How do I extract seismic amplitude on an interpreted horizon?

The answer to most of your questions is: it depends.
Is amplitude good for mapping channels?
Amplitude maps can be great for finding and interpreting channel systems. It depends on the geology and on the seismic data's characteristics. Sometimes you can just see the channels, which might be qualitatively useful, and sometimes you can infer quantitative information, such as width, thickness, composition, porosity, or fluid content. It depends.
Here's a workflow for any kind of attribute analysis. I'll try to add to it in the next day or two.
When should I use RMS amplitude?
Before confusing yourself with what others do (they are not necessarily a good guide), it's worth reading about different kinds of average.
The main feature of the RMS average, for geophysicists anyway, is that it works on zero-mean data like seismic:

So it's not really that "when using RMS amplitude one must integrate over a window", more that if you want to measure amplitude over a window, you must use RMS.
Because the values are squared, RMS has two other features (or bugs, depending on your point of view): large values are emphasized, and noise may therefore be emphasized.
An alternative is to use the envelope of the trace (sometimes also called 'energy' or 'absolute amplitude'), which is the magnitude of the Hilbert transform (also called 'complex trace'). It is always positive and has the added benefit of being phase-independent. Read more about envelope..
Which window to use?
Let the expected geology and basic geophysics and statistics guide all of your decisions. Use a window that captures the interval of interest (look at the wells!) without too much non-interesting stratigraphy. But use a big enough window that you don't see a lot of artifacts from large amplitude values coming in and out of the window (this also depends on the quality of the horizons and smoothness of the geology).
Windows don't have to be symmetrical about a horizon. It depends where the features you're interested in are. In my experience, stratigraphic windows are often useful — from one horizon to the next. If you're interested in the horizon itself, consider just using its amplitude directly. If it's too noisy, try improving the pick or smoothing the amplitude map, before confusing things by throwing more geology in there.
What does that caption mean?
Who knows what that caption means? Vague captions plague the geophysics literature. Don't be part of the problem! If only for the sake of your future self, record the exact statistic and its parameters on every image — even put it all in the filename.
Remember what you're trying to do
You're trying to relate the seismic to reservoir properties you care about. This means proving that the property is related to the seismic in as quantitative way as possible. A nice way to do this is to crossplot the property with the seismic attribute — that way you also know the error of the estimate. A map showing wiggly channels is interesting, but nowhere near enough.
I tend not to believe attribute analyses that don't include a crossplot.


How to measure elevation above sea level

It's actually an inordinately difficult problem. Neither the land nor the sea level is stable. A tide gauge along a coast needs 30 to 40 years of data to filter out the very noisy tidal and other weather signals. By the time one has homed in upon a precise average, one is already within the time-frame of land uplift or subsidence, and that is before we even think about the complexities of climate-change generated sea level rise, or quasi-decadal oceanic oscillations. Then there is the question of Earth's non-homogeneous gravity which affects local sea levels. For example if we correctly measure the elevation of a Himalayan peak relative to average sea level at the Gurarat coast, west India, we get an elevation of 'h1'. We can then measure the same peak relative to sea level in the Ganges delta, east India, which we will call 'h2'. We can make all the usual corrections for Earth's curvature etc., yet h1 will be different to h2 - though both are 'correct'.

There is no stable bench mark on 'God's Earth', so maybe the answer is to get off the planet completely. Satellite orbits are not perfect, but they are predictable, so satellite-based measurements of elevation are the best available.


Splitting the Earth's emerged land in two equal parts

TL;DR: It depends on how one defines land area. With a sensible definition, such a meridian (along with its completion on the other side of the globe) must necessarily exist by virtue of the intermediate value theorem. The same goes for the line of latitude.

Defining the functions

$\operatorname{A}_{\text{E}}(\lambda)$ is the area of the land projected onto the reference ellipsoid of the hemisphere to the east of the line of longitude $\lambda$.
$\operatorname{A}_{\text{W}}(\lambda)$ is the area of the land projected onto the reference ellipsoid of the hemisphere to the west of the line of longitude $\lambda$.
$\operatorname{\Delta A}_{\text{lon}}(\lambda)$ is the difference between $\operatorname{A}_{\text{E}}(\lambda)$ and $\operatorname{A}_{\text{W}}(\lambda)$.
$\operatorname{A}_{\text{N}}(\phi)$ is the area of the land projected onto the reference ellipsoid of the hemisphere to the north of the line of latitude $\phi$.
$\operatorname{A}_{\text{S}}(\phi)$ is the area of the land projected onto the reference ellipsoid of the hemisphere to the west of the line of longitude $\phi$.
$\operatorname{\Delta A}_{\text{lat}}(\phi)$ is the difference between $\operatorname{A}_{\text{N}}(\phi)$ and $\operatorname{A}_{\text{S}}(\phi)$.

My definitions make each of these functions continuous. Note well: Other definitions of land area might result in non-continuous functions. Imagine a perfectly vertical cliff that runs north to south. If the area of that cliff face counted as land area then $\operatorname{\Delta A}_{\text{lon}}(\lambda)$ will not be continuous. The same goes for $\operatorname{\Delta A}_{\text{lat}}(\phi)$ for a perfectly vertical cliff that run east to west.

Proving that the latitude line must exist is easy, so I'll do that first. All of the Earth's land area is north of 90° south latitude, making $\operatorname{\Delta A}_{\text{lat}}(-90)$ a large positive number. All of the Earth's land area is south of 90° north latitude, making $\operatorname{\Delta A}_{\text{lat}}(90)$ a large negative number. Because zero is between this large negative number and large positive number, and because $\operatorname{\Delta A}_{\text{lat}}(\phi)$ is continuous, there must necessarily exist at least one line of latitude $\phi$ for which $\operatorname{\Delta A}_{\text{lat}}(\phi)$ is zero.

Regarding longitude, Pick an arbitrary longitude $\lambda$. If $\operatorname{\Delta A}_{\text{lon}}(\lambda)$ is zero we have a winner. If it's not zero, then since $\operatorname{\Delta A}_{\text{lon}}(\lambda +180°) = -\operatorname{\Delta A}_{\text{lon}}(\lambda)$, there exists at least one longitude $\lambda_0$ between $\lambda$ and $\lambda+180°$ where $\operatorname{\Delta A}_{\text{lon}}(\lambda_0)$ is zero.


Are oceans a major factor in creating high winds on a planet?

The major factor is not the size or temperature of the ocean, it is the differential temperatures, and hence large scale convection, such as Hadley cells, Monsoons and tropical storms. With the latter, large oceans are relatively deep with thin warm water over vastly deeper cold water. The minimum temperature for as hurricane to form is about $27^\circ\!$C ($80^\circ\!$F), which most commonly develops over relatively shallow water, or where there is a massive influx of warm water such as the current El Niño.


How does palingenetic fusion occur in rock?

I have never seen the term "palingenetic fusion" anywhere in the geological literature, but seeing that it means:

  Palingenesis is a concept of rebirth or re-creation, used in various contexts in philosophy, theology, politics, and biology. Its meaning stems from Greek palin, meaning again, and genesis, meaning birth.

And seeing that it is used to describe granitic charnockites, I think it is safe to say it is a very obscure term for anatexis, a common process of granite formation by partial melting of pre-existing rock. This is most commonly used in high grade metamorphic rocks, and in the context of formation of migmatites and leucogranites.


Is pure "heat" harmful to the environment?

As with the answer to most things that involves consumption or absorption it's a question of degree, quantity and duration.

Heat is energy that is being transferred.

All life forms require a certain amount of heat to function and survive. Too much heat and not enough heat are detrimental to all life forms.

Applying heat to food by cooking it kills most bacteria associated with the food. Likewise freezing food will initially slow life processes of bacteria and enough cold will also kill many types of bacteria.

As for Earth's environment, if it does not contain enough heat, climate patterns change, ecosystems suffer and the planet freezes, as it has done on a number of occasions when it experienced ice ages. Likewise, with too much heat climate patterns change and ecosystems suffer.

Earth's ecosystem requires a specific range of heat for it to be healthy. This is generally supplied by the Sun but in places can be supplied by the Earth's own geothermal systems, such as volcanic vents, particularly in oceans. Occasional extreme variations in heat can be tolerated if the difference in heat is not too extreme and if the duration of the extreme is short.

Consider the detonation of a thermo-nuclear device in the atmosphere,

  the temperatures reached are briefly in the tens of millions of degrees

This is hotter than the Sun and such energy has been released in Earth's environment.

Ignoring the effects of radiation and only considering the heat produced, such detonations product a huge amount of heat for a very short time in a very small region. This adversely affects life forms and the ecosystem in the area of detonation, but the ecosystem recovers from the effect of the heat and the heat does not affect the climate.

If however, there are heat sources covering a large area that is generating a large amount of heat for a prolonged period of time it can affect weather patterns and locally change an ecosystem.

As for the ease of heat exiting Earth's ecosystem it depends on what is in the atmosphere and the proportions of what is in the atmosphere. Cloud cover will retain heat by acting as a blanket. Gases such as methane and carbon dioxide are known for their ability to reflect heat back to the Earth's surface, thus retaining heat in the atmosphere. Increased levels of such gases increases the heat retention within the atmosphere.


For the US, there are several sources:

Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS)
MRDS is a collection of reports describing metallic and nonmetallic mineral resources throughout the world. Included are deposit name, location, commodity, deposit description, geologic characteristics, production, reserves, resources, and references. It subsumes the original MRDS and MAS/MILS.  As of 2011, USGS has ceased systematic updates to MRDS, and is working to create a new database, focused primarily on the conterminous US.

MAS/MILS:
This record is maintained in the National Geologic Map Database (NGMDB). The NGMDB is a Congressionally mandated national archive of geoscience maps, reports, and stratigraphic information, developed according to standards defined by the cooperators, i.e., the USGS and the Association of American State Geologists (AASG). Included in this system is a comprehensive set of publication citations, stratigraphic nomenclature, downloadable content, unpublished source information, and guidance on standards development. The NGMDB contains information on more than 90,000 maps and related geoscience reports published from the early 1800s to the present day, by more than 630 agencies, universities, associations, and private companies. For more information, please see http://ngmdb.usgs.gov/.

