Plate Tectonics vs Gravity for Creating Highs and Lows

I think this question is less intuitively obvious than it appears. and I like @Universal_learner 's answer.  I thought I'd give a different approach to the question.

Earth is the only object in the solar system with significant amounts of granite and granite is very important to your question because of it's durability and it's buoyancy.

Granite forms under pressure below the Earth's surface in conditions where the magma gradually cools and it requires the presence of water to form.    Once formed, Granite is more durable than the denser crustal rock and fairly early in the Earth's history, about 3 billion years ago by this article, this granite formed into continental crusts.

Because Granite is lighter than other crustal rock, it floats like a cork in the Earth's crust, about 2/3rds below the surface or ocean, and one third, extending above sea level.   (Continental crust extends beyond the land/ocean boundary).

Higher gravity would likely flatten out the granite to a degree in terms of mountains and valleys but continental crust is in balance with the heavier basalt crust, so I don't see how gravity would effect the continents much.  The rate of erosion from land to sea might increase, but the buoyancy of the granite wouldn't be affected by gravity.

The effect on the depth of the oceans is unclear.   Outside of the continental crust that extends below the oceans, and the ridges and trenches, ocean depth is reasonably consistent.

Source of picture

If on Earth, for example, if you were to drain the oceans, with the weight removed the ocean floor would rise and the continents would sink somewhat, much like they do when a mile of glacial ice forms over and then recedes from the continents and the land shifts up and down, but the altitude variation on Earth, average continental height to ocean floor wouldn't change all that much.  A few hundred feet perhaps out of 2-3 miles in variation.

The point is, the ratio of granite continental crust, to surface water would be the primary factor in ocean depth.  Those ratios would be more important than gravity.    Other factors to consider would be weathering and how active the planet's tectonic movement is.

The highest peaks on the Earth are formed by the comparatively rapid movement of two tectonic plates crashing into each other and their height is limited by two factors, gravity and weathering, and I'm not even sure gravity is the bigger of the two factors.    Olympus Mons on Mars is as tall as it is, in part, because Mars has no weathering and in part because Mars has no tectonic movement, so the volcano under Olympus mons keeps adding to the same spot.   That doesn't happen on Earth because our crusts move.    Olympus mons is also very flat because it was formed by lava, not by two crusts pressing against each other, which can form more jagged peaks.

Take two granite continental plates slowly pushing into each other at a fixed speed.   How high the mountain range grows would be a factor of their momentum pushing into each other.  Gravity would play a role in how high the mountains could grow before they spread out/landslide across the surface, but the volume of rock being pushed upwards would be a property of the velocity and mass of the two moving plates.   Gravity would add just as much momentum to the collision as it would discourage building the mountains higher.

So ultimately I think the question boils down to these key factors.

Ratio of continental crust granite to ocean floor.
How much water is on the planet.   It's not hard to imagine a dry planet with almost no oceans to speak of or a water world with no land at all.
how active the tectonic movement is
how much weathering is done by the atmosphere on the planet
and . . . gravity is a factor too.    But to ask the question considering gravity alone, I think there are too many variables to answer.   From a worldbuilding standpoint, you'd have to consider other things as well.

Finally, a planet with 1.35 times Earth's gravity, if we assume similar density, equal density to gravity the ratio is 1 to 1, so such a planet would have 1.35^3 or about 2.5 times the mass of the Earth and 1.8 times the surface area.  It would also cool more slowly, having more heat of formation and would, everything else being equal, probably be more volcanic.   How the extra gravity, extra heat and additional matter would affect continent formation and plate tectonics is above my pay grade.   You might need some super-computer modeling to get a more accurate answer.


Is ice also created ín cold water of the oceans?

The National Snow and Ice Data Center website describes the process of ice formation on polar oceans. Virtually all of the young ice is made from ocean water which retains some brine in the process of forming. Older ice tends to lose the brine and have it replaced by air bubbles.

Surface ice would form differently, either by frost, which tends to form in patterns or in snow fall.  Over many years it might be possible for snowfall and surface forming ice to build up on top of permanent ocean ice. I'm not sure what the ratio could eventually become, but if sea ice was to be mostly from the air, it would need to be very old where over time, enough ice formed on top and the original ice melted from the bottom.  On average I suspect most sea ice is ocean ice though, even multi-year ice.

When temperatures are low enough (below -1.8 °C), ice forms naturally in polar ocean-water.  See phase diagram:   http://antoine.frostburg.edu/chem/senese/101/solutions/images/saltwater-phase-diagram.gif

Salt can freeze along with water in ice below -21 °C, but oceans tend to circulate quite efficiently, so -21 °C water is unlikely in oceans.


Natural oil seeps are not unusual, the light components evaporate leaving "tar". Then an earthquake could cause a release of gas which if in just the right location could blow the tar into the air.  Normally the gas escapes through the tar and throws it only a very shot distance, like an inch.


What influences the movement (speed and direction) of tropical cyclones?

Cyclones generally drift in a westerly/north westerly direction due to the Beta Drift  and Beta Effect

For atlantic hurricanes the forward speeds are summarized here by latitudinal range -Average forward speed of Atlantic Hurricanes and  if there is recurve(turn more northerly) they can slow down or if they cross mid latitudes they may pick up speed by interacting with mid latitude troughs.

For the latitude of Midge Point, Queensland you can expect forward speeds of about 17-18 kms/hr. So this cyclone is certainly slow moving.

TC forward speed

There are other factors influencing cyclone tracks which include steering winds, presence of high pressure systems,etc and more recent studies have studied the influence of SST on cyclone tracks Response of  cyclone tracks to SST.

From this peer reviewed reference Effect of forward speed on flooding modeling studies reveal that increasing forward speed decreases flooded volumes while increasing peak surge

Back to Cyclone Debbie it looks like from this blog at least Cyclone Debbie Progress the forward speed of the cyclone is probably one of the reasons for the water to be present for more than one day and making sure storm surge occurs at the same time as the high tide.


Is the Mid-Atlantic Ridge a ridge or a trench?

