Are Great Britain and Italy parts of the same geological feature?

No

Great Britain doesn't necessarily have a unitary geological origin, but the mountains on it (such as there are mountains) are well worn left-overs from the Caledonian orogeny of 400 million+ years ago. These were thrust up before the tetrapods even took to land as part of the plate collision that formed the northern half of Pangaea. This is the same orogeny that made the Appalachians in the US and contributed to the mountains of Scandanavia, as well.

The Appenines are a result of the much more recent Alpine orogeny. Caused by the collision of Africa into Eurasia over the last 60 million years or so, this orogeny built mountains from Spain and Morocco to the Zagros and Alborz in Iran.


How does evapotranspiration affect rainfall?

Without water in the air, clouds cannot form and evaporate quickly if they do and so a sudden drop in evapotranspiration that resulted in low humidity could decrease the prevalence of rain. But, in simulations, there's not usually much of a measurable effect (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0273117787902900?np=y). This is because there's a lot more going into this than just evaporation from plants and the total amount of water that winds up in the region's atmosphere.

Air is constantly moving and there's a lot of it, and so to have a measurable impact, this would need to be a pretty large region and/or evapotranspiration would need to stop for an extended period of time.
Plants have a greater impact on their environment than what can be measured through evapotranspiration
Evapotranspiration affects energy balance, which means that sunlight also plays a role in the ultimate effects.

The result is a rather complex web of interactions and an effect that would be very different depending on season, region, and how the loss of evapotranspiration occurred. So, the two scenarios you proposed would have very different effects.


regarding four-way closure in structural geology

I understand the term "four-way closure" to be a dome (structural). If that is what you mean...
In that case the 2 structures are similar, but domes are rather symmetrical, whiles anticlines are very asymmetrical, to the extend that we only consider them having to limbs. Although technically speaking anticlines have four, just like domes. Those limbs are called periclines. It's all just convention, both four-way closures and anticlines are folded structures that have an "ending" at some point, it's just that four-way closures are more symmetrical.


While the terms are rarely used rigorously, AVO and AVA refer to slightly different versions of the same type of analysis.

The amplitude (and phase) of a seismic reflection varies with the offset distance between the source and receiver. Hence 'amplitude variation with offset', or AVO.

Strictly speaking, however, the variation — which is given by the Zoeppritz equations — is with the incidence or offset angle, often called $\theta$. That is, the reflectivity is a function of angle, not of distance. So 'amplitude variation with angle' (AVA) is arguably a better name for the phenomenon.

It turns out that the reflectivity varies linearly with respect to $\sin^2\theta$, so we often use that relationship instead, e.g. via the 2-term Shuey approximation:

$$R(\theta) = R(0) + G\sin^2\theta$$

where R is the reflectivity and $G$ is a function of P-wave velocity $V_\mathrm{P}$, S-wave velocity $V_\mathrm{S}$, and density $\rho$.

If we're being strict about the language, the practical difference in seismic analysis is that you'd perform AVO analysis on offset gathers or partial offset stacks (such as you might get directly from processing), and AVA analysis on angle gathers or partial angle stacks (which would require you to interpolate the offset-based data using a velocity model and ray-tracing).


How much wind power is there roughly in Britain and its surrounding?

2.2TWe on average in the seas...
The uk uses less than 350 Gigawatts every year, so the sea can provide about 6 times the current UK energy consumption:
80 GW in shallow waters (0-25 m)
270 GW in seas of depth 25-50m
(up to there is sufficient to meet all of the UK's 2016 energy consumption)... There is also:
790GW in seas of 50-100m
1030GW at 100m-700m
https://claverton-energy.com/two-terawatts-average-power-output-the-uk-offshore-wind-resource.html
https://www.statista.com/statistics/323381/total-demand-for-electricity-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/
For onshore resources, you can add another 100GWh.


On the light difference between morning and afternoon

I am asking why the light of a clear day is not symmetrically changing centered at noon.

Trying to attribute this to a single cause misses the point. There are multiple causes. Other than lighting itself (i.e., the Sun angle), most aspects of the atmosphere are not symmetric about noon.

The low on a clear day typically occurs right around sunrise (not midnight), while the high typically occurs hours after noon. Assuming a front is not passing through, relative humidity is typically highest in the hours around sunrise, lowest a few hours before sunset, roughly coinciding with the low and high temperatures. Atmospheric stability is high in the early morning on a clear calm day, low in the afternoon and evening. During weekdays, pollution oftentimes is at a minimum around 6 to 8 AM and a peak around 5 to 7 PM.

All of these can contribute to the effects you are seeing, plus other factors I did not list.


What would happen if magma flows into a very large oil deposit?

An oil deposit is gravel and rock mixed with oil, capped by rock - like this:

My guess is that if somehow, likely from below or sideways, magma would intrude into this deposit, oil (and posibly water) would evaporate. The pressure rises, slowing the magma intrusion. If enough magma and enough heat is provided, the vapor pressure of the oil may be enough to crack the rock layer at places, oil would escape and condense in the shale layer.

My gut feeling is that we are talking about processes that take years to decades to play out.


How can I test my house water supply for hydrocarbon presence?

Chances are you do not have presences of fuel in your water. This sounds like you could have a few different things happening.
First off, iron reducing bacteria can lead to significant corrosion. These are bacteria that feed on iron both in the water and also in plumbing systems. They also can put off a smell.
The second one is manganese. If you notice this smell after rain, etc. then this is a possibility. Manganese can make the water blackish and smell like fuel oil. While mostly harmless, it can cause issues with staining, etc.
If you have a private well and live in a hard water area, both of these could be occurring simultaneously. Correlation is not always causation. What the smell is vs. what is causing the corrosion could be separate issues.
Lastly, if the pH is off in the water, too acidic or too base then this can also eat away at your pipes. Typically though, many water quality smell and plumbing issues come from bacterial issues. Check this first and then move on if negative.


Relative world carbon footprints by nation?

The answer is no.

The search for a single and simple measure for each country’s contribution to global warming is unlikely to succeed, new research has warned.
The question of how to fairly quantify national contributions to global warming historically, and inform future policy on sharing the burden of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, has long been part of international discussions on global warming.
Researchers from the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research Oslo (CICERO) and the University of Oxford, UK, assessed if finding an answer to this question was possible or likely.
Dr Steffen Kallbekken, from CICERO, said: “There are vast differences in income, population, resources, technologies and capacity across countries. Because of this, the idea of distributive fairness has played a crucial role in the international climate policy debate.
“However, trying to find a single common formula for policymakers to decide the distribution of national efforts in a climate agreement was never likely to succeed.
“Although it references equality principles, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change 2016 Paris Agreement tacitly recognises this fact, as in practice the differentiation is left to each country to decide for itself.”
Dr Jan Fuglestvedt said: “Our results indicate there is no simple and single correct answer to the question of how much each country has contributed to global warming. There are too many fundamental value-related and ethical questions remaining, to which it is impossible to find a single answer.
“A more useful approach would be for scientific studies to present not just one set of calculated contributions – based on some of many choices – instead present a spectrum of results showing how the contributions vary according to a broad set of choices.”


What is the mean amount (in grams) of dissolved carbon in a ton of sea water?

This graph at Wikipedia/Wikimedia is part of the answer :

source:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceanic_carbon_cycle#/media/File:WOA05_GLODAP_pd_DIC_AYool.png
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:WOA05_GLODAP_pd_DIC_AYool.png

2.15 mol/m3 at the surface in 1990 seems like a approximative value, which makes approximately 27 g.

Now, the two questions left are:

How did this value evolve since 1990?
Does this concentration change a lot with depth?


If North America were in the southern hemisphere, would the mountains and high desert have to be -east- of Tornado Alley?

No, the mountains would still need to be west of tornado alley.

It all starts with temperatures.
You often hear the colloquial "warm\cold airmass battle" image.
But more specifically, the vital requirement for tornadoes is warm air advection.  Why?  Because warm advection fundamentally means the proper wind shear (cyclonic turning with height) for sustained storm rotation [for more info on why warm air advection is needed, look into thermal wind].
To have winds that bring warm air, you have to also have periods with cold air advection too.  Plus the oscillations between warm air and cold air give the potential for uneven vertical temperature profiles to develop, creating instability to fuel vigorous storms.  Warm air advection also builds the instability by transporting in that warm and moisture low level air.
And then fronts between warm advection zones and cold advection zones brings the trigger to best set off those ripe, unsettled conditions.  So on the warm sides of fronts is the prime location for supercells, though anywhere in warm advection has some potential.

Where do you find this battle of warm and cool air masses?
In the midlatitudes.  The most favorable tornadic regions have to be there, it's the only place with such regular oscillations.

And then the most favored spots within that band comes down to the positioning of mountains.
Mountains help pool the ingredients, and allow upslope flow to perhaps help kick off some of the storms.
But most importantly, mountain ranges perpendicular to the flow cause consistent lee troughing, the formation of surface lows downwind from the mountains when upper-level storm systems approach.

So it comes back to hich way the winds move in the upper levels of the troposphere in the midlatitudes.

And in the southern hemisphere, just as in the northern hemisphere, flow is mostly from the west at midlatitudes [for more on this, look into global or Hadley circulations, particularly the Ferrel cell].

So... indeed, we're talking east of mountains, since the wind is coming from the west.

Lee troughing is really important as young storm systems have strong meridional wind ahead of the system (bringing that juicy air in), the largest warm air region size near the low, and falling pressures, which further enhance low-level wind shear [look into isallobaric flow].  Areas further downstream (east) will have more mature systems with less warm advection collocated with instability.  That's a primary reason why the central US has more tornadoes than the eastern US.