Data.Gov Mining related data set.

Digital Rockhound's companion
(Shameless plug for my software, not free though).
I created a new user interface to search MRDS and MAS/MILS databases.

For Canada:

Natural Resources Canada
This map depicts the location of Canada's principal producing mines for the given reference year. It includes locations for significant metallic, nonmetallic and industrial mineral mines (except clay products, peat, and most construction materials [most stone, sand and gravel]), coal mines, oil sands mines, and oil and gas fields across the country. Also depicted are the locations of significant metallurgical facilities across Canada. The data in this map are based on Natural Resources Canada's annual Map 900A – Principal mineral areas, producing mines, and oil and gas fields in Canada.

For Australia:

Australia's mineral resources and their global status
Australia's known resources of a wide range of mineral commodities are considerable in comparison with rates of production. Australia has the worlds largest economic demonstrated resources of bauxite, lead, zinc, silver, ilmenite, rutile, zircon, tantalum, and uranium. In addition, Australia is ranked in the top three countries in the world for economic demonstrated resources of brown coal, copper, cobalt, gold, iron ore, manganese ore, nickel , gem/near-gem and industrial diamond. Despite a high rate of discovery of significant new mineral deposits, particularly since the 1950s, there is considerable potential for discovery of further mineral deposits in Australia.

OZMin database (from site)
These data represent the OZMIN Oracle relational database containing geological and resource information for Australian mineral deposits. OZMIN has been compiled from published references and has been designed so that attribute information can be retrieved and analysed in relation to spatial data contained in geographic information systems. The national mineral deposits dataset contains data on over one thousand major and historically significant mineral deposits for 60 mineral commodities (including coal).

For United Kingdom:

MineralsUK
MineralsUK is the British Geological Survey (BGS) Centre for Sustainable Mineral Development. Facilitated by the BGS Minerals and Waste science programme, the Centre is a global leader in the compilation, provision and analysis of mineral statistics and the major UK national provider of spatial and statistical minerals information. We also carry out research in areas directly relevant to our user community, such as metallogenesis, land-use impacts of mineral extraction and geomaterials.


What are some of the strongest theories against the existence of mantle plumes?

The best argument I've heard supporting strong skepticism of plumes, if not total dismissal, is that the theory is too flexible. To put it more bluntly, this amounts to saying that it is unfalsifiable and therefore not helpful (in Popper's words, "A theory that explains everything, explains nothing.").

Erik Lundin, a Norwegian geologist, is a fairly vociferous (and sarcastic) proponent of this view. He likes to point out that you can explain almost any tectonic anomaly with plumes. Have a look at his articles The Iceland “Anomaly” – An Outcome of Plate Tectonics and Phanerozoic fold belts and volcanic passive margins: a causal relationship? on Gillian Foulger's site mantleplumes.org — where you'll find lots of other evidence for and against plumes.

My own view is that there seems to be some clear cases of plume-like things being a good explanation for observations — the Hawaiian–Emperor chain comes to mind. And then there's the rest of the infinitely complex earth, with thousands of competing and interacting forces, convection currents being just one.


Are all natural diamonds made of organic carbon material?

Diamond isn't made of organic C at all. Organic matter would rather become oil, gas, coal or dissolve entirely.

C itself isn't very common in earth's mantle, but subducted eclogites and peridotites can lead to the needed C-accumulation.

But also meteorite impacts can lead to the genesis of so called micro-diamonds due to the very short lasting but extreme conditions.

Diamond's genesis takes place in depths from 150 up to 700km and at temperatures about 1200-1400°C.
Those conditions were present in the upper mantle during the archaeum and hadeum, that's why mining takes places mainly in older crustal zones.

You are right that volcanic activity brings diamond up to the crust and surface of the earth. This process is thought to take only some minutes... This is a very quick process so that the diamond crystal structure won't change back to graphite and it's also the reason many diamond deposits can be found in sediments.

I think that should answer your question.
I don't know about the diamond exoplanets, though I've heard of it.. I'd say the process that leads to this is pretty unclear, but perhaps someone has clearer thoughts or information on this.


Its chemically stable oxide, thus non-combustible, does not rot, and fairly hard.

Clay ceramics (just ceramic covers a huge swath of materials) are very non-reactive, and fairly hard, both are exactly what you want for preservation. The clay used in these ceramics is what is left when you chemically remove everything else from rock, it is usually the most stable components, mostly oxides. Earthenware clay in particular is often iron rich which makes it even stronger. once refired the clay transforms into a solid mass, essentially a man made rock.

When you look at what destroys artifacts most don't apply or apply the least to clay ceramics.

Rot/decomposition: not an option for clays nothing organics to rot
Combustion. again not an option for clays, they are already oxides, under the right condition heat can actually make them tougher.
Erosion, this still destroys clay ceramics just like anything else but clay is fairly resistant. It is fairly hard and strong, some stones and metals are more resistant, and these are likewise more likely to be preserved.
Corrosion, clay ceramics ar mostly chemically inert oxides, already in their lowest energy state, so they won't corrode or dissolve when exposed to water, so they survive better than most metallic metals, or ionic compounds.
Theft vs rarity, ceramics generally were not valuable enough to be stolen unlike gold or gemstones or even plain stone, which would survive as well if not better. They were also common enough that that were basically all over a human habitation. If you had a human civilization you usually had hundreds of millions of ceramics. In the case of bricks the homes themselves might be made of it. So they were abundant enough that there was a good chance some would end up in the right conditions to be preserved.

there is one other feature that applies to clay tablets. When a library full of books burns down the books are destroyed, when a library full of clay tablets burns down they clay actually gets tougher much of the time.


The term "reserves" doesn't mean what most people think it does.  A mineral deposit is simply a concentration of a mineral; a reserve is a deposit that is both known and economical to extract.  As an example, oil shale and tar sands have both been known for decades, but only recently became oil reserves as improving technology and rising prices made it practical to extract the crude oil from them.

Chile, Argentina, Australia, and China have quantified their deposits, and local economic/geologic conditions make it profitable to extract those deposits, so they've got most of the world's reserves.


Were all of Earth's minerals created before Earth's formation, during, or after?

This is a very interesting topic that in the past several years has reached the spotlight because of the work of Robert Hazen on the concept of "mineral evolution".

Minerals are basically just inorganic compounds: you take several elements, arrange them in certain ways and you get minerals. Thus, the minerals will be mostly determined by what's available to them in term of chemical elements. The solar nebula in Earth's area was composed of very few major elements: Fe, Si, Mg, Al, O, C, etc. There are not many ways you can arrange this limited number of elements, and the mineral diversity was rather small. You cite the number 60. Could be more, could be less, but it sounds about right.

With time, certain processes on Earth (magmatic, metamorphic, metasomatic, hydrothermal, you name it) preferentially move certain elements relative to others. This causes redistribution of elements in space, enriching and depleting certain elements in various areas. Elements that were previously present only in trace amounts and did not form minerals of their own may be concentrated so that they do.

This is a time dependent process, hence the name "mineral evolution". This is a nice figure that sums things up:

You can read more about it in Hazen's website (from which I took the above figure): http://hazen.carnegiescience.edu/research/mineral-evolution

Be careful though when searching for "mineral evolution" online - you usually get more results of pseudoscientific and creationist websites rather than actual science.


How does NASA get a 360 degrees texture map of Earth?

If you're asking about how they are able to distinguish different layers of information on the Earth, your answer is found in the field of Remote Sensing. Using sensors running on several satellite systems (e.g. MODIS, ETM) that are isolated to pick up specific radiative bands (IR, NIR, Visible, etc.) you can derive some pretty amazing information.

Using map algebra on these bands, you can figure things out like cloud cover, vegetation health, elevation, temperature and land cover of the surface, etc. Many of these data sets can be found directly through NASA or USGS. Creating masks of different information using these techniques can lead to really amazing visualizations.

The really fascinating thing is that a lot of this information can be calculated on the fly using raw data and any GIS infrastructure or scripts. That's likely how NASA is able to visualize these data products the moment they collect them.


How to read NOAA/NASA GOES satellite data?

Go to the user preferences.  From there you will be able to choose different formats and data options.  If you choose netCDF, you will be able to read these filetypes with most map readers.  For Python, you can use netCDF4-python.


What is an aurora called when viewed from space?

It is still referred to as an 'aurora', examples include a relatively recent report from NASA - Stunning Aurora from Space.  Further, the aptly named document from NASA - Aurora - refers to the phenomenon by that name in reference to when it is observed from the surface or from space.

Whether viewed from the surface or from space, the phenomenon is still called an aurora.


Is Atlanta too far inland and too far above sea level to be affected by the comet in "Deep Impact"?

Tsunamis form as a series of moderate amplitude, long interval waves that travel away from the initial impact.  The first of these waves has the highest amplitude of the initial waves, and becomes the 'big one' later. Subsequent waves are caused by water rushing into the void created by the initial impact, bouncing off of each other, and starting the next wave out.

As the radius of the impact waves increases, the power in each wave gets spread out over a larger and larger circumference, at a rate of $2πr$.  This is a steady geometric decrease in the power any given portion of the wave has.

As these waves start to reach shallow water, the waves in front begin to slow down.  This causes the waves behind them to become part of the tsunami.  This build up continues until you reach land.  Once at land, no more power is being introduced into the wave, no more water is being pulled in.  What you see is what you've got at this point.  None of the follow up waves will go anywhere near as far inland as this initial wave.

To elaborate, following landfall, the tsunami would encounter:

The barrier islands to Georgia's east protect it from most severe storms.  Their arrangement would also introduce an interference pattern into the wave that would incline the big tsunami to spread out more.
Beyond that, there is a large, flat area of low elevation where the wave would travel easily, but it would lose a large percentage of its power crossing this area.  Once again, the wave is losing power as it spreads.
Next, you get to the continental shelf that separates North Georgia from South Georgia.  In a rather sharp increase, land goes from a few hundred feet above sea level to, as you mentioned, 750+ feet.  That is one steep hill to climb for an old, tired tsunami.

