Looking for a reference for identifing stream regimes(Intermittent, Perennial)

I'm not sure if this is a standard per se, but I found it useful.  These definitions are from a 1923 publication of the United States Department of the Interior entitled Outline of Ground-Water Hydrology.  Here is the link to the PDF and the specific definitions below can be found on pages 57-58.  Hope this helps.

Perennial:

  A perennial stream, or stretch of a stream, is one which flows
  continuously. Perennial streams are generally fed in part by springs,
  and their upper surfaces generally stand lower than the water table in
  the localities through which they flow.

Intermittent streams are divided into spring-fed intermittent streams and surface-fed intermittent streams.

  A spring-fed intermittent stream, or stretch of a stream, is one that
  flows only at certain times when it receives water from springs. The
  intermittent character of streams of this type is generally due to
  fluctuations of the water table whereby the stream channels stand a
  part of the time below and a part of the time above the water table.
  This is the ordinary type of intermittent stream.

  A surface-fed intermittent stream, or stretch of a stream, is one that
  flows during protracted periods when it receives water from some
  surface source, generally the gradual and long-continued melting of
  snow in a mountainous or other cold tributary area. The term may be
  arbitrarily restricted to streams or stretches of streams that flow
  continuously during periods of at least one month.

Ephemeral:

  An ephemeral stream, or stretch of a stream, is one that flows only in
  direct response to precipitation. It receives no water from springs
  and no long-continued supply from melting snow or other surface
  source. Its stream channel is at all times above the water table. The
  term may be arbitrarily restricted to streams or stretches of streams
  that do not flow continuously during periods of as much as one month.


You have focused on corals (that have a much more lower biomass than for example foraminifera), and you have forgotten what controls carbonate levels at oceans at bigger scale is Henry's Law:

"In chemistry, Henry's law is a gas law that states that the amount of dissolved gas in liquid is proportional to its partial pressure above the liquid . The proportionality factor is called the Henry's law constant"
Source: Wikipedia

So answering your question what controls acidity on oceans is indeed carbonates, but it is atmospheric $\small\sf{CO_2}$ levels (and temperature, as Henry's constant is temperature dependent) what determine the concentration of carbonates.
The quaternary increase of $\small\sf{CO_2}$ leads to the generation of new $H^+$ and thus acidify the ocean, acording to the reaction:
$CO2 (aq) + H2O ⇌ H2CO3 ⇌ HCO3− + H+ ⇌ CO32− + 2 H+.$


If the atmosphere is (very nearly) an ideal gas, how can it ever be barotropic?

You are correct, the atmosphere cannot ever be barotropic. It is important to note that the ideal gas law is relevant only as a state equation; it does not describe the gas as a whole. The barotropic assumption effectively states $P=\rho RT_0$. Effectively, it says "hold temperature constant" You may note this is particularly important when discussing the hydrostatic and hypsometric/barometric equations.

On that note, the atmosphere is never entirely barotropic; the atmosphere cannot undergo entirely adiabatic motions; the wind can never stay geostrophic, etc. There are assumptions that are bad, and we know they are (take a class in micrometeorology dealing with similarity theory). But in the words of George Box, "All models are wrong, but some are useful." These simple models teach us about basic atmospheric behavior.

It is also worth noting that the ideal gas law is not the only equation of state. The Boussinesq and anelastic approximations can lead to interesting other formulations of the equation of state.


What structures form due to the melting of subducting plates?

The subducting plate never really melt. It just gets recycled into the mantle (the Asthenosphere to be more precise), which is in solid state. It is plastic and deformable enough to allow convection flows, but it is solid.

Beside more mantle, something that forms from the subducting plate is magma. The water contained in the subducted slab (that was once ocean floor) can lower the melting point of the mantle and allow it to melt and form magma. The magma is liquid and less dense than the surrounding mantle, therefore it rises through it, and then through the continental plate. Once there it can create plutons, batholiths and feed volcanoes if it make it all the way to the surface.

But what melts is mostly the mantle mixed with water from the subducting plate, not the subducting plate itself.


Calculate the latitudes of a Gaussian Grid

I believe the NCL function NCL gaus should be able to give you the solution you are looking for. From the API documentation you are requested to provide - the number of latitude points per hemisphere and you should get Gaussian latitudes and Gaussian weights.

Here is a code sample from their website

nlat = 64  ; for globe
gau_info = gaus(nlat/2)   ; divide by 2 to get "per hemisphere"
glat     = gau_info(:,0)  ; gaussian latitudes ( 1st dimension of gau_info)
gwgt     = gau_info(:,1)  ; gaussian weights   ( 2nd dimension of gau_info)


Lava and Magma, Meteor and Meteorite--What's the Difference?

There is a real difference between lava and magma. Magma contains lots of water and various gases. When it reaches earth's surface, it looses most of its volatiles and becomes lava.

So, magma is volatile rich lava.


Can concretions form in non-sedimentary rocks?

Not really. Concretions are features of sedimentary rocks almost by definition. Here's my go at a definition; it essentially presupposes a sedimentary rock:

  Concretions are spatially discrete zones of above-average (compared to the rest of the rock) cementation by authigenic minerals. Common cements include calcite, quartz, siderite, and pyrite.

Concretions form during the process of diagenesis. However, diagenesis and metamorphism are really on a continuum of 'burial effects' — increasing temperature and pressure, compaction, changing porewater chemistry, and so on. One could almost call diagenesis a metamorphic facies. Concretions can start to form immediately after burial, and grow during burial as long as geo- and electro-chemical conditions allow, or until the pores are completely occluded. According to some workers (e.g. Bjoerkum & Walderhaug), total occlusion usually happens somewhere between about 150 °C and 200 °C. By this time, clay minerals have started altering and we are into low-grade metamorphism (zeolite facies).

Conversely, I think most so-called soft-rock geologists just lump all alteration into 'diagenesis' (I know I did until I started working on geothermal reservoirs). So, if you're prepared to explain yourself because it sounds weird, you could claim that concretions form in metamorphic rocks.

Footnotes

I've never seen one, but I don't see why you couldn't have concretions in volcaniclastic rocks (which I count as sufficiently like sedimentary rocks to warrant no more than a footnote).
If you were desperate to call something else a concretion — a mass of phenocrysts in a granite, say — you could always broaden your definition of 'concretion'. We geologists love arguing about the definitions of words!


Where can I find weather data on ambient outside illumination?

One direction to look in might be the various GIS systems that exist to forecast the amount of light that will reach photovoltaic (solar panel) installations. I don't know about the US, but I would be very surprised if there isn't one - try googling for "PV GIS" or similar.

Now, that will give you insolation (illuminance) in W/m2. It may be further broken down into direct and indirect insolation (that's direct sunlight and diffuse light from the sky or clouds), or it may be a single global figure.

Since you're after the information in lux rather than W/m2, you'll need to convert it. This will necessarily be an approximate process, but so long as you don't need very high accuracy it should be quite doable. Lux is at base a measurement of power density, just like W/m2, but it's modified by a frequency-dependent function that represents the sensitivity of human vision. So you'll need to assume a spectrum for the sunlight, and then apply the conversion curve (which is an international standard, and hopefully available on the internet).


What are the tallest hydrothermal vents in the world?

The tallest hydrothermal vent is the 60 m (180 ft) tall carbonate Poseidon vent, among the Lost City hydrothermal vent system on top of the ~4km high Atlantis Massif, located 20 km west of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge at 30°N.  The vents emit pH 9-11 metal-poor fluids at about 90°C.

The composition of the hydrothermal vents are aragonite, calcite (both polymorphs of calcium carbonate, $\ce{CaCO3}$), and brucite ($\ce{Mg(OH)2}$) giving the white colour of the vents, the pinnacle of the Poseidon vent is shown below:

NOAA Ocean Explorer

The Lost City hydrothermal vents are discussed in detail in the University of Washington's Lost City Research and NOAA's Formation of Carbonate Chimneys at the Lost City Hydrothermal Field page, from the websites, in answer to your questions:

Age: presumed to be over 30,000 years old.

What contributes to its height: Asides from the age of the vents, which allows the vents to build up. The vents are formed on a base of thick fossiliferous pelagic limestone, which form an impervious lid trapping the hydrothermal fluids and geothermal heat.

This limestone overlies a sedimentary breccia, which overlies fractured and faulted basement of highly deformed serpentites and exposed Mg-rich mantle rocks (peridotites).

Biomass: It is believed that 58% of the fauna are endemic to the Lost City environment, including the Lost City Methanosarcinales inhabiting the anoxic interior zones of the vent, which are an example of Methane- and Sulfur-Metabolizing Microbial Communities Dominate the Lost City Hydrothermal Field Ecosystem (Brazelton et al. 2006).  Observations suggest that $\ce{CH4}$ and $\ce{S}$ cycling dominate the ecological processes in the Lost City vent environment.


What is lava called if it has 56% to 64% silica?

It's called intermediate.

  Or is it impossible for any lava to cool into rocks with that range of silica?

Not impossible, but not common. The two most common lava types are indeed mafic (mostly basalts) and felsic (mostly rhyolite). A well known intermediate lava type is andesite.

  Why?

This question of why most lavas are either mafic or felsic has been bothering geologists for a very long time. This problem even has a name: the "Daly gap", named after the geologist who first identified the problem almost 100 years ago. There is no easy answer, and it's still being debated. A good (yet somewhat technical) read is available here in this ResearchGate question and following answers.


What is this rock found in the Illinois Valley of Southern Oregon?

This is a sandspike concretion

Pictures can be seen here

Sometimes, only a spike is found and sometimes the spike has some 'balls' or round concretions attached to it.


Explain the Idea of Pangaea and how the continents have reached their current positions

It was almost certainly multiple.    I can't say for 100% but I think it was very very likely - cause of the way they split apart for one.

For example, today: Europe, Asia and in a practical sense, Africa are all connected but contain several different plates.    The Indian Plate and the Eurasian plate are 2 different plates but the land is connected, so you'd never know it was two plates - well, except for the frequent earthquakes.

Source:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Plate

Plate Tectonics is thought to be about 3.2 billion years old:   http://sciencenordic.com/modern-plate-tectonics-arose-32-billion-years-ago


How are natural specimens, such as ‘Moqui Marbles’, distinguished from man-made artifacts?

