Billionaire Elon Musk is pushing ahead with an attempt to utilize emissions contributing to climate change, tweeting that his rocket company will launch a program to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and use it to power spacecraft.
The chairman and chief executive officer of Space Exploration Technologies Corp., Musk announced the project on Dec. 13, shortly after being named Person of the Year by Time magazine.
Lightning is one of the most destructive forces of nature, as in 2020 when it sparked the massive California Lightning Complex fires, but it remains hard to predict. A new study led by the University of Washington shows that machine learning—computer algorithms that improve themselves without direct programming by humans—can be used to improve lightning forecasts.
Better lightning forecasts could help to prepare for potential wildfires, improve safety warnings for lightning and create more accurate long-range climate models.
“The best subjects for machine learning are things that we don’t fully understand. And what is something in the atmospheric sciences field that remains poorly understood? Lightning,” said Daehyun Kim, a UW associate professor of atmospheric sciences. “To our knowledge, our work is the first to demonstrate that machine learning algorithms can work for lightning.”
After dozens of tornadoes sweep through nine states, here is a look at the worst tornado outbreaks on record.
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The same Saildrones captured the first-ever video from inside a major hurricane from sea level in September.
Six autonomous Saildrones are taking off on a six-month journey to tackle some of Earth’s most challenging ocean conditions, in order to improve climate change and weather forecast computer models, reported CNN.
They will travel to the Gulf Stream throughout the winter months where they will collect data about the process by which oceans absorb carbon (carbon uptake). So far, the numbers on this type of activity have only been estimates produced by statistical methods that cannot, therefore, be relied upon.
“This Saildrone mission will collect more carbon dioxide measurements in the Gulf Stream region in winter than has ever been collected in this location and time of year,” said Jaime Palter, a scientist at the University of Rhode Island who is co-leading the research.
“With this data, we will sharpen our quantification of ocean carbon uptake and the processes that enable that uptake in this dynamic region.”
This work will be crucial to properly estimate the Global Carbon Budget.
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What’s needed instead is something more like the engineering that goes into a race car, where the initial design is as perfect as the engineers know how to make it upfront, but every few laps during a race, they fine-tune it further for the specific conditions on the track that day, Venne said. His inspiration for a solution that is less labor-intensive than car racing also comes from the world of automobiles — specifically self-driving cars.
In addition to knowing the basic rules of the road, a self-driving car needs to be able to adapt to the unexpected, such as swerving to avoid hitting the squirrel crossing the road ahead, Venne said. “It occurred to me that if we’re doing this with cars, we should be able to do the same with the technology that drives the mechanical side of the building.”
BrainBox AI focuses primarily on controlling the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems within a building, which accounts for the majority of the energy consumption in most buildings, Venne said. A next-level goal is to get multiple neighboring buildings in a city working in tandem to produce better results, like helping utilities balance the consumption of electricity during periods of peak demand. A pilot project based on that concept won a Tech for Our Planet challenge at the recently concluded COP26 United Nations conference on controlling climate change.
We have so many types of green energy available to us, so why the hell do we still rely on fossil fuels when tidal plants like this do the same job without any emissions? Swansea Bay Lagoon has a breakwater approximate lifecycle of at least 120 years, meaning it will last twice as long as a nuclear facility and 5X longer than offshore wind turbines. It’s a no-brainer 🧠 This is how you fight climate change!
📹 Preconstruct via Vimeo / TidalLagoonSwanseaBay / ℹ️ Good News Network.
The South African satellite, SumbandilaSat (Pathfinder in Venda) is reaching the end of its life and will deorbit on Friday 10 December 2021.
The satellite was launched in 2009 and took a total of 1,128 high-resolution, usable images. In addition, these imageries were applied in local research and on the Copernicus (previously GMES: Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) programme. The data also contributed towards disaster management such as flood monitoring in Namibia and fire campaigns in the Kruger National Park in South Africa. Furthermore, it also recorded timely images of the Fukushima nuclear disaster and the Tuscaloosa tornado in the USA.
In May 2005, the then DST (Department of Science and Technology) of the South African Government commissioned Stellenbosch University and SunSpace to develop the ZASat pathfinder satellite program (later renamed SumbandilaSat), a technology demonstrator in conjunction with the South African industry. Consequently, SumbandilaSat was delivered 15 months later and launched from Baikonur, Kazakhstan on September 17 2009 with monitoring and satellite support from the SANSA Space Operations facility in Hartebeesthoek.
Moving CO2 from Air to Oceans May Be Necessary to Slow Warming.
Climbing concentrations of carbon dioxide make it likely that humans will have to move some gases from the atmosphere into the oceans to prevent crippling effects of climate change, the National Academies said in a major report released yesterday.
It came after months of deliberation among top U.S. scientists who concluded that global efforts to reduce emissions, even if successful, “may not be enough to stabilize the climate.” The report identified six ways to capture and store carbon dioxide in the oceans, a controversial idea that the report said “will likely be needed.”
Potential methods include stimulating more plant growth in and around the oceans and manipulating ocean currents to draw CO2 deep underwater.
Tens of thousands of years ago, on the territory of the uninhabited Sahara Desert, gardens flourished, rivers flowed, ancient people cultivated fertile lands. However, we know how it all ended — today in this place is a desert scorched by the blazing sun with an area 38 times the size of Great Britain. However, humanity has a chance to return life to these lands again, and as a bonus to receive free electricity for all inhabitants of the planet.
The installation of wind and solar farms could radically change the climate in this region: more rainfall, which will lead to a revival of vegetation and a drop in temperature. At least that’s what Yang Li, the study’s author and senior researcher at the University of Illinois, says. No mystery! Wind turbines facilitate the diffusion of hot and cool air. This, in turn, will raise the average rainfall by 50%, and solar panels absorb most of the solar energy, preventing it from overheating the earth.
All this will be effective only with the global development of a lifeless desert. The process has already begun. But they tried repeatedly to tame the cruel and hot sun of the Sahara.
#inventions #technology #solar.
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