Nebraska is a state on the Great Plains of the Midwestern United States. Its state capital is Lincoln and its largest city is Omaha, on the Missouri River. (Wikipedia)
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Friday, August 31, 2012
Nebraska County Map
Counties of Nebraska.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Idaho County Map
Counties of Idaho.
Idaho is a state in the Pacific Northwest area of the United States. Idaho is the 14th most expansive, the 39th most populous, and the 7th least densely populated of the 50 United States. The state's largest city and capital is Boise. Residents are called "Idahoans". Idaho was admitted to the Union on July 3, 1890, as the 43rd state. (Wikipedia)
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Map of England with Counties
Counties of England.
England, formerly a kingdom and independent country, united with Scotland to form what would eventually become the UK (Wales was treated as part of England at that time). (Wikipedia)
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Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Natural Resources in Australia
Map of natural resources in Australia.
Natural Resources: bauxite, coal, iron ore, copper, tin, gold, silver, uranium, nickel, tungsten, rare earth elements, mineral sands, lead, zinc, diamonds, natural gas, petroleum. Australia is the world's largest net exporter of coal accounting for 29% of global coal exports. (CIA: The World Factbook)
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Monday, August 27, 2012
New Mexico County Map
Counties of New Mexico.
New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. New Mexico is the 5th most extensive, the 36th most populous, and the 6th least densely populated of the 50 United States. (Wikipedia)
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Sunday, August 26, 2012
Map of World's Resources
World's natural resources by top countries.
Natural resources are commodities that are considered valuable in their relatively unmodified (natural) form. A commodity is generally considered a natural resource when the primary activities associated with it are extraction and purification, as opposed to creation. Thus, mining, oil extraction, fishing, and forestry are generally considered natural-resource industries, while farming is not. (Wikipedia)
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Saturday, August 25, 2012
Kansas County Map
Counties of Kansas.
Kansas, derived from the Siouan word Kansa meaning "People of the south wind", is a midwestern state in the United States. The U.S. postal abbreviation for the state is KS. (Wikipedia)
Friday, August 24, 2012
San Francisco Neighborhood Map
San Francisco and it's neighborhood.
The City and County of San Francisco (population 776,773), the fourth-largest city in the state of California, United States in terms of population, is a consolidated city-county situated at the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula that forms San Francisco Bay.
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Thursday, August 23, 2012
Arkansas County Map
Counties of Arkansas.
The capital of Arkansas is Little Rock. Arkansas is the only state in the US where diamonds are found naturally. As of 2003, the state's population was 2,725,714 according to Census Bureau estimates. (Wikipedia)
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
The True Size of Africa
Visualization of the size of Africa comparing to the biggest countries in the world. It's a big continent, larger than the U.S., China, India, and all of Europe ... combined.
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Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Iowa County Map
Counties of Iowa.
Iowa is the 29th state of the United States, having joined the union on December 28, 1846. The official name of the state is "State of Iowa", and the U.S. Post Office abbreviation for the state is IA. (Wikipedia)
Monday, August 20, 2012
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Puerto Rico County Map
Counties of Puerto Rico.
Puerto Rico, the smallest of the Greater Antilles, includes the main island of Puerto Rico and a number of smaller islands and keys, which include Mona, Vieques, and Culebra.
Saturday, August 18, 2012
Iceland Map for Childrens
A simple map of Iceland for childrens.
Further work can be viewed at: www.goodillustration.com
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Further work can be viewed at: www.goodillustration.com
Friday, August 17, 2012
Tennessee County Map
Counties of Tennessee. The state is bisected by the Tennessee River. The highest point in the state is the peak of Clingmans Dome at 6,643 feet (2,025 meters), which lies on Tennesee's eastern border.
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Thursday, August 16, 2012
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Monday, August 13, 2012
Australia Physical Map
Physical map of Australia.
By far the largest part of Australia is desert or semi-arid — 40% of the land mass is covered by sand dunes. Only the south-east and south-west corners have a temperate climate and moderately fertile soil. The northern part of the country has a tropical climate: part is tropical rainforests, part grasslands, and part desert.
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Sunday, August 12, 2012
Saturday, August 11, 2012
Friday, August 10, 2012
Thursday, August 9, 2012
Satellites detect unprecedented ice melt in Greenland
An interesting map appeared on NASA's website and shows the extent of surface melt over Greenland’s ice sheet.