Without subjecting this to a full simulation I can't be certain, but I think that any impact capable of creating a tsunami that could reach Atlanta would be completely unsurvivable.  Some of the simplest forms of life might make it, but everything else would be gone.

That does not mean that Atlanta wouldn't suffer substantial damage from other factors, such as all of the water launched into the air by the impact of a red hot flaming rock and any chunks of that comet that might break off from the friction of passing through the atmosphere, but right now Atlanta is pretty safe from tsunamis.


Is the impact of carbon emision dependent on the location on the earth?

The climate impacts of CO2 are not constrained to the location they are emitted, but rather the whole globe will feel the effects.  CO2 is a long-lived molecule that takes 100+ years to convert or deposit.  The troposphere, though, only takes months to mix.  There are longer times for mixing between the north/south hemispheres, (e.g. over a year), but it is still short relative to the lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere.  Globally, you can expect about a 2% variance of CO2 distributions in the well-mixed troposphere.

Here is a recent paper on CO2 distribution from M. Diallo et al.: Global distribution of CO2 in the upper troposphere–stratosphere.  The image below (Fig 6a) shows CO2 distribution for different months in color while the isolines are for potential temperature.


Will increased precipitation in Antarctica prevent sea level rise?

There is some scope for continuing debate because quantifying the various components of the ice/snow/water balance are fraught with difficulty, and many of the estimates have error bounds which approach the magnitude that is being measured. However, a good best estimate, subject to continuing research, is given in:Is Antarctica losing or gaining ice?
This cites the following two graphs:

Clearly there are important regional differences, with East Antarctica gaining slightly, but not enough to compensate for the ice loss in west Antarctica.

It is true that the amount of fresh snow in the Antarctic is increasing, but it still doesn't amount to much. Antarctica is still the driest continent, by far, and much more so than Australia. The controlling factor is not the amount of snow on the land, but the fate of the sea ice around the perimeter. Notwithstanding climate deniers, there is abundant evidence that the oceans' sea surface temperatures are warming, including the Southern Ocean. This reduces the seasonal extent and thickness of sea ice, which lowers the oceanic albedo, and increases near-surface heat absorbtion. It is a well-documented feedback process. Overall the warmer ocean around Antarctic destabilizes the shelf ice, thereby unlocking the glacial ice which would have been held back. So we have two opposing non-linear processes, mobilization of coastal land ice (mass loss), vs increased snowfall (mass gain). At present, and for the forseable future, the mass-loss is winning. I'm guessing this will continue to be the case because the negative feedback is very powerfull. I don't think there are any reliable forward projections about how precipitation in the Antarctic will evolve.

(Later) In view of the comments, maybe it would be helpful to visualize the daily precipitable moisture around the world. This is available at El Dorado Weather.


Given the well known effects of the inverse turbulence cascade for 2D flow, does it make sense to use grid resolutions that resolve turbulence?

Any numerical model solution is inherently constrained by the equations being solved. You are probably aware that the inverse turbulence energy cascade exists in predominantly 2D flows. In oceans and atmospheres, this happens at approximate scale of Rossby radius of deformation and larger. Whether or not a numerical model is able to represent a physical process (i.e. 3D turbulence) really depends on the terms in the model equations.

Take for example the simplest 2D model representative of ocean and atmosphere, shallow water equations (SWE, writing non-conservative form for brevity here so don't give me a hard time):

$$
\dfrac{\partial \mathbf{v}}{\partial t} =
-\mathbf{v}\cdot\nabla\mathbf{v} - f\mathbf{k}\times\mathbf{v}
-g\nabla h
$$

$$
\dfrac{\partial h}{\partial t} = -\nabla(h\mathbf{v})
$$

where $\mathbf{v}$ is the 2D velocity, $f$ is Coriolis frequency, $g$ is gravitational acceleration and $h$ is the fluid depth.

The linearized form of the SWE, i.e. $\mathbf{v}\cdot\nabla\mathbf{v}\approx0$ and $\nabla(h\mathbf{v})\approx H\nabla\cdot\mathbf{v}$, where $H$ is the mean fluid depth, has an analytical solution and is well known.

The non-linear term $\mathbf{v}\cdot\nabla\mathbf{v}$ allows for the fast growth of small perturbations, eventually resulting in eddy formation. In this model, the only dissipation is of numerical kind, and the only turbulence is of the 2D kind, supporting inverse energy cascade. In order to allow for 3D turbulence, a prognostic equation for vertical velocity $w$, including non-linear terms $\mathbf{v}\cdot\nabla w$ must be introduced to the model.

  if we know that it is a true 3D flow, is there any point in using highly resolved 2D simulations that attempt to resolve the scales that are typically involved in turbulence?

If by this you mean, can I model 3D turbulence with a very-high resolution 2D model, the answer is no. 2D models are obtained by making an assumption that variations in the 3rd dimension are negligible compared to variations in the other 2 dimensions. It is this assumption that prohibits any 3D process to be part of the model solution. Sure, one can crank up horizontal resolution as much as they like, and the model will produce a solution, however that solution will always be inherently constrained by the initial assumptions made.


Who originated Taylor's axiom of lunar formation, and where?

Just a shot in the dark, as the journal in which this article has been published has no online presence and is not available in paper form in my institution, but it might refer to an article by a Richard L. S. Taylor from 1990 called 'The Damocles Hypothesis', published in the journal "Space" (journal edited by the University of London it seems).

Follows the abstract of that article:

  Consideration is given to the use of data from the Apollo missions to
  study theories of the origin and geological evolution of the moon.
  Theories of lunar origin are examined, including origin by fission,
  binary accretion origin, the capture hypothesis, and the giant impact
  model. Apollo data related to each of these theories is summarized,
  showing that the giant impact model is the most probable theory for
  the origin of the moon. The giant impact model is outlined, focusing
  on the collision between the earth and a large body called Damocles.


Sunlight (heat), planetary rotation, and the shape of the land in passes over.

Prevailing wind is mostly caused by hadley cells, or the masses of air move due to the thermal difference between the pole and the equator as well as the surface of the earth and space. Thus it is the interaction of two different thermal convection cells. this moment twists into cells due the coriolis effect and the earths rotation.

Source

these cells can be somethat disrupted on the local level by things like mountains.


shortwave and longwave radiation terminology, direct, beam, PAR, flux?

Beam radiation is direct radiation, e.g. photons that have not been scattered.  Diffuse radiation is indirect and has been scattered.  Examples of beam radiation from the sky would be from the sun directly to your eye.  Diffuse solar radiation would be the blue sky (scattered out of the direct beam by the atmosphere), clouds and anything you can see that is illuminated by the sun.

Shortwave radiation refers to radiation of solar origin, which is primarily in the visible and shorter wavelengths.  Longwave refers to radiation of terrestrial origin, which is typically in the infrared and longer wavelengths (dependent on temperature) and is radiated by the earth, us, clouds, the atmosphere, etc.

A flux is the "rate of flow of a property per unit area" and for radiation is generally expressed in watts per square meter, Wm$^{-2}$.  A watt is 1 Joule per second, so this is an energy flux, a or the mount of energy flowing through a 1 m$^{2}$ surface every second.

To apply this to your variables:

Visible beam downward solar flux

This is the direct radiation in the visible spectrum from the sun expressed as a flow of energy.  This is generally given either at the top of atmosphere or at the surface.  For ToA, this would be the rate of energy through a 1 square meter patch just above the atmosphere.  For the surface, this would be the rate of energy into a 1 square meter area on the earths surface.
Visible diffuse downward solar flux

This is a measure of radiation in the visible spectrum that isn't directly from the sun.  At the surface of the earth this flux would be the rate of energy flowing into a 1 square meter patch of earth from reflection of sunlight (scattering) and from the rest of the sky and clouds that isn't the direct path from the sun.
Upward longwave radiation flux

This is the rate of energy flow from the sum of all terrestrial emission.  At the top of the atmosphere this would be the terrestrial energy escaping to space (per square meter).
Near IR beam downward solar flux

This is the same as the visible beam downward solar flux except it is in the near IR band (infrared wavelengths longer but close to that of visible red) rather than in the visible spectrum.
Downward longwave radiation flux

This flux is terrestrial emission sources that send energy downward toward the earth.  This energy would come from clouds, the atmosphere (greenhouse gasses), etc.
Downward solar radiation flux

This is the total shortwave flux (visible + IR + UV, etc; beam and diffuse) downward through the top of atmosphere or at the surface.


How long does it take for the ocean conveyor to circulate?

According to NOAA It takes almost a 1000 years to complete a cycle. I am not sure how accurate, or where the citation came from their information so take it with a grain of salt. Lecture notes from one of Columbia University's 2007 "The Climate System" class suggests this process takes between 100-1000 years. This paper says Thermohaline Circulation overturns deep water every 600 years or so.


Is it possible to find the magma chambers that produce supervolcanos?

I am a seismologist, not a volcanologist, but we can use a method called seismic tomography to understand the size of magma chambers.

This method is similar to a medical CT scan - the magma mush will have a slower seismic wavespeed than the surrounding 'normal' rock. Therefore, we can use this to determine the size of magma chambers from a tomographic image.

Even if a volcano does not appear to be active at the surface, it could still overlie a magmatic anomaly.

This approach was recently used to estimate the seismic of the Yellowstone magmatic body. See this paper: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014GL059588/abstract

Seismic tomography can theoretically be applied to any region, but we just need to have enough seismic sources nearby (e.g. earthquakes) to be able to do this accurately.


