Category Archives: Oceanography

Speaking of Meltdown: Arctic Ice Reaches Maximum, Begins Seasonal Melt

Posted on March 27, 2011 by

On March 7, 2011, Arctic sea ice likely reached its maximum extent for the year, at 14.64 million square kilometers (5.65 million square miles). The maximum extent was 1.2 million square kilometers (463,000 square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average … Continue reading →

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The Quake: Rikuzentakata, Before and After, from NASA

Posted on March 18, 2011 by

Today’s image from NASA Earth Observatory is of … the city of Rikuzentakata. At the end of a narrow inlet, the city of roughly 8,000 households lost 75 percent of its homes. On March 14, 2011, The Mainichi Daily News declared: “Rikuzentakata … Continue reading →

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Floods on the Kitakami River: Before and After

Posted on March 16, 2011 by

The NASA Earth Observatory page has before and after images of tsunami flooding along the Kitakami River. Flooding along the Kitakami River, Japan : Image of the Day      

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Memo to Oregon & Washington re Tsunami: Get Ready

Posted on March 14, 2011 by

It Can’t Will Happen Here At 9PM on January 26, 1700 one of the world’s largest earthquakes occurred along the west coast of North America. The undersea Cascadia thrust fault ruptured along a 1000 km length, from mid Vancouver Island … Continue reading →

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The Quake: “The Day The Earth Sped Up”

Posted on March 14, 2011 by

The shifting of tectonic plates beneath the Pacific Ocean opened up a crack about 250 miles long, causing a good portion of Earth’s crust to tumble inside. The Day the Earth Sped Up : Discovery News The earth contracted, enough … Continue reading →

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Where Will The Radiation Blow?

Posted on March 14, 2011 by

Jeff Masters has been running wind direction projections from NOAA. The takeaway: Whatever radiation leaks from the blown reactors in Japan will very probably drift mostly to sea, and precipitate onto the ocean. Note the comparison to Chernobyl, emphasis added. … Continue reading →

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The Quake: Before and After, Redux

Posted on March 13, 2011 by

The New York Times has a superb set of “before and after” shots, taken by GeoEye. Satellite Photos – Japan Before and After Tsunami – Interactive Feature – NYTimes.com

Posted in Disasters, Earth Science, Landscape, Oceanography, Photos, Science | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments