Along this part of the voyage, I am discovering how climate change might affect homes and businesses built helter-skelter on a seaside cliff. Location: at an Internet café in the Valle de Guadalupe, 20 miles inland from the coast, with vineyards and olive groves lining the hills. Conditions: Clear skies, 3 p.m. It is warmer inland in the valley, but the breeze keeps the temperature cool. Discussion: After our brief encounter with “hyena-like” road criminals, we had a pleasant night at the cliff-top camping of K-58, one of the last spots before the old Mexico Highway 1 veers ... Read More
Space Probe to Measure How Sloshed Mother Earth Is
March 16, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
What do the fates of the tiny Pacific island nations of Tuvalu, Tonga, Kiribati and the Russian launch of a gleaming new European gravity satellite have in common? Gravity itself. Variations in Earth's gravity field — which is a reflection of how Earth's mass is distributed around the planet — is as subject to the constant motions of the world's oceans as it is from massive mountain chains. And in how those seas slosh around the globe lies the fate of some 600 million people living in low-lying nations and coastal areas around the world. Their futures are linked inextricably to ... Read More
Core of the Problem
December 24, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment
I really notice the chill in the air when my mechanical pencil freezes — or maybe it has just run out of lead. But it is undeniably cold, 36 degrees below zero Celsius, plus or minus. "The temperature in here is about what it always is at the South Pole," says Geoff Hargreaves, his face turning plum-colored. We are in Denver on a sunny, late September afternoon, but here at the National Ice Core Laboratory the main collections room is kept perpetually frigid, the better to store 14,500 precious cylindrical cores drilled from glaciers near the planet's poles. Hargreaves, the laboratory's ... Read More