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| Extent of surface melt over Greenland’s ice sheet on July 8 (left) and July 12 (right). Measurements from three satellites showed that on July 8, about 40 percent of the ice sheet had undergone thawing at or near the surface. In just a few days, the melting had dramatically accelerated and an estimated 97 percent of the ice sheet surface had thawed by July 12. In the image, the areas classified as “probable melt” (light pink) correspond to those sites where at least one satellite detected surface melting. The areas classified as “melt” (dark pink) correspond to sites where two or three satellites detected surface melting. The satellites are measuring different physical properties at different scales and are passing over Greenland at different times. As a whole, they provide a picture of an extreme melt event about which scientists are very confident. Credit: Nicolo E. DiGirolamo, SSAI/NASA GSFC, and Jesse Allen, NASA Earth Observatory |
For several days this month, Greenland's surface ice cover melted over a larger area than at any time in more than 30 years of satellite observations. Nearly the entire ice cover of Greenland, from its thin, low-lying coastal edges to its two-mile-thick center, experienced some degree of melting at its surface, according to measurements from three independent satellites analyzed by NASA and university scientists.
On average in the summer, about half of the surface of Greenland's ice sheet naturally melts. At high elevations, most of that melt water quickly refreezes in place. Near the coast, some of the melt water is retained by the ice sheet and the rest is lost to the ocean. But this year the extent of ice melting at or near the surface jumped dramatically. According to satellite data, an estimated 97 percent of the ice sheet surface thawed at some point in mid-July.
Researchers have not yet determined whether this extensive melt event will affect the overall volume of ice loss this summer and contribute to sea level rise.
"The Greenland ice sheet is a vast area with a varied history of change. This event, combined with other natural but uncommon phenomena, such as the large calving event last week on Petermann Glacier, are part of a complex story," said Tom Wagner, NASA's cryosphere program manager in Washington. "Satellite observations are helping us understand how events like these may relate to one another as well as to the broader climate system."
Son Nghiem of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., was analyzing radar data from the Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO) Oceansat-2 satellite last week when he noticed that most of Greenland appeared to have undergone surface melting on July 12. Nghiem said, "This was so extraordinary that at first I questioned the result: was this real or was it due to a data error?"
Nghiem consulted with Dorothy Hall at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Hall studies the surface temperature of Greenland using the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites. She confirmed that MODIS showed unusually high temperatures and that melt was extensive over the ice sheet surface.
Thomas Mote, a climatologist at the University of Georgia, Athens, Ga; and Marco Tedesco of City University of New York also confirmed the melt seen by Oceansat-2 and MODIS with passive-microwave satellite data from the Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder on a U.S. Air Force meteorological satellite.
The melting spread quickly. Melt maps derived from the three satellites showed that on July 8, about 40 percent of the ice sheet's surface had melted. By July 12, 97 percent had melted.
This extreme melt event coincided with an unusually strong ridge of warm air, or a heat dome, over Greenland. The ridge was one of a series that has dominated Greenland's weather since the end of May. "Each successive ridge has been stronger than the previous one," said Mote. This latest heat dome started to move over Greenland on July 8, and then parked itself over the ice sheet about three days later. By July 16, it had begun to dissipate.
Even the area around Summit Station in central Greenland, which at 2 miles above sea level is near the highest point of the ice sheet, showed signs of melting. Such pronounced melting at Summit and across the ice sheet has not occurred since 1889, according to ice cores analyzed by Kaitlin Keegan at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H. A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather station at Summit confirmed air temperatures hovered above or within a degree of freezing for several hours July 11-12.
"Ice cores from Summit show that melting events of this type occur about once every 150 years on average. With the last one happening in 1889, this event is right on time," says Lora Koenig, a Goddard glaciologist and a member of the research team analyzing the satellite data. "But if we continue to observe melting events like this in upcoming years, it will be worrisome."
Nghiem's finding while analyzing Oceansat-2 data was the kind of benefit that NASA and ISRO had hoped to stimulate when they signed an agreement in March 2012 to cooperate on Oceansat-2 by sharing data.
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Monday, August 6, 2012
Sunday, August 5, 2012
Russian scientific stations in the Arctic
Russian scientific stations in the Arctic. In 1875, an Austrian geophysicist named Karl Weyprecht proposed polar stations to conduct year-round observations using consistent methods and instruments.
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