Like Michael, I find your question a little unclear, but the crux of it seems to be this:

  ... does science have to conclude [that a specimen is] just a rock because the composition is entirely from earth minerals?

The answer is an emphatic no. There are lots of non-rocks out there, many of them manufactured by the (alleged) intelligence known as Homo sapiens. There is certainly no rule in geology that you have to exclude this possibility from consideration when identifying a rock, no matter what its composition. After all, we’re perfectly capable of manufacturing artefacts from earth minerals. In fact, when identifying a specimen, you have to consider the possibility that it's a product of intelligence: many enthusiastic amateurs have ended up collecting bits of brick, rubble, salt-lick, industrial slag and so forth by failing to do this :-).

One factor you mention in your question is the property

  look to be manufactured by intelligence

This, it turns out, is often a less useful diagnostic than you might expect. Lots of manufactured specimens don't look particularly manufactured, especially after a bit of erosion and weathering. Conversely, lots of naturally occurring objects look remarkably regular and intricate.

On the left, objects manufactured by intelligence (slag from the Knight Smelter in Utah). On the right, a naturally occurring specimen of dodecahedral pyrite from Elba, Italy. So a subjective, purely visual judgement that something ‘looks manufactured’ or ‘doesn't look manufactured’ can be very misleading.

Your question also asks specifically about the ‘Moqui marbles’ of the Navajo Sandstone:

  If Earth only had them would science say they are ancient artifacts from a past civilization?

The answer here is, again, a firm no. This is easy to check because, of course, the ‘Moqui marbles’ had been observed long before Opportunity landed on Mars in 2004, and at that time scientists did not regard them as ancient artifacts from a past civilization. For example, Chan et al. (2000) described them like this:

  Small concretions of secondary iron oxide deposits are exclusively hematite-cemented sandstone. These concretions form all kinds of shapes from millimeters to centimeters in diameter, and cut across primary bedding structure. Some concretions are solid spherical balls around unknown nuclei; others are spherical rinds with plain red-stained, host rock interiors (lacking black-colored hematite cement on the inside). Concretions also exhibit forms that appear to have coalesced or joined (similar to two glued marbles), or exhibit a variety of other odd shapes (buttons, disks, irregular knobby forms to spiked-looking balls).

As you see, the authors identify these objects as concretions. (Also note that, although you claim that they're only "minutely" different in size and shape, the description here mentions a great deal of variation in both those properties.) Concretion is an extensively studied geological phenomenon which occurs across the globe. There’s no need to invoke an ‘intelligent manufacturer’ to explain it, whether or not concretions are found on other planets.

Chan, M. A., Parry, W. T., & Bowman, J. R. (2000). Diagenetic hematite and manganese oxides and fault-related fluid flow in Jurassic sandstones, southeastern Utah. AAPG bulletin, 84(9), 1281-1310.


Is it possible to create clouds by pumping water into volcanoes?

Maybe, but it's a really bad idea. Here's why:

Volcanoes are unexpected and change with time. You can waste two years building a facility that does it, only for the volcano to cease being active and become dormant. Alternatively, the volcano might blow up and destroy your infrastructure.
You actually need lava to do so. Very few volcanoes have persistent lava lakes. Two are in tropical islands (Vanuatu, Hawaii), two are in rainforests (Nicaragua, DRC), one is in Antarctica, and only one is in a desert where it would actually be somewhat useful (Ethiopia).
In the absence of a lava lake, you can pump the water into the underground magma chamber and hope that it escapes in the form of steam. This is a bad bad bad idea, because you can cause a phreatic or phreatomagmatic eruption. Here's an example:

https://youtu.be/hjOnh_QRd0A

You need water. If you have fresh water, you better use that water to solve the drought directly instead of pumping it into a volcano. If you're using sea water, you have the problem of laze. At the moment the opposite is happening: Kilauea in Hawaii is erupting lava that reaches the ocean. The reaction between the hot lava and the sea water creates releases acid into the air. Bad idea. Here's how it looks like:

https://youtu.be/8SF5LQO4T_4

If somehow you managed to avoid exploding the volcano or creating acid rain, you would rapidly cool the top layer of the lava, solidifying it into rock. Rock is a poor thermal conductor, so you're forming a lid on top of the lava, making the thing much less effective.

  if an important effect of global warming is rainfall reduction and
  drought...(regardless of costs)

Just use desalination. A very effective yet expensive way to get fresh water.


wave speed is smaller than both horizontal wave speed and vertical wave speed?

I don't know if I fully grasp your question; but I can confirm that slowness and velocity vectors are kind of weird things :-)

Let me describe a simple example (and not worry too much about the mathematical details). If in the figure above, if you point your wave not diagonally but just straight down, what happens? Well, $dx$ becomes infinitely large when the incidence angle becomes $i=0^\circ$, because there is no observable thing happening along the upper horizontal surface, the wave only moves down! At the same time, $dz$ becomes exactly equal to $ds$ when the incidence angle $i=0^\circ$. So, $dx=\infty$ while $dz= ds$, right? I have drawn that in the figure below, for a monochromatic (single-frequency) wave, such that for all the 3 cases, the length of the vector $\vec{p}$ is identical! I have added $c_x$ and $c_z$ as the apparent velocities.

So for a wave moving straight down, the wave moves in 2D for a grand total distance of $ds$, it propagated 0 in the direction of $dx$, and $ds$ in the direction of $dz$. Now your research already suggests that either of the following relations should  hold -- both basically expressions of the Pythagorean rule:
$$
dx^2 + dz^2 = ds^2, \tag{a}
$$
or
$$
\frac{1}{dx^2} + \frac{1}{dz^2} = \frac{1}{ds^2} \tag{b}
$$
If we use our extreme example $dx=\infty$ and $dz=ds$, then only equation b can hold (remember, $1/\infty=0$).

If we multiply every term in equation $b$ with $dt^2$, we get:
$$
\frac{dt^2}{dx^2} + \frac{dt^2}{dz^2} = \frac{dt^2}{ds^2}, \tag{b'}
$$
or realizing that $dx/dt=c_x$ and $dt/dx=1/c_x=p_x$ we get:
$$
p_x^2 + p_z^2 = p^2 = \frac{1}{c^2}, \tag{b"}
$$

With those details out of the way, we have seen the following: $p_x=0$ but $c_x=\infty$, and $p_z=1/c_z$ and $c_z=c$. So we have found that both $\{c_x,c_z\}\geq c$, i.e., both apparent velocities were greater than or equal to the original wave speed! On the other hand, $\{p_x,p_z\}\leq p$, i.e., the apparent slowness components were less than or equal to the original slowness.

And that is the result that holds generally. The apparent velocity components are always equal to or greater than the original velocity; while the apparent slowness components are always equal to or less than the original slowness. This is why equations (b), (b') and (b") give the right decomposition rule, it's the only one where $p_x$ and $p_y$ are less than the full $p$! This is why we can think of such a thing as a slowness vector $\vec{p}=(p_x,p_y)$, because the modulus of that vector $\lvert \vec{p} \rvert^2 = p_x^2+p_y^2$ (which is eq. (b")) behaves exactly like a vector should!

I hope that maybe along the way I answered your question somehow? My apologies for the rather mathematical take on things, but it's the only way I ever understood slowness vectors!


Most maps of Great Britain derive from the maps published by Her Majesty's Ordnance Survey.  The official website is https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/ and the sales page says that for £23.99 you can get a 1 year subscription to a digital app that gives you the ability to export in the GPX digital format.
A crowd sourced version working on a map of the world is The Open Street Map Project.  This is equivalent to your rejected option of Wikipedia but I mention it for others that may land on this question.


Now Mars is pulsing 3 times per night in the UV, can anyone explain these waves in simple terms? Do these waves happen on Earth?

The Martian nightglow comes from molecules in the atmosphere that react with solar radiation, carry it over to the night side, and give off the energy they gained as ultraviolet light as they free-form stable compounds.  From https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/goddard/2020/mars-nightglow:

The diagram explains the cause of Mars’ glowing nightside atmosphere. On Mars’ dayside, molecules are torn apart by energetic solar photons. Global circulation patterns carry the atomic fragments to the nightside, where downward winds increase the reaction rate for the atoms to reform molecules. The downwards winds occur near the poles at some seasons and in the equatorial regions at others. The new molecules hold extra energy which they emit as ultraviolet light.
Credits: NASA/MAVEN/Goddard Space Flight Center/CU/LASP

The Martian nightglow has been used to trace atmospheric circulation on Mars.
As for a similar phenomenon on Earth, and for that matter on planets generally, the above NASA reference goes on to say:

Many planets including Earth have nightglow, but MAVEN is the first mission to collect so many images of another planet’s nightglow.


Yes, it is rose quartz. There are a number of mines in eastern New York near Vermont where rose quartz been found. Massive rose quartz can occur in granitic pegmatites.  I could not google to find images of any massive rose quartz from the northeastern United States but it is very similar in appearance to the rose quartz from Black Hill of South Dakota.  The rose quartz deposits from the Black Hills are the largest on earth and the material is sold world-wide.  Locally here in Ohio, I know of the landscaping company that has bulk rose quartz for sale.

You're specimen might be local to New York but might also be from elsewhere.

See Mindat.org


What is difference between partially penetrating stream and fully penetrating stream?

Streams that are shallow relative to the thickness of the aquifer in which they lie. Such streams often are referred to in the literature as partially penetrating streams. Most streams are partially penetrating streams. Seepage between a partially penetrating stream and the contiguous aquifer occurs both horizontally and vertically through streambank and streambed materials.

Image Source:USGS

There are a few streams that are deep enough to penetrate the full thickness of the aquifer in which they lie. Such streams often are referred to fully penetrating streams. Seepage between a fully penetrating stream and the contiguous aquifer occurs horizontally through streambank materials.

Image Source:USGS


Are there pockets of liquid carbon dioxide in Earth's oceans?

Yes, according to this paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. But they also say that this "lake" of liquid CO2 is covered by CO2 clathrate, so it's not quite your average brine pool.

Note about clathrates:

The following image is from the Wikipedia article on CO2 clathrate. It is a CO2 hydrate P-T phase diagram with experimental data (black squares) from a 1998 paper by Sloan listed in the references of the Wikipedia article.

