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1500 questions
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Wet and dry seasons - what are they and how do they form?
While asking questions on Worldbuilding, I keep hearing about wet/dry seasons. Obviously, one has rain and the other doesn't, and I've gathered that they occur with regularity on an annual basis, but what exactly are they? What causes them, and…
Thomas Reinstate Monica Myron
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What is the potential impact of hurricane intensification and sea level rise on coastal flooding?
Climate change has the potential to increase flooding by hurricane intensification (magnitude and intensity) and by sea level rise. Many communities around the world are already exposed to coastal flooding from tropical cyclones. How much will the…
arkaia
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2 answers
How much land does it take to support New York City?
New York City has about 8.5 million people living in an area of 300 square miles which gives a population density of 28,300 people per square mile. The food required to support such a high population density is mostly grown outside of that 300…
Chris Mueller
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Does within-canopy wind direction correlate with wind above the planetary bounday layer?
Wind above the planetary boundary layer (PBL) tends to be fairly smooth and constant over short periods of time. Below the planetary boundary layer, the smoothness is broken by eddies caused by friction with the land surface. Below the canopy, wind…
naught101
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Cell Size of Salt Pan Tessellations
Salt Pans (such as in Badwater Basin of Death Valley, California) often show a tessellation pattern which forms presumably due to contraction of the deposited salt crust forming irregular cracks towards which the salt crust bends upwards and creates…
S.Surace
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How would weather change on a tidally-locked terrestrial planet?
On Earth, weather is very much affected by the Earth's rotation around its axis and around the Sun. Even locations that are almost on the equator do have strong annual variations in precipitation and other characteristics. On the other hand, on a…
Irigi
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Does bathymetry affect ocean topography/height?
Here is a map of ocean surface height or topography:
Source: http://www.esa.int/var/esa/storage/images/esa_multimedia/images/2010/12/mean_dynamic_topography_of_global_ocean/9930795-2-eng-GB/Mean_dynamic_topography_of_global_ocean.jpg
How…
user4624937
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How important is Sahara dust for the Amazon?
A recent article by Yu et al. estimated that 28 million tons of dust from the Sahara fall to the surface over the Amazon basin per year out of the 132 million tons that remain in the air when the dust reaches South America. The deposited dust is…
arkaia
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10
votes
3 answers
Source of water for the Great Artesian Basin in Australia
The Great Artesian Basin in Australia covers 23% of the continent and contains 64,900 cubic kilometres of water.
Many years ago it was claimed on a TV science show I saw that some of the water in the basin comes from Papua New Guinea (PNG) via an…
Fred
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Alternatives to Plant Functional Types as parametrisations in land surface models?
Plant Functional Types (PFTs) are a discretisation of global vegetation types. They are used in land surface models to parametrise many values, including albedo, various photosynthesis parameters, and water use. These affect the resultant estimates…
naught101
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Predicting volcanic eruptions by experimentally proven volatile outgassing observations
In the abstract for the article Forecasting Etna eruptions by real-time observation of volcanic gas composition (Aiuppa et al. 2007), the authors assert that real time monitoring of volcanic volatiles, such as $\ce{H2O}$, $\ce{CO2}$ and $\ce{SO2}$…
user889
10
votes
1 answer
Does temperature affect partial pressure of gas dissolved in water?
I am trying to understand the behavior of oxygen dissolved in seawater. I have always been under the impression that if a gas is in equilibrium between its gaseous and aqueous forms, that it will always have the same partial pressure in the air as…
CephBirk
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Sudden Localized Surface Water Temperature Increase In Eastern Lake Superior, Canada
As can be seen in the below sequence of NOAA images spanning 15 hours (most recent at top), in extreme eastern Lake Superior the surface water (but not bottom water) temperature increased dramatically in a localized area. Can anyone confirm or rule…
DavePhD
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3 answers
Mega-tsunami, what is the greatest possible height of a tsunami?
The notion of a taller-than-skyscraper, so called "megatsunami" is not new - with the often-reported 524m (1720 feet) high Lituya Bay tsunami of 1958 is sometimes referred as such (despite the wave not reaching that high). In many movies (and some…
user889
10
votes
3 answers
Pressure as a function of altitude above 11 km
I need to calculate the force that causes a weather balloon with a specific volume to rise. Having searched for quite a few hours, I found the needed formula that can be used to calculate the pressure at a certain altitude. (surprisingly, the…
Tacticus
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