A Fire Creates Big "Volcanic" Stormclouds

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/08/100816-fires-thunderstorms-thunder-clouds-volcanoes-science-weather-russia/

Intense fires have the power to generate dirty thunderclouds that may be influencing the climate, scientists have discovered.

Like volcanoes, the dirty, fire-induced thunderstorms, or pyrocumulonimbus storms (pyroCbs), can funnel smoke and particulates high into the stratosphere, experts announced Friday at an American Geophysical Union meeting in Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil.

The high-flying smoke palls created by the so-called pyrocumulonimbus storms (pyroCbs) may be having unknown effects on Earth's climate, such as warming or cooling the atmosphere, the scientists added.

And the fire-started storms aren't just figments of a climate model. Recent satellite images, for instance, show that the forest fires currently raging in Russia (pictures) are generating several pyrocumulonimbus storms of unprecedented size, according to Michael Fromm, a meteorologist at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C.

(Also see "Planes Create Weird Clouds—And Snow, Rain Fall Out.")

Dirty Clouds Long Mistaken for Volcanic Ash

Pyrocumulonimbus clouds had long been mistaken for volcanic ash clouds, but Fromm and colleagues' new survey of satellite images dating back to 1979 has definitively linked them to especially intense forest fires called crown fires, the team says.

"It's when the fire sweeps from treetop to treetop without necessarily working its way down the trunks," said Nathaniel Livesey, an atmospheric scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, who worked on the survey.

The intense, rising smoke and heat of a crown fire can cause storm clouds to form—clouds that are typically bigger, taller, and darker than normal thunderstorm clouds.

Like natural smokestacks, the pyrocumulonimbus clouds absorb the fire's smoke and aerosol particles and funnel the pollutants as high as 11 miles (17 kilometers) into the upper atmosphere, where they exit the clouds and drift far and wide.

"An entire hemisphere can be polluted by an individual pyroCb ... and the smoke and pollutants can linger for several months," the Naval Research Laboratory's Fromm told National Geographic News.

The fire-started clouds are abnormal in other ways too. For example, while they can produce thunder and lightning and even tornadoes, pyroCbs rarely, if ever, create rain.

"That's because of the unique ingestion of so many smoke particles into the thunderstorm," From said.

By preventing water molecules from coming together, "the smoke essentially cuts off the precipitation process, so you get very violent storms without much rain," he said.

Furthermore, unlike normal thunderclouds, the fire-born clouds don't drift. They remain tethered to the blazes from which they were born.

Cancun Climate Summit Yeilds Deals

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11975470

UN talks in Cancun have reached a deal to curb climate change, including a fund to help developing countries.

Nations endorsed compromise texts drawn up by the Mexican hosts, despite objections from Bolivia.

The draft documents say deeper cuts in carbon emissions are needed, but do not establish a mechanism for achieving the pledges countries have made.

Some countries' resistance to the Kyoto Protocol had been a stumbling block during the final week of negotiations.

However, diplomats were able to find a compromise.

Delegates cheered speeches from governments that had caused the most friction during negotiations - Japan, China, even the US - as one by one they endorsed the draft.

BBC environment correspondent Richard Black said the meeting did not achieve the comprehensive, all-encompassing deal that many activists and governments want.

But he said it was being "touted as a platform on which that comprehensive agreement can be built".

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European Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said the deal was substantial and covered several issues

Mexico's President Felipe Calderon said the summit had allowed leaders to "glimpse new horizons" where countries had the "shared task to keep the planet healthy and keep it safe from [humans]".

Anesthetic Gases Heat Climate as Much as One Million Cars Do, New Research Shows

From the ScienceDaily.com website: "When doctors want their patients asleep during surgery, they gently turn the gas tap. But anesthetic gasses have a global warming potential as high as a refrigerant that is on its way to be banned in the European Union. Yet there is no obligation to report anesthetic gasses along with other greenhouse gasses such as carbon dioxide, refrigerants and laughing gas."

Read the full article here:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101203081644.htm

Lee Hotz: Inside an Antarctic Time Machine

Also from the ted.com website: "Science columnist Lee Hotz describes a remarkable project at WAIS Divide, Antarctica, where a hardy team are drilling into ten-thousand-year-old ice to extract vital data on our changing climate."

Watch the video here:

lee_hotz_inside_an_antarctic_time_machine

David Keith's Unusual Climate Change Idea

From the Ted.com website, "Environmental scientist David Keith proposes a cheap, effective, shocking means to address climate change: What if we injected a huge cloud of ash into the atmosphere to deflect sunlight and heat?"

Watch his lecture here:

http://www.ted.com/talks/david_keith_s_surprising_ideas_on_climate_change.html

Residents Blame City For Constant Floods

www.weather.com reports that, "Historic floods in March actually changed the course of the Woonasquatucket river in Cranston, Rhode Island. Now, homeowners say the city hasn't done enough to solve the problem."

Watch it here: http://www.weather.com/outlook/videos/caught-on-cam-dramatic-water-rescue-19034#19037

31ft Polish Snowman

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 5:57 PM on 12th December 2010


It's Frosty, super-sized.

This 31-foot behemoth - dubbed 'Milocinek' - is casting a long, frigid shadow over Trzebnica, Poland.

A group of 'bored' Poles started building him one day - and then decided they would just keep going.

Six days later, they hunted down a barrel for a hat and a traffic cone for a nose, and their work was done.
The resulting Goliath of a snowman stands on eye-level with surrounding two-storey homes, and dwarfs passing cars.

The snowman was completed Friday near the town of Trzebnica in southwestern Poland.

A Polish newspaper's website reported Saturday that the snowman's builders believe Milocinek is the largest snowman built in Poland since winter weather set in more than a week ago.

Other observers go further - suggesting he may well be the largest snowman in the world.

But with a major storm dumping two inches of snow an hour on America's mid-west last night, and thousands of children being held home from school, that record may not last for long.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1337926/Is-worlds-biggest-snowman-Bored-Poles-build-31ft-behemoth-traffic-cone-nose.html#ixzz186rephcE