Then it's all about large bodies of warm water to the right of the upper-level wind, such that it brings in that fuel in when a storm system starts to develop.  Because while warm advection is vital for the wind shear, you still need the moisture for tve precipitation (and to really ramp up instability).  The body of water needs to be warm (to evaporate lots of that water, and help that advection have that vital warming quality) and generally quite large (to provide lots of fuel regardless of slight wind differences, and do so regularly)

Finally, you did well to mention the high deserts\plateaus, as that is a pretty special ingredient to the Southern Plains.  As you may well know, a cap is a pocket of warm air aloft that prevents storm formation.  It's usually up around 850-600 mb, which is up a km or two.  High enough to be above  cloud base but low enough to counteract the nascent updraft energy... and also low enough to be driven by  ground features in other places.
That cap prevents widespread storms as you said, allowing a rotating storm to mature and persist.  It's a subtle ingredient in that you need just the right amount of it to keep excessive cells down, but not too much such that it prevents all storms.
It isn't nearly as vital as other features.  But it certainly helps.
And as you hinted, the best source for a cap is a dry hot elevated region upwind at that wind level (which works out to be to the southwest in the Northern Hemisphere... such that the cap in the southern Plains is primarily due to the Mexican mountains, and in the central Plains based more on the US desert southwest).
Even without such a region, there can still be natural capping from the mixed layer of the previous day, though.  And even widespread convection can be prolific at tornado producing if shear and instability are strong enough (see April 27th outbreak for instance).  So this isn't as critical as other ingredients.

So again, the order of most important to less important are:
1 - warm advection (= midlatitides, in spring\fall)
2 - Downwind of mountains (= east since midlat flow is from west)
3 - Warm moist water to right (south in NH, north in SH)
4 - Deserts upwind of capping level wind field (SW in NH, NW in SH)

The best spot is a reasonable balance between each ingredient, though still quite close to each source.
And that's all the Southern Plains of the US.  Out Oklahoma way.

One thing that actually turns out not to generally be as important is the geography in the cold air direction.  I've definitely heard that one suggested before, but don't see it factoring in much.
While the amount of land Poleward can help keep cold air drier and allow it to get colder perhaps overall, it's really not the strength of the cold air as much as the existence of it.  Too strong of cold and dry air and you'll have it reaching the warm water source, and disabling moisture return for long periods of time.
That's why tornado season in the US tends to peak a bit after warmth starts returning.
You can look at where prolific tornado areas are, too... the Great Plains have a lot of Poleward land; so does a lot of Eurasia, yet it's mostly unfavorable.
And then conversely, Australia doesn't have a lot of land Poleward yet is still a reasonably busy tornado spot.

Mountain ranges Poleward also generally aren't a big deal... even pretty large ones; one of the biggest tornado areas is Bangladesh\India, despite the disruption the Himalayas presents.  Because enough cold air can filter into the region in spite of the blockage.

The only thing that would be a real large scale geographic issue to the needed cold air would be a warm sea Poleward that modifies the incoming cold air significantly.
But that's pretty tough to have geographically.  Perhaps more possible in the Autumn... maybe the Great Lakes serves as a slight dampener on fall season tornadoes in parts of the US?  Though their effect is still mostly pretty small overall.  Bring too near any large body of water, in any direction, is really a downer on supercellular tornadoes, as it modifies temperature gradients and instability.

To your direct question... there actually is a very good example of what Tornado Alley would look like in the Southern Hemisphere already: the Pampas Lowlands of Argentina.
It has that big mountain range to the west, in the midlatitudes, and does have fairly warm water a ways northward.

But it doesn't have quite as large of a region east of the mountains to have the tornadoes in, the cold air (and storm system strength) is probably modified due to the closed nature of the Antarctic vortex and the widespread oceans of the SH modifying air masses, and the source water isn't probably as well located being so far north (and is it warm?).
But even still, Pampas area might be the second most consistent tornado region on Earth.  Such that some US storm chasers have traveled down there in our winter.

In the end, local effects play a huge role too, creating mesoscale ingredients (seabreezes\temperature boundaries, upsloping, local vortex flow, etc) to add plenty of rotation to the ledger (see Florida, one of highest tornadoes per square mile in US, in large part due to seabreeze water spouts and hurricanes).  But all things equal, being east of mountains in the midlatitudes is a jackpot ingredient to climatological tornado formation (regardless of hemisphere).


Hail is created within a thunderstorm by updrafts that carry water droplets to an altitude where temperatures are lower than the freezing point for water (32°F or 0°C). This freezing process forms a hailstone.  This process can repeat itself each time increasing the size of the hailstone until the hailstones become too heavy to be picked up again.

The creation of hail requires high wind speeds that may only be sustained in the storm for a brief period of time.  Longer periods of hail are possible but typically require large strong storms such as tornadic supercell thunderstorms.

References:
   How hail is created.
   Size of Hail vs wind speed


How should I choose the block size in constrained model-based inversion?

It depends.†

Some factors to consider:

The sample interval of your seismic data. there's not a lot of point in being smaller than that. For most legacy data it's 4 ms; these days it's often 2 ms. This is a lower bound; you can increase from here if your data have limited bandwidth; there's no point using less than 8 ms for data that's just noise past 50 Hz.
What is the scale of your problem? If this is part of an exploration exercise and the model is areally large, then you can safely and justifiably lose temporal resolution. If it's a reservoir characterization problem, then there's probably some feature you really care about: minor reservoir units, thin heterogeneities, etc.
How much time have you got? Small samples means more compute time, more statistics, more fiddling with details. It also means more time to simulate later, if you're doing flow modeling. Since you will no doubt end up doing everything multiple times, you need a model that is both useful and iterable.

I think there are at least a couple of approaches that avoid having to choose now and stick with it:

Start large, figure out the workflow, then reduce the size and watch the stability. Iterate until you have the right combination of detail, stability, and convenience.
Model the big picture at low resolution, and more interesting subsets of the data at high resolution. Make the large interval an integer multiple of the small to facilitate merging them later.

Note that some properties, such as velocity, are scale-dependent. Be careful how you upscale them. Read up on Backus averaging, starting with Chris Liner's recent work.

† How's that for a geoscientists's answer?


What happens when a mid-ocean ridge sub-ducts underneath continental crust?

We probably can't say that any one thing will happen in every instance.  The particular effects of any one such subduction will probably depend on the event's geometry and the continental rocks doing the subducting.
That said, we can talk about a famous instance of this, when parts of the East Pacific Rise (between the Pacific and Farallon plates) first started going under North America about 30 Ma ago.
Subduction itself is a destructive process: oceanic sediments and water lower the melting point of the crust being subducted, so the subducted plate melts.
So, for the most part, the Pacific-Farallon rifting centers were just swallowed up, and we don't consider the Farallon plate to exist anymore, just its remnants, such as the Juan de Fuca and Cocos plates.  A large transform fault, the San Andreas Fault, formed in the gap.
However, the tendency to rift is still there: A bunch of previously North American continental crust was rifted off onto the underlying Pacific Plate oceanic crust, forming Baja California, and the San Andreas Fault adjusted itself to meet the rift. This was more likely a recent extension of the rift north from the Rivera triple junction than remnant Farallon slab pull under North America.

Source: USGS via Wikimedia Commons - Public Domain


What is "qflux" and why is it important for climate models?

Q= Ocean heat flux

Slab Ocean Model is the name when the atmospheric component of CESM is coupled with ocean mixed layer. When CESM is configured in the fully coupled way, there's no need for the Q flux computation.

GCMs coupled with ocean mixed layer (and thus a thermodynamical ocean instead of a dynamical ocean) computes Q flux to account for the exchange of heat with the ocean.

See http://www.cesm.ucar.edu/models/atm-cam/docs/description/node28.html:

  The ocean mixed layer contains an internal heat source $ Q$ (also called a $ Q$ flux), whose values are generally specified by a CAM control run, representing seasonal deep water exchange and horizontal ocean heat transport. For example, using prescribed sea surface temperatures and sea ice distributions, the net surface energy flux over the ocean surface can be evaluated to yield the heat source $ Q$.


I can engage in some educated speculation about what you think you see, but I'm confident you were fooled by the shadows in the image, which are caused by a low sun angle and distorted by the terrain. These are not inuksuit (which is the correct plural of inuksuk). They are all natural, not man-made.

Let's point out a few things we know and can see on the imagery:

It's in the Low Arctic.
The uplands away from the river are snow-free, except in a few pockets. There is even some greening of new tundra vegetation.
There is broken-up ice along the sides of the river.
The trees in the uplands all have very long shadows, so other shadows are likely to be elongated.

Together, #1, #2, and #3 tell us that it's probably early summer just after the river ice has broken up.

The tooth-like features in the left image are simply erosional remnants sticking out of the riverbank. They could be bedrock (not likely), ice wedges, unmelted permafrost, or simply dirt. They are on the outside of a meander, so the river is actively cutting into them, and so the river-facing faces are quite sheer and high compared to the slopes in between. The right side might be white because the conditions there had left the snow unmelted when the image was taken. And of course their shadows are longer because the river channel is at the bottom of the bluff.

If you use Google Maps or Earth to go downriver a bit (up and to the left), you will see similar features sticking out of the riverbank, but because they're at a different angle from the features in your image, the fact that they're natural is more readily apparent.

Although the terrain is much less regular on the right side of the image, again the long shadows tell the tale. There are some round lumps that may be pingoes.  The shadow that looks like a man is just a coincidental jumble of shadows from the broken terrain. If you look closely at the lump that is supposed to be the "man" (which would technically be an inunnguaq) does not have any protrusions that correspond to the "arms". The "arms" are the shadow of a little cliff or shelf past the lump, which is overlapped by the lump's larger shadow.

It's similar in effect to the infamous misinterpretation of a Viking orbiter image of a natural feature on Mars as a "Face on Mars".

This is a good example of the complications of image interpretation, specifically, understanding the conditions under which the image was taken. It's also a good time to emphasize the importance of doing ground truth when interpreting images. So when you go there, let us know what you find.


What is a mud diapir and how does it form?

This is an excellent question, and a topic about which there is a lot of literature. In addition to the volume linked above, I can also recommend:

Geological Society of London Special Publication 216: http://sp.lyellcollection.org/content/216/1

Another good place to start is the extensive body of work done by Chris Morley and Pieter van Rensbergen that examines shale diapirs on seismic as well as in outcrop (good outcrop examples are surprisingly rare). Some good papers, in addition to the above two books, include:

Morley, C. K., P. Crevello, and Z. H. Ahmad, 1998, Shale tectonics and deformation associated with active diapirism: the Jerudong Anticline, Brunei Darussalam: Journal of the Geological Society, London, v. 155, p. 475-490.
van Rensbergen, P., C. K. Morley, D. W. Ang, T. Q. Hoan, and N. T. Lam, 1999, Structural evolution of shale diapirs from reactive rise to mud volcanism: 3D seismic data from the Baram delta, offshore Brunei Darussalam: Journal of the Geological Society, London, v. 156, p. 633-650.
van Rensbergen, P., and C. K. Morley, 2000, 3D seismic study of a shale expulsion syncline at the base of the Champion delta, offshore Brunei and its implications for the early structural evolution of large delta systems: Marine and Petroleum Geology, v. 17, p. 861-872.
Barber et al., 1986, Mud Volcanoes, Shale Diapirs, Wrench Faults, and Melanges in Accretionary Complexes, Eastern Indonesia, in AAPG Bulletin.
Stewart, S.A. & Davies, R.J. (2006) Structure and emplacement of mud volcano systems in the South Caspian Basin. AAPGBull., 90(5), 771^786.