Trench has a specific meaning in plate tectonics. It doesn't just refer to any valley; it specifically refers to the features formed at subduction zones by the flexure of the downgoing oceanic plate. A classic example is the Marianas Trench which is the location of the deepest point in the ocean

Fast spreading ridges do indeed have valleys at their centre but these are not usually referred to as trenches to avoid confusion. In slow spreading ridges the valley is often filled up with erupted lavas. However, the valley sits on top of a much larger ridge, which is the surface expression of hot mantle upwelling below the spreading axis.


Could burning all fossil fuels (available on earth) render the atmosphere unbreathable?

Not directly.  What possibly could happen is that rising temperatures turn the parts of the ocean anoxic, which leads to large releases of hydrogen sulfide, which is toxic: https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/ocean-chemistry-changes-triggered-earths-greatest-extinction-event/2500368.article


Horizontal momentum flux in the surface layer

Instead of just giving you the answer to a textbook problem (which would make SE a version of Chegg that future students would use to cheat on homework), I'll guide you in getting an answer.

Which variable does $\overline{u'w'}$ affect most?
For that variable, identify the surface layer.
Imagine that you are on the line. If you go straight up (that is, $w'>0$) what would the difference be between the $M$ traced out and the graphed $M$? What is the sign of $w' \times u'$?
Do the same as number 3, except start at the top and go down ($w'<0$).


Is there any link between sea-water inflitration into groundwater and nitrate?

While the context and specifics would likely vary from site to site, the situation along the Gaza strip may be due to contamination of the Mediterranean Sea.  I am unsure of natural levels of Nitrate in ocean water, but I know that it is possible to contaminate water, independent of it's salinity.

Nitrate, like other water-soluble ions, ultimately is transported from the land to the oceans via the hydrologic cycle.  Waste from marine organisms also likely contributes nitrate.  This paper talks on the content of nitrate in ocean water. For more information on the various major constituents of sea water, check out this site.

There has been reported incidence of sewage draining into the Mediterranean, which would explain nitrate contamination in conjunction with sea-water intrusion.


I live in Colorado, USA.  All gas stations must have shallow wells drilled around the gasoline tanks to monitor for gasoline tank rupture leaks.  The tanks usually lie above the water table so any gas leaks will travel to the water table and start flowing on top of the groundwater.  One hundred percent contamination happens when a flashlight is shined down the well and a gasoline sheen is seen on the water.  Less contamination is measured by sampling the water. The depth to the water table is also measured.

The point I am getting to, is that all gas stations in Colorado have to be measured every three months and the results sent to the State.  I would suggest that you check for a gas station near where you live and get a recent published water report that you can study.  One of the maps is a water table depth map.  The map will have a contour map with the depth below surface contours and arrows perpendicular to contour lines that show the direction of groundwater flow.

I would suggest for you to see if your State or Provence has a similar contamination monitoring program. This would give you an idea how the water table behaves in your area. If you go to your nearest gas station and look for circular steel plates about 6 inches in diameter placed flush on the ground around the tanks, gas pumps, and parking lot, then you will know if the station is monitored.  The top of the plate has a filled in triangle with the triangle points touching the circle circumference. Sometimes the plate has a warning that says "DO NOT FILL".  The the steel plate and map symbol looks like Unicode symbol U1F7D5.


Is there a data source for annual global precipitation?

In case you want to learn something about precipitation first:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GPM/main/index.html

There is the most important information about current missions with some videos, too.
If you click on the education link a little lower on the page you can learn a lot about how the data is retrieved and about earth's water cycle itself.. if that's not interesting to you and you just want the data this here is the right way:

http://giovanni.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/giovanni/

The site does not just provide data about precipitation but about all measurements that are made from space such as amounts of aerosols, evaporation rates, heat flux, vegetation, wind speed and so on.. you'll see it all on the left site of the page.. just make a tick on the dataset you need and all measurements will pop up on the middle of the screen, make another tick on the information that suits your needs, choose the time span you wish and the area of the map you want to know more about under "show map".. if you're done with that just click "Plot data" on the right bottom corner and a map with the data you wish will show up.

I hope that helps!


Determing whether an area is Inland or Coastal

Well, let's start with a rough global map (from NCEP Reanalysis) of the average winds speeds (in meters per second):

Multiply by 3.6 to get km/hr.  So your range is basically from 3 m/s to 4 m/s.  So you're looking at the medium blue color basically.
There are some coastal locations.  But generally, coastal locations will have quite a bit of wind...

What this graphic says is that basically winds at the ocean are 15-60% increased from typical land values.  Even more upsetting to being coastal is the 8 days less than 52 km/hr that you mention.  You're in a location reasonably mid-latitude, so you've traditionally got the big wind storms that often affect the coastal areas, such as Nor'Easters, and Bering Sea cyclones.  I'd think it'd be hard to find an oceanic city that doesn't get above 52 km/hr more than 8 days during a year outside the tropics (assuming you're talking about short burst of 52 km/hr and not daily averages, but even daily averages I'd think might surpass 52 km/hr 8 days per year in the majority of seaboard cities).

So I'd be surprised to see that it is truly a coastal location.  However there are a couple places with connections to water that might fit still.
 1 - Near inland seas\lakes would have somewhat lower wind because of the diminished water fetch available and the decreased percentage of the year that wind flows over such water.
 2 - The transition zone from marine winds to land winds is probably only something like 10-100 miles, while temperature moderation is still significant, even moreso if there is water on many sides.

Because your temperature range is only indeed 31 C (56 F) wide, that certainly does seem to still suggest it has significant moisture influences.

Now, 21 C seems a fairly cool value (especially if that's the absolute maximum daytime peak during the year, but even an average of 21 seems a tad cool, especially for cities not right on the water.
So that suggests to me that it's pretty far north, or perhaps abuts rather cool waters.

So, looking at the map, and based upon those ideas, I'd think the favorite might be inland Russia or China... or maybe around Italy\Greece.  Just the right city location in the northern US or Canada might work too, like Portland (Oregon), Detroit, or Ottawa.


Why don't all living beings die at night due to lack of oxygen?

The rates at which plants consume CO$_2$ and animals consume O$_2$ is minuscule compared to the vast amounts of CO$_2$ and O$_2$ in the atmosphere. The amount of change overnight is not even measurable, unless the plants are in an enclosed structure.

