Subject:
All Disciplines Arts & Humanities Biology & Life Sciences Business & Economics Chemistry & Materials Science Computer Science & Mathematics Engineering Environmental & Earth Sciences Medicine & Pharmacology Physical Sciences Public Health & Healthcare Social Sciences
Sort:
Hottest Latest Alphabetical (A-Z) Alphabetical (Z-A)
Type:
All Topic Review Biography
Topic Review
Earth Rainfall Climatology
Earth rainfall climatology Is the study of rainfall, a sub-field of meteorology. Formally, a wider study includes water falling as ice crystals, i.e. hail, sleet, snow (parts of the hydrological cycle known as precipitation). The aim of rainfall climatology is to measure, understand and predict rain distribution across different regions of planet Earth, a factor of air pressure, humidity, topography, cloud type and raindrop size, via direct measurement and remote sensing data acquisition. Current technologies accurately predict rainfall 3–4 days in advance using numerical weather prediction. Geostationary orbiting satellites gather IR and visual wavelength data to measure realtime localised rainfall by estimating cloud albedo, water content, and the corresponding probability of rain. Geographic distribution of rain is largely governed by climate type, topography and habitat humidity. In mountainous areas, heavy precipitation is possible where upslope flow is maximized within windward sides of the terrain at elevation. On the leeward side of mountains, desert climates can exist due to the dry air caused by compressional heating. The movement of the monsoon trough, or intertropical convergence zone, brings rainy seasons to savannah climes. The urban heat island effect leads to increased rainfall, both in amounts and intensity, downwind of cities. Warming may also cause changes in the precipitation pattern globally, including wetter conditions at high latitudes and in some wet tropical areas. Precipitation is a major component of the water cycle, and is responsible for depositing most of the fresh water on the planet. Approximately 505,000 cubic kilometres (121,000 cu mi) of water falls as precipitation each year; 398,000 cubic kilometres (95,000 cu mi) of it over the oceans. Given the Earth's surface area, that means the globally averaged annual precipitation is 990 millimetres (39 in). Climate classification systems such as the Köppen climate classification system use average annual rainfall to help differentiate between differing climate regimes. Most of Australia is semi-arid or desert, making it the world's driest continent. Australia's rainfall is mainly regulated by the movement of the alien monsoon trough during the summer rainy season, with lesser amounts falling during the winter and spring in its southernmost sections. Almost whole North Africa is semi-arid, arid or hyper-arid, containing the Sahara Desert which is the largest hot desert in the world, while central Africa (known as Sub-Saharan Africa) sees an annual rainy season regulated by the movement of the intertropical convergence zone or monsoon trough, though the Sahel Belt located at the south of the Sahara Desert knows an extremely intense and a nearly permanent dry season and only receives minimum summer rainfall. Across Asia, a large annual rainfall minimum, composed primarily of deserts, stretches from the Gobi Desert in Mongolia west-southwest through Pakistan and Iran into the Arabian Desert in Saudi Arabia. In Asia, rainfall is favored across its southern portion from India east and northeast across the Philippines and southern China into Japan due to the monsoon advecting moisture primarily from the Indian Ocean into the region. Similar, but weaker, monsoon circulations are present over North America and Australia . In Europe, the wettest regions are in the Alps and downwind of bodies of water, particularly the Atlantic west coasts. Within North America, the drier areas of the United States are the Desert Southwest, Great Basin, valleys of northeast Arizona, eastern Utah, central Wyoming, and the Columbia Basin. Other dry regions within the continent are far northern Canada and the Sonoran Desert of northwest Mexico. The Pacific Northwest United States, the Rockies of British Columbia, and the coastal ranges of Alaska are the wettest locations in North America. The equatorial region near the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), or monsoon trough, is the wettest portion of the world's continents. Annually, the rain belt within the tropics marches northward by August, then moves back southward into the Southern Hemisphere by February and March.
