Sam.urmy

“Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.”

Henry Miller, 1950. 

People come up with all sorts of wacky ideas to explore the oceans. And here is another one of those ideas. Meet the Polar Pod, a manned research platform dreamed up by French Explorer/Physician Jean-Louis Etienne to drift around Antarctica in the Southern Ocean. My first thought when I saw this concept was WTF. . . . → Read More: Is this Polar Pod genius or just plain insanity?

As the weather warms and the outdoor picnic/barbecue season commences, there are few more important questions than how can I keep my drinks chilled?  And for the scientifically minded:  what processes control the temperatures of my cold beverages?  

How many times have you taken a cold beer out of the cooler and found it lukewarm and unsatisfying after a few minutes?  How can this be prevented?


Relax!  Cutting edge research at the University of Washington reveals the answers to these pressing issues.  It turns out that humidity can be as important as temperature in warming your drinks, and that a cold brew is just an inexpensive koozie away.

In a recently published paper in Physics Today, UW Professors Dale Durran and Dargan Friesen, aided by undergraduates Stella Choi and Steven Brey, did a series of experiments with chilled soft drink cans exposed to various temperatures and humidities.

In their experiments they started with 12oz cans filled with water at a temperature just above freezing.  Then they exposed the cans to various temperatures and humidities over a five-minute period.   The results were sobering.  Condensation counts.

When you take a can out of the frig or cooler, the can and its contents warm by two processes:  conduction of heat to the can (this is called sensible heating) and by condensation of water vapor on the can (called latent heating).   When water vapor condenses it releases huge amounts of heat, specifically 680 calories per gram of water condensed.    So when you see that shiny, watery condensation on your cold drink, imagine those drops as powerful heaters! 

For a typical Seattle summer day (77F) and moderate humidity (say 50% relative humidity) the UW experiments showed that the drink warmed up by roughly 9F in five minutes and about 2.5F of the warming was due to the condensation.    If the humidity was 80%, a rare occurrence here in Seattle, the can would warm up by 11F and about 6F would be due to condensation.   You don't want to enjoy your beer or soft drink in a hot shower at 100% relative humidity!  Few of you do that I suspect.

They did the same experiments at 95F and a range of humidities; the impacts of humidity became HUGE at high temperatures and high humidities. At 95F and 80% relative humidity the can warmed by 22F, and 13F of the warming was by contributed by condensation.



No wonder this research became a viral subject in India and Pakistan, which extreme heat and humidity are commonplace.

So what does one do about this scourge?  One that robs our enjoyment of a frosty drink on a warm summer's day.

 Easy!   Buy an inexpensive koozie that fits around a can or bottle.  They are cheap and effective devices (see images) that act as insulators, which helps in  two ways.  First, they lesses the conduction of heat from the surrounding air to the can and bottle.  But just as important, it pretty much stops the condensation, since the outside of the koozie generally does not cool enough to cause condensation (the outside of the koozie stays about the dew point of the surrounding air).  

"Antarctic time" can stretch out like taffy when you are stuck in a storm that hits right as you try to leave. But even when the hours pass their slowest, one can't help but think how they will miss the place and its pace.

This Picture of Boston, Circa 1860, Is the World’s Oldest Surviving Aerial Photo

“Boston, as the Eagle and the Wild Goose See It” by James Wallace Black. Photo: James Wallace Black / The Met

from Smithsonian.com

Keaton. 

You know the good stuff is going to keep rolling in from my research cruise to Mid-Cayman Spreading Center. At the end of JC82, we had the opportunity to join a bolt-on cruise to explore the seabed around Montserrat. During a biological survey of the surrounding abyssal plain, we twice stumbled on a giant deep-sea [...]

Sea urchins begin their lives as ethereal wanderers.

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Sea Urchins - Planktonic Origins from Parafilms on Vimeo.

Hellacool video, as usual, from the French team at the Plankton Chronicles. I particularly like the kinda creepy (in a good way) narration.

Fave frame: symmetry.
  

Building the World’s Largest Ship in 50,000 Pics

This timelapse, produced by Discovery Channel and Maersk Line, shows the construction of Maersk Line’s first Triple-E container ship at the DSME shipyard in Okpo, Korea.

The timelapse was made using 50,000 photos taken over a 3 months period.

Centuries Ago, a Cat Walked Across This Medieval Manuscript

While pawing through a stack of medieval manuscripts from Dubrovnik, Croatia, University of Sarajevo doctoral student Emir O. Filipović stumbled upon a familiar set of splotches marring the centuries-old pages. Years ago, a mischievous kitty had left her ink-covered prints on the book…

Read more: http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2013/03/centuries-ago-a-cat-walked-across-this-medieval-manuscript/#ixzz2NXWblmLp
Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter

We interrupt our regularly scheduled marine science and conservation discussions and frequent Aquaman adulation to bring you this important announcement:

“My legs creak as I climb the stairs to our meeting room. I lean against the wall to steady myself. I could have taken the elevator, saved myself the pain, but I need to heal. [...]

Success in 03:27 minutes. Harbor seal pups are awesome.

The Weather Channel is now naming major storms, most recently referred to two major East Coast events as Nemo and Saturn.  Since the WC seems adverse to naming West Coast storms, those of us facing the Pacific must take the matter into our own hands.   No one will name our storms if we don't.

So today, this blog will begin leveling the playing field by announcing that Atmospheric River Poseidon will soon hit our coast, bringing torrential rains and possibly flooding to some rivers drainages.

Be advised. Poseidon is approaching!
Poseidon arrives on Tuesday.  The WRF model prediction of the total water vapor in an atmospheric column for 1 PM that day shows the watery "finger" of Poseidon stretching from near Hawaii to the Northwest.  Yes, some folks have called this a "Pineapple Express", but we are beyond that now.


Poseidon's humid, warm finger will be touching us for days!  Let's look at the forecast precipitation for several 24-h periods.  The first, ending 4 PM on Tuesday (see graphic), shows the intensification of the precipitation as it is forced to rise by the local terrain, with the main impacts being in southern B.C. and NW Washington. 2-5 inches will pummel the windward side of Vancouver Island.

But Poseidon is not finished with us!  The next 24-h (ending 4 PM on Wednesday) enhances the terrible wrath, as his briny, wet finger strengthens and drifts down across Washington (see graphic). The western side of the Olympics will be particularly hard hit, as will the central Cascades.


And the final 24-h period I will show you (ending at 4 PM on Thursday), shows Poseidon's watery revenge moving a bit northward.

To get the whole wet picture, here is the 72hr precipitation total ending 4 PM on Thursday.  5-10 inches over the Olympics, north Cascades, and mountains of southern B.C.   Enough to bring some rivers to near bankfull.  (The National Weather Service has a hydrological outlook that notes the potential threat).  The interesting thing is that from Portland southward it will be dry...and quite warm. This time the Willamette will be favored by the trident-clad one.
But Poseidon's influence will go beyond rivers and streams, it will bring a current of very warm air at low levels, causing the freezing and snow levels to rise above the Cascade crests....here is the 850 hPa (around 5000ft) temperature and wind map for Wednesday night...warm air and strong southwesterly winds will extend over the region.  Great sadness will spread across the skiing community. 

For the middle of March, this will be a notable event, worthy of a proper name.  Too far away for the Weather Channel's attention or even a visit by Jim Cantore.  But we will honor it, in our fashion.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AQUARIUS! You’ve been measuring sea surface salinity from space for over a year now. It must feel good to be a grown up satellite giving oceanographers a whole new view of the ocean. Keep on tracking that fresh Amazon Plume, the salty subtropical seas and seasonal freshening in northern latitudes due to melting . . . → Read More: How salty is your ocean? How loose is your plume?

Georgia O’ Keeffe, 1956.

photo by Yousuf Karsh

Paul Newman, 1963.

Can an island that reaches a few hundred feet in elevation create its own clouds?   The answer is yes, and some wonderful video of southern Whidbey Island yesterday afternoon shows the action.

Image from the video at 1:12 PM Feb. 12

 The video was provided by Greg Johnson, who maintains the excellent skunkbayweather web site.  He has two cams looking northeastward towards Whidbey Island from his home in Skunk Bay (Hansville) on the Kitsap Peninsula (see map).


The temperature and dew point at Skunk Bay (see graphic) and other nearby sites (e.g., Wahl Rd on Whidbey Is, also shown) were close but not at saturation (the dew point was a few degrees less than the temperature).
Whidbey Island is about 300 ft high for the peninsula in view, with a relatively abrupt cliff facing the southeast. (see blow-up of the terrain below) The winds were from the southeast over the area and so

air was forced up quickly along that share..  As the air was forced to rise, it cooled (air moving from higher pressure to lower pressure expands and cools).  The temperature fell to the dew point and the air became saturated, producing a cloud.  As shown in the picture above, and the video below, the cloud was not only maintained over the land, but streamed downwind of the island.

How much will air cool moving up a slope?   If we assume that the air rose 100 meters (328 ft) and assume the dry adiabatic lapse rate (9.8 C per km, the rate that unsaturated air parcels cool when they are forced to rise), we get a decrease of .98C or 1.8F, which was enough to bring the temperature down to the dew point.

Greg Johnson produced a wonderful slow-motion video of the event; click on the image to view it yourself.


If you want real visual treat, check out his melding of TWO cams into one wide image--it doesn't get much better than that! (click on image below):

 
We may not have gotten megastorms this season like the NE U.S., but our weather has its own fascinations and subtleties.  Like the subtle flavors and accents of a fine wine compared to the overwhelming flavors of a highly sweetened soft drink.   Northwesterners have sophisticated meteorological palates.

A really close encounter between a small asteroid and Earth provides a reminder that rare, but big, threats need to be seriously confronted.

In his book Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North, Tom Sugrue makes a great point while discussing the erection of Levittowns. The premier suburban developments excluded blacks and became bastions of white supremacy. Here Sugrue looks at Levittown, Pennsylvania:

As was the case in every Levittown, by Levitt's orders, not a single resident was black. It was not for a shortage of potential black buyers. Black housing demand far exceeded supply. In metropolitan Philadelphia, between 1946 and 1953, only 347 of 120,000 new homes built were open to blacks. Racial exclusion had perverse economic effects: It created a vast gap between supply and demand. As a result, blacks paid more for housing on average than did whites. In nearly every northern city, black newcomers crammed into old and run-down housing, mainly in dense central neighborhoods left behind by upwardly mobile whites.

This is really sinister. In rhetoric, at the time, America claimed "separate but equal." In effect, what you see is something more like "separate and serfdom." The policy was to keep black people from moving out of ghettos, and to keep them from marketing their labor in competition with whites, unless absolutely necessary. It is not enough to merely understand segregation as a means to keep the "races" separate. Segregation is about rendering black people a permanent underclass. This is not about an amorphous diversity. This is about power.
Part of keeping power out of black hands is turning the community's aspirational class into a bevy of easy marks. You can only imagine what kind of money was made exploiting the dreams of middle class black people trapped in the ghettos of America. That money represents a transfer of wealth from black hands to white hands. It continued unabated from the early 20th century, through the New Deal (which actually aided this process), well into the 1960s.
We spend a great deal of time talking about the black poor, but less talked about is how America for most of its history has actively punished black ambition. The black middle class has been the field for demonstrations upon the subject of what happens to "niggers with ideas." Any history of race riots in America will note that the targets are invariably institutions of black improvement -- churches, "black wall streets," schools, homes, etc.  it's worth considering what message a country sends to a people when it persecutes ambition. 
And it's worth thinking about how this country thought about black citizenship. William Levitt pitched homeownership as act of patriotism:

No man who owns his own house and lot can be a Communist. He has too much to do.

When a nation excludes a people from the process of patriotism, what is it saying to them?

What does it feel like to drop through 10 feet of ice cover into deep, blue stillness to meet one of Earth's earliest forms of life?

myvintagevogue:

Jantzen 1947 / Illustrated by Pete Hawley

Kitt.