To me I am not sure why the subset option should not work with a python script. According to me it does work. Here is a sample script.

import cdsapi

c = cdsapi.Client()

c.retrieve(
'reanalysis-era5-single-levels',
{
    'variable':'total_precipitation',
    'product_type':'reanalysis',
    'year':'2010',
    'month':'04',
    'day':'07',
    'area':'60/0/0/100',
    'time':[
        '00:00','01:00','02:00',
        '03:00','04:00','05:00',
        '06:00','07:00','08:00',
        '09:00','10:00','11:00',
        '12:00','13:00','14:00',
        '15:00','16:00','17:00',
        '18:00','19:00','20:00',
        '21:00','22:00','23:00'
    ],
    'format':'netcdf'
},
'precip.nc')

UPDATE
In response to some of the comments raised by @Nemesi - with this CDS Python API
There is no need to use CDO or NCO to subset the data. The API itself takes care of it for you using the keyword area. Once you specify the bounding box the data that goes get downloaded is the bounding box boundaries you specify. There is also NO programmatic subsetting of global data. Right now the CDS web interface does not allow you to do subsetting(the problem is being fixed as I write according to Copernicus support). But that is not really a problem. Since OP's requirement is one of automating the process the CDS Python Web API fills the purpose. In this context subset is the same as ROI or region of interest.

Here is what I had to do get this to work. I had to install the cdsapi for python. One can do this using pip (I usually do it - python3.6 setup.py install since I do not have conda). Then create a .cdsapirc(on Linux and other UNIX flavors it should be under the main home directory. Create this file wherever you have the $HOME variable defined) which should be like this -

url: https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/api/v2
key: {UID}:{API key}
verify:0

The values of UID and API key you should get when you register at the new CDS web interface site.

And then just run it.

Here the key parameter is the  area

and the first two values are starting latitude and longitude followed by the ending latitude and  longitude. When I viewed the downloaded netCDF file using ncdump it did have the right bounding box values. Now you could change it to GRIB format if you so wish but I think the basic format of the script does not change.

Here is a plot of the subset of the precipitation for a specific instant in a 24 hour period.

Here is the code that plots it (I use matplotlib and cartopy)

from netCDF4 import Dataset,num2date
import cartopy.crs as ccrs
from cartopy.mpl.ticker import LongitudeFormatter, LatitudeFormatter
from cartopy.util import add_cyclic_point
import matplotlib as mpl
mpl.rcParams['mathtext.default'] = 'regular'
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np

file = "precip.nc"
nc_pvFile = Dataset(file,'r')
lats = nc_pvFile.variables['latitude'][:]  # extract/copy the data
lons = nc_pvFile.variables['longitude'][:]
lats = lats[:].squeeze()
lons = lons[:].squeeze()

preciPlot = nc_pvFile.variables['tp'][:]

pp = preciPlot[0,:,:]

ax1 = plt.axes(projection=ccrs.PlateCarree(central_longitude=180))
clevs = np.arange(min(pp.flatten()),max(pp.flatten())*1000,1)

shear_fill = ax1.contourf(lons,lats,pp*1000,clevs,
                      transform=ccrs.PlateCarree(),cmap=plt.get_cmap('hsv'),
                                                                      linewidth=(10,),levels=100,extend='both')

ax1.coastlines()
ax1.gridlines()
ax1.set_xticks([0, 10,20,30,40,50,60,70,80,90,100], crs=ccrs.PlateCarree())
ax1.set_yticks([0, 10,20,30,40,50,60], crs=ccrs.PlateCarree())
lon_formatter = LongitudeFormatter(zero_direction_label=True,
                               number_format='.0f')
lat_formatter = LatitudeFormatter()
ax1.xaxis.set_major_formatter(lon_formatter)
ax1.yaxis.set_major_formatter(lat_formatter)
cbar = plt.colorbar(shear_fill, orientation='horizontal')
plt.title('Total precipitation', fontsize=16)
plt.savefig('precip_era.png')


Is there any correlation between La Niña/El Niño and seismic activity?

There is a case study from Environmental Science entitled El Niño: A Link among Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Crustal Circulation? that discusses  the correlations between seismic activity and El Niño cycles in certain areas of the world, that have been documented:

  A geophysicist, Daniel A. Walker, hypothesizes that a different sequence of events produces an El Niño event. Walker says that the thermal input to the oceans comes from Earth’s interior. This hypothesis is based on an intriguing correlation of seismic activity under the eastern portion of the Pacific Ocean near Easter Island and the onset of El Niño events. This correlation can be used to illustrate possible linkages among the physical systems of planet Earth and the difference between statistical correlation and physical causation.

  The East Pacific Rise is located west of Easter Island. Along this rise, tectonic plates move 160–170 mm (6.3–6.7 inches) per year. This rate is one of the most rapid in the world. As a result, seismic activity along the East Pacific Rise has been studied extensively for more than thirty years. During this period scientists have tracked the number of earthquakes and the amount of energy they release.

  Months with the greatest number of earthquakes or months with earthquakes that release the greatest amount of energy precede the onset of El Niño events. This hints at a relationship between seismic activity and El Niño events. A simple statistical analysis suggests that if the seismic events and the El Niño events occurred randomly, the probability of finding a sequence in which periods of heightened seismic activity precede El Niño events would be 1 out of 313. Such long odds imply that the sequence probably is not generated by random chance. Rather, there may be a physical connection between seismic activity and El Niño events.

  But statistical correlation should not be confused with physical causation. Correlation indicates that the timing of the two events is similar but does not mean that the two events are connected.

  Scientists have come up with several explanations for how seismic activity may trigger El Niño events. These hypotheses are based on the relationship between air temperature and pressure. In general, warm air has less pressure than cold air, so hypotheses seek to explain how seismic activity along the East Pacific Rise could affect air temperature.

There are several other articles that discuss the relationship between La Niña/El Niño cycles and seismic activity, such as this article published by RSTA entitled Statistical analysis of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation and sea-floor seismicity in the eastern tropical Pacific.

There also appears to be a relationship between El Niño cycles and volcanic activity, as published in Nature.


What's the difference between a crater and a vent?

A vent opens through the side of a volcano, somewhere on its slopes. The crater (and neck) can seal itself up, solidify over a period of inactivity, then re-open anew nearby to form a new crater. Magma will more readily move through the interface between a solidified neck and surrounding ash matrix than it will through the center of a solidified neck alone.


How to determine how long ago a rock was broken?

There is a technique called "Exposure Dating". Using e.g. cosmogenic nuclides (they are produced in the first metre or so of the surface of a rock which is exposed to cosmic rays, i.e. on the surface of the earth), it is possible to estimate the amount of time that the rock was exposed.

With some assumptions, you can get an exposure age of the fracture surface (or at least some information about it) since the fracture surface was exposed to cosmic rays only recently, whereas the rest of the surface was exposed to it long before.

The specific sample is probably too small though. This technique is useful to date the retreat of glaciers (they shield cosmic rays from the underlying bedrock), fault scarps, or the time a meteorite spent flying in space from its parent body to the earth.


What is this big Black Mass in Syria, as seen on google maps?

This is the Al-Safa Volcano in Syria. According to Wikipedia it last erupted in 1850 AD.


At the ocean surface, why do large amplitude waves travel faster than small amplitude waves?

Higher amplitude waves, on water, are caused by larger disturbances and longer durations of energy input, in the form of wind, than smaller ones. Quite simply in order to build a big ocean wave you need to put in a lot of acceleration of surface waters over an extended period of time. So it's not just that the wave itself is travelling that much faster, the whole surface that the wave is moving on is itself moving in the same direction as the wave on the surface. The larger amplitude of the waves is in fact partly due to them going faster rather than the other way around.

NB: This doesn't apply with Tsunami waves as those are full column disruptions involving the water column from seabed to wave crest.


Seismic inversion: High-Frequency approximation

The propagation of seismic waves is described by the wave equation: $$\mathrm{\nabla \cdot \sigma = \frac{\partial ^2 u}{\partial t^2}}$$
Where $\sigma$ is the stress and $u$ is the displacement.

Geometric ray theory is an approximation to the full wave equation where the length scale of variation in seismic wavespeed is much larger than the seismic wavelength (i.e. a high frequency approximation). Typical seismic wavelengths are anything from $\mathrm{\text{~}50-5000~m}$ depending on the application so the ray approximation is generally valid, unless you are trying to resolve very high resolution structure. It is used widely because it is computationally much less expensive than solving the full wave equation.

This book has a very detailed explanation of many aspects of seismic inversion if you need more detail.


Is it right practice to validate temperature data with reanalysis data?

No. One should not attempt to validate raw in situ measurements with reanalysis data. Reanalysis data contain partial information from observations, but are mostly model fields and are provided at very coarse resolution (~1$^\circ$ longitude). In situ measurements are subject to very local, small scale effects, and have different meaning from reanalysis. One is always free to compare the two datasets, but this would not be validation in any meaningful way.


Difference between the oxygen/$CO_2$ ratio during the period of the dinosaurs and the present

Is it true that during the time of the dinosaurs, both the oxygen
  requirements (by all living creatures on the planet) and the CO2
  released by volcanoes were higher than the same type of oxygen
  requirements today and the CO2 pollution created by us and the
  currently active volcanoes?

I'm not quite sure what "Oxygen requirements" means.   It seems to me that atmospheric changes is a byproduct of life on earth more than a "requirement".  There's other smaller factors, such as
volcanic activity.

I think the best way to address this question is to start before the dinos, around 360 million years ago and the start of the Carboniferous Period
when oxygen increased to higher levels than it had ever been and CO2 levels fell significantly, perhaps as low as 300 PPM, though estimates vary.

These lower levels of CO2 played a key role in the Karoo Ice Age

Something rather drastic happened around 251-252 million years ago but CO2 levels had started to rise before then, and the simple termite may have played a key role in the end of the Karoo ice age and rise in atmospheric CO2 .

When the Dino's came about (230 million years ago), CO2 levels were too high to have glaciers.   Whether that was due to the massive mantle plume, or the termite or increased volcanic or some combination of all 3 is hard to say, but CO2 PPM has risen quite significantly by the time the Dinos came.

