Snow At One of World's Highest Observatories Melting Earlier Than Ever Before (theguardian.com) 47
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The snow at the highest observatory in the world to be operated all-year-round is expected to completely melt in the next few days, the earliest time on record. Scientists at the Sonnblick observatory in the Austrian Central Alps, which is 3,106 meters (10,190ft) above sea level, have been shocked and dismayed to see the snow depleting so quickly. Some years the peak is covered in snow all summer. But this year it has melted more than a month before the previous record time, which was 13 August in 1963 and 2003. Throughout June, snow has been at the lowest levels since records began in 1938.
The observatory publishes the snow level every 10 minutes, along with other data. Rainfall affects the measurements. But the steady downwards trend is clear to see, and as of Tuesday the snow was down to just a couple of centimeters. Sonnblick was built in 1886, for scientists to explore the higher levels of the atmosphere. Since then it has been used by meteorologists to forecast the weather, and hosts the mountain observatory with the longest and most reliable climatic data.
The observatory publishes the snow level every 10 minutes, along with other data. Rainfall affects the measurements. But the steady downwards trend is clear to see, and as of Tuesday the snow was down to just a couple of centimeters. Sonnblick was built in 1886, for scientists to explore the higher levels of the atmosphere. Since then it has been used by meteorologists to forecast the weather, and hosts the mountain observatory with the longest and most reliable climatic data.
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Which glacier is that? TFA isn't about a glacier, it's about an observatory on a mountain...
Note that there are fewer than 100 years of data as to when this particular mountaintop are melts. Which isn't a whole lot, compared to the records for, say, London....
So they won't have to clean snow off the telescope (Score:1, Funny)
That's a good thing.
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Ach, just throw boiling water on the lens.
If it freezes, then it's just more lens, so better star photos. Obviously.
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Republicans are like the coyote chasing the road runner off a cliff and then getting nervous because there nothing but air for a long way down. The market is a lagging indicator. When the price goes up, the damage has already been done and you are screwed.
Sit back and enjoy the ride (Score:5, Insightful)
Best to think this is just the natural course of things. Humans, like any other species, will exploit available energy. We can't help it.
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We could all get together and shoot Putin. That'd be a start.
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We could all get together and shoot Putin. That'd be a start.
The only way shooting Putin ends the war in Ukraine is if it starts a civil war in Russia.
Putin was probably the only one crazy enough to invade Ukraine, but now that it's started Russia won't quit until they've won, been utterly defeated, or both sides are thoroughly exhausted (probably at least a year from now).
Unfortunately all of those options are going to involve a lot more dead bodies.
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We could all get together and shoot Putin
I like your line of thinking there! Can't have global warming if you've got nuclear winter.
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Re:Sit back and enjoy the ride (Score:5, Insightful)
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Go you go back and check because I think other than including something about abortion and guns you managed to hit every major GOP talking point? (Nice hit on EVs, btw. Entirely false to fact, but too many assertions to go back and refute one by one.)
Regardless, climate change will be the death of a thousand cuts. Extreme events like hurricanes, tornadoes, drought, "1,000-year" floods, and fires will increase, ravaging our food sources and destroying our infrastructure faster than we can maintain it and reb
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Nice hit on EVs, btw. Entirely false to fact,
Producing batteries does create a ton of CO2 and the batteries aren't economically recyclable. Where exactly am I wrong on this? I didn't really see you challenging this.
I understand your desire to do things to reduce CO2 consumption, but battery based EVs don't do anything meaningful other than make you feel like you've done something because you feel helpless against oil companies. Go throw hydrogen into an ICE and you've done something and done something meaningful. The conversion is easy to do. Harder t
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https://web.archive.org/web/20... [archive.org]
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Sigh
- Producing batteries does create a ton of CO2
And oil exploration, extraction, shipping, refining, shipping again, and then burning does not? There are plenty of legitimate studies on the carbon footprint. Read one.
- and the batteries aren't economically recyclable
Battery recycling isn't economical yet because, what, oh yeah, there largely haven't been enough automotive batteries to recycle. Not to mention that car batteries have been lasting longer than expected (hitting 200,000-300,000, and even 500,
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And oil exploration, extraction, shipping, refining, shipping again, and then burning does not? There are plenty of legitimate studies on the carbon footprint. Read one.
We're not talking about oil. You might as well have brought up the best wok to use for preparing stir fry.