Note the H2O phase lines drawn in. There is a relatively small habitable area for clathrate somewhere inside about 273-280 K (0-7 ºC) and 10-12 bar (or about 90-110m in ocean depth as calculated here). Above the phase boundary, the clathrate will dissolve to liquid. Below, to gas. What this diagram does not say (according to a knowledgeable colleague) is that clathrate will not readily form or remain in its semi-organized state given very slight amounts of mechanical agitation. Hence why it does not exist en masse under typical seafloor conditions.


The Earth is always radiating heat to the space. But in the day the Sun delivers some heat. The net heat flux is then defined as the sum of those two factors. If the energy delivered by the Sun is bigger than the cooling rate, the Earth is net warming (positive net flux – we can imagine it like heat is travelling "to us"), as opposed to the opposite case (cooling; negative net flux – heat is travelling "away").
In the day, the Sun warms the ground until the evening. The Sun's heating rate is higher than the cooling rate, so the temperature is rising until it gets to a point where the heating rate is same as cooling rate. This happens in the evening, so the temperature is steady at that point. But the Sun goes even lower, so the net flux becomes negative. In the night there is only cooling of Earth, so the temperature is falling steadily until the Sun is high enough that it balances the cooling. This happens at a point of a minimum temperature.
Of course, this is valid for most of the days, but we can have some other effects that can change the time of the minimum temperature (clouds, fronts or advection, for example).
On graph:

So, the temperature is falling over night after the sunset, but rises again after the sunrise. Thus, the temperature is at its lowest point in the morning.

Appendix for all you loving calculations:
Note: Simplified to toy model, no atmosphere
The cooling rate of the Earth is approximatelly given by the Stefan-Boltzmann equation:
$$j_E=\sigma\cdot T^4=5.670  \cdot 10^{-8} \frac{W}{m^2 K^4} \cdot (288.15 K)^4 = 390 \frac{W}{m^2}$$
The maximum heating rate of Sun in the zenith is $j_{\text{S max}}=1361 \frac{W}{m^2}$. So, the heating rate of Sun at altitude $\alpha$ is:
$$j_S=j_{\text{S max}}\cdot \sin{\alpha}=1361 \frac{W}{m^2}\cdot \sin{\alpha}$$
When is the heating rate equal to zero?
$$0=j_S-j_E=1361 \frac{W}{m^2}\cdot \sin{\alpha} - 390 \frac{W}{m^2}$$
$$1361 \frac{W}{m^2}\cdot \sin{\alpha} = 390 \frac{W}{m^2}$$
$$\alpha = 17 °$$
So, with our calculations, the minimum temperature is at the time when the altitude is equal to 17°.


What is the relevance of Arctic coastal erosion to the Earth's climate?

If we consider only the climatic impacts of Arctic coastal erosion, there are still two sides of the question of how relevant is Arctic coastal erosion of permafrost.

The first side is how big is its current role as a ${CO}_2$ source, and the second is how much of risk it posses for future climate change.

It term of current contribution the answers is that it is not very relevant. According to the "The Arctic Coastal Dynamics Database: A New Classification
Scheme and Statistics on Arctic Permafrost Coastlines" from 2011, there are 101,447 km of coastline in the Artic, and the mean coastal erosion rate is 0.5 m/yr with a mean backshore elevation of 8.3 m. Multiplying all those numbers we get that 421,005,050 $\text{m}^3$ of Arctic soil are lost to the sea every year.

That paper is behind a paywall so I'll copy here Table 2 (where most of above numbers come from) and figure 6 that are relevant here.

Table 2 also indicates that ~2% of the weight of that lost soil corresponds to carbon, so using a bulk density of 1,900 $\text{kg}/\text{m}^3$ (source) you get that the lost corresponds to 0.00002 Pg C (peta grams of carbon) per year, a very small number compared with the ~7.8 Pg C that burning fossil fuels put into the atmosphere every year.

Now, it is more concerning the potential of permafrost lost. Scientist have studied Arctic ocean sediments and found that during the period of fast sea level rise at the end of the last ice age, a huge amount of organic carbon stored in permafrost was released (source), perhaps close to 1,000 Pg (source). Carbon that was then available for microorganism to metabolize and transform into greenhouse gases as carbon dioxide and methane. This greenhouse gases helped warming the Earth and melting the ice caps that covered it at that time.

There are still about 1,300 Pg of carbon stored in permafrost (source). Thawing of permafrost is increasing rapidly. As well as coastal erosion rates. In coastal Alaska for example it have increased from 6.8 m/yr in 1955-1979, to 8.7 m/y in 1979-2002, to 13.6 m/yr on 2002-2007 (source).
Arctic warming, sea level rise and release of permafrost organic carbon form part of a dangerous positive feedback cycle that we don't know how far or how fast it can go. And it have the potential to release massive, and this time, VERY considerable quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.


Why is the skyline hazy on the Greek islands?

Basically, hazyness mostly comes down to particles in the atmosphere (aerosols). Could be water, could be soot and other exhaust from fires or combustion engines, could be simply dust. Sometimes differences in temperature obscure the horizon, too.

In your case my first guess is dust, most likely from northern Africa, which is blown north, out over the sea.


Is wind just mainly nitrogen particles moving in one direction?

In a nutshell, you're a little bit right.  The Air pressure is essentially Nitrogen and Oxygen molecules hitting our bodies, but that's true with and without wind.

wind is more easily explained from the macro-scale not the micro-scale.  It's not molecular behavior but governed by forces like high and low pressure systems and weather, or, fans if you're indoors.

The Brownian motion of molecules is pretty consistent like 3d billiard balls, though velocity of the molecules increases with temperature.  This is kind of what air molecules movement looks like:

Wind is, in a nutshell, the entire box moving, not individual particles changing direction, but it could probably be looked at either way.

If all the air molecules, by some strange coincidence, all moved in the same direction 2 things would happen.  One, the air would get very cold as temperature is essentially agitated molecules moving or vibrating against each other, and two, the wind speed would be over 1000 kph.  Roughly the speed of sound.   Fortunately this kind of thing is so statistically improbable it essentially never happens.


Which type of seismic sensors usually used in Earthquake Early Warning?

Accelerometers, preferably triaxial (i.e., those that record horizontal and vertical motion). Beyond that your question is indeed a bit too open-ended. Some use many cheap MEMS (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008GL036572/epdf; https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/7/13/15963996/raspberry-pi-seismograph-early-warning-earthquakes; these are similar to those found in phones), some use more expensive but reliable equipment (https://kinemetrics.com/post_products/episensor-es-t/)...


Interpretation of a seismogram (three components)

Yes, the vertical component of the seismogram looks different than the horizontal components. There are surface seismic waves (Love waves or Q-waves) that are horizontally-polarized. The ground motion due to these waves is horizontal and parallel to the plane of the ground surface. Therefore these waves will be most visible in the horizontal components of the seismogram. In some cases it may be possible to use the horizontal components to estimate the bearing to the epicenter.  Surface waves travel more slowly than body waves, and their amplitude decays at a lower rate, therefore they may be easier to recognize in seismograms measured farther from the epicenter.


Why don't Antarctic waters have more upwellings, when Arctic waters are so rich in upwellings?

First, we might want to distinguish between the different types of upwelling:

Coastal upwelling: It is the best known form of upwelling. Winds in these systems flow parallel to the coast (with the coast to the left in the northern hemisphere or to the right in the southern hemisphere) and generate upwelling dynamics. Surface Ekman balance is setup (in deep enough waters) with water transport being to the right (left) of the wind in the northern (southern) hemisphere. The result is a deficit along the coast that requires a compensating flow in the deeper part of the water column bringing usually colder waters to the surface. If the wind blows in the opposite direction, then downwelling occurs.
The figure from the question refers to coastal upwelling (here in its original website with explaining caption). There is definitely more coastal upwelling in the northern hemisphere because of the abundance of shorelines as a greater amount of landmass is present in that hemisphere.

 Source Commons Wikipedia.

Equatorial upwelling: Winds from the east blow and converge along the equator as part of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). While the magnitude of the Coriolis acceleration is zero along the equator, Ekman transport takes place immediately north and south of the equator resulting in surface ocean divergence that requires a compensating flow of denser (nutrient-rich) water upwelled from below.

 Source

Southern Ocean upwelling: Strong westerly (eastward) winds dominate the atmospheric setting around Antarctica. The strong winds force the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, the strongest current in the ocean. The winds also result in an Ekman balance with northward flow in the upper part of the water column. To compensate that flow, some water flows up from greater depths. The magnitude of the Southern Ocean upwelling is still being studied, but some observations and models propose that it represents the main way for dense water from deeper areas to be reintroduced in the surface circulation. If that were the case, then it represents the largest upwelling system in the world. An alternative explanation proposes oceanic eddies as the main mechanism for dense water to reconnect with the surface circulation. Additionally, there is coastal upwelling over the Antarctic continental shelf driven by local winds that brings relatively warmer waters to the shelf contributing to local/regional ice melting.
 Source

The question also mentions downwelling associated with dense water formation. Deep water forms at high latitudes (typically north and south of 60°) in both the southern and northern hemispheres. As mentioned in the question, ice contains almost no salt, so when ice forms, a salty, sub-zero brine is left behind and sinks. In the Antarctic, as the saltier water moves down, it mixes with slightly warmer intermediate water. The mixture becomes Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW), which flows northwards along the bottom in all the main oceans. In the Arctic, the northward flowing branch of the Gulf Stream (salty and warm) joins the subpolar gyre and enters the Labrador Sea where as it cools, it starts to sink. The eastern branch of the Gulf Stream begins to sink in the Nordic Seas. The resulting water masses combine to form the dense North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) that flows south at depth. Both the creation of AABW and NADW can be considered downwelling, as there is a net downward flow in the formation areas, but they are not related to wind-driven downwelling in the vicinity of coasts.


Does iron in core have chance to come out to crust?

No, we occasionally get fragments of upper mantle overthrust onto the Earth's crust, but then the specific gravity (density) contrast is not so great, roughly 2.7 to 3.0 for crust, about 3.2 for mantle. But the core is another matter. The density contrast is huge - the liquid outer core is between 9.9 and 12.2, whilst the solid core is estimated to be 12.6 to 13.0! (High pressure iron-nickel with some denser metals mixed in). Not only that, but the mantle is quite close to the surface, only tens of kilometres deep, whereas the Earth's core is 3000 kilometres below the surface.
Sadly, there is no volcanic process that comes from even remotely that depth.

Alas - many geologists, myself included, would dearly love to sample the core and compare the composition to iron meteorites (assumed similar). There are many other questions of geochemistry and isotopic composition which might be answered if only we could sample that deep. Unfortunately it is way beyond even the most optimistic advances in technology, so we just have to theorize.


How did the intensity of Earth's magnetic field change through geological time?

The Earth's initial accretion was about 4.5 billion years ago, and there is good Hf-W isotopic evidence that an iron core started to form within about 10 M years, and may have been largely complete within 30 M years. However, the Earth's dynamo, which is driven by isotopic heating and core rotation/convection, didn't switch on strait away. It must have built up over hundreds of millions of years, possibly kick-started by a the magnetic field of a stronger solar wind at that time. The evidence from 3.5 Bn year old dacites suggest that the magnetic field at that time was only 30 to 50% of the current value. There is no magnetic data for 4.4 to 3.5 Bn years, (the time period you are interested in), but current models lean towards lower rather than higher values. There appears to be no mechanism for strong magnetism in the early Earth. Geomagnetic evidence from about 2.5 Bn years ago seems to indicate that the Earths magnetism was more stable then than now, with few if any peaks of high or low magnetism. Probably the Earth's early magnetic field will always be imprecisely known because nearly all the early rocks have been 'cooked' in such a way as to extinguish the early magnetic evidence.


In terms of the greenhouse effect, what is the Earth's heat capacity?

For the greenhouse effect, the problem is not a matter of heat capacity. For example, Carbon Dioxide has a specific heat capacity of 0.843 J g$^{-1}$ K$^{-1}$ while $\ce{N_2}$, which is the largest component of the atmosphere, has a specific heat capacity of 1.039 J g$^{-1}$ K$^{-1}$ and water vapor, the most common greenhouse gas on earth, has a specific heat capacity of 1.865 J g$^{-1}$ K$^{-1}$. Thus, the warming isn't necessarily a thermodynamic problem, with regards to heat capacity (though it is, in a ways, a problem of entropy).

The reason that some gases are greenhouse gases is more of a radiative transfer problem than a thermodynamic problem, but the two overlay with regards to molecular structure. Water vapor's absorption spectrum shows that it absorbs most infrared radiation. This graphic demonstrates how much radiation of each wavelength is absorbed by different gases.

You may ask "well, that's dandy, but why do some gases absorb only some parts of the spectra?" Well, that is a bit more complicated, and is dependent on the molecular structure, quantum mechanics, and spectroscopy.

To answer your hypothetical questions directly:

  Has the earth’s atmosphere reached an equilibrium at which the input radiation energy roughly equals its output, or is the output significantly lower than the input because the energy is being used to heat up stuff?

In a ways, yes, that is a fundamental assumption, per Kirchoff's law.

  if the atmosphere’s composition remains exactly the same as it is now, will the atmosphere continue getting warmer, or will the temperature remain as it is now?

There would be a lag before major changes are seen, per Fourier's law. But since water vapor is a greenhouse gas, we would do best not to deus ex machina all greenhouse gases away. Additionally, we need greenhouse gases for survival- too little and we all freeze.

  Has the earth’s atmosphere reached an equilibrium at which the input
  radiation energy roughly equals its output, or is the output
  significantly lower than the input because the energy is being used to
  heat up stuff?

Well, we are almost always at some sort of radiative equalibrium, per Kirchoff's law. For example, the hotter an object becomes, the faster it will cool, per Stefan-Boltzmann Law.


What factors affect daily temperature range?

There are a lot of aspects affecting daily temperature. I want to distinguish between factors, which may change from day to day and others which are fixed and thus affect more the annual cycle of temperature (like altitude of place).

Some factors which affect daily temperature and change daily:

prevailing winds (temperature/moisture advection)
cloudiness
day of the year: duration of day (and thus insolation) is important for daily temperature range. The longer sun shines, the more solar radiation is absorbed by surface and the higher temperatures you get. For example, during equinox (march and september) day and night have the same duration and you have the longest or shortest day during solstice (in June and December). Thus this aspect is more relevant at middle and high latitudes.

Other aspects which do not change daily:

local relief and surface type (atmosphere is heated due to absorption of solar radiation by surface)
distance to ocean/large lake (maritime vs. continental climate)
latitude: the angle of incidence of solar radiation changes with latitude (and day of the year)


When was the first not-icy desert formed?

Deserts have existed since at least the Permian period (299-251 million years ago) when the world's continents had combined into the Pangaea supercontinent. Stretching from pole to pole, this land mass was large enough that portions of its interior received little or no precipitation, according the University of California Museum of Paleontology.

Pangaea broke into smaller land masses which were moved across the surface by tectonic forces, a process that both changed global climate patterns and the climate those continents were exposed to. As a result, current desert regimes date back to no more than 65.5 million years, according to this Encyclopedia Britannica article:

  The desert environments of the present are, in geologic terms,
  relatively recent in origin. They represent the most extreme result of
  the progressive cooling and consequent aridification of global
  climates during the Cenozoic Era (65.5 million years ago to the
  present), which also led to the development of savannas and scrublands
  in the less arid regions near the tropical and temperate margins of
  the developing deserts. It has been suggested that many typical modern
  desert plant families, particularly those with an Asian centre of
  diversity such as the chenopod and tamarisk families, first appeared
  in the Miocene (23 to 5.3 million years ago), evolving in the salty,
  drying environment of the disappearing Tethys Sea along what is now
  the Mediterranean–Central Asian axis.

Which would put the oldest of "modern" desert somewhere in the region of what later became North Africa or South Asia.


What allowed the Himalaya to become so high?

It mostly has to do with the type of convergent boundary the  Himalayas are, continental crust to continental crust. Most convergent boundaries are oceanic to continental or oceanic to oceanic. In both cases there is a dense oceanic plate that can get subducted. But in a continental crust to continental crust collision neither can really dive under the other and get reworked*, since both are low density, thick, and roughly equal in density, so they just compress together like pushing two wads of clay together. They build both up and down since they sort of float on the rock below. Think of it kinda like a geologic iceberg, it is too light to sink. All compressive collisions  thicken like this to a lesser extent, due to the compressive forces, it is just far more intense with continental to continental collisions because there is no other outlet for the energy but compression because all the material involved is to light to be subducted. .

the Eurasian and Indian plates are both large continental plates so as long as they are getting forced together they can only get thicker and thicker. This is the only boundary like this on earth right now, so it seems weird to us, but this type of collision has happened before they are just rarer.

*sometimes one does go down more than the other but it does not get reworked, they just get fused together in a lopsided fashion.


Have there ever been simultaneous cyclones in the same ocean but different hemispheres?

It does occasionally happen. Not often, because to kick-start a hurricane there has to be some rotation to start with, from the Coriolis effect, together with a sea surface temperature of >27 °C (+ some other requirements such as lack of horizontal shear). This combination is best met during summer when one or other hemisphere is tilted towards the sun, so the hurricane seasons in both hemispheres tend to be 6 months out of synchronization. But there are occasional overlaps, as in this vector composite, found at http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/archive.html?year=2015&month=06&MR=1


Our interglacial ends some 1500-years from now, the AGU recently recognized the Holocene as geo-engineered by people converting forest to agriculture.

We passed a warm-ocean tipping point for northern hemispheric winters, frozen oranges in Florida and rain in Alaska now will be common.

Our emissions rate is far beyond natural systems, the rate of change coming out of the last ice-age was 1-ppm/180-years, we hit 3ppm/year in 2016, 540-times faster.

And, the max CO2 during the late Pleistocene was 305-ppm, we hit that in 1916 and added 100-ppm in 100-years.

This carbon bomb is acidifying the oceans 10-times faster than the worst land extinction in geologic history.

It's very unwise what we're doing.


Is it physically possible to see mountains from 500 km away?

I think what was observed is a superior mirage. A superior mirage occurs when warm air overlies a very cold layer of air, aka an inversion. You don't often see a superior mirage in lower latitudes, but they seem to be somewhat common in and near the Arctic regions.With normal atmospheric conditions and taking into consideration refraction, about the furthest one could see a 15,325 foot mountain from, say, a 100 foot high deck is roughly 177 miles, depending on the tide. The only possible explanation is a very strong superior mirage.There are a couple of good articles here and here that describe the conditions necessary:


Two approaches:

Search tourist websites for the countries you are interested in. They very often have average data on temperature and rainfall by month.
Just Google countryname monthly rainfall. You may get general descriptions instead of hard (tabular) data, but since you only have to collect the data once, that's doable.

But as you get from the comments below your post, how useful that data is remains doubtful.

As an example: The first hit for the austria monthly rainfall search says:

  ... altitude determines the precipitation pattern; while high-level areas in the Alps may have a high average rainfall in excess of 2000 mm per year, while some regions in the flatlands of Austria have only 600 mm annually.

(emphasis mine)

Note that this page mentions the WeatherOnline (UK) Climate of the world page as its source. There you have descriptions for many countries.


There are two water-related erosional process at work here:

The exhumation of main sandstone blocks caused by heavy rainfall, incising channels and carrying away the loose debris for deposition elsewhere as "sand".

Formation of weather resistant surfaces caused by dissolution and re-precipation of iron-rich minerals.

You often see this process at work in any desert environment bearing iron-rich sandstones. The morphology, however, will differ based on the internal structure of the rock. Where high winds can carry sand, these iron-rich surfaces can become highly polished into a varnish-like surface.


If a ship on its way to Germany from Norway sank, where will the survivors likely end up?

The survivors would probably end up in Jutland or Norway, maybe Sweden due to the currents.

CC BY-SA 3.0

The main wind pattern is also western, but with prevailing eastern winds, they might end up in Scotland, depending on the vessel. The Jutlandic coast has experienced a large number of shipwrecks in the past.

DMI

Even if a boat gets out on the open ocean, the Gulf stream flows northeast, so there are very small chances to get to Sub-Saharan Africa.

So the answer would be: (a), very small but depending on the survivors' ability to navigate and the wind direction. (b) None.

