#InternationalAsteroidDay, #OmniGlobe #Siberia, #RussianFederation, #UnitedNationsGeneralAssembly, AssociationofSpaceExplorers, #Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, #Dr.BrianMay, #DanicaRemy, #GrigRichters, #RustySchweickart, #PacificMuseumofEarth, UniversityofBritishColumbia, Toronto, June 30 (Canadian-Media): International Asteroid Day (IAD) is being observed globally today to commemorate the anniversary of the Tunguska asteroid impact over Siberia, Russian Federation, on 30 June 1908, media reports said. IAD was declared by United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) to be observed all over the world on June 30 of every year on the proposal of the Association of Space Explorers, which was endorsed by Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS). “We are extremely proud of the UN recognition as we founded Asteroid Day to raise awareness of the asteroid threat and the opportunity for the human species to unite around a single goal: protect our planet from asteroid impacts,” stated Asteroid Day co-founders Dr. Brian May, Danica Remy, Grig Richters and Rusty Schweickart. “Asteroid impacts are the only natural disaster we know how to prevent if we, as the crew of Spaceship Earth work together towards a global solution.” The first official observance of International Asteroid Day is reported to take place in 2017. While Canada is getting ready to celebrate its 150th birthday tomorrow, it is observing the IAD today, fully aware of the asteroid threats and our efforts to prevent its impacts. Vancouver’s Space Centre in Pacific Museum of Earth (PME) —a University of British Columbia -- based organization that specializes in hands-on demos of rocks and minerals—has joined the charge this year. The space Centre will pass around asteroids and meteorites, and explain how their compositions are unlike anything found on Earth. Pacific Museum of Earth. Image credit: pme.ubc.ca PME offers a variety of education programs to small or large groups, families, social clubs, summer camps, and school groups of all ages. Kids get to enjoy the event screens “The Little Prince” movie, featuring a young girl discovering the extraordinary world of the Little Prince—who just happens to live on an asteroid. OmniGlobe is one of the PME’s newest permanent exhibits and is Canada’s first and only OmniGlobe. It is a spherical interactive display on which you can project images and animations of planets, real time weather, ocean currents, tsunami wave data, forest fires, ancient ice coverage and much more. OmniGlobe in Pacific Museum of Earth. Image credit: pme.ubc.ca PME gives guided tours of the museum to interactive Earth Science themed workshops. It also offers virtual tours and enables anyone to get its tour while sitting at home. (Reporting by Asha Bajaj)
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![]() Atlantic Ocean: Wikimedia Commons NASA, #AnastasiaRomanou, #NASA'sGoddardInstituteforSpaceStudies, #ClimateChange, #JohnMarshall #MassachusettsInstituteOfTechnology Toronto, June 18 (ICanadian-Media): New NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) research, one of the first studies to estimate how much and how quickly the ocean absorbs atmospheric gases and contrast it with the efficiency of heat absorption revealed that that gases are more easily absorbed over time than heat energy and that release of buried gases and heat from the oceans will keep raising temperatures, NASA reports said. NASA. Image credit: Twitter handle “Most of the excess heat from climate change will go into the ocean eventually…most of the excess chemical pollutants and greenhouse gases will be buried in the ocean. But the truth is that the ocean recirculates that extra load and, at some point, will release some of it back to the atmosphere, where it will keep raising temperatures, even if future carbon dioxide emissions were to be much lower than they are now” said Anastasia Romanou, lead author and climate scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and Columbia University in New York City. Romanou added people will have to cope with this release of buried gases and heat from the oceans, sometimes called the “warming in the pipeline” or “warming commitment.” Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Image credit: NASA The Goddard Institute for Space Studies, reportedly is a laboratory in the Earth Sciences Division of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and a unit of the Columbia University Earth Institute. The institute is located at Columbia University in New York City. Using two computer models that simulate the ocean, NASA and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) scientists found that over time gases were absorbed more easily than heat energy. These findings formed the basis of further research to study these impacts on climate change. The world’s oceans have considerably slowed down, said reports, by storing atmosphere heat, carbon dioxide and other gases in their depths for decades to centuries and millennia. Over the last ten years, reportedly one-fourth of human-emissions of carbon dioxide as well as 90 percent of additional warming due to the greenhouse effect have been absorbed by the oceans. “As the ocean slows down, it will keep uptaking gases like carbon dioxide more efficiently, much more than it will keep uptaking heat. It will have a different behavior for chemistry than it has for temperature,” said Romanou. She and colleagues at the MIT, Massachusetts used the NASA GISS ocean model and the MIT General Circulation Model to simulate one of the Atlantic's major current systems that delivers absorbed heat and gases to the depths. NASA GISS ocean model To understand the ocean's sponge-like capabilities, the researchers used two independent models of Atlantic Ocean currents with shipboard observations of chlorofluorocarbons, also called passive tracer, as a starting point. This allowed scientists to see how much of the gas is absorbed from the atmosphere into the ocean and then follow it as it travels around the world in the currents. These findings by the scientists of how efficiently gases and heat are absorbed by ocean, and consequently their release, will improve global climate model projections for future climate scenarios, said co-author John Marshall, a professor of oceanography at MIT. (Reporting by Asha Bajaj) |
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January 2021
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