Battery recycling isn't economical yet because, what, oh yeah, there largely haven't been enough automotive batteries to recycle. Not to mention that car batteries have been lasting longer than expected (hitting 200,000-300,000, and even 500,000 miles) and even then finding their way after the fact into grid-scale storage solutions. Further, EV batteries are still in their infancy, with solid electrolytes, sulfur, and other tech still under development.
We're still waiting on the promise of aluminum recycling, and how many decades has that been? 5 at least? Oh, and never mind that the same kind of batteries are used in laptops, cell phones, smart watches, etc. There's plenty of supply, the expense of recycling is simply much greater than just mining more, creating more CO2. Batteries have been in their infancy since the early 1800s. A car running on ga
Trustworthy Data!? (Score:1)
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Be grateful they're being honest. It's an artifact of the real life data - an outlier normally discarded in the data massaging process. If they threw it out, they'd be accused of manipulating the data to serve their purpose. If they don't throw it out, people question the integrity of the effort.
Real world data is messy.
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Be grateful they're being honest. It's an artifact of the real life data - an outlier normally discarded in the data massaging process. If they threw it out, they'd be accused of manipulating the data to serve their purpose. If they don't throw it out, people question the integrity of the effort.
Real world data is messy.
I meant that sarcastically, I should go back and add tags, I have worked with lots of depth sensors, and yes you can definitely get odd readings as you get to boundary conditions (such as 0). Getting good clean data out of depth sensors is hard, especially for irregular surfaces (such as snow and liquids in vibrating machinery)
I claim the error. (Score:2)
My apologies for not noticing the sarcasm. I'm usually on top of stuff like that. Mea culpa.
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Getting good clean data out of depth sensors is hard, especially for irregular surfaces (such as snow and liquids in vibrating machinery)
Or crabs [opb.org] - don't forget crabs...
In other news... (Score:2)
The sun road appears to be having historically late snow falls: https://flatheadbeacon.com/202... [flatheadbeacon.com]
Please be clear on the difference between weather and climate on these kinds of articles or people can abuse them...
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Repeat after me.
Weather is not climate. Weather is not climate. Weather is not climate. Weather is not climate.
Weather... okay. Okay,
Enough weather IS climate.
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Repeat after me.
Weather is not climate. Weather is not climate. Weather is not climate. Weather is not climate.
Weather... okay. Okay,
Enough weather IS climate.
Agreed, but there are issues when you provide examples of weather as examples of climate change, when counter examples are happening at the same time. Now if they were to discuss how climate change adds more energy and extreme weather to the world, thus excessively cold weather comes along with the excessively hot weather. Though I guess this level of depth is too much for most news reporting.
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Didn't NASA have a telescope in a modified C141
I think it was called Kuiper
I'd guess it would have flown at above 40,000 ft
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Didn't NASA have a telescope in a modified C141
I think it was called Kuiper
I'd guess it would have flown at above 40,000 ft
Yep
First was a Convair 990, appears to fly up to 41k ft https://www.nasa.gov/centers/a... [nasa.gov]
This one was lost in a collision with a P-3.
The Kuiper Airborne Observatory could get up to 48k ft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Now SOFIA a Boeing 747 that flew at 45k ft is likely to be retired without(?) replacement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
At least those are the ones I've found.
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Seems to me the Mauna Kea observatory isn't operated continuously, what with scientists having to stay at the base station for a day to acclimate to the thin air [wikipedia.org]:
Soylent Green (Score:2)
Soylent Green will be People!
The headline is over-simplifying things (Score:2)
I went to the station's website a few hours ago - the Guardian article links to it - and they gave the reason for the melt: Red sand coming up from the Sahara Desert is colouring the snow and making it less reflective, bottom line is it absorbs more sunlight and melts.
There have been at least three "events" this year where sand from storms over the Sahara has been funnelled north to the Alps and beyond, one of them was a few days ago and the others were around February or March. This is from memory, I may
Hoher Sonnblick, online (Score:2)
Garbage headline, Slashdotters must do better (Score:2)
Without regard to whether you deny all indications of warming and think the planet was created a few thousand years ago, or you are terrified that all life here will be soon snuffed-out on a world that fell into place from the debris of an un-caused explosion of nothing billions of years ago, or anything much saner in-between, this headline is dishonest and you should be objecting to it.
It may well be true that this snow is melting earlier than humans have ever seen it melt before. As an objective FACT, how