Interestingly, there is a variation in CO$_2$ concentraion over the course of a year as the Northern Hemisphere (where most of the land vegetation is) goes through its seasons. Here is a plot of CO$_2$ over several decades. It shows an annual cycle superimposed on the general upward trend from the accumulation of man-made CO$_2$.

The red trace is the actual data, and the black trace is the time averaged fit to the data.


Independent sources of information on radiation pollution in Europe

Two websites I've come across that might be of interest are:

Radioactivity Environmental Monitoring Joint Research Centre, for Europe.
Radmon.org which provides radiation information from number of
global station.


Is there evidence of multiple poles (higher order than dipole) in earth's magnetic field?

It's common for dynamo models to predict a large reduction in the dipole field during a reversal. Proving it in the paleomagnetic record is another matter entirely. To characterize the geometry of the magnetic field, you need several simultaneous measurements, preferably with a good spatial distribution. Instead what you get are relatively infrequent, asynchronous measurements. See this article by Fabio Florindo for more details. For what it's worth, though, a model by Olson et al. (2011) with multipolar fields during the transition predicts some observations that are consistent with the Matayama-Brunhes transition, including reductions in the intensity of the field and variations in the virtual geomagnetic pole path (VGP) from one site to another (see page 124 of this book for a definition of a VGP).


To what extent do the levels of UVA, UVB and UVC radiations on the earth surface increase during solar flares?

During a powerful solar flare the amount of x-ray radiation can increase up to 110% in the boundry layer of the atmosphere/space,very little of this will reach the earths surface but it can be measured from high flying planes.

UVC is stopped by the upper layer of the atmosphere so this will never reach the ground,It might be possible to measure some UVC in antarctica because of the ozone hole but it is very weak so one will need special equipment to measure it.

UVB will change very little during a solar flare and only in the shortest wavelenght of the UVB spectrum will additional radiation be measurable.

UVA radiation will not change at ground level.

During a solar flare only the shorter wavelenghts of the electromagnetic spectrum will be affected,hard x-rays the most and the longer wavelenghts will be less affected.

source https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2005JA011507

source for more detailed information https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraviolet

i do not have the source for this picture but i think it is free to use.


Is there a time difference between two points at the same longitude but at different latitudes?

Earth's rotation has a fixed angular speed, therefore time is the same across the entire surface.

Even though the tangential speed (speed of the point in the surface) is different in each place of the surface, what counts here is the angular speed (the speed of rotation). Different tangential speed compensate the distance to the rotation axis by:

(angular speed) = (tangential speed)/(distance to axis)


How does a subduction zone form mountains?

When the subducted oceanic plate slides beneath the continental crust, it causes crustal thickening and sometimes crustal folding. In addition to this, rising plumes of magma are created when the oceanic plate is forced down into the mantle. These are all orogenic (mountain building) processes. We also have mountains built by volcanoes.

The friction created by the subducted plate scraping the bottom of the plate above as it is being forced into the hot mantle, plus the fact that it carries water with it, causes partial melting of the plate and the rising of magma plumes, which also have a lifting effect. Water mixing with the magma makes it more fluid and more easily melted. These plumes often force their way through the upper plate and erupt as volcanoes, which is why volcanic arcs are created near subduction zones. The classic example of volcanic arcs is found around the Pacific rim, where subduction zones abound.


How much faster are airmolecules going when the temperature raise from 15 to 25 degrees C?

User LTK 4 is correct. The air molecule is moving 1.7% faster at 25°C.
Marijn can calculate the absolute velocities from the simple equation given in http://www2.ignatius.edu/faculty/decarlo/surfacepower/pages/KineticTheoryOfGases.htm .

And yes, this is more physics than Earth Sciences.


The short answer is "Probably Yes".

The longer answer is that it is debatable whether Earth's rotation will become tidally locked to the moon due to tidal drag, at which point it will not be rotating relative to the moon, or whether the sun's exhaustion of hydrogen and the fusion of Helium will result in the sun's expansion vaporizing the earth first.  As tidal drag slows the earth's rotation, the moon moves further away, reducing its effect on the earth's rotation, and making the calculations fairly complex.

In either case, unless something really unexpected happens to the earth first, such as it being ejected from the solar system, which is completely improbable, it will stop rotating, if only due to it ceasing to be a planet at all.


Appearing of Weird Cornered Cloud in Sky?

The left edge of the cloud is a real edge, irregular and fuzzy as expected. However, the lower sharp edge is just an illusion due to illumination. Just before sunrise or after sunset, the sun can illuminate the upper clouds but not the lower ones. If a cloud happen to be in the limit between illuminated clouds and shaded clouds, it will have its upper side illuminated and the lower one in the shade. That is what you are seeing, the lower edge is not the edge of the cloud, is just the limit of the illuminated part of it.

If you pay attention you can follow the contrast in illumination even outside of the cloud to the left. Where the illuminated air above the line have a glow not visible in the part under the illuminated part.


Accurately Measuring Indoor/Outdoor Air Temperature & Relative Humidity

Looking at the source you provided in the comment, there is some other information you may be able to accumulate to help your study.

Control or Baseline.  You need an the same actual set of data from a facility in the area that is meeting the above-mentioned standards.  This needs to be as close to your target facility in size, structure and regional conditions as you can find so you can demonstrate that under the same Temperature and Humidity proper conditions can be maintained.
More Data.  You haven't mentioned Time in your question. Most building temperature studies show conditions throughout the day. The duration that the animals are exposed to extreme conditions may be relevant.  There are data-logging thermometer type devices available , or you may need to perform your tests once an hour during the day to collect enough relevant data to make your case.
More Data. You talk of taking measurements on an extreme day. Gather data on a variety of days, and you may find the care standards are exceeded more (or less) often then you expect.  This way you may find the lower limit of conditions which cause problems. Which brings us to...
More Data.  Once you have a measured example of the problem temperature and humidity reading, for a given day, you can collect data from local weather sources and you can present a graphic showing the number of days, or perhaps hours per year the animals are exposed to these conditions.

You mention Heat Index. According to NOAA,  Heat Index

  is what the temperature feels like to the human body when relative
  humidity is combined with the air temperature...