Here is a sad account of the North Sea currents


What caused the Cretaceous uplift of the Harz mountains (Germany)

The intraplate compression responsible for this uplift has had a couple of explanations over the years; historically, it's been ascribed to Alpine collision, i.e. the collision of the Alpine orogen with the Europe. However Kley & Voight (2008) reviewed evidence and concluded it was the effect of Africa-Iberia-Europe convergence:

  ... the onset of intraplate contraction coincides with an important change in relative motion between the European and African plates. At ca. 90 Ma, Africa's SSE-directed sinistral transform motion relative to Europe changed to NE-directed convergence. This agrees well with the timing and kinematics of intraplate thrusting in central Europe. Structures of similar age and kinematics occurring in southern France, Spain, and North Africa suggest that the Late Cretaceous pulse of contraction was caused by pinching west-central Europe's thin lithosphere between Baltica and Africa. Only since the onset of N-directed thrusting in the Alps in Paleocene or Eocene time are the kinematics of the Alps and their European foreland compatible, indicating that mechanical coupling between Africa-Europe and the Adria microplate had been achieved.


How much water is the atmosphere losing to space?

It is not actual water what is lost to space, because in the high atmosphere water usually dissociate into other molecules or ions. The oxygen ion outflow is frequently assumed to be a proxy for the loss of water from the planetary atmosphere. In terms of global outflow rates for the Earth the rate varies from $10^{25}$ to $10^{26} s^{-1}$, depending on geomagnetic activity (reference).

On the poster of the reference (sent to me by the author) we can read:

  If we assume oxygen corresponds to water loss (self-regulation, Hunten
  and McElroy [1970]), then an oxygen loss rate of ~$10^{25} s^{-1}$
  corresponds to ~300 $\text{g s}^{-1}$ of water loss. Over the age of the
  solar system (4.5 billion years ~ $1.4 \times 10^{17}$ s) this loss
  rate gives $4.2 \times 10^{19}$ g of water.

The current loss figure is equivalent ~25,920 liters per day, or 9,467 $\text{m}^3$ per year. And the reference of that figure seem to be the paper Escape of O+ through the distant tail plasma sheet, that used measurements from the STEREO‐B (Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory) spacecraft.

That would correspond to a total loss over Earth's history of 42,000 $\text{km}^3$ of water, equivalent to about 12 cm of sea level change. However, that's a straightforward extrapolation of the current rate, because they acknowledge that they don't know how to model how Earth's magnetosphere would have behaved in the past when the Sun was weaker. Although, for a weaker Sun it would be reasonable expect smaller losses.

This value is radically different to that of the article you pointed to. In that case they use the loss of hydrogen instead of oxygen as proxy for water loss:

  Knowing how much hydrogen had disappeared from the oceans over the
  last four billion years enabled the researchers to calculate that the
  oceans have lost about a quarter of their water since the Earth’s
  early days.

They the say:

  Today the atmosphere is rich in oxygen, which reacts with both
  hydrogen and deuterium to recreate water, which falls back to the
  Earth's surface. So the vast bulk of the water on Earth is held in a
  closed system that prevents the planet from gradually drying out.

That suggests that the limiting factor for the existence of water is now the abundance atmospheric oxygen (although oxygen in rocks if very abundant). So it would make sense to use now Oxygen loss as proxy for water loss, but in the past, before the atmosphere was flooded with oxygen, maybe hydrogen loss was a better proxy.

They suggests that methanogenesis can free hydrogen atoms and make them liable to be loss to space, but when it is part of a water molecule it is safe. Methanogenesis would have been much more common in the past when the atmosphere was rich in methane (50 to 500 richer than today).

To wrap up, it seem that there is no consensus about the actual amount of water loss trough Earth's history. Different proxies give different values. Some proxies might be representative to some periods in Earth's past, but other proxies are more representative of other periods. And unfortunately we don't have yet a good reconstruction of the composition and density of the atmosphere throughout Earth's history.

But we do know with some confidence, that while you where reading this answer, one or two liters of water were loss to space.


Intuition on overall effects from climate change under different levels of warming

I think you're asking about the sort of outputs that are obtained from climate-change integrated assessment models [IAMs] And now you've got the right search term, your quest will get a lot easier.

You're doing the right thing: start with the IPCC reports. The next step is to follow through on reading their references. And then use google scholar or any proper academic search engine you have access to, to find more recent papers that have also cited those papers that the IPCC cited.

Here's a pdf on the PAGE09 IAM, an updated version of the PAGE2002 model used for the Stern Review. Chris Hope makes his PAGE model available to other researchers, on request.

Here's the UK's Committee on Climate Change report on IAMs

Here's the London School of Economics' page on IAMs.

And the TIAM IAM from UCL.

Google Scholar claims to have 3000 results from the last five years on IAMs and climate change.

As you can probably imagine, there are uncertainties piled on top of uncertainties in this field. The scholarly work on them nevertheless represents the best available set of expert expectations on the sort of damages we are likely to experience with different increases in the concentrations of greenhouse gases.


Why does NOAA no longer provide sunshine data?

It was not discontinued

Using the Climate Data Online tool from NOAA's website, I was able to get sunshine data through March 1st of this year for both major airports in my metropolitan area.

Sunshine data is relatively restricted geographically compared to other datasets like temperature and precipitation (for those I counted 7 stations in my metro area), but you should be able to retrieve data from any major airport.


How to simulate wind's trend from his windrose distribution?

You can't. A windrose aggregates over time, so you lose all the information about patterns over time. You're trying to do a time-based simulation, but your data source discards all time-specific information.

You need a different set of data, to base your simulation on. One that contains the dimension of time.

The changes in direction and speed over time vary hugely depending on the local climate and topology.


This is largely an issue of trying to show three dimensional structures in a two dimensional medium. It is also an issue of trying to differentiate between different materials and volcanic behaviours.

Volcanoes can be composed of three types of material: Country Rock is the material they're erupting up through it's usually sedimentary near the surface and gets buried under volcanic rocks relatively quickly, so much so that few diagrams include it. The other two rock types are volcanic in origin these are Cinders and Lava. Cinder is material thrown out of the volcano, this is usually Scoria but can include other Tephra as well, importantly it lands as a solid. Lava is the liquid rock that flows continuously from a volcanic vent. These two volcanic rock types are usually mutually exclusive, eruptions with lava have few cinders and vice versa.

There are three basic "plan-forms" of volcano Basalt Shields, Cinder Cones, and Composite Cones.

Basalt Shields form slowly from layer upon layer of lava flows that solidify one atop another over long periods of time they are correspondingly flat.
At the other end of the eruptive spectrum are steep Cinder Cones formed from more violent eruptions that throw a lot of material out of the volcano, that rock solidifies as it flies through the air and lands around the vent. The closer you are to the vent the more material there is landing and the bigger it tends to be so a cone builds up, the angle of it's sides being governed by the average size of rock landing at that point.
Composite Cones are exactly what the name says; cones built up from a combination of Cinder and Lava from separate eruptions, some gentle and others violent.

The diagrams you've presented are an attempt to differentiate between these three plan-forms based on the nature of the volcanic material involved, using a deceptively simple palette. In active volcanoes there usually are lava distribution systems that move laterally through the visible cone, these feed lateral vents or lava tubes moving material far from the central vent.


What you are really asking is why the weather varies from place to place, sometimes in places which are only a few miles apart (in the hills of the Dhofar region of S.Oman, you have a transition from monsoon scrub and grassland to arid desert in the space of only 2 or 3 hundred metres!). Weather is such a complex thing it is impossible to enumerate all the factors which cause local variation, except to say that the presence of hills and mountains often has something to do with it.

Matter is made up of sub-atomic particles containing positive and negative charges. They are usually evenly distributed, every positively charged particle  being balanced by a negatively charged particle, which means these charges cancel each other out.  Nearly everything we see around us is therefore electrically neutral. This disguises the enormous power of the electromagnetic force, which is trillions of times more powerful than the gravitational force, so even a very slight imbalance between positive and negative charges, such as occurs in thunderstorms, can produce dramatic results.

These electrical imbalances can be produced by air turbulence such as takes place in rising plumes of hot air called thermals, of which the strongest happen in summer. Particles of dust or moisture in the rising air currents rub against each other and cause separation of charge.  The condensing raincloud becomes negatively charged, while the ground below becomes positively charged. Positive and negative charges hate to be separated, as they have a very strong attraction for each other.

The positive charges on the ground are pulled along by the negatively charged cloud, and tend to build up on church steeples and similar pointed objects that reach into the sky. When the two masses of separated charge become sufficiently strong, and especially if they pass over a tall, pointed object, they cannot resist the urge to recombine and an electrical discharge takes place. Why one place should have more of these events in August and another in September is a complex question which cannot be answered without knowing all the many variables which influence the weather in both of these places.


Effective Temperature of a Planet and Surface Temperature due to Greenhouse Effect

I think you’re not far off with your understanding, but maybe I can put in a few comments to make things clearer.

  I often get confused because most diagrams for the Earth energy budget and net radiation balance show more infrared leaving the surface than is ever supplied by solar radiation at the top of the atmosphere in the first place… As you can see, more infrared is leaving Earth than enters as solar radiation and yet this is still a picture of equilibrium where the net radiation is zero.

These types of diagrams only show the fluxes, but you have to remember that the surface (mainly the ocean) and the atmosphere are reservoirs of energy that have built up over time.  In that diagram the top-of-atmosphere net radiation balance for the Earth system is,

67 (absorbed by atmosphere) + 168 (absorbed by surface) = 235 (outgoing longwave radiation)

and all the other much larger components are just different pathways for energy transfer between those two internal reservoirs.  The sun only has to top-up the amount of energy that the reservoirs are leaking to space (235 W/m2) to maintain the equilibrium.

  This re-emission of infrared radiation to the ground is like a trap for energy and over time it will cause the surface temperature of the planet to rise… If the terrestrial surface is warming it will have to emit even more infrared radiation back to space... I was thinking that the surface will grow warmer and emit more radiation until the amount exiting equals the amount incoming, establishing the new thermal equilibrium.