If I was to summarise all of the work I have seen over the past 15 years, I'd say that there are three major concepts for shale diapirs:

1) That they are large masses of mobilised shale - essentially big masses of shale, akin to salt diapirs. Note this is starting to fall out of favour, but is still relevant in some places, such as the Niger Delta.

2) Shale diapirs are emplaced in a means more akin to igneous intrusives, undergoing fracturing and stoping of overburden rocks due to their high overpressures. As such, shale diapirs are considered to be more like country rock that has been heavily fractured and invaded by gases and mud. This generates the chaotic seismic character.

3) Shale diapirs may be simple artefacts caused by complex structure. Features interpreted on seismic as diapirs have been drilled into in several places, but these well penetrations typically did not encounter indications of mobile or previously mobile shale. This has led to suggestions that many 'diapirs' may just be zones in which the bedding is at high angle, and/or heavily affected by fault processes and gas, leading to zones of poor seismic resolution.

My personal view is that there is evidence for all three of the above scenarios, depending on the regional basin and tectonic history.

I'm sorry this doesn't really answer the question, but I hope it gives you enough threads to research this in more detail.

Good Luck!

Mark


How to calculate relative humidity from temperature, dew point, and pressure?

You can refer to this question for more detail on the origin of this formula (based on the Magnus approximation), but if you do some algebra to the expression there for dew point ($TD$) as function of temperature ($T$) and relative humidity ($RH$), you get
$RH=100 \, e^{\Large \left(\frac{c\, b (TD-T)}{(c+T) (c+TD)}\right)}$
With $b=17.625$ and $c=243.04$.
In this case, where $TD$ is one of your input variables, there is no need to consider the pressure, pressure have no effect in $RH$, or more accurately, the pressure dependence is already considered through $TD$.
The pressure would come into play if you are computing $TD$ from water vapour pressure, because water vapour pressure is what have a small dependence in atmospheric pressure.
The Magnus approximation above is considered valid for:
$0^oC < T < 60^oC$
$1\% < RH < 100\%$
$0^oC < TD < 50^oC$
There are also other equivalent formulas that extends their validity range by changing the constants, like this one
$RH=100\cdot10^{\Large m\left( \frac{TD}{TD+T_n}-\frac{T}{T+T_n}\right)}$
Where values for the constants $m$ and $T_n$ depend on temperature and are tabulated:

See this document for more details.
There are also very simple approximations to these formulas, like
$RH \approx 100 - 5 (T-TD)$
You can find a discussion on the accuracy of this approximation here.


Need help understanding variables that relate to meterology terminology

Here are the answers that I received for anyone interested:

1) Regarding the question about 10th percentile: The 10th percentile of reflectivity in a 5x5 neighborhood of the gauge means that they take the 25 reflectivity values surrounding the gauge (horizontally), sort them, and return one of the lowest values. The table in the attached image shows an example of this. In this case, the gauge is assumed to be in the green box, and bold value to the bottom right is the 10th percentile value returned by Excel.

2) Regarding the question about the vertical column: The radar scans at multiple elevation angles (between 0.5 and 19.5 degrees above horizontal), and so each one of those scans will be at a different height when it passes over the location of the gauge, sampling a different set of particles (rain, hail, etc). So the vertical maximum reflectivity at that point is simply taking the maximum value at the gauge location from all the available elevations within a complete set of scans. This “maximum reflectivity in the vertical column” variable is sometimes referred to as “composite reflectivity”.

3) Pulse volume refers to the volume of air that is sampled by the radar beam at a given instant. This volume is defined by a horizontal extent, a vertical extent, and a range extent. The horizontal and vertical extents are determined by the characteristics of the antenna and the range being considered. For most radars, this cross-section is circular, since the horizontal and vertical beamwidths are the same, often around 1 degree. The range extent is determined by the amount of time the radar transmits between periods of listening. The physical length of the pulse is the speed of light times the amount of time the pulse is being transmitted, and is typically on the order of a couple hundred meters. The formula for pulse volume is pi(range*vertical beamwidth/2)(rangehorizontal beamwidth/2)(pulse length/2).


My ansatz for what cyl means is likely Equidistant Cylindrical Projection, because in the older Basemap module, 'cyl' was the shortname for that projection.
But the reality is that since the GFS is a global spectral model with a latitude-longitude grid, it likely does not require a CRS. That is, it presupposes a sphere, where a CRS projects the spherical coordinates (latitude, longitude) onto a shape (such as a cone).


Mineral rarity is dependent on several factors that include these:

Distribution of elements within the earth

The mass-abundance of the nine most abundant elements in the Earth's crust is approximately: oxygen 46%, silicon 28%, aluminum 8.2%, iron 5.6%, calcium 4.2%, sodium 2.5%, magnesium 2.4%, potassium 2.0%, and titanium 0.61%. Other elements occur at less than 0.15%. (reference)

So minerals composed of elements other than (O, Si, Al, Fe, Ca, Na, Mg, K, and Ti) represent far less than 0.15% chemical composition of the earth.

Redistribution of elements by natural processes.

Consider the top 9 elements (O, Si, Al, Fe, Ca, Na, Mg, K, Ti), notice Chlorine is not in the list but by mass Cl should be in the top 9 for the surface of the earth.  Natural processes will alter the distribution of elements.

Top elements in the oceans (71%) of earth's surface are:
Oxygen, hydrogen, chlorine, sodium, magnesium, sulfur, calcium, potassium, bromine, carbon, and boron.

Atmospheric elements are: Oxygen, Carbon, Hydrogen,Nitrogen ,Calcium, Potassium

Stability (physical and chemical characteristics) of mineral species can affect how common a mineral may be.

Example: Water soluble mineral species - There are at least 90 mineral species that readily dissolve in water.  (reference)

Some minerals are solution readily affected by acidic or alkali solutions.

Some minerals are inherently unstable are near surface conditions.

Some minerals readily oxidize  (native iron)
Some minerals can slowly altered by humidity and oxygen (marcasite)
Some minerals are only stable at high tempature and/or pressure.
(It depends on the crystal structure of the mineral how long the mineral remain at surface conditions (1 atm pressure 25'C)
Diamonds are resilient but alpha-Quartz can rapidly alter to beta-Quartz.

Mineral formation environments impact mineral distribution.

Minerals that commonly form in the mantle of the earth are naturally going to hard to find at the surface regardless of the chemical position.

Volcanic mineral assemblies require a volcanic activity which is typically limited to plate boundaries and isolated mantle hot spots.

Lastly thermodynamics (Gibbs free energy) can be used to measure the how probability of specific chemical reaction is occur.

Consider:  Fe + S = FeS2  (pyrite)  verses Fe + S = FeS2  (marcasite)
Free energy state of an environment can be used to explain why pyrite or marcasite will form.

Some chemical reactions are very improbable due to elements involved with in a specific environment.

Consider:
   Cubic zirconia (CZ) is the cubic crystalline form of zirconium dioxide (ZrO2). It is not found in nature because there are no stable environments for formation where Silicon is absent.   Zircons are formed instead. (zirconium silicate (ZrSiO4).


Does a hurricane classification exists where estimated rainfall is taken into account?

At the current moment, none that are in operaational use. The problem with using expected measurements is that there may be multiple drastically different estimates, and then there is the problem of errors creating misclassification. There have been attempts, but none of them that are noteworthy or operationally used, that I know of.

This article may be relevant to your question. This article may also be relevant, but is obviously dated considering the events of Hurricane Harvey. Harvey also highlighted the problem of rainfall relative to runoff, which is significant in urban areas and concave/parabolic topography.


Why is convective precipitation associated with heavy rains?

Before we go any further it would be helpful to review this Q/A-Are clouds a gas, liquid, and/or solid?

The key to understanding this question is to realize that it is missing a comparison. Does convective precipitation produce heavier rains in comparison to some other form of precipitation ?

When we look at the different types of precipitation and the respective scales involved hopefully we can see why convective rains produce heavier rainfall.

So there are two forms of precipitation - convective and stratiform.

I am going to provide a definition of both types of precipitation based on the magnitude of the mean vertical velocity of an atmospheric volume. So the mean vertical velocity(obtained from observations) is the average vertical velocity over the atmospheric volume being studied(in this case the cloud(s) in question).

So stratiform precipitation is defined as

$ w << V_{ice,typical} $ and $w > 0$.  where w is the mean vertical velocity and $V_{ice,typical}$ is the terminal fall velocity of ice crystals and snow(typically in the range  1-3 m $s^{-1}$)

Convection precipitation is defined as

$ w \approx V_{ice,typical} $ and w is in the range  1-10 m $s^{-1}$ and sometimes exceeds the value of $V_{ice,typical}$

These definitions are due to Henry Houghton as shown from the reference - On Precipitation Mechanisms And Their Artificial Modification. Also stratiform precipitation occurs mostly from nimbostratus clouds and convective precipitation occurs from cumulonimbus clouds.

Now let us list the different types of instability in the atmosphere and the scales at which they evolve(any cloud has to form due to an instability in the atmosphere)

1) Conditional instability/Convective instability - (usually less than 10 km horizontally) and time scale - few minutes

2) Symmetric instability - ( 200 kms horizontally) and time scale - few hours

3) Baroclinic instability ( less than 2000 kms horizontally) and time scale - maximum 2-3 days.

Now let us match the speed of the vertical motions in the atmosphere with the scales at which a particular instability evolves. I am going to exclude symmetric instability  from this discussion.

Frontal systems(baroclinic instability), systems affected by topographic lifting and large scale horizontal convergence produce stratiform precipitation and continuous rain. In this case growth  occurs by deposition of vapor particles and aggregation of ice particles. Because of the slow updrafts we typically see continuous rainfall spread over a large distance and slowly varying over time.

Localized rain associated with either conditional instability or convective origin produce updrafts of several meters per second. There is not enough time for full growth of precipitation particles. Initial growth occurs just above the cloud base
and since the time for growth is very short and rain drops grow mainly by accretion of rain drops. Heavy rainfall realized over a short period is balanced by the smaller horizontal scale of the event. When convective rainfall is observed over a large horizontal area usually it is balanced by areas that have a) either no rain b) areas having stratiform precipitation.

References

Cloud Dynamics by Robert Houze, Chapter 6


What does it mean when polar nights have twilight?

Civil twilight: the sun is between 0 and 6 degrees below the horizon
Nautical twilight: the sun is between 6 and 12 degrees below the horizon
Astronomical twilight: the sun is between 12 and 18 degrees below the horizon

I believe if the sun is lower than 18 degrees below the horizon, all sun rays can no longer reach your location. Hence it is completely dark.


Are there probably decent oil fields located in the middle of the ocean?

tl;dr: no.

Hydrocarbon deposits form by thermal maturation (i.e. slow and mild heating) of buried organic matter (i.e. dead things) in sedimentary rocks. This is exactly why you find hydrocarbons...

  very near the country's shore, on the continental shelf

...because that's exactly where you find sedimentary rocks.

In contrast, the deep ocean basins are igneous rocks (mostly basalts) overlain by thin marine sediments with very little organic material. Whatever organic material is there, it never has the chance for maturation. It's either very cold, or gets heated in subduction and is lost forever in the deep mantle.


Is it possible to predict the maximum daily/annual tide height without calculating hourly heights?

Tidal tables are regularly calculated by several oceanographic institutes worldwide and handed out e.g. for navigation. Influencing factors (superficially spoken) are positions of celestial bodies like Sun, Moon, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and others, modelling of the propagation of the tidal bulges over the ocean basins, and topography and coastal features to calculate individual heights and, equally important, strength and timing of currents. These calculations are done for certain points of interest, like ports or coastal features or areas that could pose a risk to navigation. It is calculated and published for a year in advance.
Modern electronic equipment displays values directly, else one would have to do it old style and search in the tables for adjacent places and a time interval and do a little interpolation manually.
The tables are usually to the minute, to the tenth of a knot in current, and a decimeter in height, but of course small scale local features and meteorology and weather can have huge influence and significally alter the precomputed values. But weather prediciton has its limits which are days.
Examples for tide tables:
https://www.linz.govt.nz/sea/tides/tide-predictions/how-calculate-tide-times-heights
https://www.admiralty.co.uk/digital-services/admiralty-digital-publications/admiralty-totaltide
You can check tidal figures for individual times and places yourself with the help of a nautical chart viewer (e.g. navionics.com chartviewer, the red diamonds with a T inside), or by buying the tables if one needs a copy, e.g. the ATT. I fear they cost a little something.
All that said, there is the concept of the "Highest Astronomical Tide" HAT, which is part of the calculations. Simply spoken the highest possible tide if all the celestial bodies pull in the same direction. But meteorological influences (e.g. a storm) cannot be calculated beyond a few days.
So, generally, this can not be done with exactness because of unforeseeable meteorological influences. If we ignore these (not advisable for nautical purposes) and for average meteorological conditions, the highest (or lowest) tide for a time and place can be taken from these tables.


When charged particles from the sun strike air molecules in Earth's magnetic field, they cause those molecules' atoms to become excited. The molecules give off light as they calm down.                         At the center of our solar system lies the sun, the yellow star that sustains life on our planet. The sun's many magnetic fields distort and twist as our parent star rotates on its axis. When these fields become knotted together, they burst and create so-called sunspots. Usually, these sunspots occur in pairs; the largest can be several times the size of Earth's diameter.                                                                       At the center of the sun, the temperature is 27 million degrees Fahrenheit (15 million degrees Celsius). As the temperature on its surface rises and falls, the sun boils and bubbles. Particles escape from the star from the sunspot regionson the surface, hurtling particles of plasma, known as solar wind, into space. It takes these winds around 40 hours to reach Earth. When they do, they can cause the dramatic displays known as the aurora borealis.


When the solar wind is funneled into the Earth's magnetic poles, those particles excite the electrons of molecules in the atmosphere which then bumps those electrons up into another orbital. When the electrons fall back down into their native orbital, they produce a photon of a particular wavelength whose energy is equal to the difference between the energy states of the two orbitals.There is a good pdf from NASA here and another good article here.


Differences between linear airy wave theory and Stokes' 5 wave theory? and it's application

You should find what you're after within the following:

https://rules.dnvgl.com/docs/pdf/DNV/codes/docs/2014-04/RP-C205.pdf

If not, one of their other documents should contain the information.
I hope this finds you well.


Tipping point theory, historical examples

Tipping point events have occurred throughout earth's history and parts of the earth system are currently being monitored for signs of abrupt change. Past earth system tipping points include The Great Oxygenation which brought molecular oxygen (O2) into the atmosphere and Snowball Earth events where the earth's surface became ice-covered. Tipping points can occur on a planetary scale, as in the previous examples. These events can also occur on a regional  scale. For example, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is a regional feature that is currently being monitored for signs of collapse.


Determining the paleoelevation of mountain ranges

I'll begin with your second question, as to how mountains erode.
To simplify things, there are two methods:

Physical weathering, where the rocks are broken down by weather. For example, there are cracks in rocks that get filled by water which freezes and expands. This maker the cracks bigger and breaks down the rock. Also wind, earthquakes and any other process that breaks it down.
Chemical weathering, where the rocks are not broken by are altered to softer and weaker types of "rock". For example, take granite, a common rock in mountain ranges. It contains minerals from the feldspar family which are solid and hard. However, give some time and water and they convert to minerals from the clay family (aka "dust").

The first process is more relevant for tall mountains.

Now, how do we know the rate? This is a competition between uplift (the rising of the mountains) and the weathering (the breaking down of mountains). I'll give one example to illustrate it. Let's say that on the mountain top you find limestone with a certain fossil that you know existed 5 million years ago. So you know this used to be at the sea floor, let's say 300 meters below the water, but now it's 2000 meters up in the sky. So it had to rise 2300 meters in 5 million years. You can calculate the average uplift rate from that. Also, let's say that you know that in the past 10 years, a certain amount of rock was eroded from the mountain. You can calculate the rate of weathering. This way you can know the total rate.

There are new modern methods which rely on cosmogenic isotopes to get a much more accurate picture of this process, but that's for another question.


Why don't dewdrops form on a cloudy night?

Clouds absorb thermal radiation and re-emit it, so that some of it comes back towards the Earth (Behind the Forecast: How clouds affect temperatures). During the day this warming effect is balanced by the cooling effect of blocking out the sunlight. They don't strictly speaking stop the formation of dew, but they make it less likely.

In the words of NASA's Climate for Kids pages, "It’s sort of like clouds are wrapping Earth in a big, warm blanket."

The 2nd question is about the effectiveness of greenhouse gases, and why we still get dew at night with all the extra greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere. There are two parts to this. Firstly, the GHGs are not as effective as clouds when it comes to blocking the transmission of thermal radiation to space: they absorb in spectral bands related to the vibrational modes of the molecules in the gases, and there are gaps in these bands ("windows") which allow radiation to escape to space.

Secondly, dew formation depends not only on the temperature at night, but also on the near-surface humidity. The increase is GHGs is, as we know, warming the Earth and this also leads to an increase in the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere, because warmer air can carry more water. To get dew formation we need a change in the temperature between night and day -- and GHGs don't contribute directly to this.

There is an indirect effect which we see in nights getting warmer faster than days. There are several recent studies looking at the vapour pressure deficit (VPD) and showing an increase due to GHGs (e.g. Ficklin and Novick) -- VPD is a measure of the dryness of the air and an increases means less dew (though I have not found a reference that give direct evidence of reductions in the amount of dew). This drying of the night-time may also contribute to reduced harvests (Sadok and Jagadish).


What are the natural causes for methane formation?

The 'natural causes' of global methane emissions are, as you indicate, mostly of biological origin. To some extent it depends upon what you regard as 'natural'. There are many and differing estimates of global methane generation, of which I list a summary below. Those in bold you may regard as abiological. Values are in Mega-tonnes per year released to the atmosphere:

Wetlands 217

Fossil Fuels 96

Ruminants 89

Landfill 75

Geological sources 54

Freshwater 40

Biofuels 38

Rice growing 36

Oceans - DMS  20

Termites 11

Wildfires 10

It's a moot point as to whether degradation of dimethyl sulphide (DMS) is biological or not.


Have meteorites been found in the oldest sedimentary rocks?

A main source of meteoritic origin in sedimentary strata could have been likely to have been placed in a marine sedimentary environment as debris from a larger impact. Evidently, as you stated, the older the sediment, the greater the chance of alteration or even complete destruction of any trace of the fragments.

In addition to the micrometeorites found in Sweden (as per DavePhD's linked articles), the article Cosmic-ray exposure ages of fossil micrometeorites from mid-Ordovician
sediments at Lynna River, Russia. (Meier et al. 2014), report of observations of chondrite micrometeoritic dust occurring in mid-Ordovician (~ 470 million years ago) sediments found around the Lynna River, Russia, as well as localities in China.  The authors state that the composition of the micrometeoritic sample makes them largely resistant to weathering and diagenesis.

The authors of the article Noble gases in fossil micrometeorites and meteorites from 470 Myr old
sediments from southern Sweden, and new evidence
for the L-chondrite parent body breakup event (Heck et al. 2008) concluded that it was 'remarkable' that the solar gases trapped in the chromite grains from the Ordovician-aged 'fossil meteorites found in Sweden (and according to Meier et al. 2014, also in Russia and China) have survived not only the heat up due to entry into the Earth's atmosphere, but also the long residence time in the sediments.

Further back, finding pristine sedimentary layers, let alone intact meteorites within the strata become increasingly difficult to find, so there incorporation into the geology would be in the form of geochemical traces.