You might have to prove the relevance of this data to animals which do not react the same way to humidity. If you can find an external source supporting your use of that index, then by all means continue to use it. You may even be able to find a study showing that the animals feel the effects of humidity more then humans do. Look for, more data. The link above mentions a possible place to begin.

Personally I believe the main argument you will face would be the amount of time the proper conditions are exceeded. Like the people who leave the dog in the car, 'but it was just for a minute...'.

Good luck, no matter what results you find.


What are the impacts of sublimation on an annual mountain snowpack?

I looked into this and found Sublimation from a seasonal snowpack at a continental, mid-latitude apline site by Eran Hood, Mark Williams, and Don Cline go into great detail on this subject.

Martinelli (1960) reports that sublimation is
responsible for only 1-2% of summer snowpack ablation in snowfields between 3500-3800 m in the Rocky
Mountains.
(West and Knoerr, 1959) Measurements from snow evaporation pans at the Central Sierra Snow Laboratory in
California measured annual sublimation at only 25-35 mm or 2-3% of total ablation over the snow season
Beaty (1975) reported that sublimation was responsible for 80%
of the ablation of fresh snow and 60% of the ablation of older snow during springtime conditions in the
White Mountains of California.
Kattelmann and Elder
(1991) estimated sublimation from snow to be 18% of total precipitation over two water years based on data
collected in the Emerald Lake Basin in the Sierra Nevada.
Marks and Dozier snowpack estimated lost to sublimation in the Sierra Nevada to be
20%.
Water losses to sublimation were equal to 13% of annual
precipitation at Niwot Ridge.
Hood, Willians & Cline report 15% of maximum snow accumulation at the study site was lost due to sublimation.
Another article notes the importance of vegetation on sublimation:   ranging from 13% for a mixed spruce–aspen, 31% for the mature pine and 40% for a mature spruce stand. The results indicate that sublimation can be a significant abstraction of water from mature evergreen stands in northern forests.

The results seem somewhat inconclusive.  This topic needs more comprehensive and robust research.

Take-aways

15-20% is the range given by the most recent studies in the intermountain USA.
Solar
radiation was the most closely correlated with trends in sublimation and condensation.
Vegetation impacts sublimation rates.


CERN is a scientific site developed to create anti matter

The scientific activity at CERN involves many things, anti matter being just one of them. For more information you can read their anti matter page.

  Does this have any negative impact on the environment?

No. The amount of anti matter is negligible. Any anti matter produced in CERN is also annihilated at CERN as well and does not "escape" outside into the environment. The CERN experiments require lots of power, so there are power plants that have their own environmental impact. There are also people driving and flying to CERN, but those are indirect environmental effects that are not directly due to the experiments.

  Effects of CERN on earth's magnetic field?

CERN has large magnets that are used in their experiments. Their magnetic field is 100,000 times the Earth's magnetic field! But, the magnetic field is constrained to CERN itself and has no effect outside of CERN, and it definitely has no effect on Earth's magnetic field itself.


How do I get the velocity of the P-wave or S-wave without using the travel time graph?

I think that it is possible with fours stations yes, not with three.

With the assumption of (roughly) homogeneous velocities we get the following forward problem. Assuming that $v_p$ and $v_s$ are constants between the Earthquake and all your receivers yields the following system:
\begin{align}
    d &= \sqrt{\Delta x^2 + \Delta y^2 + \Delta z^2}=\text{3 knowns, 3 unknowns},\quad \text{for} \left\{ \begin{array}{rl} \Delta x &= x_\text{earthquake}-x_\text{receiver} \\ \Delta y & = y_\text{earthquake} - y_\text{receiver} \\ \Delta z & = z_\text{earthquake} - z_\text{receiver}  \end{array} \begin{split} \end{split}\right.,\\
\Delta t & = t_s - t_p = \text{measured},\\
p &= \left(\frac{1}{v_s} - \frac{1}{v_p} \right) = \text{1 unknown}.
\end{align}
Restating the equation of your question then gives the forward problem:
$$ \Delta t = p d.$$
For example, for $v_p=2000$ m/s and $v_s=1200$ m/s, we find $p=1/3000$ and can compute e.g. with $d = 600$ that $\Delta t = 600/3000 =0.2$ s.

Now, we must set=up the inverse problem. You generally need at least as many equations as unknowns. In this case we have 4 unknowns (the velocity and the $(x,y,z)$ earthquake location). That means that we need 4 (unique) equations. I think that the simplest way of obtaining 4 unique equations is to combine 4 measurements:
$$ p\begin{pmatrix} d_1 \\ d_2 \\ d_3 \\ d_4 \end{pmatrix} = \begin{pmatrix} \Delta t_1 \\ \Delta t_2 \\ \Delta t_3 \\ \Delta t_4 \end{pmatrix}, $$
Denoting with $x_{1,2,3,4}$ and $y_{1,2,3,4}$ the latitude and longitude of the receivers, and assuming measurements at the surface, we obtain:
$$ p\begin{pmatrix} \sqrt{(x_\text{earthquake}-x_1)^2 + (y_\text{earthquake}-y_1)^2 + z_\text{earthquake}^2} \\ \sqrt{(x_\text{earthquake}-x_2)^2 + (y_\text{earthquake}-y_2)^2 + z_\text{earthquake}^2} \\ \sqrt{(x_\text{earthquake}-x_3)^2 + (y_\text{earthquake}-y_3)^2 + z_\text{earthquake}^2 } \\ \sqrt{(x_\text{earthquake}-x_4)^2 + (y_\text{earthquake}-y_4)^2 + z_\text{earthquake}^2} \end{pmatrix} = \begin{pmatrix} \Delta t_1 \\ \Delta t_2 \\ \Delta t_3 \\ \Delta t_4 \end{pmatrix}. $$

Finally, we must solve the inverse problem. Unfortunately, the system is non-linear (the unknowns are 'hidden' in the root of the square and can't be separated). You must therefore use some non-linear solver. For example, in MATLAB you can do this

% True earthquake location
x_earthquake=0;
y_earthquake=0;
z_earthquake=1000;