Broadly yes, but remember that the diagram you posted describes a long-term steady state (“thermal equilibrium”), so all that “warming” has already occurred and is built into those numbers.  It may just be your phrasing, but note that surface doesn’t emit the bulk of its thermal radiation directly back to space.  In your diagram this is the 40 W/m2 “atmospheric window”, which is much smaller than the 350 W/m2 of surface emission that’s absorbed by the atmosphere.

It might be better to think of the atmosphere less as trapping energy at the surface and more as slowing the net transfer of energy from the surface through the atmosphere to space.  Atmospheric science text books often include a cartoon to demonstrate how energy is absorbed and re-emitted as it passes through the atmosphere:

Here each arrow is 1 arbitrary unit of energy.  Things to note are that (1) each layer emits as much as it receives, (2) there's a lot more than 1 unit of flux within the atmosphere, (3) there's a steady 1 unit of net flux through the atmosphere and (4) this equilibrium is maintained by 1 unit in and 1 unit out at the top of atmosphere.


How will global warming affect climate systems like the ENSO or the MJO?

Still undetermined, though a number of papers on the subject suggest global warming will increase the variance in both of the climate systems you mention. They suggest more research and more refined models are needed to narrow down the uncertainties.

Some definitions:

  The Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) is the major fluctuation in
  tropical weather on weekly to monthly timescales. The MJO can be
  characterised as an eastward moving 'pulse' of cloud and rainfall near
  the equator that typically recurs every 30 to 60 days. (Australian Bureau of Meteorology)

  The El Niño/ Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle refers to the coherent
  and sometimes very strong year-to-year variations in sea- surface
  temperatures, convective rainfall, surface air pressure, and
  atmospheric circulation that occur across the equatorial Pacific
  Ocean. El Niño and La Niña represent opposite extremes in the ENSO cycle. (National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center)

El Niño is the "warm phase" of sea-surface temperatures in the east-central equatorial Pacific with a variety of effects on regional and global weather. La Niña is the "cold phase" of the oscillation.

One of the predictive challenges is that climate change is not monotonic. It's generally held that will be a "warmer-get-wetter" impact -- warmer oceans produce more evaporation and therefore more precipitation. But ocean states are also affected by highly complex relationships involving currents and convection.

Here are extracts from the abstracts of a couple of recent papers on the subject(s) (actual papers are paywalled):

In Intermodel Uncertainty in ENSO Amplitude Change Tied to Pacific Ocean Warming Pattern, Zheng, et.al. compare actual sea-surface temperature measurements to the outputs of various models and write:

  To the extent that correcting model biases favors an El Niño–like mean
  warming pattern, this study suggests an increase in ENSO-related SST
  variance likely under global warming.

In The MJO and global warming: a study in CCSM4, Subramanian, et.al, write:

  The RCP8.5 run exhibits increased variance in intraseasonal
  precipitation, larger-amplitude MJO events, stronger MJO rainfall in
  the central and eastern tropical Pacific, and a greater frequency of
  MJO occurrence for phases corresponding to enhanced rainfall in the
  Indian Ocean sector. These features are consistent with the concept of
  an increased magnitude for the hydrological cycle under greenhouse
  warming conditions.

In MJO Intensification with Warming in the Superparameterized CESM, Arnold, et.al. said their modeling runs showed "Intraseasonal precipitation increases at a rate of roughly
10% per 1 K of warming, and MJO events become 20%–30% more frequent," but conclude:

  This work adds to existing evidence that MJO activity may increase in
  response to global warming. Evidence for an MJO dependence on SST has
  been identified in observations (Hendon et al. 1999; Slingo et al.
  1999; Jones and Carvalho 2006; Oliver and Thompson 2012), and in some
  numerical models (Lee 1999; Caballero and Huber 2010; Arnold et al.
  2013; Schubert et al. 2013). However, other models have shown negative
  or neutral trends with SST (Takahashi et al. 2011) or a strong
  dependence on the spatial pattern of warming (Maloney and Xie 2013),
  so any conclusions regarding future trends should be viewed as
  tentative.


Excellent question!  Indeed, entire plates have subducted before.

One example is the Intermontane Plate (Wikipedia).  This plate sat west of North America around 195 million years ago.  The plate contained a chain of volcanic islands on its western edge (known as the Intermontane Islands).  As the plate subducted under the North American plate, that island chain stood too tall and merged with the North American plate.

An illustration of the plate:

Source: Black Tusk, Wikimedia Commons

The entire Intermontane Plate was subducted under the North American plate.  However, we are able to see the remnants of the plate in the volcanic islands it left behind.

Once this Intermontane Plate was subducted, the Insular Plate became the new subduction zone.

This entire process was actually repeated with the Insular Plate, subducting the entire plate, leaving behind yet another chain of volcanic islands that fused to the western coast of the North American Plate.

The Burke Museum has an excellent article that describes the subduction of both the Intermontane Plate and the Insular Plate.  Well worth the read.


You can think of this amplitude term as being part of the wavelet term such that your definition of the wavelet is: "the necessary filter/operator to convert true reflectivity into the arbitrarily scaled seismic data". This scalar depends on the data itself and therefore must be obtained empirically. In fact, it is very likely that the scalar is frequency dependent. Your best bet to obtain the full wavelet, including its scalar, is by using a well where your reflectivity is known and applying the method of White and Simm (2003) or any other similar method.

Anyway, doing any sort of deconvolution or inversion with the wrong wavelet scalar will leak all error from this into the solution. You are pretty much asking: "What is the necessary (for example) acoustic impedance such that when I do this faulty forward modeling, I get the measured seismic data?".


Do cloud formations change depending on the season?

Yes. The types of clouds formed are dependent on the profile of temperature and the profile of water vapor. During the summer, there is more radiative flux, which produces more buoyancy. Hence more buoyant clouds (cumulus-type) are formed in the summer than in the winter. Instinctively you may recognize that you get more thunderstorms during the summer than the winter.

Kelvin-Helmholtz wave clouds usually need different densities of air, typical of an inversion. This is more likely to happen during cooler seasons (Fall, Winter, and Spring).

Also, freezing fog is inherently more common in the winter than the summer.


Amount of Distortion at Continental Collisions

I think of the plates not as icebergs floating around in a sea but as pieces of porridge skin on the surface of gently simmering porridge, moved about by convection forces from below.

The Indian plate became fused with the Australian plate about 43 million years ago, so now there is only one plate, the Indo-Australian plate. Since then, the whole mass has been moving north at about 4 cm per year. A relatively small amount, perhaps a quarter of what was once the Indian plate, has crumpled against the Eurasian plate to form the Himalayas.

I don't know what the total mass of the Indo-Australian plate is, but it must be many trillions of tons. Imagine the momentum of many trillions of tons of rock moving at 3 mm per month, in addition to which there are convection forces from the mantle pushing it along! Bulldozing the Himalayas must have slowed it down a little, so 43 million years ago it was moving even faster.


Your local university likely has a small natural history museum in its geology department. These are generally free and filled with information regarding local geology. I'd start there.....and bring your rocks; the attendant might be able to help you find someone who can identify your rocks.


How were the sea levels around western Europe during the Medieval Warm Period?

In the global sense the sea level data are not entirely consistent, but then, there are always going to be apparent variations when you are comparing proxy data from different sources. As far as Europe is concerned sea level rose between 1.0 and 1.6 metres throughout the Medieval Warm Period - or maybe as much as 2.0 metres by some of the more extreme estimates. Following this was the 'little ice age' (actually not an ice age at all), when sea level fell by almost as much. See for example the graphs of Behre 2004, and Puls, 2008, (German North Sea coast),both of which are reproduced in Kwaad's paper, which is a good overview.

http://www.kwaad.net/SeaLevel-MiddleAges-LittleIceAge.html

Whatever sea level change you regard as definitive, the important point is that these were just minor variations superimposed upon a major sea level trend. Overall the post-glacial sea level, from about 8000 years ago, was a rapid rise from -50 metres (or so), flattening off during the last two millennia, and now massively accelerating again, primarily due to human-induced climate change.


Where can I find a database of historical wildfires in the USA back to 1960?

I would suggest the National Interagency Fire Center, which keeps statistics in a variety of formats as well as lists of historical fires.  For instance, you can see a list of historically significant fires as far back as 1804 here.  In general, the closer you get to present, the more information about fires there is.

Other websites with historical wildfire lists include:

Wikipedia list of large fires
USGS spatial data back to 1980 with a viewer here
NOAA World Data Center


Why has the average low for the hottest months in Clearwater Florida about 5 degrees higher than the historical average?

What you are observing is called anecdotal weather observations.  I will address it in a number of points, none of which many people will agree with, but so be it.

2-3 years is weather, not climate.  Climate is measured in millennia, not days.  Historical averages are measured, well historically, which for most locations in the US is 50-300 years.  During those years, methods of measurement have changed, so historical numbers may also have glitches in them, such as the the highest US temperature ever recorded is still in dispute because of how it was measured.  But historical averages are calculated from all of those years, ones with droughts, unseasonable cold fronts, and so on.  Warming patterns which are the basis for global warming studies are based on looking at all this data, plus many years of indirect data from ice cores, tree rings, sediment deposits, and many other sources, not from 2 years of personal study.

It is routine to have years that are outside of the average, that is what averages are.  It is also human nature to amplify the variation and see extremes.  I did not go that far back, and I used only one source, but I looked at a little recent recorded data for Clearwater.  I took daily numbers and went with variations to the daily average temp for that date.  For Aug 2017, there are 8 days available thus, and the daily lows have been recorded as +17 degrees to average, or +2.15 degrees.  For 2016 back to 2013 you get +27, -2, +24 and +7 for Aug, or as an average daily difference about +0.87, -0.06, +0.77 and +0.23 with a average for the 4+ years of +0.38 to average.  Only the partial month for 2017 exceeds 1 degree variance to average.

July numbers are, starting with 2017, 41, 37, -29, 13, -31 or in daily variations +1.32, +1.19, -0.94, +0.42, -1.00 for a 5 year average of +0.20.  Although the last two July's have exceeded the plus one degree variance, two of the prior three were almost the opposite.  That is weather and normal variation.  To get to climate numbers requires looking at those patterns over centuries, not over a couple years.