Source

I recommend reading this part as it's more relevant to your question:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth's_atmosphere#Measuring_ancient-Earth_carbon_dioxide_concentration

  I want to know if there's some simple argument against cars and
  factories being responsible for global warming (while methane
  production and deforestation are left behind) - that's what I believe
  in (for now).

There's really no good argument at all.   it's worth pointing out that while some people don't like the man made climate change theory and a handful of scientists continue to question it, it has stood up reasonably well to the tests, and no alternate theory has even come close.

When the Koch brothers funded a study to prove the "urban heat island" effect, their study suggested the CO2 effect was even bigger than the IPCC's studies said it was.

There are a number of factors that can effect climate.   The Earth's orbital changes, ocean current changes, sunspots, volcanism, deforestation, snow cover and albedo, cow farts, land location, mountain ranges and their effect on rain and atmospheric circulation, but none of those effects are playing a significant role in recent decades. CO2 is the only driver that makes any sense at all and it's quite clear that the cause of the rise in CO2 is the burning of fossil fuels.


What sort of a plate is the Sunda plate?

Well, in short, it's mainly continental, (oceanic-continental convergence).
But in regards to the "type of plate" that the Sunda plate is, is minor plate or tertiary plate. Meaning it's not very big etc. Because 1 tectonic plate can have both oceanic or continental crust. Tectonic plate and crust are slightly different concepts. So, The Sunda plate is mainly comprised of continental crust. There might be a bit of oceanic crust, but less.
Map of oceanic crust on earth: https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/ocean_age/data/2008/ngdc-generated_images/whole_world/2008_age_of_oceans_plates.jpg


Can living where (rare) earth magnetic ore is abundant provide any protection from cosmic radiation?

Absolutely not.
First of all, "rare earth magnet ore", meaning the ores of metals like neodymium (Nd) and samarium (Sm), is not magnetic at all. It only becomes a magnet once you make a magnet out of it. For example, one such magnet is Nd2Fe14B  and it only becomes a magnet after neodymium is combined with iron and boron.
Naturally occuring neodymium ore is usually in the form of minerals such as bastnäsite (a rare earth carbonate) or monazite (rare earth phosphate) that are not magnetic.
It gets even worse!
Even if by some force of magic the rare earth ore would protect you from cosmic radiation, you now have two problems:

Most rare earth ore also has significant amounts of the radioactive thorium and uranium. You do not want to live in these areas, as any "protection" from cosmic radiation will be more than compensated for by the background radiation of the place you are now living in.
These are not nice places to live in. The three operating or recently operating rare earth extraction operations (aka mines) are in the desert. Bayan Obo in China, Mount Weld in Australia, and Mountain Pass in the United States.


The deep zones in the ocean are not where new rock is formed. The trenches are the areas where rock is subducted back into the mantle. Here's a picture to visualise it:

USGS/USGov, modified by Eurico Zimbres

New rock is formed at mid ocean ridges (for example 12 in the image). Those are areas that are less deep than the rest of the ocean. This rocky plate sinks underneath another plate (either continental or oceanic) and by doing so "pulls" that plate down (for example 13 and 18 in the image). This is what causes the extreme depth of those areas.


Is the momentum of a volcano's high-velocity ejecta mostly due to expanding gas?

The ejecta and their momentum appear to be entirely the product of the dissolved gasses in magma, according to this page on Physicochemical Controls on Eruption Style on the How Volcanoes Work pages of the Geology Department of San Diego State University:

  The amount of dissolved gas in the magma provides the driving force
  for explosive eruptions. The viscosity of the magma, however, is also
  an important factor in determining whether an eruption will be
  explosive or nonexplosive. A low-viscosity magma, like basalt, will
  allow the escaping gases to migrate rapidly through the magma and
  escape to the surface. However, if the magma is viscous, like
  rhyolite, its high polymerization will impede the upward mobility of
  the gas bubbles. As gas continues to exsolve from the viscous melt,
  the bubbles will be prevented from rapid escape, thus increasing the
  overall pressure on the magma column until the gas ejects explosively
  from the volcano. As a general rule, therefore, nonexplosive eruptions
  are typical of basaltic-to-andesitic magmas which have low viscosities
  and low gas contents, whereas explosive eruptions are typical of
  andesitic-to-rhyolitic magmas which have high viscosities and high gas
  contents.

A similar description is offered by Stephen A. Nelson, associate professor in the Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences at Tulane University:

  At depth in the Earth nearly all magmas contain gas dissolved in the
  liquid, but the gas forms a separate vapor phase when pressure is
  decreased as magma rises toward the surface of the Earth.   This is
  similar to carbonated beverages which are bottled at high pressure.
  The high pressure keeps the gas in solution in the liquid, but when
  pressure is decreased, like when you open the can or bottle, the gas
  comes out of solution and forms a separate gas phase that you see as
  bubbles.   Gas gives magmas their explosive character, because volume
  of gas expands as pressure is reduced.

So the gross extrusion of magma from the earth is not innately gas-dependent (though gas influences the composition of the magma), but the violent processes are caused more by gas coming out of solution and forming pressurized bubbles than gas or magma being under pressure, if that makes sense.


What geological events could cause a Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) level 9 eruption?

A fairly recent article by the Geological Society of America: Arc magmatism, calderas, and supervolcanoes (de Silva, 2008) states that VEI-8 (or volcanoes that release 1000 km$^3$ of tephra) are classed as being supervolcanic - and something that we have not witnessed in recorded history.  Specifically, the author describes VEI-8 (and greater) eruptions to be the result of 'supervolcanic caldera forming event flare ups'.

However, de Silva characterises the volcanism for this type of event as requiring a thermal and physical environment that can support storage and the mantle basaltic flux for the production of massive silicic magma.

As according to several authors including Siebert et al. (book: Volcanoes of the World), there is no evidence of a VEI-9 eruption found yet, the best way to think about this question is to imagine a majorly upscaled version of a VEI-8 supervolcano, such as Toba or Yellowstone.

So, the geological events for a hypothesised VEI-9 eruption would need (adapted from de Silva):

the development of a magma chamber that could support the magma that would be fragmented to produce at least 10,000+ km$^3$ of volcanic ash - this would probably result in major uplift in the area, with faulting around the edges.
flare up conditions that are the result of elevated power input from the mantle resulting in a major shift to an increase in silicic magma productivity - this could include a massive array of geysers (if water were present), heating of the ground, possibly widespread gas vents.
the thermomechanical evolution of the crust through a positive feedback between mantle power, mantle production, heat advection through the crust and the mechanical strength of the crust.  This is where there is enough energy to prevent the magma and crust to cool too quickly.
a trigger to set the whole pressure cooker off - most likely an earthquake, or a series of quakes that start a caldera collapse for example.
a recent study suggests that the assimilation of water bearing crustal rocks into the magma at Toba increased its water content, and therefore, explosivity.

Essentially, a VEI-9 eruption could be classified as a 'megavolcano', the consequences of such a volcanic eruption would be absolutely catastrophic.


What was the first rock in the rock cycle?

which came first

That's actually a very hard question. The most simple answer would indeed be igneous. Here's why:

Sedimentary rocks (in the sense of rock cycle) comes from pre-existing igneous or metamorphic rocks, so you need to have had them first.
Metamorphic rocks, by definition, are rocks that form from other kinds of rocks (be it igneous or metamorphic).
Igneous rocks form by melting of other rocks. Now here is the catch - what do you consider "other rocks"? The first igneous rocks on Earth (or to be exact - the proto-Earth) likely formed by impact melting of various small planetary bodies hitting each other and coalescing to form the Earth. These planetesimals formed by condensation of gas from the solar nebula, before Earth even existed, and before the rock cycle began.

So yes, igneous rocks were here first. The rocks (or material, if you wish) that existed before the igneous rocks do not fit into the traditional igneous/sedimentary/metamorphic definitions.

However, note that the rules of the rock cycle aren't written in stone (pun intended). What about evaporites? Rocks such as halite or gypsum beds form on the surface on the Earth, and their constituents aren't derived directly from either igneous or metamorphic rocks. What about sandstones that form by weathering of former sandstones? What about igneous rocks that form by partial melting of metamorphic rocks, and then melt again without ever reaching the surface to become sedimentary rocks? And my favourite one: pyroclastic rocks. Are they sedimentary or igneous? One textbook quips that they're igneous going up, and sedimentary going down.


I've been searching for a map that shows all continents in their actual size that is free of projection distortion, to no avail

That's because such a thing does not exist. A projection by definition has distortion, otherwise it would not be a projection.

The only way to have a distortion free view of the planet is by having a physical globe, and looking at it with both eyes so your brain gets the three dimensional perception (assuming going to space is not an option). Anything else will result in distortion.

Now that we have this covered, there are all kinds of projections with all kinds of distortions. Distortions can affect areas, distances, shapes, etc. to various degrees. It's your choice to determine which types of distortions and their magnitudes are acceptable to you, personally. There is no need to reinvent the wheel, there are enough projections out there already.


One of the best sites I know of for this type of analysis is the National Weather Service’s precipitation analysis site, which combines radar data, gauge observations, and satellite data to make an informed analysis over the entire country, not just where there are rain gauges.

You can use the controls below the map to choose day(s) for which you’d like to see the precipitation analysis, and it looks like they have archived data going back to 2005. I don’t know offhand if you can quickly get exact totals from the site, but it should be enough for a rough idea.

And if you’re more specifically interested in snow totals (instead of liquid precipitation), there’s also another site from the NWS dedicated to snowfall analyses.


Plain-language summary of why Uranus and Neptune are different than Earth in having large offsets of their dipole field?