% True station locations
x_1 = 1000; y_1 = 1000;
x_2 =  500; y_2 = -300;
x_3 = -400; y_3 = -100;
x_4 =  -10; y_4 = 800;
X = [x_1;x_2;x_3;x_4];
Y = [y_1;y_2;y_3;y_4];

% True velocity structure
p0 = 1/3000;

% Forward equation (F(1)=x_eartquake, F(2)=y_earthquake, F(3)=z_earthquake, F(4)=p.
t =@(F) F(4) * sqrt( (F(1)-X).^2 + (F(2)-Y).^2 + F(3).^2);

% True recordings
measured_times = t([x_earthquake,y_earthquake,z_earthquake,p0]);

% Misfit function (=0 at optimum)
G =@(F) t(F) - measured_times;

% Invert
%options = optimoptions('fsolve','FiniteDifferenceType','central'); % using these will give better results in MATLAB
%F_inv = fsolve( G, [1000,1000,1000,0.1],options)
F_inv = fsolve( G, [1000,1000,1000,0.1])
x_earthquake_inv = F_inv(1)
y_earthquake_inv = F_inv(2)
z_earthquake_inv = F_inv(3)
p_inv            = F_inv(4)

If you copy this into https://octave-online.net/, for example, it will find an earthquake at (0,0,1000) and p=1/3000, with some small errors due to the non-linear solver.


What is the tallest fully underwater seamount in the world?

According to the Oxford Dictionary of Earth Sciences,

  seamount Isolated, submarine mountain rising more than 1000m above the ocean floor. The sharp, crested summits of seamounts are usually 1000-2000m below the ocean surface. Seamounts are of volcanic origin.

To avoid classifying seamounts by arbitrary sea level (dependent on availability of surface water), the key point is then that seamounts are features of volcanic origin that rise over 1000m above oceanic crust.

The Hawai'i-Emperor seamount chain is of volcanic origin; all of the islands in this chain are seamounts. Mauna Kea only rises 4207m above sea level - but measured from its base on the oceanic plate it is 10100m high, much taller than Mt Everest. Mauna Kea is - pretty conclusively - the highest seamount in the world. The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute agrees.


Can we store maize along with husk and kernal?

For the (1) you can store your whole maize for 8 - 12 years or 18 - 36 months if the maize is ground or chopped. Moreover the less moisture the maize has the more it can be stored. If you want to store your harvest for a long period of time then the maximum moisture  percentage is 13.5%.


According to page 43 of the Landsat Products Description Document the acquisition time is GMT when there is a "Z" behind the time.


Has a reduction in car use ever had an effect on the ozone layer?

The sequence of events you describe has never happened, for several reasons.

As Sabre Tooth mentions in the comments, vehicle emissions have a negligible effect on stratospheric ozone. (Note that while vehicle emissions can lead to ozone production at ground level, the ozone layer is several kilometres above the Earth's surface and isn't really affected by variation in ground-level ozone. The EPA has published a guide entitled Ozone: good up high, bad nearby which explains the distinction in more detail.)
Even the most dramatic attempt to reduce driving in the USA, the National Maximum Speed Law of 1974, only produced a 1% (or less) reduction in fuel consumption; we can assume that reductions in emissions would have been of similar magnitude.
Even in 1974, there were a lot of vehicles outside the USA, diluting the global impact of any changes in driving habits within the USA.

However, to answer a slightly broader question, it does seem that the ozone layer is capable of repairing itself when emissions of ozone-depleting substances are reduced. The Montreal protocol was enacted in 1989:

  The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer was designed to reduce the production and consumption of ozone depleting substances in order to reduce their abundance in the atmosphere, and thereby protect the earth's fragile ozone Layer. The original Montreal Protocol was agreed on 16 September 1987 and entered into force on 1 January 1989.

A report released in 2014 by the World Meteorological Organization concluded:

  Actions taken under the Montreal Protocol have led to decreases in the atmospheric abundance of controlled ozone-depleting substances (ODSs), and are enabling the return of the ozone layer toward 1980 levels.

They estimate that total recovery will occur "before midcentury in midlatitudes and the Arctic, and somewhat later for the Antarctic ozone hole".


Stability correction factor in the Wavewatch III wave model

The stability correction factor ASF is related to the effects of atmospheric stability (function of buoyancy and shear) on wave growth, and has been implemented in Wavewatch3 in the Tolman and Chalikov 1996 input source term. The code where the correction happens can be found in w3updtmd.ftn:

! 5.  Stability correction ( !/STAB2 )
!     Original settings :
!
!     SHSTAB =    1.4
!     OFSTAB =   -0.01
!     CCNG   =   -0.1
!     CCPS   =    0.1
!     FFNG   = -150.
!     FFPS   =  150.
!
!/STAB2      STAB0  = ZWIND * GRAV / 273.
!
!/STAB2      DO ISEA=1, NSEA
!/STAB2        STAB   = STAB0 * AS(ISEA) / MAX(5.,U10(ISEA))**2
!/STAB2        STAB   = MAX ( -1. , MIN ( 1. , STAB ) )
!
!/STAB2        THARG1 = MAX ( 0. , FFNG*(STAB-OFSTAB))
!/STAB2        THARG2 = MAX ( 0. , FFPS*(STAB-OFSTAB))
!/STAB2        COR1   = CCNG * TANH(THARG1)
!/STAB2        COR2   = CCPS * TANH(THARG2)
!
!/STAB2        ASF(ISEA) = SQRT ( (1.+COR1+COR2)/SHSTAB )
!/STAB2        U10(ISEA) = U10(ISEA) / ASF(ISEA)
!/STAB2        END DO

The correction essentially accounts for atmospheric stability based on air-sea temperature difference, and is applied to calculate the "effective" wind speed at 10-m height, from the input wind speed. Note that this code is active only when /STAB2 switch is enabled (optional), and works only with the /ST2 switch (Tolman and Chalikov 1996 source term package). It's implementation and test results have been described in Tolman 2002.

This is also documented in the manual for version 4.18, see equations (2.86)-(2.89) in section 2.3.7.

References:

Tolman, H. L. and D. V. Chalikov, 1996: Source terms in a third-generation wind-wave model. J. Phys. Oceanogr., 26, 2,497–2,518.
Tolman, H. L., 2002: Validation of WAVEWATCH III version 1.15 for a global domain. Tech. Note 213, NOAA/NWS/NCEP/OMB, 33 pp.