Trust me, I am not refuting global warming.  I am however refuting using such anecdotal observations as a bases for the claims.  Weather patterns work in cycles, and before climate change claims can be made the cycles must be accounted for.  When a location has an especially hot day, or month and references are made to global warming, it make that side of the argument look silly.  When a blizzard occurs, there is a record low, or an seemingly especially cold day, and the deniers point and chant global warming and laugh, they may also feel they scored points, but under statistical analysis they look silly as well.

I do not claim the above to be a statistical analysis.  I also did not cherry pick data, I simply only had time or willingness to do a quick 5 years.  That was more than enough to see yearly variations and demonstrate that a perceived variation of 4-5 degrees is actually 1, and 1 degree is still within typical yearly variation.  To make a real claim requires a pattern of trending real variation in a continuing upward direction and that require rigorous and systematic data collection and analysis.


Was Russia's original territory unfavorable for agriculture?

The area outlined covers several climatic zones. The northeastern part was, and to some extent still is, permafrost at shallow depth, so obviously this was not good for agriculture. Further south most of the area outlined is covered in podzols, which are generally sandy and nutrient poor. Therefore, where water availability is not a limiting constraint (and we have no rainfall records for the 1500s), and where it is not too cold, the soils could have supported agriculture- but only just. They would most likely not have been high yielding. Even today, such soils need a lot of extra nutrients and additional organic carbon to give good results. Politics apart, maybe this is why much of Russia has remained so poor for so long?


To what extent is hydroelectric power really renewable?

Electricity from waves, from hydro (both run-of-river and storage) and from wind, are all indirect forms of solar power. Electricity from tides is different, and we can deal with that in a separate question. Global tidal electricity generation is not yet at the scale of gigawatts, so it's tiny for now.

Winds come about from the sun heating different parts of the planet at different rates, due to insolation angles, varying cloud cover, varying surface reflectivity, and varying specific heat of surface materials. Temperature differentials create wind currents.

Waves come about from wind, so they're a twice-indirect form of solar power.

Sunlight on water speeds up evaporation, lifting the water vapour into clouds, giving them lots of gravitational potential. That rain then falls, sometimes onto high land, from where it can be gathered into storage reservoirs that are tapped for electricity, or where it flows into rivers that are then harnessed in run-of-river hydro.

How much power is there? Well, the insolation from the sun is, at the outer boundary of the Earth's atmosphere, at an intensity of about 1400 Watts per square metre. The Earth's albedo is roughly about 30% - i.e. on average about 400 Watts are reflected back into space, giving an average irradiation into the Earth of about 1000 Watts per square metre. Picture the Earth's surface as seen from the Sun: wherever the Earth is in its orbit on its own axis, and around the Sun, the Sun sees a disc that has the Earth's diameter, so the surface area exposed to the Sun is just $\pi$ times the square of Earth's radius, which is about 6 300 kilometres.

So the incoming solar radiation is $1000 \times 6,300,000^2 \times \pi \approx 125 \times 10^{15} \rm \ W$

Current human consumption of non-food energy is about 17 TW, i.e. $17 \times 10^{12} \rm \ W$, which is about four orders of magnitude smaller than insolation.

There is an interesting open academic discussion (see "modelling methodology smackdown" section) about how much energy we can physically extract from wind: some models say it's only a few times as much as all the energy we currently use; others say it's another order of magnitude more again. Either way, it's way more than we need, so while it's an interesting modelling discussion, the answer wouldn't change anything right now.

There are also open academic discussions about the impact of removing terawatts of wind energy, on regional climates. However, regional climates are already one of the more uncertain parts of long-term climate forecasts; add to that the high uncertainties around where the energy extraction would be, and what the specific effects of extraction are, and we end up with a lot of speculation and very little usable information. Not that this has prevented people from trying to model it, and reporting their results: but the uncertainties dwarf the results.

And harnessing renewables doesn't change anything significant in the Earth's total heat budget either, because almost all of that $1000\ \mathrm{W/m^2}$ from the sun already ends up as low-grade heat anyway. If harnessed for electricity, that electricity will then get used, and almost all of it will then end up as low-grade heat. The bit that will change when we get close to 100% renewables is that we will no longer be injecting about 15 TW of energy from fossil and nuclear into the biosphere (2 TW is renewables). But that's only about 0.01% of the insolation anyway.


Basically the de facto best operational source would probably be the Storm Prediction Center website.  They provide this table:

It caps out at EF5.

However it also true to note that the scale was developed to mirror the Beaufort Scale into a range between the Hurricane Force on the Beaufort Scale and Mach 1.  And as such, indeed in Fujita's 1971 proposal of his scale, as well as in this 1981 journal article (which offers some additional interesting insight into the progression of understanding into tornadic wind speeds, plus alternative scales), Fujita lists the option:

However, in the same papers, likely as his dataset expanded, he evolved his initial wording

  ...the presumption that the occurrences of F6 or higher wind are
  extremely rare... [1971 paper]

into

  ... because F6 or stronger tornadoes are not expected to occur on the
  earth, they will be called Inconceivable tornadoes should they ever
  occur. [1981 paper]

Very importantly, the Fujita scales are damage scales, simply because it's very difficult to directly measure the speeds of a tornado. As such we base tornado ratings by analyzing the degree which it damaged objects; SPC's Fujita scale page lists the 28 damage indicators currently available as of 2017. The highest wind speed matched with any of them, found when significant structural deformation is done to a high-rise building (over 20 stories tall), would only indicate an upper bound of 290 mph.

That does not indicate that wind speeds aren't higher than that, only that we have no structures that can withstand any higher wind speeds.  Thus there would not be any potential for an F6 rating unless building methods are substantially changed to withstand stronger speeds, those buildings became prevalent enough that engineering testing were done and were able to verify its strength, and then such an extreme tornado ever hit them.  Not something we're going to see anytime soon it appears.

So back to the question of whether tornadoes have winds stronger than those listed for an (E)F5?  Measurement of the wind speed appears our only real hope of noting such.  In-situ instruments such as anemometers generally fail well before winds reach such speeds, and typical radars cannot offer the resolution to diagnose such speeds.  Only mobile Doppler radars offer much hope.  There are numerous issues with utilizing such measurements, such as the fact they scan significantly above the ground layer, their sampling areas\timescales that make analyzing suction vortices difficult, and they contain uncertainties due to Nyquist frequencies, variations in reflective objects, and statistical distributions.

Such tornadoes are very rare to encounter.  But in the past couple decades we have indeed managed to attain a handful of close-proximity estimated measurements of strong tornadoes.  But I am not aware of any peak estimated wind speed reaching beyond the (E)F5 range.  Here are the most notable ones I'm aware of:

May 31, 2013 El Reno, OK: 135 m/s (302 mph)
May 3, 1999 Bridge Creek, OK: 135 m/s (302 mph)
May 24, 2011 El Reno, OK: 132.1 m/s (295 mph)
April 26, 1991 Red Rock, OK: (268-280 mph)
May 30, 1998 Spencer, SD: (264 mph)
May 9, 2016 Sulphur, OK: EF4 or EF5 measurements (based on preliminary communication)

So, long story short:
While (E)F6 tornadoes may not be impossible, and the categorization does theoretically exist... in practicality, there is no need for such a value, as the damage would be complete whether in an (E)F5 or (E)F6+.


First step - draw a strike line where line A intersects the 400 m line.
Second step - you know that the sandstone layer is of equal thickness and dip, so you can draw a parallel line at the place with line B intersects the 400 m line. This will give you the thickness, as expressed on a horizontal surface. You know what the dip angle is, so getting the real thickness is simple trigonometry.
This should get you started.


There isn't much to choose between them. They are both variants of the same general equation. They both take account of the three main variables: temperature, rate of advective removal of moisture (proportional to surface wind velocity), and difference in vapour pressure (which can be related to humidity). In countries using SI units there are several other evaporation equations along similar lines Some other equations do not take adequate account of advection (the 'v' parameter), and hence I would advise against using such equations.
Strictly, the best equation, favoured by FAO, and in a slightly modified form by the American society of Civil Engineers, is the classic Penman-Monteith equation:

from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penman%E2%80%93Monteith_equation
But this is a pain to calculate, so most people, including myself, put it in the 'too hard basket'.
Whatever equation you decide to use on your spreadsheet, be aware of potential errors from ground conduction (underestimate of E), higher salinity (depresion of E), and boundary effects, especially in areas of high advective exposure.


Will model resolution have an effect on model spin-up time?

Without spin-up time, our initial conditions would be blank or generic.

I guess the simple answer is "NO" spin-up time is not really affected by the resolution, unless the model resolution changes are so great that it takes much longer for diffusion / advection between cells to flush out. Though that wouldn't explain a 5 year change in spin up time unless you made drastic changes to a model with very large time steps. Increased model resolution could theoretically increase the necessary spin-up time by a small amount, if the changes in resolution were very large and the time steps used were coarse.   However, in a reputable research setting the spin up time is chosen based on how long (in model time) it takes for things to get to an acceptable initial condition, and changes in resolution are usually not so extreme.

Complexities in the model can increase desirable spin-up time if they have long time-horizons before an acceptable initial condition is achieved.  The spin-up time you choose for your model will influence the degree to which the initial conditions actually represent a realistic distribution of numerics across all parameters, assuming the model is adequately developed.


Because the top layer is marine, you're being asked to think of the sequence being "coastal" in origin, where there is ocean, coastal plain, and inland mountains. In this scenario, two things are happening in tandem: the mountains are eroding and sea level is rising.

As the mountain erodes, boulders and cobbles (eroded from steep slopes) bury trees and form coarse conglomerates and source material for the coastal plain deposits, which are the middle unit of your sequence. As sea level rises due to local subsidence or a global sea level rise, the marine environment marches steadily inland depositing sands and then limestones.

Assuming no unconformities, yours is a textbook example of a continuous depositional sequence!


What is more important in Antarctica calving or basal melting of the ice shelves?