Earth's rotation is an important factor in contributing to the generation of the field, and helping to stabilise the form of it. The rotation influences the flow of compositionally convecting material deep within the outer core, forming cylindrical rolls that align along the rotation axis (a Coriolis effect).
While Earth's field polarity may reverse occasionally, it is to a good approximation (and we believe predominantly has always been) a roughly centred dipole, aligned roughly with the rotation axis of the Earth because of the influence of Earth's rotation.
For Uranus and Neptune, this is not the case. The centre of their dipoles are significantly offset from their centres of mass, the axes of the dipoles are significantly offset from the rotation axes.
For both Uranus and Neptune, magnetic field generation is believed to occur in flowing material much closer to the planets' surfaces (due to the very different composition of ice giants versus the terrestrial Earth). With flow constrained in a relatively thin layer near the surface, planet rotation does not have a strong influence on the form of the convective motion, so the field that results is not particularly tied to how the planet rotates.
This article gives a good idea of how the geometry of the convecting flow region can lead to Earth-like or Neptune/Uranus-like magnetic fields.


Modelling sea levels with gravitational parameters

Starting from scratch and building a "toy model" is unlikely to be successful here, because while you could certainly model Newtonian tides, much of what happens on the continental shelves is tied very closely into the shapes of coastlines and bathymetry, the interaction between the inertia of the tidal wave and friction on the seabed, and so forth - a lot of non-linear effects, some of which are not fully understood.

My suggestion would be to start with an existing, validated, global ocean model and tweak its input parameters. For example, to simulate a change in the gravitational pull of the moon you could change the amplitudes of the lunar tidal constituents that drive the model (and perhaps also their periods, if you wanted to work out the appropriate orbital mechanics!).

Be aware that running models of this sort tends to be computationally expensive, obviously depending on the resolution - but it should be within the realms of what is feasible on a home computer, if you don't mind things taking a week or two to run (I assume, since this is a hobby project, that you don't have access to HPC resources for it). I'm not sure whether anybody makes a simple but validated model openly available - if anybody knows of one, perhaps they could comment. If not, you might have to build your own using an open source code, which would be substantially more work.


Are there any seasonal or diurnal trends in earthquakes?

There is a slight tendency for earthquakes in coastal areas to coincide with higher gravitational attraction. In one study in Greece, earthquakes were 15% more likely to occur when the sun's gravitational pull was at a maximum. In general though, seismic-tidal correlations are very weak (but not zero).


What effect does river channelization have on the surrounding water table?

The concept of rivers being the outcrop of an aquifer at the surface is a useful generalization, but tends to simplify the real world.

The water level in a river can be higher than the water table in an aquifer. We would describe the river as 'losing' water and it would recharge the aquifer. So in that case channelization would reduce aquifer recharge and potentially lower the water table. As an example irrigation canals in arid areas are often quite leaky. Projects to line the canals to reduce leakage have frequently had the unintended consequence of cutting off local recharge to aquifers used by farmers adjacent to the canal.

If the water level in the aquifer is higher than the river we describe it as a 'gaining' river. Channelization would reduce river flow and lead to higher water tables in the aquifer. The consequence of the higher water tables might be increased spring or river flow in another part of the aquifer - or in the worst case emergence of water adjacent to the channelized section waterlogging the ground. The extreme case of filling up a whole region is improbable, as once levels rise enough the water will just flow back into the channel, or further rise will be balanced by evaporation from open water.

Stretches of river may change from losing to gaining, and vice versa, seasonally, or in response to changes in geology or topography over quite short distances. Natural river beds are often not seamlessly connected to the aquifers they run over; muds and silts on the river bed can reduce permeability and effectively cause natural channelization. Equally artificial channelization is rarely 100% effective and leak proof.


What are the technical solutions to measure $\ce{CO2}$ emissions?

In addition to satellite measurements of carbon dioxide, there are numerous ground based stations that also measure carbon dioxide: Italy, Hawaii, Australia, just to name a few.

If you want to catch carbon dioxide emitting cheaters, a dense network of such ground based stations would be needed around the world. The measurements would need to combined with meteorological data, particularly wind directions and strength. I imagine this would also require significant computer modelling to analyze all this data in a timely manner. This would need to be operated by a totally independent organization with lots of money. This will be difficult to achieve.

Alternatively, and probably more costly would be to have a constellation of satellites in geostationary orbit around the Earth constantly measuring atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide. As with the ground based stations, the data would need to be combined with meteorological data and processed via a computer model.

Monitoring compliance will not be cheap or easy.


What processes created these apparent topographical anomalies in North California?

Tectonic processes and erosion.

Well.....obviously: all surface features on our globe are caused, at base, by tectonics (uplift or subsidence) and erosion (knocking down or burying). To simplify: shifting plates cause mountains to build and basin to form and water falling from the sky erodes the rock and fills valleys with sand and gravel.

That, however, won't explain why a specific mountain will be shaped like a dog biscuit, or why a certain lake will look like a guitar. These are very specific results of erosion and, as such, are controlled largely by the internal fabric of the eroded body.

Water, as we all know, is the most important erosive force on earth and we also know that water will always seek the easiest path to the sea; it's a constant, stream of fine sandpaper always first eroding the softest, weakest spots of anything it touches. This would include the following:

"Soft" rock units like carbonates, shales, and chemically unstable rocks like serpentinites.
Internal weaknesses like fault planes, joints, bedding planes, and folds,

In the area highlighted by the OP, there is an abundance of these weaknesses for water's erosive power to exploit. That these weaknesses occur rather randomly in this area means that there is no specific orientation to drainages and mountain ridges. And this all makes sense given the context of the geologic history of the region.

This area is home to the Fransiscan Assemblage of rocks. These mangled, misshapen, motley group of metamorphosed sedimentary rocks were once part of the accretionary wedge that built up at the bottom of a subduction zone. Tectonic forces bent, folded, cooked, smeared, and finally lifted these rocks, exposing their inherent weaknesses to the erosive power of water. The relatively random nature of these weaknesses results in a pretty random-looking erosional pattern.

Below are a few examples from the SW U.S. of what erosion does to uplifted units that contain regular and ordered weaknesses:


Are there any quantities defined analogically to the virtual temperature, but for other gases?

It is true that water is not the only variable constituent of the atmosphere, but it is capable of large variations (0-5%+) that I'm not sure other trace constituents are capable of outside of plumes from smokestacks / cars / factories / etc.  A virtual temperature for other gases would only be meaningful if their variability imparts a significant change in mass in a parcel such that it becomes important for buoyancy.

That being said, you could easily derive such a virtual temperature, as the virtual temperature is just a proxy for density changes and we can easily calculate this.

For each constituent gas, you can use the ideal gas law as

$$p_i = \rho_i R_i T$$

such that each density of gas $i$ is

$$\rho_i = \dfrac{p_i}{R_i T}$$

and then sum these with dry air ($p_d$)

$$\rho = \dfrac{p-\sum p_i}{R_d T} + {\large\sum} \dfrac{p_i}{R_i T} $$

and then solving for $p$ in terms of $\rho$, $R_d$ and collecting the rest of the terms into a variable and calling it $T_v$.

This process could be used to generically define a virtual temperature for any number of trace gases (single or multiple) as long as you know their mixing ratios with dry air.  I'm not aware of anyone using (on Earth) a virtual temp for anything other than water vapor and suspended hydrometeors (e.g. density potential temperature, $\theta_\rho$) but that certainly doesn't mean no one is.


Results of large woody debris in river/lake

Depending on the fauna within the rivers and lakes, submerged trees can be like reefs in oceans. They provide protection for fish and other fauna and they can also act as nurseries for certain types of fish.

Submerged trees can sometimes be snags in waterways which increases the difficulty in navigating waterways, particularly for larger boats.


Can a braided fluvial create thick relatively continuous siltstone beds?

Braided channels are usually found in estuaries. Estuaries are usually on the coast. That being the case, it seems possible that now and again a high tide brought in some sand which covered the silt-filled channels, which then brought more silt, thus creating the layered structure you describe. If the site is now a long way from the coast, it doesn't follow that it always was.


How significant is a 5-10 mb drop in pressure over a 20 minute period?

On the synoptic scale (thinking along the lines of cyclones, weather fronts etc.), then that's a pretty significant drop in that amount of time.

A bomb or explosive cycogenesis in meteorological terms is defined as a drop of at least 24mb in 24 hours, so your observation easily fits this description of being a significant rapid pressure change. There's a list of similar events here.

You ask what the significance would be at the surface, and only 80m up, which makes me think you might be talking about smaller scales (perhaps?), in which case @naught101 is right in suspecting small scale eddies from buildings could be causing the surprising readings. 80m isn't really going change the significance of an observation that much on synoptic/meso -scales.

Sources:

http://glossary.ametsoc.org/wiki/Bomb

Synoptic-Dynamic Climatology of the "Bomb"


Why do more tornadoes happen late in the day?

There are two factors at work here:

Actual occurrence of tornadoes,
Reports of tornadoes.

Tornadoes are primarily associated with supercell thunderstorms, though they can also be associated with landfalling tropical cyclones, squall lines and bow echoes.  Thunderstorms are favored in the afternoon to early evening hours as this is when integrated solar heating throughout the day has warmed the boundary layer enough to kickstart convection (through reaching the convective temperature or eroding the capping inversion).  Because of this, supercells are going to tend to initiate in the mid to late afternoon and if they produce tornadoes it will be in the timeframe maximized in your graph.

The tornado record is far from perfect and is based on verification of tornado damage.  That damage will only be surveyed if a potential tornado is reported or radar strongly suggested that one may have occurred.  A small tornado in the middle of nowhere from an unimpressive storm at night surely may exist, but a record of it may not.  This is also true of middle-of-nowhere tornadoes during the day, but those may have a slightly higher chance of being reported by a storm chaser.  No one smart chases at night.


Predicting school closures with historical weather prediction data?

I'm not aware of any datasets that are quite what you want (archived point forecasts for the next day).  There is less digestible data out there though.

NOAA NCDC archived messages
This website has archives of all messages that NOAA transmits.  The vast majority are unrelated to your needs, but if you look through the message types you might find something worthwile.

NCDC NOMADS
This site has archived GFS model grids.  This model is run 4 times per day and each run will have an analysis grid (current weather) and forecasts every 6 hours through the first few days of forecast time.