How come ZamZam water in Mecca never runs out?

The Zamzam Well is located in the Wadi Ibrahim. It accesses water from the wadi alluvium and from the bedrock.

  Water in the well comes from absorbed rainfall in the Wadi Ibrahim, as well as run-off from the local hills. Since the area has become more and more settled, water from absorbed rainfall on the Wadi Ibrahim has decreased.


Synoptic weather predictibility under climate change scenarios

Are you referring to mid-latitude cyclones, or a different synoptic weather event?

Baroclinicity is one factor of synoptic climatology in the mid-latitudes, but it's hardly the only one. Since meteorologists are moving away from traditional forecasting parameters and heading toward a more radar-focused and statistical inference model, it won't have an impact on the "predictability" of synoptic weather. Remember, our advances in science may be the only thing outpacing climate change, and that's a damn good thing.

One more thing: Psychics predict, scientists project.


Is every space group realized by some mineral?

Now all of the 230 space groups are realized by a natural occurring mineral.
I found this blog: crystalsymmetry.wordpress.com where space groups are listed with at least one chemical compound is listed for each space group. Minerals are listed for all of the space groups.
For example, Benitoite has fairly unusual crystal symmetry. I think it was first mineral found for P-6c2 space group.
188 P-6c2 Example – Benitoite, BaTi(Si3O9)
From Crystal Structure of Benitoite.
From a crystallographical point of view this compound (Benitoite)
is especially interesting, being the only known member of the ditrigonalbipyramidal
symmetry class.


Is there geological evidence that the moon once collided with the Earth?

Is there geological (or other physical) evidence here on Earth that confirms the moon once collided with the Earth?

No, there isn't. This is, however, plenty of evidence that the moon formed due to a collision of a third body (sometimes referred to as Theia) with the Earth, and the moon formed from the ring of debris that resulted from the collision.

This theory is often known as the Giant Impact Hypothesis and searching for this term may help you find other links and references elsewhere.

  If so what is that evidence?

To summarise the geological evidence, much of it is indirect evidence, in that it compares geology on the Moon with similar geology or features on the Earth, and draws conclusions to explain the similarities (or discrepancies).

Because of the sheer size of the proposed impact, it would have likely reconfigured the surfaces of both bodies entirely, and so finding direct physical evidence on the Earth would be extremely unlikely. (e.g. a massive hidden crater would simply no longer exist)

Geological Evidence

Moon rocks collected from the Apollo missions that have almost identical oxygen isotope ratios to similar rocks found on Earth of the same age.
A large portion of the Lunar crust is made up of Anorthosite, which is indicative of a large melting event. (with the energy for this supplied from the impact)
Zinc. Lunar rocks contain less zinc, but with heavier isotopes of Zn than those found on Earth, which by contrast has lighter isotopes in greater abundance. This is consistent with zinc being depleted from the moon by evaporation, such as during a massive impact event.
Density and volatiles. The Moon is 25% less dense than the uncompressed density of Earth. It is severely depleted in volatiles, with practically no water and less than half the potassium abundance that Earth has. The combination of low density and lack of volatiles implies that the Moon was not a simple accretion of early solar system material, but resembles the Earth's mantle in bulk composition. Volatile material would have been vapourised by the impact.
The bulk composition of the Moon's crust. (This one does not actually involve the Earth, but I feel it is still important to mention.) The Moon's mantle and crust chemical composition could be explained if the Moon had a large iron core, but its core is actually quite small.

Other Physical Evidence

The ratio of the Earth and Moon's mass far exceeds any other planet in the solar system, and this begs the question of how did so much material become in orbit of the Earth. (Not evidence as such, but raises the question in the first place)
Getting more indirect...there are bands of warm silica-rich dust orbiting nearby stars which is interpreted as planet-sized bodies having collided with each other, so there is precedent for similar events happening elsewhere in the galaxy. (Again, I realise this is one is not strictly answering the question, but Earth Scientists often have to look well outside the Earth to answer their questions!)

Hope this gets you started!

Update:
I recently came across this short article, which provides a summary of some of the latest thinking on the Moon's formation, including the Giant Impact Hypothesis.

Sources: de Pater and Lissauer (2010): Planetary Sciences; Canup and Asphaug (2001), Nature


Giant Cavern the Size of Manhattan Under Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica - how was satellite and airborne radar data combined?

The paper basically combines multiple datasets to figure out the changes in ice surface elevation and ice thickness at tidal and multi-year timescales. That way they were able to study grounding line migration, and the melt rate of the glacier and its corresponding ice shelf from above and below. Then they were able to make inferences of the processes producing glacier melting, specially basal melting that is difficult to measure directly.

They actually used three datasets:

DInSAR: Standing for Differential Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar. It is basically a technique that compares the phase of two SAR images acquired at different time to compute uplift/subsidence of the surface with great accuracy (usually millimeters). So they were able to see the surface of the ice shelf rise and lower with the tides, and also compute surface flow velocities.
IceBridge MCoRDS: Airborne radar depth sounder MCoRDS (Multichannel Coherent Radar Depth Sounder) operated by NASA mission IceBridge. This is a much more powerful radar operated close to the surface and designed to penetrate the ice, allowing to see the bedrock topography beneath the ice and some of the structure above the bedrock, such as water/ice transitions or layers of ice with distinct dielectric properties. This allowed them to know the ice thickness and bedrock topography.
TDX DEM: TanDEM-X Digital Elevation Model. This are Surface topography models generated using single pass InSAR data provided by two SAR satellites that orbit in tandem formation (one immediately behind the other). This allows precise surface topography measurements, that are also needed for the DInSAR processing.

I hope that helps. It is a very interesting work. Although the "giant cavern" part is not the most relevant part of it at all, but it was great for catchy headlines.


During glaciations, the shelves down to ~100m depth would have been above sea level, but they would have been covered by ice sheets.

Geology.com
The actual "ocean floor" would still be deep water.
There is a general explanation of the oil formation here and here, although they don't say when (or where the continents were when the sediments were deposited), and again, this is on the shelves, not the floor.