A couple of examples of this include the following, the Nature article (Abstract only - paywalled), Tungsten isotope evidence from approx 3.8-Gyr metamorphosed sediments for early meteorite bombardment of the Earth (Schoenberg et al. 2002), suggest that Archaean aged metamorphic rocks found in Greenland and Canada contain tungsten anomalies that can, according to the authors, only be meteoritic remnants in the metamorphosed sediments.  Chemical traces of possible chondritic origin have been hypothesised to have been included in Archaen spherules in metamorphosed sedimentary strata in South Africa, according to the article Geological and Geochemical Record of 3400-Million-Year-Old Terrestrial Meteorite Impacts (Lowe et al. 1989) (Abstract only -paywalled).


Gravitational acceleration does vary.  It tends to be strongest at the poles and weakest at the equator, this is due to the oblate shape of the Earth which means that at the Equator you are further from the centre, and gravity decreases the further you are.

Also the spinning of the Earth makes gravity seem less at the Equator.  The combination of these effects causes felt gravity to vary from about 9.77 $\frac{N}{kg}$ at the Equator to 9.83 $\frac{N}{kg}$ as you travel from the equator to the pole (a difference of about 0.6% in weight).

On top of this there are local variations in gravity, which are called gravitational anomalies. They are caused by the structure of the rocks in a particular location.  There is a large scale anomaly over the Hudson Bay region, and so gravity there is slightly weaker than you would expect at its latitude. Gravitation anomalies are generally due some combination of two mechanisms:

The massive ice sheet that covered Canada during the Ice Age pushed mass down and south. Now that the ice has gone, the rocks are rebounding back but the mass has still been pushed aside. Less mass means less gravity.
There are mantle plumes - hot spots like Yellowstone and cold spots where the mantle sinks.  Hot spots tend to have high gravity and cold ones tend to have lower gravity.

These two effects combine in the Hudson Bay region to give a distinct gravitational anomaly.  However the difference is tiny. There is still lower gravity in Florida than in Hudson, simply because Florida is closer to the Equator (and thus further from the Earth's center). And you still wouldn't notice the difference between the strongest gravity and the weakest. It is much too small to feel (though pole vaulters still could have a small gain [1 or 2 cm] if they compete in countries close to the Equator). It is absolutely not the case that there is any part of Caanda where you can float or experience "half the strength of gravity".


What is real impact of Precision Agriculture?

This is a placeholder answer in anticipation of (1) the question being closed before I can write a valid answer, and (2) I will replace this placeholder with a valid answer.

I have now partially filled in the placeholder, but what I wrote obviously still needs references.

The hope is that precision agriculture will be the basis for the next Green Revolution. The first Green Revolution started in the late 1950s and picked up steam during the 1960s. These techniques, now 50 to 60 years old, drastically changed farming in many developing countries, and even turned some of those countries from net food importers to net food exporters. The gains from those now dated techniques have plateaued in many places as of late; in some places productivity has even begun declining.

The goals of precision agriculture are to integrate many aspects of the earth and agricultural sciences with late 20th / early 21st century technology (modern direct sensing, remote sensing, internet of things, big data, ...)  so as to identify on a very precise scale exactly which land areas are in need of enhanced irrigation, fertilization, insecticides, herbicides, etc., -- and which areas are just fine as-is. The hopes are that this will reduce the overall need for irrigation, etc., thereby reducing stress on the land, and that this will be largely automated, thereby reducing the workload on farm workers.

These are the aims and hopes. The concepts do appear to be working in highly developed areas. But whether they can work well in the developing world is a bit suspect, let alone whether they can work at all in undeveloped areas of the world.

The bigger problem is that many estimates indicate the Earth's human population will increase by almost thirty per cent in just thirty years (from a bit over 7.5 billion to almost 10 billion) -- and that increase will be happening while the first Green Revolution is plateauing / declining. Something has to be done lest many parts of the world fall into famine. Precision agriculture might be one way address this bigger problem. Or it might not.


What actually happens to reduce the perceived color in a 'white rainbow" or "fog-bow"?

The reason why fog bows lack colour, compared to rainbows, is due to the size of the drops of water.

Fog is composed of very small drops of water - less than 0.05 mm diameter. Because of this the wavelength of light is critical, with diffraction smearing out colours that the larger drops of water in a rainbow would make.


How do we calculate if a meteoroid will completely burn up in the atmosphere?

The density & composition of the meteoroid would be important.

There are three main types of meteoroids:

Iron
Stone, &
Iron-Stone

Iron meteoroids are dense & would be somewhat resistant to burning up.

Stone meteoroids are composed of grains of material. The composition of these meteoroids is 75-90 percent silicates. They tend to resemble terrestrial rocks.

Iron-stone meteoroids contain approximately equal amount of iron and stone material.

Another factor to consider is the shape of the meteoroid. A meteoroid that is rounded will have better streamlining properties that a meteoroid that is more angular or elongated in shape. Being more streamlined, less of the meteoroid will be exposed to burning air as it travels through the air at high speed. Also, the more streamlined the meteoroid the more likely one aspect will be exposed to high heating than a meteoroid that is more angular and rotating/tumbling as it travels through the air.


Book on the history of Earth and life on Earth

Cowen's History of Life
Your best bet is  Cowen's History of Life, it is an excellent introductory textbooks for paleontology well laid out and clearly written with introductory students in mind so a laymen will be fine. It covers the entire breadth of the life. Check the edition though there are six of them now and the older ones are pretty outdated and not laid out as well. if it wasn't so expensive I would buy it to give to people.
I can recommend a few more specialized texts, to dig deeper [pun intended]
Terrestrial Ecosystems Through Time: Evolutionary Paleoecology of Terrestrial Plants and Animals which is an excellent review of terrestiral life.
Invertebrate Palaeontology & Evolution
by Clarkson which is a beautiful textbook yet still accessible to the laymen since it is written for undergraduates.
Introduction to Paleobiology and the Fossil Record by Benton and Harper is the best introduction to paleontology in general you can get, and may be worth a look if you are having trouble with the other books make.
A lot of searches will point you to Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth It is OK but the author very much has their storytelling hat on. Great for making it a more enjoyable read, bad if you want information. It reads more like a biography.


What efforts have been made to separate the microseismic events related to wind-related ocean waves from the components of volcanic origin?

There have been several studies regarding the separation of volcanic and water-wave (surf) microseismic traces, recently a study was performed exactly as you asked - using and comparing data from several sensors.

A recent study at Pagan Volcano in the Northern Mariana Islands (1) demonstrated multiparameter seismo-acoustic observations of long-period signals from seismic, infrasound and buoy data can not only determine the azimuth to the source of the mcroseism disturbance, but can provide a means to compare the frequency typical of surf and those that are 'normal' for the volcano.

One of the major differences they found was when a typhoon passed 770km away from the sensors, these clearly showed the difference in the signal that ocean waves have on local surf induced microseisms - causing a peak that is not present on the volcanic microseism (as the volcano itself is not directly affected by the surf). In fact, the storm track could be tracked, something that was also done during Superstorm Sandy (2) - which presents another signal that is very different to volcanic microseisms.

The research and observations suggest that a feasible way of determining the origin of the sources to microseisms is to have an array of types and spacing of sensors.

References

(1) Lyons et al. 2014, Distinguishing high surf from volcanic long-period earthquakes, Geophysical Research Letters

(2) Sufri et al. 2014, Microseisms from Superstorm Sandy, Earth and Planetary Science Letters


What is the weather data covering the range of 359 to 360 degree

Remember that 360° == 0°. They're the same line of longitude. So the gap between 359° and 0° is no more than the gap between 1° and 2°, and should be handled the same way.


What is the life-cycle of agricultural water used to grow crops/animals?

The water cycle isn't geology, but it's important to pedology, which is an earth science.

Agricultural water can be converted (by photosynthesis) directly into simple carbohydrates that we eat; or converted into carbs and then used as structure or energy that keeps the organism alive and growing, but isn't the mass we finally eat; or used to build more complicated parts of the organism (fats, protein) that we finally eat; or transferred to the atmosphere (mostly) because none of these biological processes are leak-proof; or transferred to the atmosphere or groundwater because we don't get all the water to the plant roots exactly when the plants can use it.

If we eat meat, there's all of the above in making the plants the animal eats, and then even greater inefficiency in turning water-in-plants into animal flesh, and the greater structure and energy costs to keep the animal alive and growing.

The crops listed are not simple carbs, or even self-fertilizing legumes. It takes a lot of tree to make an almond or an avocado. It takes a lot of water to grow the alfalfa and grains that we fatten cows on. There's also water in the processing, the cold chain, often in generating the power that makes nitrogen fertilizer or moves food from California (CA) to the markets.  CA's main ag land is dry and warm and often windy in the summer, so it can lose water really quickly (either through the plants or from flood or overhead irrigation, and even a little bit through mulched soil).

I don't know about all of CA (it's a big place with a lot of different climates), but at least some -- the west side of the Central Valley -- is having soil trouble because they rarely get enough irrigation or rain to flush salts and excess fertilizer out of the root zone, so they at least aren't sending excess water to groundwater. One could check stream gauges to guess whether excess water is making it into surface water -- my guess, not.


Where are the magnetopheres weak points on Earth?

The region where the Earth's internal magnetic field is weakest is known as the South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA). In this region at Earth's surface, the field is approximately one third the strength of the region of maximum strength (near the North and South magnetic dip poles), so roughly 20,000nanoTesla versus 60,000nanoTesla.

The weaker field seen at Earth's surface is caused by opposite polarity field at the surface of Earth's outer core (inwards instead of outwards like in the rest of the Southern hemisphere). It allows the radiation belts closer to Earth's surface, and allows charged particles to penetrate lower into Earth's atmosphere, increasing the risk to satellites flying through the region.

  Source: NASA, via wikimedia

  Source: USRA The weaker region of field over the SAA allows the radiation belts closer to the surface, so increases the occurrence of electrical upsets (yellow dots in the image) on satellites flying through the region, here the TOPEX/Poseidon satellite. The contours are magnetic field intensity in nanoTesla.


What are these Gizmos at Izaña Atmospheric Research Center in Spain?

Those are Sun/Moon multispectral photometers and ski radiometers. These are instruments that can scan the sky or track the Sun/Moon for direct measurements. They measure light intensity at multiple narrow wavelength bands, and are designed to measure atmospheric aerosols content and characteristics.