  • 340
  • 18 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Western Caribbean Zone
The Western Caribbean Zone is a region consisting of the Caribbean coasts of Central America, from Yucatán in Mexico to northern Colombia, and also the islands west of Jamaica. The zone emerged in the late sixteenth century as the Spanish failed to completely conquer many sections of the coast, and northern European powers supported opposition to Spain, sometimes through alliances with local powers. Unsubdued indigenous inhabitants of the region included some Maya polities, and other chiefdoms and egalitarian societies, especially in Belize, eastern Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. In addition, the region was the refuge of several groups of runaway slaves, who formed independent settlements or intermixed with the indigenous societies. The combination of unsubdued indigenous people, outlaws (pirates in this case), and an absence of outside control made it similar in some aspects to the American West or the Wild West, as the western half of North America is often called. Its long engagement with the English-speaking Caribbean made it an ideal conduit for trade from both the English colonies of the Caribbean, especially Jamaica, but also North America, which had been trading in the zone since the eighteenth century at least. The relatively low population and strategic location attracted United States -based transportation companies to promote infrastructure projects from railroads to the Panama Canal in the zone, and conjointly with that to introduce large-scale fruit production toward the end of the nineteenth century, often bringing in labor from the English-speaking Caribbean to assist. Unique elements of the region, relative to the population of Central America in general, is the high percentage of people of whole or partial African descent, and its cultural connections to English and the English-speaking Caribbean through language and religion.
  • 331
  • 18 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Technological Innovation for Climate Change Mitigation
}} Climate change has worsened at the hands of human activity for centuries, and many scientific efforts have been made since the first political acknowledgment. In order to avoid the ongoing and potential impacts of climate change, mitigation technologies have been developed in order to adapt to the issue, each invention belonging to one of four specific groups of effort. These groups include energy efficiency improvements, renewable energy (RE), nuclear power/energy (NE), and carbon capture storage (CCS). However, concerns regarding mitigating and adapting to climate change commonly have a priority focus on the groups of carbon capture storage and renewable energy efforts. Traditionally, areas of western civilization around the world have the resources and finances to successfully develop and maintain technological mitigators to climate change. The research and development of these technologies require funding and incur high costs. There is a global inconsistency in producing these inventions, leaving developing countries without the means to defend themselves against the issue of climate change. Ironically, some of these areas are powerless enough while being the most inflicted by climate change in the world. Climate change was mentioned as early as 1896 by Swedish chemist, Svante Arrhenius. The topic did not emerge as a political issue until the 1950s. Public policy is its own actor in the business of climate innovations through its control over the activity of emitting and reducing pollution inventions. Predominantly, legislature works to control the innovations particularly through placing restrictions on the amount of pollution that can be produced, and time crunches on when certain changes by companies using polluting inventions need to be completed by. It is up to the state that is implementing policy and the pollution-contributing businesses to work towards the implemented legal requirements in order to reach environmental goals by a set date.
  • 368
  • 18 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Climate Change Denial
File:Former Senator Tom Coburn- Paris Climate Agreement Was 'Poorly Negotiated'.webm Climate change denial, or global warming denial is denial, dismissal, or unwarranted doubt that contradicts the scientific consensus on climate change, including the extent to which it is caused by humans, its effects on nature and human society, or the potential of adaptation to global warming by human actions. Many who deny, dismiss, or hold unwarranted doubt about the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming self-label as "climate change skeptics", which several scientists have noted is an inaccurate description. Climate change denial can also be implicit, when individuals or social groups accept the science but fail to come to terms with it or to translate their acceptance into action. Several social science studies have analyzed these positions as forms of denialism, pseudoscience, or propaganda. The campaign to undermine public trust in climate science has been described as a "denial machine" organized by industrial, political and ideological interests, and supported by conservative media and skeptical bloggers to manufacture uncertainty about global warming. The politics of global warming have been affected by climate change denial and the political global warming controversy, undermining the efforts to act on climate change or adapting to the warming climate. Those promoting denial commonly use rhetorical tactics to give the appearance of a scientific controversy where there is none. Organised campaigning to undermine public trust in climate science is associated with conservative economic policies and backed by industrial interests opposed to the regulation of CO2 emissions. Climate change denial has been associated with the fossil fuels lobby, the Koch brothers, industry advocates and conservative think tanks, often in the United States. More than 90% of papers sceptical on climate change originate from right-wing think tanks. Since the late 1970s, oil companies have published research broadly in line with the standard views on global warming. Despite this, oil companies organized a climate change denial campaign to disseminate public disinformation for several decades, a strategy that has been compared to the organized denial of the hazards of tobacco smoking by the tobacco industry.