Most other archived data I could find are either observations or model reanalysis datasets, which won't work for your needs (except to better define the initial day t).  With the above datasets you could potentially put together the current weather at a specific place at 4 different times on day (t) and from each time have forecasts data for the next day, e.g.:

Observations / model analysis 12Z day t: 24 hour forecast for 12Z day t+1
Observations / model analysis 18Z day t: 18 hour forecast for 12Z, 24 hour forecast for 18Z day t+1
Observations / model analysis 00Z day t: 12 hour forecast for 12Z, 18 hour for 18Z and 24 hour for 00Z day t+1

From these you could then do your statistical analysis overall and explore how it may change as the day progresses and the model forecasts are shorter term.
If wading through this data is not something you want to deal with, an alternative is to start archiving forecast data yourself going forward and building up a database over time.
Some caveats...
The NOMADS GFS data is pure model data, no forecaster input.  This is not what decision makers will be using directly.  This data will be made more consumable and be tweaked by forecasters before dissemination to the public.  If the NOAA message archive contains suitable forecasts data, that data will have likely been filtered through a forecaster and close to what would be displayed on the NWS website as a forecast.
School closings are chaotic.  The same weather will not yeild the same closures.  Sometimes schools will stay open when faced with a worse forecast than a time they recently closed.  The criteria for closing may be a moving target as usable "snow days" are used up.  School closing thresholds will vary regionally (Florida schools would be closed Dec - March if subjected to a Michigan winter).  You may come up with a good forecast for when a school should close, but don't be surprised if it doesn't correlate well with actual closings.


Is there consensus amongst climatologists that cold weather extremes are caused by global warming or human influence?

It is common sense. The more energy in the Atmosphere the most intense will be the stirring up of it, so you will get cold polar air and hot tropical air moving around further and producing extreme weather.


Q1: A volcano consists of many lava flows that occur over a long period of time.
In general, only very few of these lava flows have the right composition and  the right cooling history that are required to form obsidian.

This is why only parts of a volcano consist of obsidian, and by volume it's a generally a very small amount.

Q2: And yes there is amorphous ice. It is known since the 1980s. These days it is being used in laboratory environments, e.g. for electron cryomicroscopy. This is a high-tech-method for observing biochemical reactions and cellular processes in situ. The microorganisms need to be alive and in the middle of a reaction when shock-freezed. Researchers want to image atomic structures of the biomolecules, not from ubiquitous crystalline water so it better be amourphous.

Q3: Glass from windows and bottles contains more Na and K than most Granitic rocks. Na- and K-rich ingredients are being added as fluxing agent (limestone, soda), in the glass factory, decreasing the melting point of the silicates and therefore lowering the production costs.

I think a melt of bottle glass, when crystallizing slowly would initially form the minerals Nepheline and Leucite, but late in the solidifcation process also Alkali Feldspar, and some Quarz, among other minerals.

If you cooled it so slowly that no glass phase forms, you still might get zoned crystals, having with a different composition from core to rim. That depends on the absence/presence of impurities and local chemical (dis-) equilibria.


What factors affect the size of rain shadows?

Of course, first you will need a collision zone where moist air collides with dry air - and therefore you will need to consider a considerable air flow in the opposite direction to the flow responsible for the rain shadow.

For example, in Eurasia, the Himalayan rain shadow extends up to the Kazhak steppes, until regional climatic effects of the Black Sea and Caspian Sea moderate the dryness. The Russian heartlands are blessed with the Dvina-Sukhona river; which starts at the lake Kubenskoye; which is blessed from Baltic Airs, still under the effects of the westerlies: thus you do not directly have a moist airstream colliding with the dry air from the opposite direction, but from the side.

In contrast, the German northeast, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is within the rain shadow of the central German Harz mountains - but the river Oder is also inside the rain shadow. This brings us to the second point: topological relief. Is it sloping towards the rain shadow, such that the rain water from the other side drains into the rain shadow?

In this case, sooner or later you will form rivers - and lakes, unless the river meets the sea very quickly (as in the case of Germany and the Baltics). As soon as you have lakes, the rain shadow will be moderated.

Taking yet another example, the Kalaharis: east of Namibian Great Escarpment, and west of Highveld/Drakensberg. Thus Kalahari lies within a rain shadow from both east and west - and despite the river Okawango flowing in it, the climate is not moderated.

So there are uncountably many factors that contribute to your question.


How can radiometric dating of meteorites determine the age of the earth? Wouldn't this only determine the age of the decaying nuclide in each rock?

Many of your questions are answered in this question and associated answers:

Why is Earth's age given by dating meteorites rather than its own rocks?

To add to some of your other questions:

  Wouldn't radioactive decay have already been occurring in all of those meteorites long before they hit earth or our moon?

Yes. We have an assumption that the Earth formed at about the same time as the meteorites. The age obtained for meteorites is not the time when they hit the Earth, it is the time when they formed. Which is reasonably assumed to be close to the age of the Earth.

  Wouldn't this only give us a lower bound on the earth's age? How do we know there doesn't exist some older meteorite out there indicating the earth is older then 4.5 billion years?

Because we haven't found one. We have found thousands of meteorites and none have an age older than that. Yea, there could be something that we simply having found. But the more you look, the more a pattern emerges.
Furthermore, there are other systems like 26 Mg-Al which do not date how long ago things formed, but rather how soon after the supernova things formed. This allows us to know that meteorites that formed 4.5 billion years ago, also formed within a few million of years after the supernova that made the nebula and all materials in the solar system. Therefore, Earth could not be older than 4.5 billion years.

Al-26 forms abundantly in supernovae and is radioactive with a half-life of almost a million years. Minerals which contain both Mg and Al (such as spinel: MgAl2O4) will initially incorporate Al-26 which will then decay to stable Mg-26. When measured, the mineral will have an excess of Mg-26 relative to what is expected, and then it can constrain its formation time to the time when Al-26 was still around (without a few million of the supernova). The same meteorite can then be dated using other methods (usually U-Pb) to determine how long ago it formed, and the answer is usually ~4.5 billion years.


Could Rumblings From Plutons be as Ominous as Rumblings From Volcanoes?

I searched the mentioned earthquake, and if i understood it right it is attributed to a fault line formed by two laterally moving crustal units (a "normal fault"). Mount Kinabara itself is not to blame, though the earthquake triggered landslides as secondary effects at its steep flanks. I also found papers on the geological history of the area that offer explanations of the causes of the earthquake. As to portents and the future, if only i knew ... :-)

There is this publication (Wang et. al. 2015, open access) about the earthquake attributing it to a normal fault directly beneath Mt Kinabalu. The epicentre's position is marked on a profile in the publication.


What are these lake-like blue patches in the desert, visible in satellite image?

The 'bluish' areas are exposed gypsum and gravel across which the sand dunes are moving. The colour is likely an artifact of the 'natural' colour palette used when processing the SPOT image. To understand just how arbitrary and variable the results of that processing can be, consider the following image captured at a fairly high zoom level in one of your 'blue' areas:

Meanwhile just to the south-west, there is at least one identifiable lake (at 20.896022N ,54.007201E, perhaps an up-welling of ground water, possibly transient and apparently highly saline, judging from the lack of vegetation around it) and, as you can see here.... it has an entirely different appearance to the blueish areas you've identified.


Carboniferous CO2 levels may not have been unlike today's. Evidence for this is primarily from long term geochemical modeling work, as there are few direct proxies of sufficient age.

I can easily cite one source, as it's from my own paper, but please check the reference list for the other datasets. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chemgeo.2013.10.012


How deep are the cracks in the earths crust at fault zones?

Cracks (actually the right word is fault or in some situations rift) can only occur in brittle material and only the Earths upper crust (top 5-25 km) is brittle. The lower crust and mantle are ductile, i.e., they have a relatively lower viscosity which means that they can indeed crack on short time scales but will heal quickly due to high temperatures and pressure.

Edit: In some ways you can think the lower crust and mantle to be like pitch (tar), which is solid at room temperature but flows over longer periods. E.g., see this link which also happens to be the worlds longest running experiment.


What are these "ship wrecks" (pictured) in the old volcano crater?

If U-shaped in cross-section, it is plausible that these are the partial remnants of lava tubes. See, for example, Morphology and mechanism of eruption of postglacial shield volcanoes in Iceland (Rossi, 1996). It is difficult to propose more detailed formation mechanisms in the absence of significantly more information about the structure.


Looking for counter-arguments concerning the melting of glaciers in the alps in the context of global warming

He concludes that it must have been much warmer in times when mankind was not yet able to bring CO2 in the atmosphere and there is no causal relationship between the melting of the glaciers in the alps and the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

This incorrectly collapses several things.

Mankind is not the only cause of CO2 in the atmosphere. There have been warmer periods caused by CO2, but it was not man-made.
I think you slightly misrepresented his words by quoting no causal relationship between the melting of the glaciers in the alps and the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, but actually meaning is no causal relationship between the melting of the glaciers in the alps and the amount of man-made CO2 in the atmosphere. If not, that would mean he is denying any relationship between CO2 and temperature, which would disqualify him as a knowledgable person.


How much of one day can be considered nighttime, on average?

To further clarify, assume we are on the equator, I want to know how long a time, as a percentage, you could consider to be nighttime on Earth, with the points in time separating night and day being within sunrise and sunset.

I personally wouldn't consider that the dividing line between night and day. I consider night to be the period between dusk and dawn rather than sunset and sunrise. One doesn't need to stop playing a ball game on an unlit field just because the Sun has set. There's still another twenty to forty minutes of light from the blue sky. Dusk and dawn last the shortest in the tropics, with civil twilight (e.g., the period when one can continue playing a ball game on an unlit field) generally considered to be the 24 minute period prior to sunrise / after sunset in the tropics. With this, "nighttime" comprises about 47% of the time in the tropics.