There are two studies published in 2013 that provide the most recent updates on this balance

Depoorter, M.A. and 6 others, 2013. Calving fluxes and basal melt rates of Antarctic ice shelves. Nature, 502, 89–92, (03 October 2013),  doi:10.1038/nature12567
Rignot, E. and 3 others, 2013. Ice-Shelf Melting Around Antarctica. Science, 341, 6143, 266-270, (19 July 2013), doi: 10.1126/science.1235798

The first study arrives at a calving loss of 1321 ± 144 Gt/yr year and a total basal mass balance of −1454 ± 174 Gt/yr (− = loss). The mass balance is the net of mass added by freeze on and mass lost by melting so the number does not reflect melting alone. The pure loss by melt is hence larger but from a balance perspective the net is what counts.
The second study indicates a calving flux of 1089 ± 139 Gt/yr and a basal melt of 1325 ± 235 Gt/yr. Although they report "melting" it is likely that they mean net balance as in the other study.
The two studies have used slightly different approaches to arrive at their results, both indirect, but over all the numbers indicate that basal losses are larger than calving and that the order of magnitude is the same.
In more detail, the studies show that calving losses are dominant from the larger ice shelves, the Ross and Filchner-Ronne. Melting dominate regions along the western Antarctic Peninsula and down along the coast of the Bellingshausen and Amundsen seas. For most of the East and West Indian Ocean coastlines losses are relatively small and equal between the two processes.
The bottom line is that these studies have changed the perspective from ice loss being predominantly through calving to now slightly dominated by basal melting.


How does ice-penetrating radar "see" through kilometers of ice without being absorbed?

Water molecules do interact with microwaves and in microwave ovens that operate at 900MHZ- 2.5GHz. This Radar instrument operates using Very High Freq Radio Waves at 193MHz [1].

At lower-than-microwave frequencies, the loss factor is much lower, and as a result the wave can penetrate deeper into the ice sheet with minimal absorption. The difference in permittivities between liquid water and solid ice is what allows them to visualise boundaries and identify the subglacial lakes

From Nasa [2]

  Ice, on the other hand reacts differently depending on the radar's frequency. It reflects high-frequency radio waves, but despite being solid, lower frequency radar can pass through ice to some degree. This is why MCoRDS uses a relatively low frequency—between 120 and 240 MHz. This allows the instrument to detect the ice surface, internal layers of the ice and the bedrock below. "To sound the bottom of ice you have to use a lower frequency," said John Paden, CReSIS scientist. "Too high a frequency and signal will be lost in the ice."


Seismic wavefield theory: velocity anisotropy

Yes, or at least certainly in theory. If you look up any derivation of the elastodynamic representation theorem you're bound to find that it holds for the most general version of the elastic wave equation:
\begin{align}\rho \frac{\partial^2 u_i(x,t)}{\partial t^2}& = \frac{\partial \sigma_{ij}}{\partial x_j} \\ \sigma_{ij}(x,t) & = c_{ijkl}(x)\varepsilon_{kl}(x,t)\end{align}
with $u$ the displacement, $\sigma$ the stress, $\rho$ the density and $c_{ijkl}$ Hooke's tensor. You'll have run into this tensor whenever you researched anisotropy, because it is how one describes anisotropy.

The main reference is a book by Aki & Richards (1982): https://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~richards/Aki_Richards.html , but it is also derived in these handouts, see the bottom of page 15: http://www.geo.uu.nl/~paulssen/Theoreticalseismology/handout.pdf .

The notation $G_{nm}(\xi_2,\tau|\xi_1,t)= G_{mn}(\xi_1,\tau|\xi_2,t)$ is the reciprocity relation. $G_{nm}(\xi_2,\tau|\xi_1,t)$ is the measured displacement due to a point source in direction $m$ at time $t$ at location $\xi_1$ as measured at time $\tau$ at $\xi_2$ in direction $n$. The reciprocity relation says that this recorded signal is identical to an experiment where a source in direction $n$ at time $t$ at location $\xi_2$ is measured at time $\tau$ at $\xi_1$ in direction $m$. Hence, you can interchange source and receiver when you interchange source and receiver dirctions too.


Is there really precipitation on Mars? Does frost count?

See this answer.

Actually already snows on Mars. The snow, made of carbon dioxide, has been observed and studied by orbiting spacecraft. Aside from the different chemical composition from the stuff we shovel on Earth, Martian $\text{CO}_2$ snow also is very finely divided, microscopic in size in fact; likely this is related to the low density of available material and the very fine nature of the dust on which the snowflakes nucleate. In fact studying the snow could provide clues about the atmospheric Martian dust on which it nucleates.

Details are published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

In addition:

Indirect evidence for water ice snow has also been found. According to an article published in Nature, mixing layers have been identified from orbiting spacecraft and water-ice precipitation signatures have been found by the Phoenix lander. Simulations show that such signatures are consistent with snow formation, with the water-ice snow expected to fall at night (as temperatures cool and the atmosphere can retain less water vapor). The arcticle does not claim any direct detection of water-ice snow."


Does the Antarctic Ozone Hole affect the rest of the world?

The ozone hole size changes according to the season. It is usually larger in winter because cold temperature Why is the Ozone Layer 'hole' more pronounced in the Southern Hemisphere?

And in this graph you can see that the ozone level is lower in Australia, South Africa and south America area. http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/sbuv2to/gif_files/sbuv18_sh_latest.gif

In a broader scale, it does have an impact to the rest of the world. A thinning ozone can cause stratosphere cooling. Scientists are still studying this http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/science/ozone-hole-and-gw-faq.html#.WJx_YLNqPU8


In the field, in which I work, the term _ambient aerosol` is related to the water content of aerosol particles.

Commonly in the atmosphere, water is attached to particles. The amount of water attached to particles depends on the relative humidity (in ambient air). Increasing relative humidity means more water and, hence, larger particle/droplet diameter. When we provide a measured/modeled particle diameter, we need to note whether the diameter is given as dry, as wet at XX% relative humidity or as wet at ambient relative humidity.

Maybe it is also used in other contexts.


Does the NWS actually name winter storms, or is this exclusive to the Weather Channel?

It is just the Weather Channel. You can tell which businesses frequently watch (or even do business with) the Weather Channel by whether or not they refer to them by these names. The naming of winter storms irks many of the meteorologists I know (including myself).


Ozone can indeed absorb UV and infrared radiation. The UV part, plays an important role in protecting us from harmful radiation, and the infrared part makes it an effective greenhouse gas.
All gases absorb/emit radiation at multiple different and discrete wavelengths. That's know since the early 19th century when the Fraunhofer lines where observed. The wavelengths can change depending on ionization and other factors. But in this case,I don't think there is any change in the absorption wavelengths between stratospheric and tropospheric ozone.

If you have information about such phenomena, please provide documentation. However, my guess is that in different situations studies might mention the absorption wavelengths that are relevant to the case, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't absorb in other wavelengths too.

In particular, close to the Earth's surface there is plenty of infrared radiation, and very little UV radiation. Therefore, ozone might absorb more energy in the infrared. The oposite happen in the stratosphere, where it probably absorbs more energy in the UV bands.

UV absorption bands are the most known for Ozone, but as I said it has infrared absorption bands too. You can see those bands in the following infrared spectrum obtained from NIST:


What color(s) would Earth be without water or life?

That's actually an interesting question. Let's try to answer it, but first let's make a few assumption.

Oxygen on Earth is biogenic, so without life there would be no oxygen. However, let's assume that some magical process keeps the oxygen in the atmosphere.
Oceans play an important role in plate tectonics, and without it it might change. Let's assume that plate tectonics keep on running regardless of the state of the oceans.

The majority of the Earth's surface is covered by oceanic crust. This crust is composed of basalt, an iron rich rock. This iron would rapidly oxidise and rust, giving a red tint (possibly Mars-like) to most of the Earth's surface. The mid ocean ridges will most likely be black, but it will get redder the farther you get away from there.

The continental crust would like slightly different. Mountain ranges would appear grey, perhaps slightly pinkish - not too different from the highest peaks you see today. Most of the continental crust is composed of granite (sensu lato), a grey-pinkish rocks. Because there's no life and no vegetation, that barren landscape you see high above the mountains would go all the way down to the base of them mountains. At the mountain's base, you would get deserts of quartz sand, slightly yellow. Think the sand dunes of the Sahara desert. This sand comes from the breakdown of the granites. Quartz, the most resistant mineral in the granite forms sand, I guess from the action of wind. The other minerals (mostly feldspar) break down to form all kinds of clays, aka dust.

So to sum it up:

Most of the surface will be covered by dark red low lands, with high lands of sandy desert and Himalaya type mountain belts sticking out of them.


If matter is constantly being cycled through an ecosystem, does that mean a given ecosystem has a fixed mass?

You can always weigh the biomass of the (global) ecosystem in metric tons, or any other unit, even when this mass would not be constant.

I don't see a reason why the total biospheric mass should be constant (maybe because it reached a saturation limit long ago) on short timescales. On long/geological timescales it is certainly not, as the available carbon, silicate, oxygen etc. for the bottom of the nutritional chains a.k.a. microbes, lichen, fungi... evolves, as the planet itself changes.

That is however not true for the total mass of Earth, which is essentially constant since its time of formation, but the biospheric mass is anyways only a small fraction thereof.


How much gasoline in cubic meters is used per day?

The total consumption of crude oil according to this site is around 100 000 000 barrels per day and is in SI units 10 000 000 cubic meters. Of course not all of that can be processed to gasoline, but the scale of things is revealed. That would be actually bigger than a football stadium's volume a day as it would effectively be a cube with all sides around 215 meters.


Why are alkali basalts found at rifting centres and on top of 'plumes', whereas MORBs are generally tholeiitic?

Geology/Petrology has proposed some models for the origin of basalts which are based upon chemical evidence from rocks. Modern origin-models have been constrained by isotopic chemistry for some time. I do not claim to be current in this subject, but I believe the conclusions in this classic paper are still accepted as the most likely origin models.

Models of Earth Structure Inferred from Neodymium and Strontium Isotopic Abundances

G. J. Wasserburg and D. J. DePaolo
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Vol. 76, No. 8 (Aug., 1979), pp. 3594-3598
Published by: National Academy of Sciences
Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org

Free copies of this paper are available in several place from the Web. Here is the brief abstract.

  ABSTRACT: A simplified model of earth structure based on the Nd and Sr isotopic characteristics of oceanic and continental tholeiitic
  flood basalts is presented, taking into account the motion of crustal
  plates and a chemical balance for trace elements. The resulting
  structure that is inferred consists of a lower mantle that is still
  essentially undifferentiated, overlain by an upper mantle that is the
  residue of the original source from which the continents were
  derived.