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  • Irish Chronicles Document Links Between Volcanoes and Weather
    A study of over 40,000 written entries in Irish Annals and ice core measurements shows a strong corr...Read more

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    Irish Chronicles Document Links Between Volcanoes and Weather

    A study of over 40,000 written entries in Irish Annals and ice core measurements shows a strong correlation between the occurrence of volcanic eruptions and extreme cold weather in Ireland over a 1200 year period. Data analyzed in this study cover the period from 431 to 1649, during which time up to 48 volcanic eruptions are identified in Greenland ice core records through deposition of volcanic sulfate in annual layers of ice. You can find the study (open access), published on 6 June 2013 in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research Letters, at http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024035/article. Find out more about how volcanoes can influence climate.
  • EF-5 Tornado in El Reno, Oklahoma Widest Ever Recorded in US
    The EF-5 tornado that hit El Reno, Oklahoma on May 31st was the widest ever recorded in the US, acco...Read more

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    EF-5 Tornado in El Reno, Oklahoma Widest Ever Recorded in US

    The EF-5 tornado that hit El Reno, Oklahoma on May 31st was the widest ever recorded in the US, according to the National Weather Service in Norman Oklahoma. The tornado, which remained on the ground for 40 minutes and reached 2.6 miles across (4.2 km), took the lives of 18 people including storm chasers Tim Samaras, Paul Samaras and Carl Young. For more information on the tornado, visit http://ow.ly/i/2hfDG.
  • Atmospheric CO2 Level Tops 400 ppm
    During the week of May 13th, the CO2 level at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii topped 400 ppm rep...Read more

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    Atmospheric CO2 Level Tops 400 ppm

    During the week of May 13th, the CO2 level at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii topped 400 ppm repeatedly. Daily levels of CO2 can vary due to weather, and there are seasonal trends as well. The level of atmospheric greenhouse gases continues to increase, now over 120 ppm since the Industrial Revolution began. For more on the Keeling Curve, see http://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/. Find out more about greenhouse gases and warming.
This is the Hubble Deep Field-South, an exposure taken over ten days in October, 1998.
Click on image for full size
Hubble Space Telescope image courtesy of STScI

Hubble Heads South for the Winter
News story originally written on November 23, 1998

Scientists now have a compliment to the Hubble Deep Field--it's the Hubble Deep Field-South. The HDF-S is a 10-day-long exposure of a piece of the southern hemisphere sky taken in October 1998.

"We have eagerly awaited this new set of images ever since the first HDF, which had a dramatic impact on the entire science of astronomy," said STScI astronomer Robert Williams. "Hubble's deep field views revealed a large, heretofore unseen fraction of the universe and opened it up to interpretation and understanding."

The Hubble Space Telescope looked at a section of of the constellation Tucana to create the HDF-S. The original HDF was taken from a section of space near the Big Dipper. Scientists also wanted the HDF-S to look at a distant quasar to gather more information than they had through the HDF.

The two cosmic "core samples" appear to support the theory that the universe is uniform (on a large scale) regardless of the direction you look. If scientists tried to map the entire sky using the technique they used to get the two deep fields, it would take 900,000 years.

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