwards.

* Half the women got placebo gels and half received gels containing a very low dose of tenofovir, an inexpensive HIV drug.

* At the end of the study 422 women remained in the tenofovir arm and 421 in the placebo arm, a retention rate of 95 percent, which suggests the gel was not unpleasant to use.

* At 30 months, 98 women were infected with HIV -- 38 of them had been given tenofovir and 60 were on placebo. This is a 39 percent reduction in HIV incidence for tenofovir.

* At 12 months into the study, women who got tenofovir were 50 percent less likely to be infected than women who got placebo.

* 54 of the women became pregnant and delivered 31 babies. None had any congenital problems and the miscarriage rate was normal.

* Blood tests showed the tenofovir stayed in the vagina and did not cause effects elsewhere in the body. This suggests side-effects will be low and also suggests that women who become infected with HIV will still be able to take pills without being resistant to their effects.

* In a surprise finding, researchers said the gel also reduced the risk a woman would get genital herpes by 51 percent.

* The main side-effect was slightly more mild diarrhea in the women who got tenofovir.

(Reporting by Maggie Fox in Washington, Editing by Sandra Maler)

(For more news on Reuters India, click http://in.reuters.com)

Magnetic Field of the Earth

The Earth's magnetic field is similar to that of a bar magnet tilted 11 degrees from the spin axis of the Earth. The problem with that picture is that the Curie temperature of iron is about 770 C . The Earth's core is hotter than that and therefore not magnetic. So how did the Earth get its magnetic field?

Magnetic fields surround electric currents, so we surmise that circulating electic currents in the Earth's molten metalic core are the origin of the magnetic field. A current loop gives a field similar to that of the earth. The magnetic field magnitude measured at the surface of the Earth is about half a Gauss and dips toward the Earth in the northern hemisphere. The magnitude varies over the surface of the Earth in the range 0.3 to 0.6 Gauss.

The Earth's magnetic field is attributed to a dynamo effect of circulating electric current, but it is not constant in direction. Rock specimens of different age in similar locations have different directions of permanent magnetization. Evidence for 171 magnetic field reversals during the past 71 million years has been reported.

Although the details of the dynamo effect are not known in detail, the rotation of the Earth plays a part in generating the currents which are presumed to be the source of the magnetic field. Mariner 2 found that Venus does not have such a magnetic field although its core iron content must be similar to that of the Earth. Venus's rotation period of 243 Earth days is just too slow to produce the dynamo effect.

Interaction of the terrestrial magnetic field with particles from the solar wind sets up the conditions for the aurora phenomena near the poles.

The north pole of a compass needle is a magnetic north pole. It is attracted to the geographic North Pole, which is a magnetic south pole (opposite magnetic poles attract).

The simple question "how does the Earth get its magnetic field?" does not have a simple answer. It does seem clear that the generation of the magnetic field is linked to the rotation of the earth, since Venus with a similar iron-core composition but a 243 Earth-day rotation period does not have a measurable magnetic field. It certainly seems plausible that it depends upon the rotation of the fluid metallic iron which makes up a large portion of the interior, and the rotating conductor model leads to the term "dynamo effect" or "geodynamo", evoking the image of an electric generator.

Convection drives the outer-core fluid and it circulates relative to the earth. This means the electrically conducting material moves relative to the earth's magnetic field. If it can obtain a charge by some interaction like friction between layers, an effective current loop could be produced. The magnetic field of a current loop could sustain the magnetic dipole type magnetic field of the earth. Large-scale computer models are approaching a realistic simulation of such a geodynamo.