The ones in the third image seem to be a CIMEL CE-138 Sun Sky Lunar Multispectral Photometer (specs).

There is just a few brands that make these instruments. Others are Prede and Kipp & Zonen. I don't know why they have so many at the AEMET. Perhaps it is some sort of instrumentation investigation, where they are testing different types of photometers or different wavelengths. Or perhaps, as these instruments have a filter wheel inside, each one may have a different set of filters to have higher multispectral resolution.


How long does one touch on a stalagmite/stalactite lasts?

The duration cannot be estimated as it is dependent upon many other factors, such as the diameter of stalagmite/stalactite, its age etc.

Normally these are formed in limestone caves and sometime in salt mines as well.


What is the consensus among geologists about climate change being caused by humans?

First, a correction. Most climate scientists are climatologists rather than meteorologists. Climatology and meteorology, while related, are quite distinct sciences. Meteorologists and climatologists don't see eye to eye. The consensus amongst meteorologists regarding climate change is not nearly as strong as it is amongst climatologists. Many meteorologists still doubt human-driven climate change.

One key issue is that meteorologists know that predicting the weather beyond a week or two is impossible thanks to the butterfly effect. This knowledge makes them rather skeptical of claims by climatologists regarding what will happen in 50 to 100 years. Climate is not weather, of course. That weather is not predictable beyond a week or two does not mean that climate is not predictable.

The same cannot be said regarding geologists. They take a long view of things, arguably longer even than that taken by climatologists. The consensus amongst geologists is quite strong. The Geology Society (British) issued a strong statement regarding climate change in 2010 (Climate change: evidence from the geological record) and made this even stronger with an adddendum in 2013. The Geological Society of America conducted informal surveys of its members at annual meetings in 2009 and 2011 (GSA members on climate change: Where, what, and ways forward?) The consensus was quite strong. Of the 181 members who were surveyed, only two "clearly stated they do not believe anything will occur because climate change is not happening". This is in line with the 97% consensus amongst climatologists.


Is there a reason most mountain ranges seem to run parallel to coastlines?

Mountain ranges are usually formed as orogeny where tectonic plates collides, known as convergent boundaries.

The continental plates have less density than the oceanic plates and the buoyancy results in that they are mostly above sea level. Continental sea floor is known as continental shelf, but usually, it doesn't reach far from the coastline. Therefor the continental-oceanic boundaries often runs sub-parallel to the coastlines we see today.

At convergent boundaries where oceanic crust and continental crust collides, the mountain ranges can therefor form right at the coastline. Vulcanism is also important in the process as volcanoes forms where oceanic crust is subducted under the continental plates.

Some of the mountain ranges that today are located far from the coast, e.g. the Urals are formed from earlier convergent boundaries between continental plates that today are incorporated in larger plates.

Convergent boundaries explains most of the mountain ranges (e.g the Andes, Himalaya, the Alps, Nihon Arupusu) but there are however some curious exceptions, e.g. the Scandinavian Mountains that are not located near any convergent boundary and might be the result of regional uplift. However, there is an interesting ongoing discussion on how these processes work.

This is a simplified answer that I hope inspire to further studies in tectonic and geology.


How does vertical wind change over time?

There are a number of causes, for a variety of scales.
Generally speaking, you can boil it down to convergence/divergence, as a continuity of mass problem, or buoyant motion.

You can refer to the vertical component of the Navier Stoke's equations.
$$
\frac{Dw}{Dt}=\frac{∂w}{∂t}+\vec{v}\cdot\nabla w + w\frac{∂w}{∂z} =-\frac{1}{ρ}\frac{∂P}{∂z}-g+\nu\nabla^2w
$$
Additionally, it must also be constrained by the conservation of mass.
$$
\frac{∂P}{∂t}=-\nabla\cdot(\rho\vec{v})
$$
The Quasigeostrophic Omega Equation may also provide you some insight. This equation is filtered down from the above Navier-Stokes equation, though it may not seem like it. Omega is vertical velocity in pressure coordinates.
$$
(\nabla^2+\frac{f_0^2∂^2}{\sigma∂\Phi^2})\omega=\frac{f∂}{\sigma∂p}(\vec{v}\cdot\nabla(\frac{1}{f_0}\nabla^2\Phi+f)) + \frac{1}{\sigma}\nabla^2[\vec{v_g}\cdot\nabla(-\frac{∂\Phi}{∂p})]
$$


Is Oregon lake extremely pure water? If so, why?

The visibility or "clearness" is more a matter of suspended particulates, and organic material such as algae, than of dissolved material.  For instance, runoff from glacial streams can be nearly opaque due to suspended rock flour, yet "pure" in the common sense of not having much in the way of algae &c. Conversely, some parts of the oceans can be very transparent due to lack of suspended sediment & organic matter, yet still have the same dissolved salts as other parts of the ocean.


The Pleniglacial is a stage of the Weichselian Chronostratigraphy which is divided in three stubstages (early, middle and late). You can compare the absolute age to the geologic time scale.

(Data from:
Kasse, C., Huijzer, A. S., Krzyszkowski, D., Bohncke, S. J. P. and Coope, G. R. (1998), Weichselian Late Pleniglacial and Late-glacial depositional environments, Coleoptera and periglacial climatic records from central Poland (Bełchatów). J. Quaternary Sci., 13: 455–469. doi: 10.1002/(SICI)1099-1417(1998090)13:5<455::AID-JQS398>3.0.CO;2-T)


Have Russian Drilling Operations in Lake Vostok Succeeded Yet?

The Russians did "succeed" to reach the water at borehole 5G-2 in 2012. However, the lake water flooded into the borehole due to overpressure, and refroze. They drilled again during the next campaign to sample this refrozen lake water, but found that it was contaminated by drilling fluid (DF). From Alekhina et al. 2017:

  As expected, the level of contamination of the frozen water core with the DF constituents decreases as the depth of sampling increases. However, even in sample 3450, the deepest and cleanest of all those studied, the concentration of foreign organic compounds (16.7 mg l−1) indicates significant chemical contamination, especially for water as pristine as that which we expected to obtain from Lake Vostok [...] After the rising water in borehole 5G-2 reached the junction of the two boreholes and continued to rise in 5G-1, the drilling fluid that remained trapped in the abandoned borehole began to be displaced by the heavier water. As a result, about 1 t of DF rose from the bottom of 5G-1 to the top of the lake water column that had already filled the borehole. During this process, the rising DF mixed with, and thus contaminated, the freezing water.

Because of this contamination, any biology result from these ice cores would be invalid for the scientific community. After that, the Russians have drilled a new borehole (5G-3) where they allegedly managed to sample pure, uncontaminated water in 2015 (here is the press release from RT, which is not considered a neutral source...). However, I could not find any published results from this sample. And the same year, Russia cut Vostok project's budget... So I doubt we will see anything coming out of this in the future.

On a more positive note, scientists did manage to drill through 800 meters of Antarctica ice to reach another lake, lake Whillans, without contaminating it (they used only hot water to drill, not drilling fluid). And they did find "a diverse assemblage of bacteria and archaea". From Christner et al. 2014:

  Our data show that SLW supports a metabolically active and phylogenetically diverse ecosystem that functions in the dark at sub-zero temperatures, confirming more than a decade of circumstantial evidence regarding the presence of life beneath Antarctica’s ice sheet [...] Given the prevalence of subglacial water in Antarctica, our data from SLW lead us to contend that aquatic microbial ecosystems are common features of the subsurface environment that exists beneath the ~10$\small\mathsf{^7}$ km$\small\mathsf{^2}$/s Antarctic ice sheet.

However, there is a major difference with lake Vostok: lake Whillans is connected to a hydrological system, while lake Vostok is "closed" and has a water residence time of over 10,000 years. So if life is trapped in there, it could have evolved differently...


What is the formula used for atmospheric visibility?

I calculate surface visibility from WRF output using a calculation that I adapted from DTC's Unified Post Processor, specifically from their Fortran routine found in UPPV2.2/src/unipost/CALVIS.f. The calculation is based on hydrometeor mixing ratios, and air temperature and pressure, all from the lowest model layer. If your GFS output has hydrometeor mixing ratios, you can use this formula to calculate visibility. The documentation in the original code reads:

This routine computes horizontal visibility at the
surface or lowest model layer, from qc, qr, qi, and qs.
qv--water vapor mixing ratio (kg/kg)
qc--cloud water mixing ratio (kg/kg)
qr--rain water mixing ratio  (kg/kg)
qi--cloud ice mixing ratio   (kg/kg)
qs--snow mixing ratio        (kg/kg)
tt--temperature              (k)
pp--pressure                 (Pa)

If iice=0:
   qprc=qr     qrain=qr and qclw=qc if T>0C
   qcld=qc          =0          =0  if T<0C
               qsnow=qs and qclice=qc  if T<0C
                    =0            =0   if T>0C
If iice=1:
   qprc=qr+qs   qrain=qr and qclw=qc
   qcld=qc+qi   qsnow=qs and qclice=qc

Independent of the above definitions, the scheme can use different
assumptions of the state of hydrometeors:
     meth='d': qprc is all frozen if T<0, liquid if T>0
     meth='b': Bocchieri scheme used to determine whether qprc
        is rain or snow. A temperature assumption is used to
        determine whether qcld is liquid or frozen.
     meth='r': Uses the four mixing ratios qrain, qsnow, qclw,
        and qclice

The routine uses the following
expressions for extinction coefficient, beta (in km**-1),
with C being the mass concentration (in g/m**3):

   cloud water:  beta = 144.7 * C ** (0.8800)
   rain water:   beta =  2.24 * C ** (0.7500)
   cloud ice:    beta = 327.8 * C ** (1.0000)
   snow:         beta = 10.36 * C ** (0.7776)

These expressions were obtained from the following sources:

   for cloud water: from Kunkel (1984)
   for rainwater: from M-P dist'n, with No=8e6 m**-4 and
      rho_w=1000 kg/m**3
   for cloud ice: assume randomly oriented plates which follow
      mass-diameter relationship from Rutledge and Hobbs (1983)
   for snow: from Stallabrass (1985), assuming beta = -ln(.02)/vis

The extinction coefficient for each water species present is
calculated, and then all applicable betas are summed to yield
a single beta. Then the following relationship is used to
determine visibility (in km), where epsilon is the threshhold
of contrast, usually taken to be .02:

   vis = -ln(epsilon)/beta      [found in Kunkel (1984)]

I have adapted the code from this routine to a Python function below, which you can use for your purposes:

def calculate_visibility(qv,qc,qr,qi,qs,T,p):
    """
    Calculates visibility based on the UPP algorithm.