  • 2.1K
  • 18 Oct 2022
Topic Review
UN-SPIDER
UN-SPIDER ("United Nations Platform for Space-based Information for Disaster Management and Emergency Response") is a platform which facilitates the use of space-based technologies for disaster management and emergency response. It is a programme under the auspices of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA).
  • 251
  • 18 Oct 2022
Topic Review
History of Life
The history of life on Earth traces the processes by which living and fossil organisms evolved, from the earliest emergence of life to the present day. Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago (abbreviated as Ga, for gigaannum) and evidence suggests that life emerged prior to 3.7 Ga. Although there is some evidence of life as early as 4.1 to 4.28 Ga, it remains controversial due to the possible non-biological formation of the purported fossils. The similarities among all known present-day species indicate that they have diverged through the process of evolution from a common ancestor. Only a very small percentage of species have been identified: one estimate claims that Earth may have 1 trillion species. However, only 1.75–1.8 million have been named and 1.8 million documented in a central database. These currently living species represent less than one percent of all species that have ever lived on Earth. The earliest evidence of life comes from biogenic carbon signatures and stromatolite fossils discovered in 3.7 billion-year-old metasedimentary rocks from western Greenland. In 2015, possible "remains of biotic life" were found in 4.1 billion-year-old rocks in Western Australia. In March 2017, putative evidence of possibly the oldest forms of life on Earth was reported in the form of fossilized microorganisms discovered in hydrothermal vent precipitates in the Nuvvuagittuq Belt of Quebec, Canada, that may have lived as early as 4.28 billion years ago, not long after the oceans formed 4.4 billion years ago, and not long after the formation of the Earth 4.54 billion years ago. Microbial mats of coexisting bacteria and archaea were the dominant form of life in the early Archean Epoch and many of the major steps in early evolution are thought to have taken place in this environment. The evolution of photosynthesis, around 3.5 Ga, eventually led to a buildup of its waste product, oxygen, in the atmosphere, leading to the great oxygenation event, beginning around 2.4 Ga. The earliest evidence of eukaryotes (complex cells with organelles) dates from 1.85 Ga, and while they may have been present earlier, their diversification accelerated when they started using oxygen in their metabolism. Later, around 1.7 Ga, multicellular organisms began to appear, with differentiated cells performing specialised functions. Sexual reproduction, which involves the fusion of male and female reproductive cells (gametes) to create a zygote in a process called fertilization is, in contrast to asexual reproduction, the primary method of reproduction for the vast majority of macroscopic organisms, including almost all eukaryotes (which includes animals and plants). However the origin and evolution of sexual reproduction remain a puzzle for biologists though it did evolve from a common ancestor that was a single celled eukaryotic species. Bilateria, animals having a left and a right side that are mirror images of each other, appeared by 555 Ma (million years ago). Algae-like multicellular land plants are dated back even to about 1 billion years ago, although evidence suggests that microorganisms formed the earliest terrestrial ecosystems, at least 2.7 Ga. Microorganisms are thought to have paved the way for the inception of land plants in the Ordovician period. Land plants were so successful that they are thought to have contributed to the Late Devonian extinction event. (The long causal chain implied seems to involve the success of early tree archaeopteris (1) drew down CO2 levels, leading to global cooling and lowered sea levels, (2) roots of archeopteris fostered soil development which increased rock weathering, and the subsequent nutrient run-off may have triggered algal blooms resulting in anoxic events which caused marine-life die-offs. Marine species were the primary victims of the Late Devonian extinction.) Ediacara biota appear during the Ediacaran period, while vertebrates, along with most other modern phyla originated about 525 Ma during the Cambrian explosion. During the Permian period, synapsids, including the ancestors of mammals, dominated the land, but most of this group became extinct in the Permian–Triassic extinction event 252 Ma. During the recovery from this catastrophe, archosaurs became the most abundant land vertebrates; one archosaur group, the dinosaurs, dominated the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. After the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 66 Ma killed off the non-avian dinosaurs, mammals increased rapidly in size and diversity. Such mass extinctions may have accelerated evolution by providing opportunities for new groups of organisms to diversify.
