Leafing out to bring down CO2
It’s getting green outside – what’s it mean for the planet? Find out in this blog post contemplating the relationship between spring leaves and atmospheric CO2.
graphs
Contemplating the IARC-JAXA graph
One of the ~350 or so blogs I subscribe to is Arctic Sea Ice by Neven. Today, he put up a post highlighting new daily data from IARC-JAXA, a collaboration between the International Arctic Research Center (IARC) at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Check it out. Here’s a couple … Read more
I have no idea
This image has been in my “to blog” folder for more than a year: But here’s the thing – I can’t think of what I was going for when I drew this. The closest I can figure is that I was trying to illustrate conceptually what differentiates diamictites from other poorly sorted sedimentary rocks. Any … Read more
ACM
From “Volcanic Versus Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide” by Terry Gerlach in the June 14, 2011 issue of EOS: Human activities emit ~135 times as much carbon dioxide as the world’s volcanoes? Holy cow.
A graphical dalliance
I read an article in the current issue of Physics Today with interest. It deals with the nature of scientific controversies, as percieved by the public and by specialists in the field in question. The author, Steven Sherwood, compares the origin of the ideas of a heliocentric solar system, general relativity, and human influence on … Read more
Another updated aftershock plot…
A up-to-date tally of the aftershocks from the Mineral, Virginia earthquake is presented as a time vs. magnitude plot.
Updated aftershock plot
The USGS reports more aftershocks, so your humble graphing servant has responded with a plot that updates the images I showed you last week. Here you go: Embiggable, via a simple click. Again, the “decay” pattern jumps out at us. One thing that I’m also noticing is how there are no events below 2.0 magnitude. … Read more
Animated GIF of Virginia quake aftershocks
So last Tuesday we had an earthquake, and we expected some aftershocks as the crust in the Mineral, Virginia, area adjusted to the new stress regime. We expected those aftershocks to be lesser in magnitude, and to take place after the main shock. In other words, we would predict the following: And, indeed, over the … Read more
Aftershocks
Since Tuesday’s big earthquake, we’ve had 5* aftershocks in the same area (and possibly on the same fault). The most recent one popped off last night at 1am. Here’s a plot showing the size of the events (moment magnitude) relative to the passing of time: Note that the quakes that came after “the big one” … Read more
Graph beauty: T vs. viscosity for lavas
I spent the day lazily reading the igneous petrology chapters of Petrology by Blatt, Tracy, and Owens (third edition, 2006). Last time I read it, I didn’t get all that much from the igneous section, but this time around that’s the thing that motivated me to delve into it again. I don’t remember enough about … Read more