The question however asks about the period between sunset and sunrise. Even on an airless planet, "nighttime" by this definition will comprise a bit less than half the time at the equator because sunrise and sunset occur when the top of the Sun appears above / drops below the horizon. Since the Sun's angular diameter is about 32 arc minutes, on average, this alone means that daytime is about two minutes longer than nighttime+twilight at the equator. We don't live on an airless planet. Atmospheric refraction means that when we see the very top of the Sun at the horizon, the Sun is geometrically well below the horizon.

This, coupled with the Sun's angular size, makes daytime last about 12 hours and 6 to 8 minutes at the equator, with very little variation over the course of a year. Taking 12 hours and 7 minutes as the average, daytime represents 50.5% of the time while twilight plus nighttime (or just night, per the question) represents the other 49.5% of the time.


US Naval Observatory Sunrise/Sunset Data: Blank Sunrise/Sunset Times?

I get a blank entry for May 03.

The Sun didn't set on Bovinia, New York on May 03 when time is expressed as Universal Time. Sunsets from May 04 to August 16 occur before sunrise. (Also note that August 16 has two sunsets.)

The solution is simple: Fill in the time zone. Ignoring daylight savings time, time in Bovinia New York is offset by 5 hours from UTC.

Another solution is to use a different website. There are better web services than the simple perl-based script used to generate that table.


How much energy would be required to actively reduce the temperature of the oceans of Earth by 1℃?

The question is slightly confused, because reducing the temperature of the oceans, in a direct sense, doesn't require energy - it releases it. The amount that is released is simply related to the mass and specific heat capacity of seawater, as you suggest.

The missing question, though, is why the ocean is cooling. For it to happen naturally and simply release energy, it would need to be because its surroundings (e.g. the air) were cooler. If you want to actively cool the sea, then yes, that is going to consume energy. If the cooling has approximately the same level of performance as building-sized air conditioning, the power used by the cooling apparatus will be about 40% of the rate at which the energy is removed (and remember that this is not just the total energy divided by the time, because more heat will be leaking back in while you do it).

Leaving aside the, uh, engineering challenges of this scale of cooling, this leads to a question as to why one might want to do this. Remember that unless you devise some complex system to radiate this heat into space from above the atmosphere, you're going to be releasing the same heat into the same global climate system, plus the additional 40% that you've used to move it around.


Material used in river embankment and difference between levees and dykes

Generally, the terms are used somewhat interchangeably. However, a levee can be formed along a river or ephemeral channel due to natural causes. Mainly: flooding of the river/channel and subsequent deposition of suspended material on its banks. In case of a river: as this occurs on the sides of the river where the flowing water has the least energy, it mainly carries fine material such as fine sand, silt and clay. A dyke, on the other hand is often man made and can consist of numerous materials. In the Netherlands for instance, it is often made of various components of sand, clay and peat.

As the description in the image is dutch, the yellow parts are sandy materials, the brown/reddish are clayey materials and the orange/pink materials are peaty or clayey. You will often find peaty and clayey material on the outer parts of a dyke. These materials conduct less water than sand and serve as a first protective layer. In the Netherlands, the core is often made of sand, as the stability and geotechnical behaviour of sands are less influenced by water than those of clay. Clays shrink and swell as a result of water content, in extensive drought this may cause clays to crack and dykes to be damaged. Additionally, sands are more easily drained than clays, as a result of their bigger pores.
Sources:
Deltares


Would a nuclear explosion over one of the Earth’s magnetic poles momentarily disrupt/weaken the Earth’s magnetic field?

There are a few different questions lurking here.

No, it would not have any lasting effect on the Earth's magnetic field. That field is not generated at the surface, at the poles or otherwise.
Yes, it would produce an electromagnetic pulse, and that could be harmful to unshielded electronics in at least a line-of-sight sense.
Yes, this EMP would definitely cause localized magnetic effects for a very brief moment, which one could argue constitute a change in the natural magnetic field.
I'm not sure whether there's any reason to think that the earth's magnetic field could help these effects to propagate beyond line of sight - which I think is what you're really asking. Perhaps a physicist could chime in...


How are wind speeds typically distributed?

Yes, the most commonly used distribution for wind speed is the Weibull - at least when it comes to predicting wind speeds at prospective wind farm locations.

Yes, the parameters vary.

See, for example, the book "Wind Energy - The Facts", the output of an EU research programme (ISBN 9781844077106, also freely available online).

Or Seguro & Lambert's paper Modern estimation of the parameters of the Weibull wind speed distribution for wind energy analysis

As a starting point for estimation, it's usual to take $k=2$; this is equivalent to the Rayleigh distribution. However, the Weibull is more generalised, and often provides a better fit (i.e. $k$ isn't exactly 2).


Why would a suite of related rocks have one anomalous sample?

Under the assumption that we don't know anything about sampling, preparation and analysis we have to proceed with caution. Any of these steps can introduce effects that can produce stronger signals than the natural geochemistry of a rock sample.

Just to give you an idea of the errors:

Sampling a heterogeneous rock can produce very different whole rock chemistry. If you take your sample from a mica-rich layer you will get different results than from a feldspar-rich layer.
During sample preparation you can inadvertently through grinding, sieving and pouring produce aliquots which don't have the same mineral composition. Micas pour different from one vessel into another than quartz-grains. A certain mineral you want to analyze might have a smaller grain size and sit at the bottom of your vessel or in a different sieve your not analyzing. Each step in the lab can result in chemical fractioning!
Analytics is a whole science on its own. Without knowing how the mineral sample was dissolved (did everything dissolve?) and values for detection limit and standard deviation you will have uncertainties in your data that might be make these values meaningless.

Now assuming that the data is somewhat trustworthy:

The left plot shows you the chondrite normalized rare earth element pattern. The light rare earths are 100 to 1000 times enriched relative to the chondrite (should actually be cited which one). Heavy earth elements are also enriched but less. The sample CCS01 has lower enrichment and a positive Eu-anomaly. This could indicate that the sample has a different mineral composition than the other samples. Maybe a rare-earth-element-enriched mineral has a lower concentration in the CCS01-sample.
The right plot the CCS01-sample sticks out again. It has lower P-concentrations. Think again of how your sample might have fewer phosphates. The relative depletion in Ce and La might correlate with P. The sample might just have less monazite (But other minerals could cause this too). Lower Nb and Ta might indicate that the sample has fewer columbite and tantalite (but the Elements occur in other minerals too).

Conclusion:

Instead of guessing you should find out everything you can about the samples history (sampling, preparation, analysis). If possible suggest more analytics. A day at the microprobe could show you which minerals are contained in your sample (rock slide or strewn grain concentrate). If not available a polarizing microscope could also help you figure out the differences in the sample (excluding very small grains).


How do we measure (or empirically calculate) the amount of entropy in the atmosphere and oceans?

There is a convention for moist air entropy built from dry air entropy being 0 at T = 273.15K and P = 101325Pa, and liquid water entropy being 0 at its triple point. See the page numbered 47 of this NIST document:

http://www.nist.gov/calibrations/upload/5241.pdf

Entropy is not measured directly.

Entropy $S$ is defined as $dS \equiv dQ_{rev}/T$

Therefore, entropy can measured by measuring heat transfer and temperature.

See Calculation of Entropy Change in Some Basic Processes for more information.


Please could you help me finding global warming video with ice melting in glass time messurment scene?

This is probably not the specific video you are looking for, but here is one:

The video Latent heat of fusion shows the effect that you mean in a real world situation where the water is not mixed well.
The video Determination of Melting Point of Ice shows it under more controlled conditions.

The video Heat in changes of state explains it with a graph.

The video Energy required to melt ice and warm the water gives you an actual calculation example and shows the energy involved in melting ice vs. heating water.


Estimation on how cold will my pond get - intent is to know if certain fish can survive in it

I doubt a pond temperature will stay above 60 in central FL winter.Without circulation there will be large temperature gradients caused by stratification, especially on warm days. Surface plants probably lower the maximum temperatures. For such a large pond ,the relative humidity and wind will make a temperature difference ( evaporation is a major heat loss).  As a comparison , I have a small ( 1000 gal) pond with circulation and although our air temperatures are usually 98 -day and 76-night, I have never measured a temperature over 83 F and usually lower. So the water temperature is definitely lower than the average air temperature in summer. In winter I protect my pond from low temperatures but it gets to 52 F . However, tropical fish like danios, swordtails and mollies survive that temperature in pond conditions , although books will say such temperature will kill them . What fish do you plan to have ? With the history that FL has for raising tropical fish , I would think there would be information available , such as from the FL Dept of Agriculture.


What is the motivation of using the Enhanced Fujita Scale in place of the Fujita Scale?

Both the Fujita (F) and Enhanced Fujita (EF) scales measure damage and then use damage as a proxy for wind speed.  Wind speed at the low levels is not directly measured unless the tornado is either very close to a doppler radar site or there happens to be a mobile radar sampling it.  This provides very few tornadoes with directly sampled wind speed and is the exception rather than the rule.

Where the F and EF scales differ primarly is that in the EF scale construction methods may be considered, not just the damage observed.

Damage is used as a proxy for windspeed by examining damage, construction techniques and methods (EF scale only), materials, and other factors and then determining what threshold wind speed could cause that damage.  This means that identical damage can result in different windspeed estimates.

For example, a house that is completely destroyed and leaves behind a clean concrete slab is generally considered EF-5 damage, but some houses with poor construction have been found to not be physically tied to the foundation.  A particular case in northern GA, USA had tornado winds blow down a garage door and then lift the house directly off the slab and take it away.  This also leaves a clean concrete slab, but the construction methods will cause a lower wind estimate and a weaker tornado determination because less wind was required to cause the damage.

The only other difference between the F and EF scales are that some of the wind speed estimates have been lowered in the EF scale and more descriptive damage indicators are used for wind speed estimates to help standardize those estimates.

In summary, the EF scale differs from the F scale:

EF scale can consider construction methods
EF scale has more descriptive damage indicators used to estimate wind speed
EF scale has reduced wind speeds in each category to better align with engineering estimates of damage