"An overview of the petroleum geology of the Arctic" has:

  Maps of palaeogeography of the Arctic based on Golonka's maps for the Late Devonian, the Middle Triassic, the Late Jurassic and the Middle Palaeogene, representing the times of deposition of some of the major Arctic source rocks


Travel Times for Seismic Wave Types - Why reflected t-x plot curves

This is conceptually relatively simple if you look at where the reflection (and refraction) happen, and in fact you have articulated the key concept in your question:

  The reflected wave ...Over time it becomes more horizontal and therefore more like a direct wave which takes a shorter and quicker path across the surface.

This is absolutely correct. So if you are close to the seismic source (distance a, where a is small), the direct wave is quickest, as the reflected wave has to first travel down to the boundary before being reflected back. It travels a little over 2b, where b is the depth of the boundary layer. That "little over" depends on the angle, which is related to the distance a.

As an example, look at the image below, from this presentation on reflected, refracted and diffracted waves. The 2nd of the reflected waves is not much larger than the first, however the direct wave has travelled 4 times as far.

If a is much larger than b, then that 2b portion becomes less and less significant, and in fact you can say the distance travelled by the reflected wave tends towards a.

So the graph does not show that the velocity of the wave is slowing down, more that the distance relationship with the angle of reflection tends to an asymptote.


Why are methane spectroscopic parameters harder to determine and relatively poorly known, compared to other Earth trace gases?

A good explanation is found at the University of Bourgogne site MODELING THE ABSORPTION SPECTRUM OF METHANE.

  Although it is a small and simple molecule, its rovibrational spectroscopy is very complicated. This is mainly due to the high symmetry of this tetrahedral system (which leads to the existence of many degeneracies) and to its intricated vibrational structure.

Vibrational and Rotational-vibrational energy level diagrams are available at the site.


The round one is a belemnite... The grid-shaped fossil is a bryozoan. Bryozoans were (and are) marine colony building organisms often encrusting shells and other hardgrounds in the oceans. There are also solitary bryozoan colonies, which form screw-like shapes.

A nice picture of a bryozoan similar to yours can be seen here


Can I see curvature of the Earth on a picture

Make your own numbers... I will take one sample, just change your figures.

I have one 4K resolution dron camera. So I can register 3840 x 2160 pixels in one shot.

Considering the Earth as an spherical body, the distance from you to the horizon depends on Earth Radius and your height by:

  Distance = (Radius + height) * Sinus {arc-cosinus [Radius / (Radius + height)]}

So depends on your height:

| Height (m) | Dist. To Hor. (Km) |
|:----------:|:------------------:|
|    1       |         3,6        |
|    10      |        11,3        |
|    100     |        35,7        |
|    1000    |        112,9       |
|    10000   |        357,1       |

My camera have a 24mm focal (on 35mm relative), so in the photograph, I can see 84º degrees. So the distance on between the edges of my horizon is:

| Height (m) | Dist. To Hor. (Km) | Dist. Edge<>Edge (km) |
|:----------:|:------------------:|:---------------------:|
| 1          |         3,6        |          4,8          |
| 10         |        11,3        |          15,1         |
| 100        |        35,7        |          47,8         |
| 1000       |        112,9       |         151,1         |
| 10000      |        357,1       |         477,9         |

Once that you have this data, you just need to calculate the arrow of the arc expected:

  Arrow Circ. Arc = Radius * Cosinus [ Arc-Sinus (Dist/2/Radius)]

So, with this data and the initial data of the camera:

| Height (m) | Dist. To Hor. (Km) | Dist. Edge<>Edge (km) | Arrow (km) | Curvature (pixel) |
|:----------:|:------------------:|:---------------------:|------------|-------------------|
| 1          |         3,6        |          4,8          |    0,000   |         0         |
| 10         |        11,3        |          15,1         |    0,004   |         1         |
| 100        |        35,7        |          47,8         |    0,045   |         4         |
| 1000       |        112,9       |         151,1         |    0,448   |         11        |
| 10000      |        357,1       |         477,9         |    4,482   |         36        |

So finally... If you have a perfect visibility condition, your camera is completely leveled, there is no fish-eye distortion... On a 4K camera at 10 km height, the Earth curvature it will be 2% -> 36 pixels on 3840 pixels wide.

If you are interested on it, that is not the way. Human eye can not perceive clearly the Earth Sphericity at a commercial flight altitude. So forget your dron, yo should go for a balloon.

Hope it helps!


How large is the area covered by coordinates XX°YY'ZZ"N/XX°YY'ZZ"E?

This is a coordinate, a single point. No area or distance can be calculated from that, sorry ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographic_coordinate_system

The length of one arcsecond depends on the latitude. The Wikipedia article explains it quite well. Distances between two coordinates can be calculated via the great circle distance. Calculating areas on earth's surface is more involved, since they require a projection into 2D.


How do I start with Modular Ocean Model version 6 i.e. MOM6 on my ubuntu linux machine?

You can follow the instructions I wrote at https://medium.com/@manmeet20singh11/installing-mom6-on-ubuntu-57918a200293?sk%3D9961d6f8565659b05e007349c47568b7&sa=D&source=hangouts&ust=1576058141492000&usg=AFQjCNH74gi6j9XgT6I3509nb8Y0gtj4-Q

Installing MOM6 on Ubuntu

  Downloading the model and basic libraries

Following https://github.com/NOAA-GFDL/MOM6-examples/wiki/Installing-MOM6-in-a-virtual-machine-running-Ubuntu

And the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5hKh8s_1b0&t=181s

sudo apt-get install git tcsh pkg-config
sudo apt-get install gfortran
sudo apt-get install netcdf-bin libnetcdf-dev libnetcdff-dev
sudo apt-get install openmpi-bin libopenmpi-dev
sudo apt-get install libnetcdff-dev
git clone --recursive https://github.com/NOAA-GFDL/MOM6-examples demo
cd demo

Open the file src/mkmf/templates/linux-gnu.mk and find the variable LIBS. Now in this file add the syntax

# Add -lnetcdff
LIBS += -lnetcdff

Compiling

Now we are ready to start compiling and that we will do by going to https://github.com/NOAA-GFDL/MOM6-examples/wiki/Getting-started#compiling-the-models

The instructions are for setting up on an intel compiler so we have to do some editing on these commands because we are going to use gfortran which is GNUs fortran.

