On May 20, 2013, a massive EF5 <a href="http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/Atmosphere/tornado.html">tornado</a> hit Moore, Oklahoma, devastating communities and lives. The tornado, on the ground for 40 minutes, took a path through a subdivision of homes, destroying block after block of homes, and hitting two elementary schools just as school was ending as well as a hospital. Hundreds of people were injured, and 24 were killed.<p><small><em>Image courtesy of Ks0stm, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license</em></small></p>This historic image is the first ever taken from a spacecraft in orbit about <a href="/mercury/mercury.html">Mercury</a>, the innermost planet of the solar system. Taken on 3/29/2011 by <a href="/space_missions/robotic/messenger/messenger.html">MESSENGER</a>, it shows numerous craters across the <a href="/mercury/Interior_Surface/Surface/surface_overview.html">surface</a> of the planet. Temperatures there can reach over 800F because Mercury is so close to the Sun and rotates so slowly. MESSENGER entered orbit around Mercury earlier in March 2011.<p><small><em>NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington</em></small></p>Greenland's <a href="http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/polar/cryosphere_glacier1.html">ice sheet</a> saw a record <a href="http://www.windows2universe.org/headline_universe/olpa/greenland_10dec07.html">melt</a> in July 2012. Scientists studying this event have found that this melting event was triggered by an influx of unusually warm air and amplified by the presence of a blanket of thin low-level <a href="http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/Atmosphere/cloud.html">clouds</a> which pushed temperatures up above freezing. For more information see the <a href="http://www.news.wisc.edu/21638">press release</a> from the University of Wisconsin Madison.<p><small><em>Image courtesy of University of Wisconsin-Madison</em></small></p>According to a Greek legend, the sea god Poseidon placed the figure of <a href="/the_universe/Constellations/circumpolar/cassiopeia.html">Cassiopeia</a> among the stars. It is said that Cassiopeia has a ridiculous upside-down position to punish her for having been pretentious.<p><small><em>Image courtesy of 1995 Visual Language (c). All rights reserved.</em></small></p>An image of Hurricane Sandy taken by the GOES-13 satellite on October 28. This category 1 <a href="/earth/Atmosphere/hurricane/hurricane.html">hurricane</a> was huge, spanning a horizontal distance of about one-third the US continental landmass. The storm came onshore in New Jersey, and gradually moved northeast. The storm disrupted the lives of tens of millions in the eastern US, doing billions of dollars in damage, resulting in over 30 deaths. Visit the National Hurricane Center's webpage on <a href="http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/">Hurricane Sandy</a> for details.<p><small><em>Image courtesy of NASA</em></small></p><p>You don't normally see <a href="/space_weather/space_weather.html">space weather</a> forecasted on the evening news, but it does impact life on <a href="/earth/earth.html">Earth</a> in many ways. What are the threats posed from all of these natural disasters and how can we work to mitigate those threats beforehand? </p> <p>Check out the materials about natural disasters in <a href="/earth/natural_hazards/when_nature_strikes.html">NBC Learn Videos</a>, and their earth system science connections built up by the related secondary classroom activities.</p><p><small><em>NBC Learn</em></small></p>


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Geologists at Harvard University found evidence that sea ice extended to the equator up to 716.5 million years ago. Listen to this and other podcasts ...Read more
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