    See documentation in UPPV2.2/src/unipost/CALVIS.f for the description of
    input arguments and references.
    """
    Rd = 287.
    COEFLC = 144.7
    COEFLP = 2.24
    COEFFC = 327.8
    COEFFP = 10.36
    EXPLC  = 0.88
    EXPLP  = 0.75
    EXPFC  = 1.
    EXPFP  = 0.7776

    Tv   = T * (1+0.61*qv) # Virtual temperature

    rhoa = p/(Rd*Tv) # Air density [kg m^-3]
    rhow = 1e3       # Water density [kg m^-3]
    rhoi = 0.917e3   # Ice density [kg m^-3]

    vovmd = (1+qv)/rhoa + (qc+qr)/rhow + (qi+qs)/rhoi

    conc_lc = 1e3*qc/vovmd
    conc_lp = 1e3*qr/vovmd
    conc_fc = 1e3*qi/vovmd
    conc_fp = 1e3*qs/vovmd

    # Make sure all concentrations are positive
    conc_lc[conc_lc < 0] = 0
    conc_lp[conc_lp < 0] = 0
    conc_fc[conc_fc < 0] = 0
    conc_fp[conc_fp < 0] = 0

    betav = COEFFC*conc_fc**EXPFC\
          + COEFFP*conc_fp**EXPFP\
          + COEFLC*conc_lc**EXPLC\
          + COEFLP*conc_lp**EXPLP+1E-10

    vis = -np.log(0.02)/betav # Visibility [km]
    vis[vis > 24.135] = 24.135

    return vis


Solved
After more investigation, and help from the PVLIB community, I learned that SWGDN is same as GHI.


Do fossil fuels insulate the crust from the Earth's interior?

Quoting from John Russell's response to this article, "This is arrant nonsense!"

Russell concludes with

  How did this paper get through the peer-review and editorial review processes? What technical standards were applied to determine the apparent merit of its contents so as to justify its inclusion in a reputable journal?

Just because something is published in a scientific journal does not mean it is fact. Publication is where science starts rather than ends. Sometimes, pure garbage manages to slip through peer review and get published, even in reputable journals. This is one of those times. Moreover, the publisher of the underlying journal, Taylor & Francis, has had issues with shoddy peer review.

The Earth's energy imbalance is 0.6±0.17 W/m2. The Earth's internal energy budget, the amount of energy that escapes from the interior of the Earth, is 0.087 W/m2, about half the uncertainty in the Earth's energy imbalance. (That largish uncertainty is because the imbalance is a difficult quantity to measure.) Even if all of that 0.087 W/m2 is due to humans removing the Earth's insulating layer of hydrocarbons (it isn't), it does not come close to accounting for the 0.6±0.17 W/m2 imbalance. The numbers don't add up.

Or as John Russell put it in his response to the referenced article, "This is arrant nonsense!"


Academic but accessible defense of the scientific understanding of anthropogenic climate change?

The definitive place to start is the Summary for Policy Makers at the start of the IPCC AR5 Working Group 1 on the physical science basis of climate change.

This also acts as a suitable introduction to the massive rest of the physical basis report, and will, together with the contents table for the full report, enable a reader to quickly find the sections of interest that cover greater detail. And to burrow deeper again, if there are specific sections that you'd like to know more about, the thing to do is to follow through and read the references from those sections.


How deep could the Vredefort asteroid have penetrated?

10–16 km

there is an interesting equation that demonstrates an rocky impactor hitting rock does not penetrate further than its diameter. Basically because a meteorite and the rock it hits have similar density several things cancel out so depth of penetration maxes out at the diameter of a spherical projectile.

Source

Source 2

image from Wikipedia.

Here is more about impact craters in general.
https://www.lpi.usra.edu/publications/books/CB-954/chapter3.pdf

Whether it hits on land or the ocean does not matter much either, although oceanic crust is thinner it is also denser, the mantle is even denser still so if it reaches the mantle it should penetrate even less than it would penetrating only crust. That said oceanic crust is only 5-10km in thickness so reaching the asthenosphere is completely possible.

Also keep in mind the depth of a crater is different than the depth of the penetration, a penetrator can generate a temporary crater deeper than it penetrated due to shockwave deformation, much like how a you can use your finger to push a depression into a balloon without penetrating it at all.

Would it fill with lava absolutely (at least partially) , just from the local rock melted from the impact alone.


Are there any geological periods found on top of each other that have dinosaurs of that period with in them?

There are definitely many examples of overlying Mesozoic strata that contain characteristic dinosaur fossils (and ichnofossils – i.e. trace fossils). One of the best examples is the Mesozoic stratigraphy of Utah and Colorado. However, most geologic intervals are characterised by less ‘famous’ fossil material (e.g. molluscs, trilobites or pollen grains). This does not render correlations involving dinosaurs less valid.

Consider a hypothetical case where some dinosaur footprints are found in a mudstone layer. The mudstone also contains distinctive grains of pollen. In the layer above the mudstone we see no more dinosaur footprints but we still have the same pollen grains. These pollen have been found in other strata (perhaps on the other side of the world!) while the dinosaur foot prints are much more rare. In this case we will be able to correlate these to rock layers much more widely using the pollen than from the dinosaur prints. However, if the mudstone layer is the youngest geological unit known to contain the fossil remnants of that particular dinosaur species (assuming it had a distinctive footprint) then we can assume that the species became extinct. Extinctions are very useful for correlating the relative age of geological units, therefore the last appearance of the dinosaur footprints will provide a tighter age control than the pollen (which persists in the rock record).

I should add that stratigraphic corrections based on the fossil record can be very complex. The scientists who study the fossil record (palaeontologists) spend decades trying to decipher the exact details of the evolution of life on this planet preserved in rocks. Due to the complexity of this science it is very easy for a layperson to get confused or make false assessments.


Are there any high-resolution urban CO2 concentration data sets?

Are there papers or datasets of average CO2 concentrations down at
  ground level (say 0-20 metres upwards from the ground), in the spaces
  between buildings - streets, parks and so on?

Yes, THE URBAN CO2 DOME OF PHOENIX, ARIZONA has measurements at a height of 2 meters above ground level, 1.6 km horizontal resolution. CO2 concentrations are 555 ppm near the center of the city.

An intensive two-week study of an urban CO2 dome in Phoenix, Arizona, USA has higher resolution data along selected transects.


Why is it so important to gather data from inside tornadoes?

Generally speaking, the types of data gathered outside a tornado can also be measured inside the tornado. Currently, forecasters try to estimate an area where tornadoes usually are. The forecasting time for tornadoes, or warn time, is about 13 minutes. There is still quite a bit we don't know about tornadoes, such as why some storms that look like they can produce a tornado, will not produce a tornado.

Currently, most data taken about tornadoes is taken outside of the tornado. Data from inside the tornado, while uncommon, can give improved estimates of wind speeds, and pressure changes, with a level of detail that is hard to get from the outside, looking in. The models we deal with are imperfect- there are too many sources of error and It generally doesn't help the current predictions, but research on that data may help future predictions.


Calculate precipitation from WRF model output

Use (1) Precipitation, as it is the sum of convective and non-convective precipitation, integrate it over one day, voilà.

converting [$kg/(m^2 s)$] (precip):
$$ precip [kg/(m^2 s)] \cdot dt [s] \cdot \frac{1}{ \rho_w [kg/(m^3)]} \cdot 1000 [mm/m] = total\_precip [mm]$$

where $\rho_w$ is the density of water.

Practically the last two factors cancel.


What are the differences between Climatology, Meteorology and Atmospheric Science?

Atmospheric science is the generic study of the atmosphere. This includes climatology, air quality, and meteorology. It is often all-encompassing.

Climatology- the study of climate, the atmosphere over an extended period of time. This can usually be seen from either a statistical or physical perspective. Usually, the statistical approach looks at climate extrema. Physical climatology studies the processes that drive climate, and may be used as reconstruction, or prediction. Some of the processes that meteorologists may neglect, such as aerosols and long term trends in oceanography, are very relevant in climatology. Climatology is also a subset of atmospheric science.

Meteorology is the study of weather, especially in forecasting. Often, meteorologists interface with the public, via television, forensic meteorology, produce forecasts etc. In regards to research, meteorologists often study improvements to atmospheric models, or other aspects to forecasting. Some research meteorologists study mechanisms behind certain weather phenomena, in order to improve understanding, say of severe weather, atmospheric chemistry, turbulence, etc.

For reference:

Meteorology time scales: Seconds-Weeks
Climatology time scales: Months-decades

In summary:

Atmospheric science is a generic term describing the study of the atmosphere.
Meteorology is the study of the atmosphere, generally in the short term. Occupationally, it involves interfacing with the public. Research meteorologists study a vast number of topics.
Climatology studies the evolution of the atmosphere over long timescales, including how it may be changing. Some of the things that meteorologists may neglect, climatologists must consider.


where are the poles of rotation of the tectonic plates located?

Up to now, we constrained the (relative) plate movements mostly with seismic slip measurments.

Since 10-20 years, with the diffusion of GPS measurments, it has been possible to have a more granular distribution of movements and a more precise estimation of the rotation pole for a given plate.

Roughly speaking, then, you should look for the work of authors like these:
https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2017/EGU2017-14816-1.pdf (just a random "scientific" google result for the search)

The end product (an accurate determination of rotation poles) should help in estabilishing the seismic hazard, by observing gaps and differential displacements, possibly representing loading of the fault, in a very primitive Reid (1910) way of thinking:

https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/events/1906calif/18april/images/ElasticRebound.gif

I have no right on the image, it comes from the USGS site.


What caused a fall in atmospheric oxygen about 1.9 billion years ago?

