Current Events

  • 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.
  • Massive Tornado Outbreak on Tornado Alley
    The week of May 19 brings dozens of tornadoes to Tornado Alley in the states of Oklahoma, Kansas, Io...Read more

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    Massive Tornado Outbreak on Tornado Alley

    The week of May 19 brings dozens of tornadoes to Tornado Alley in the states of Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa, Illinois and Missouri. On May 20th, a massive tornado struck Moore, Oklahoma, devastating communities - destroying over 100 homes and hitting two elementary schools and a hospital - with many casualties and deaths. Our thoughts are with our friends and colleagues suffering from these storms. For more on the May 20th storms, see the NOAA Storm Prediction Center Storm Report.
  • Kansas Legislator Proposes Bill to Outlaw Sustainability Education
    A bill has been introduced in the Kansas legislature this week that would prohibit the promotion of ...Read more

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    Kansas Legislator Proposes Bill to Outlaw Sustainability Education

    A bill has been introduced in the Kansas legislature this week that would prohibit the promotion of sustainability. Here is a link to the one-page bill: http://www.kslegislature.org/li/b2013_14/measures/documents/hb2366_00_0000.pdf. See report on Bloomberg News.

    Image courtesy of David Greenberg (and Tom Hartley's software)

From: David Greenberg
Veracruz, March 9, 2006

Short Flight

We launched a balloon at around 3:00 local time from a site outside Mexico City. Unfortunately, the flight only lasted about an hour because the balloon went higher than it was supposed to and the flight was automatically terminated by software on the balloon. You can see from the attached graph what happened.The x-axis is time in fractions of an hour, and the y-axis is altitude in thousands of feet.

Why did the balloon go so high? We're not sure but we think the heat from the sun and the warm air, the fact that we waited too long to launch after the balloon software was trying to control its altitude and the fact that the relative pressure inside the ballast tank and the outer balloon was not calibrated correctly for the launch site altitude all contributed to the balloon's early demise. But this is what real science is like. Tonight we will go over our calculations and tomorrow we'll try again. As Albert Einstein said: Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is to not stop questioning.

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