Got global bathymetric data? Check? Got a 3D printer? Check. Then you can make yourself a model of the ocean that you can hold in your hand! This graphic artist chose not to visualize the nooks and crannies on the sea floor, but the volume of water that makes up our oceans. As a kid . . . → Read More: How to hold the entire ocean in your hands

Two papers were just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by friends and former colleagues of mine from the University of Washington. Both of these papers confront an old and persistent question in fisheries science: what … Continue reading →

Lots of folks lately, us included, have chronicled Shell's confidence-shaking series of missteps, bad decisions and outright failures associated with their years-long, multi-billion-dollar campaign (technical and political) to drill for oil in the Arctic Ocean off the coast of Alaska.  Shell has decided to downplay their latest mishap -- losing control of their multimillion dollar drill rig, the Kulluk,  while it was being towed to Seattle from the drilling site in the Chukchi Sea -- as no big deal since the rig wasn't actually drilling at the time.

Uhhh...so we're supposed to feel better?  Because they can't get the simple stuff right?  Understand that nothing is "simple" in these often wild waters, but in the scheme of things, if you can't even move your equipment around without mishap, then how can you be trusted with the relatively complex and challenging processes of drilling and completing offshore oil wells in these waters? Or mounting a swift and effective oil spill response in ice-choked seas?

High-resolution satellite image showing the drill rig Kulluk aground off the coast of Alaska on January 4, 2013. Image courtesy DigitalGlobe. Subscribe to their WorldView report to see more great images.

It's not just technology failures that lead to disasters.  Bad / risky decisionmaking plays a major part too.  This November 9 news report said the Kulluk had been scheduled to spend the winter downtime in Dutch Harbor.  So why was it being moved? Ostensibly for maintenance work that couldn't be done in Dutch, but Shell admitted they were towing the Kulluk into the teeth of a major winter storm system in part to avoid paying taxes to the sate of Alaska.  Shell said the storm was unexpected. This analysis of the forecasts for the area by meteorologist Cliff Mass suggests otherwise, raising the possibility that Shell risked personnel and very pricey hardware to dodge a $6 million tax bill; about 1/10th of 1 percent of the total project investment. And guess who came to the rescue of the crew and the stranded Kulluk?  The US Coast Guard, courtesy of US taxpayers. What a deal.

Shell was allowed to start shallow "tophole" work on two of their planned wells in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas last summer, but they still need to secure Federal approval to continue drilling these wells to their full target depths.  This disturbing pattern of technical and decisionmaking failures suggests the kind of corporate culture that investigators have implicated as the underlying cause of the catastrophic BP oil spill in the Gulf in 2010.

That approval needs to be withheld until investigators, regulators and the public have enough information to confidently make the correct decision. There's no rush. The oil ain't going anywhere. And after all, down here in the Lower 48, Shell is producing so much oil they want permission to export it to Canada.

Let's slow down and make sure we get this right.

The USCG said Friday that it is coordinating a response with Royal Dutch Shell representatives after the company’s brand new $200 million tugboat experienced multiple engine failures while towing Shell’s arctic semisubmersible drilling rig, the Kulluk, approximately 50 miles south of Kodiak Island Friday, in 20-foot seas. Rough but not unusual conditions for the Arctic.  

The tugboat M/V Aiviq towing Shell's Kulluk drill rig in better times. Photo courtesy gCaptain.

This is right on the heels of the Coast Guard discovering "several major safety and pollution prevention equipment" deficiencies on Shell's other Arctic rig, the Noble Discoverer drillship.

And remember when the Discoverer went rogue and ran aground in Dutch Harbor back in July?

And Shell crushed their supposed oil spill containment device "like a beer can" during a field test this summer in water just 120 feet deep?
 
After having multiple delays getting their oil spill response vessel to meet Coast Guard standards?

This is a surprising - alarming? - series of missteps, mistakes and outright failures for a company of Shell's size, talent, market cap and ambitions.  Especially considering how much time and money, and political capital, they've invested in this program.  But it's not too late to take a prudent time out to allow a thorough, critical evaluation of whether we are really ready to drill safely in the Arctic, and respond effectively to oil spills in that tough environment.

Because if Shell isn't ready after all this time and effort and investment, then who on earth is?

MSE (my sentiments exactly)

robotcosmonaut:

The Saving Place

Engrossing Soviet science fiction holiday cards >