The answer might lie in aerobic respiration. This is of course only one of the many possible explanations but mitochondria (and therefore $\ce{O2}$-breathing eukaryotes) are thought to have evolved circa 2.3 to 1.8 Ga (see for instance Hedges et al., 2001; 2004; 2006). This loose age bracket however is based primarily on molecular data with very few fossil evidence (as I mentioned in an earlier answer of mine, the Proterozoic fossil record of eukaryotes is almost inexistant).
An earlier apparition of aerobic respiration is unlikely (e. g. Knoll & Holland, 1995) as a certain level of $p_{\ce{O2}}$ needed to be reached for this metabolism to be possible.
If aerobic eukaryotes expanded rapidly they might have constituted a strong enough sink of oxygen, which could be responsible for the drop observed by Frei et al., 2009.


Why do we measure eustatic sea-level from the center of earth?

The centre of the Earth is the only true unchanging datum.

Land masses rise and fall due to geological actions such as melting of land based ice sheets, volcanism, plate tectonics, erosion, sedimentation and ground stresses causing land masses to move relative to one another at faults.

As stated here, sea level changes resulting from,

  Eustatic change (as opposed to local change) results in an alteration to the global sea levels due to changes in either the volume of water in the world oceans or net changes in the volume of the ocean basins.

With the elevation of land altering over time (rising or falling depending on location), the true change in sea levels cannot be determined from using points on the Earth's surface as a datum; particularly when the volume of the ocean basins changes due to land mass movements.

True changes in sea levels can only be ascertained from an unchanging datum, which on Earth is the centre of the Earth.


What definition of "seamount" is used by the largest utilised databases of seamounts?

The largest database of seamounts contains over 33,000 seamounts and was created by Yesson, Chris; Clark, MR; Taylor, M; Rogers, AD.  Link

For their list, they defined seamounts and knolls as

  Seamounts and knolls are 'undersea mountains', the former rising more than 1000 m from the sea floor
  Yesson, C et al. (2011): Lists of seamounts and knolls in different formats. doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.757564

In their paper, they set the definition of a seamount as a sub-surface feature, not breaking the water.  This puts the highest elevation in their dataset is 2m below sea level.  The pulled their definition from Morato, et al (2008), which states: "seamounts are defined as any topographically distinct seafloor feature that is at least 200 m higher than the surrounding seafloor, but which does not break the sea surface."  Then, they subdivided the features into knolls and seamounts at an heigh of 1km (with knolls being between 200m and 1km in height).

So, specifically answering the question, that databases uses the Morato, et al (2008) definition, which excludes super-surface seamounts.


Is there a difference between Density and Specific Gravity?

It is different to density but they are closely related. This is easily seen by considering the dimensions of the two quantities (side note: always consider the dimensions of quantities - it is invariably useful).

If you read your definition carefully you will realise that specific gravity is defined as the ratio of the density of the material to that of water. $$\mathrm{SG = \frac{\rho_{sample}}{\rho_{water}}}$$

Historically I suspect that specific gravity was used rather than density because it is easy to measure by measuring the mass of the displaced water when you place the sample into a jar of water, and the mass of the sample itself. You don't actually need to know the density of water in order to calculate the specific gravity.


Does gravity increase the closer to the core you get?

The below figure, taken from Wikipedia shows a model of the free fall acceleration, i.e., 'gravity'. The left-most point corresponds to the center of the Earth; then further right at $6.3\cdot1000$ km you are at the Earth's surface; and then further out you move into space. You can follow the blue line for PREM to get an idea of the average (expected) gravity. As you see, the gravity actually increases slightly within the Earth (reaching a maximum at the core-mantle boundary), but tapers down within the core.

To make this kind of calculations, you must think of the Earth like an onion: made up of many concentric spheres. Whenever you move a bit deeper into the Earth, you strip off all the layers you've crossed. As you get closer to the center of the Earth, there are fewer and fewer layers, and eventually, there's nothing left at the center! The reason why gravity goes up ever so slightly within the Earth is that you get close to the much denser core material. If the density of the Earth were constant (per the green 'constant density' line), the gravity would just decrease linearly.

See the other answer and the discussion below for some more details on the math and procedures required to make these calculations.


Can a 99.9% probability of an M≥ 5 earthquake within a 3-year period be verified?

Based on Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analysis the probability of an earthquake of magnitude $m$ occurring at the source is obtained with the Truncated Exponential Distribution can be given by

$$P(M > m) = \int_{m}^{m_{max}} \frac{\beta e^{-\beta (m - m_{min})}}{\left( 1 - e^{-\beta (m_{max} - m_{min})} \right)}dm$$

where :

$m$ is the magnitude; $m_{min}$ is the minimum magnitude of earthquakes in source; $m_{max}$ is the maximum magnitude of earthquakes in source; $P(M > m)$ is the probability of occurrence of an earthquake with magnitude $M$ larger than $m$; $\beta = b \ln(10)$; $b$ is the slope in the Gutenberg–Richter (G–R) magnitude–frequency relation.

Source : Development of probabilistic seismic hazard analysis for international sites, challenges and guidelines

Additional Read : Gutenberg Richter Law - why exponential distribution was used


Yeddo seems to be a version of Edo, which is today Tokyo. Though it has had its share of disasters, nothing seems to come up concerning any storms in the 1864. Fires and earthquakes seem the more typical catastrophes. A horrible fire in 1857 seems to be the closest event timewise that I find. It was apparently still in existence in 1868:

  In 1868, when the shogunate came to an end, the city was renamed Tokyo
  ("eastern capital"). The emperor moved his residence to Tokyo, making
  the city the formal capital of Japan


What would a planet's sky look like with different chemical compositions, such as low nitrogen, high methane etc?

Except for Rayleigh scattering (Is the color of the sky the same everywhere on earth?) gases typically do not add any color to atmospheres, they are usually transparent in visible light. The Halogen gases (F$_2$, Cl$_2$,Br$_2$, I$_2$) have color though, and there are a few other colored molecular gases, but you would not expect them in planetary atmospheres.

The color in planetary atmospheres comes almost exclusively from particulates, such as hazes (smog basically), ice crystals (not just water), and mist with chemicals in solution. The atmosphere of Titan is colored by tholins: organic molecules of H, N, C, O and possibly S. The other planets' atmospheres are colored by particulates such as ammonia ices (NH3), sulfuric acid droplets (H2SO4), tholins, and other exotic stuff.

It is important to note the color reflected or scattered by an atmosphere can be quite different than the color transmitted through an atmosphere, which is why our sky is blue in the daytime but reddish at dusk or dawn. So the color of exotic clouds or haze on other planets may look completely different seen from below rather than above.


The problem with a statistical model is the reliance on dynamical model input, plus the requirement of climatology. A statistical model will also only give data for a solitary point, not an area. The simplest statistical model is persistence, which is the current weather, followed by climatology. Both are the lowest in forecast skill.

For a dynamic model, try using the WRF model (http://www2.mmm.ucar.edu/wrf/users/download/get_source.html).

It is a commonly used model. The runtime will range, depending on your computational power and needs. A larger domain will take longer, and require more. I know people who simulate hurricanes with it, and people who run fine scale modeling.

I can run WRF with a 200 km domain size for a 36 hour forecast in 1-2 hours.

Again it will really depend on your resources. Running WRF may require compilers you do not have access to. You can develop the visualization software after you ran the model, with whatever tools you find. Python and NCL are good languages, but MATLAB and a variety of other languages can be used.


Why does air seem to affect local surface temperatures so much?

The surface temperature is the temperature of the air at the surface (rather than the temperature of the ground itself).  This temperature is typically taken between 1 and 2 m off the ground, and this is the temperature we feel when we are outside.  Simply put, the reason air affects this temperature, sometimes radically, is because temperature is a property of the air (it is related to the mean kinetic energy of the molecules comprising the air).

If we are curious about the change in temperature we experience, we might write $\frac{DT}{Dt}$, where $\frac{D}{Dt}$ is a material derivative and $T$ is temperature.  This change in temperature is Lagrangian, or in other words it is the temperature of a parcel of air as it moves around.  We can expand this as $$\frac{DT}{Dt} = \frac{\partial T}{\partial t} + \mathbf{u}\cdot\nabla T$$ What this equation says to us is this that the change in temperature can be related to two effects:

The change in temperature of air at a fixed location in space (e.g. outside your house), and
The transport of different temperature air to your location by the wind.

The first bullet point is going to be modified by energy transfer between the ground and the air (conduction) and radiative losses (radiation emission).  These changes are on the scale of how temperature changes between morning and afternoon -- nothing too radical.

The second bullet point is where the radical changes can take place.  Temperature is a property of the air, so if new air moves in to your location with a different temperature, that will strongly determine the local surface temperature.

You mention the polar vortex, which is a often misused term which has recently come into popular vocabulary.  The polar vortex is primarily a mid-upper atmospheric circulation above the poles.  When you hear it on TV you are most likely hearing it misused and the generally just mean a really strong cold front with a (perhaps unseasonably) cold arctic continental airmass behind it.  A front, in simple terms, is an enhanced surface temperature gradient that separates airmasses with different properties.  The key feature is a strong temperature gradient -- a relatively large change in surface temperature over a relatively small distance.

This goes back to the earlier discussion on the primary contribution to radical changes in temperature being the wind bringing in air with a different temperature.  When a cold front arrives, it is being driven by the wind and this is an example of the transport of temperature by the wind (cold air advection).

In summary, air affects local surface temperatues so strongly because temperature is a property of the air.  If the air currently around your town is replaced by new air, that air will have its own temperature and so you will experience a change in temperature -- if the new air is radically colder, you will experience a radical temperature change.


How to add scale in DSLR plus microscope set up by default?

Select the objectives you want to use on your microscope altogether with your camera.  If the camera is not a permanent installation, ensure that the mount reliably establishes again and again the same position and alignment in respect to the optical axis of the microscope.

See if your group has a stage micrometer, a slide with fine regular markings:

(credit)
If not purchased altogether with the microscope (one other source), or lost during a move of the group you work in, see if an other group in your school active in microscopy may lend you one.  It may be in geology, but equally in (analytical) chemistry, biology, histology, (laser) physics / optics, etc.

Identify a reliable protocol to get hold of the images recorded by your camera to be fed into a suitable software e.g., ImageJ / Fiji.

Take a good photograph with your camera mounted on the microscope observing the micrometer plate, starting with a low magnification.  For once, you have to count the pixels to calibrate profiles for a given combination of objective, inner optics, and mounted sensor / camera. But today, you may get assistance by the software's plugin (example, documentation, tutorial video).