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World

Great Circle Route Planning

I found this website to be a useful tool for flight route planning to reduce travel durations.

Category 6 for mega-hurricane era

But “the Saffir-Simpson scale is a relic of an earlier age in forecasting”. Maybe a whole new scale system is needed? “What the Saffir-Simpson scale is good for is quantifying, showing, that the most intense storms are becoming more intense because of climate change”.

GeoTech

Geocoding

Nice example page that lets you explore the OpenCage Geocoding API.

Remote Sensing

Journalism and Remote Sensing

Most Warming Mapped

The graphics and animation in The Washington Post’s climate stories just get better and better.

Methane SAT

Methane SAT is the first remote sensing satellite developed, funded, and launched by an environmental nonprofit, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). Designed to detect methane leaks so mitigations can be applied. It is notable that it launched on a SpaceX Transporter-10 mission. That mission carried 53, yes 53, other spacecraft “including CubeSats, MicroSats, and a hosted payload”. See the book review below if you’re interested in this phenomenal explosion of satellites.

Tree rings and climate change

Really excellent scrolly-telling piece from the Washington Post on tree-rings in general, what they tell us, and the evidence of our current Climate Change. From the birthplace of dendrochronology.

Biogeography

Beer Archaeologist

Alright, this sounds like a great gig, recreating ancient beers. They also used ancient grains in ancient times, go figure. I want to try Emmer beer. Emmer is a type of wheat so pony up that modern Hefeweizen and the ancient one please. I’ve seen stories on the “Beer Archaeologist” Travis Rupp before and they are always great. You can try some of these recipes at Avery Brewing in Boulder, Colorado.

Antarctica

Geoengineering

It seems baffling to me that humans would consider geoengineering on a planetary scale, to slow down global warming, when we can’t even do the simplest things like stopping fossil fuel subsidies. It may be valid science and a legitimate path but we are sure to fuck up the execution and timing (e.g. too late). I have no faith in any organization to accomplish any geoengineering plan, at scale, if we cannot execute on the basics of decarbonization rapidly. But, that’s just me. If we can’t do the simple stuff, stay away from making it worse. I do think these ideas are interesting to read about though.

Africa

Malawi and Mozambique

New Ecoregion?

Story of a proposed new ecoregion that is unique. A chain of mountains (inselbergs) that form an inland “archipelago”. The new name? South East Africa Montane Archipelago (SEAMA). It’s biodiversity is very important, is threatened, and needs urgent protection. Let’s save the diversity we already have. Rewilding works great but doesn’t have nearly the biodiversity that exists naturally.

Location and extent of the South East Africa Montane Archipelago (SEAMA) showing core sites in red, and an outline boundary of the convex hull of the ecoregion. (doi:10.1038/s41598-024-54671-z)DOI:10.1038/S41598-024-54671-Z.

Canada

Anthropocene

Marking the “golden spike” start of the Anthropocene with lake-bed cores. Crawford Lake in Ontario, Canada has the data. Plus links to a couple of podcasts I like on the Anthropocene. Which is still a controversial term when applied as a geologic epoch - but there’s no denying human’s history and the evidence of how we “wreak environmental havoc”. The term seems fitting even if it’s not geologic dogma.

Scientists conduct core sampling at Crawford Lake in April..

Iceland

Biogeography

Inside the Icelandic Salmon Wars.

I try to buy Wild Salmon. But I’ve enjoyed farmed Steelhead many times. It seems logical that farming fish would take some pressure off of harvesting wild stocks. It seems whenever we industrialize food production we fuck it up. Its happened in B.C., Chile, and now a story from the Westfjord’s of Iceland.

US

Geography of Organ Donation

Disbanding NOAA?

Project 2025 proposes to disband NOAA.

“The National Oceanographic [sic] and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories,” the proposal says. …the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, should be “disbanded” because it issues “theoretical” science and is “the source of much of Noaa’s climate alarmism”.

Rewilding

Yellowstone Wolves

Arguably the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone was a “rewilding” event which re-introduced the keystone species back to the ecosystem. As we’ve seen previously, with profound effects. Those profound effects biologists call a “Tropic Cascade”, “spawning renewal of vegetation and spurring biodiversity”. This is the feel-good story we’re told. But, there’s some dissent on this story and all is not rosy in Yellowstone. The article below (thanks Eric) outlines more nuances from skeptics of the trophic cascade story, like the reduction in elk population and an explosion of the buffalo population. But other proponents are arguing the buffalo population increase enhances the environment because of something called the Green Wave Hypothesis where migrating animals surf a wave of greening plants. It highlights an interesting biogeographical phenomenon for more study as we simultaneously continue to reduce migration patterns as well as potentially reintroduce opportunities for migration. Which is an interesting animal “cultural” phenomenon that is learned. So, once it’s unlearned what happens?

PNW

Seattle’s first map

A nice analysis and discussion of Seattle’s first map.