  • 2.4K
  • 18 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Range (Aeronautics)
The maximal total range is the maximum distance an aircraft can fly between takeoff and landing. Powered aircraft range is limited by the aviation fuel energy storage capacity (chemical or electrical) considering both weight and volume limits. Unpowered aircraft range depends on factors such as cross-country speed and environmental conditions. The range can be seen as the cross-country ground speed multiplied by the maximum time in the air. The fuel time limit for powered aircraft is fixed by the available fuel (considering reserve fuel requirements) and rate of consumption. Some aircraft can gain energy while airborne through the environment (e.g. collecting solar energy or through rising air currents from mechanical or thermal lifting) or from in-flight refueling. These aircraft could theoretically have infinite range. Ferry range means the maximum range that a aircraft engaged in ferry flying can achieve. This usually means maximum fuel load, optionally with extra fuel tanks and minimum equipment. It refers to transport of aircraft without any passengers or cargo. Combat radius is a related measure based on the maximum distance a warplane can travel from its base of operations, accomplish some objective, and return to its original airfield with minimal reserves.
  • 1.0K
  • 18 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Lahar
A lahar ( /ˈlɑːhɑːr/, from Template:Lang-jv) is a violent type of mudflow or debris flow composed of a slurry of pyroclastic material, rocky debris and water. The material flows down from a volcano, typically along a river valley. Lahars are extremely destructive: they can flow tens of metres per second, they have been known to be up to 140 metres (460 ft) deep, and large flows tend to destroy any structures in their path. Notable lahars include those at Mount Pinatubo and Nevado del Ruiz, the latter of which killed thousands of people in the town of Armero.
  • 1.8K
  • 17 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Department of Geodesy GUT
Department of Geodesy Gdansk University of Technology – continues the tradition of the Department of Surveying and Cartography, established at Gdansk University of Technology in 1945 (formal appointment of the new Department: October 1, 1945, and the formal appointment of the head of the Department: September 1, 1946). In the annals of the Gdansk University of Technology the Department of Geodesy appears for the first time at the Technical University (Preussische Königliche Technische Hochschule) and the Faculty of Civil Engineering (1904). The first head of the Department of Geodesy was Prof. Hermann Otto Paul Eggert (b. 4 February 1874 in Tilsit, d. January 20, 1944 in Gdansk). In 1921–1937 the next head of the Institute of Geodesy was Prof. Dr. Wilhelm Lührs. In 1938–1945 the Institute of Geodesy and Geometry was led by Prof. Paul Albert Ulrich Graf (February 6, 1908, in Wolgast – September 11, 1954, in Düsseldorf). The Department of Geodesy at the Gdansk University of Technology is the oldest in the present Polish unit dealing with science and education in the field of geodesy and cartography (currently in the field of civil engineering and transport). After 1945, the Department of Geodesy was led by: Department of Geodesy - previous names:
  • 479
  • 17 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Climate Apocalypse
A climate apocalypse (also called a climate dystopia and a climate-induced collapse, among other names) is a hypothetical scenario involving the global collapse of human civilization and potential human extinction as either a direct or indirect result of anthropogenic climate change and ecological breakdown. Under a global catastrophe of this scale, some or all of the Earth may be rendered uninhabitable as a result of extreme temperatures, severe weather events, an inability to grow crops, and an altered composition of the Earth's atmosphere. Although there is consensus on the attribution of recent climate change to human activity, and concern about future tipping points and feedback loops, there is no consensus on the likelihood of climate-induced collapse.
  • 1.8K
  • 17 Oct 2022
  • Page
  • of
  • 270
Featured Entry Collections
>>

Featured Books

>>
Encyclopedia of Social Sciences
Encyclopedia of COVID-19
Encyclopedia of Fungi
Encyclopedia of Digital Society, Industry 5.0 and Smart City
Video Production Service
Feedback