Make a directory to work to build the advanced libraries

mkdir -p build/gnu/shared/repro/
cd  build/gnu/shared/repro/

Next, we will run the mkmf list path tools and we are going to give it the relative path to FMS the source code

../../../../src/mkmf/bin/list_paths -l ../../../../src/FMS

So what you have done is populated this file path_names with all these files and now we are going to run another mkmf tool and care of itself and we are going to specify the linux gnu template that we edited above and we are going to tell it to build FMS

../../../../src/mkmf/bin/mkmf -t ../../../../src/mkmf/templates/linux-gnu.mk -p libfms.a -c "-Duse_libMPI -Duse_netCDF -DSPMD" path_names

and that makes the Makefile

Finally we can type

make NETCDF=3 REPRO=1 FC=mpif77 CC=mpicc  libfms.a -j

So that builds the lib FMS code which can be seen by

$ ls -l libfms.a
-rw-rw-r-- 1 manmeet manmeet 13863094 Dec 10 13:22 libfms.a

Now we are going to go back and we will make a new set of folders ocean_only/repro

cd ../../
mkdir -p ocean_only/repro
cd ocean_only/repro

Now we are going to run the list paths command again and that is just down and this time we are going to provide the current directory as a possible supply of sorts and gauge you want to put some source files in here and thats the dot for, and then there is the relative path of source code for MOM6 and we are going to be linking a dynamic executable, so we are putting the dynamic directory out of the config source and we are building a set up using the solo drivers, the driver had a config source, and all of the source code under src is being used.

../../../../src/mkmf/bin/list_paths ./ ../../../../src/MOM6/{config_src/dynamic,config_src/solo_driver,src/{*,*/*}}/

So this has made a path_names file again which is populated will all the MOM6 source code. Now we are going to run the mkmf tool again and this time the target there is MOM6 and we have to change the template again to the linux-gnu

../../../../src/mkmf/bin/mkmf -t ../../../../src/mkmf/templates/linux-gnu.mk -o '-I../../shared/repro' -p MOM6 -l '-L../../shared/repro -lfms' -c '-Duse_libMPI -Duse_netCDF -DSPMD' path_names

This will create the Makefile and now we can run the Makefile using a similar command but the target will be MOM6

make NETCDF=3 REPRO=1 FC=mpif77 CC=mpicc LD=mpif77 MOM6 -j

Now we have the executable just called MOM6 and we will demonstrate that it works.

Going to the top of the directory and then to double_gyre

cd ../../../../
cd ocean_only/double_gyre/
mpirun -n 1 ../../build/gnu/ocean_only/repro/MOM6

This is a simple 10 day test and will give something like this

$ mpirun -n 1 ../../build/gnu/ocean_only/repro/MOM6
NOTE: MPP_DOMAINS_SET_STACK_SIZE: stack size set to    32768.
&MPP_IO_NML
 HEADER_BUFFER_VAL=      16384,
 GLOBAL_FIELD_ON_ROOT_PE=T,
 IO_CLOCKS_ON=F,
 SHUFFLE=          0,
 DEFLATE_LEVEL=         -1,
 CF_COMPLIANCE=F,
 /
NOTE: MPP_IO_SET_STACK_SIZE: stack size set to     131072.
NOTE: ======== Model being driven by MOM_driver ========
NOTE: callTree: o Program MOM_main, MOM_driver.F90
NOTE: open_param_file: MOM_input has been opened successfully.
NOTE: open_param_file: MOM_override has been opened successfully.
 MOM domain decomposition
whalo =    4, ehalo =    4, shalo =    4, nhalo =    4
  X-AXIS =   44
  Y-AXIS =   40
 MOMc domain decomposition
whalo =    2, ehalo =    2, shalo =    2, nhalo =    2
  X-AXIS =   22
  Y-AXIS =   20
NOTE: diag_manager_mod::diag_manager_init: prepend_date only supported when diag_manager_init is called with time_init present.
 MOM domain decomposition
whalo =    4, ehalo =    4, shalo =    4, nhalo =    4
  X-AXIS =   44
  Y-AXIS =   40
 MOM domain decomposition
whalo =    4, ehalo =    4, shalo =    4, nhalo =    4
  X-AXIS =   44
  Y-AXIS =   40WARNING: depth_list_setup: ./Depth_list.nc does not exist.  Creating a new file.WARNING: depth_list_setup: ./Depth_list.nc does not exist.  Creating a new file.MOM Day       0.000      0: En 1.423707E-13, MaxCFL  0.00000, Mass 5.288178268008E+18
    Total Energy: 4126F9E3C5B6FEAF  7.5288188616176497E+05
    Total Mass:   5.2881782680077681E+18, Change:   0.0000000000000000E+00 Error:  0.00000E+00 ( 0.0E+00)
MOM Day       1.000     72: En 4.580432E-06, MaxCFL  0.00023, Mass 5.288178268008E+18
    Total Energy: 42B607A80A83D4D0  2.4222139843540812E+13
    Total Mass:   5.2881782680077681E+18, Change:  -4.3787057037831573E+01 Error: -4.37871E+01 (-8.3E-18)
MOM Day       2.000    144: En 8.958206E-06, MaxCFL  0.00040, Mass 5.288178268008E+18
    Total Energy: 42C58AE533474153  4.7372590026370648E+13
    Total Mass:   5.2881782680077681E+18, Change:   4.0318344822758547E+00 Error:  4.03183E+00 ( 7.6E-19)
MOM Day       3.000    216: En 1.166708E-05, MaxCFL  0.00045, Mass 5.288178268008E+18
    Total Energy: 42CC0E8B5CE02C7F  6.1697586479192992E+13
    Total Mass:   5.2881782680077681E+18, Change:   3.7798219410031322E+01 Error:  3.77982E+01 ( 7.1E-18)
MOM Day       4.000    288: En 1.542296E-05, MaxCFL  0.00044, Mass 5.288178268008E+18
    Total Energy: 42D28B60D5891799  8.1559337444446391E+13
    Total Mass:   5.2881782680077681E+18, Change:  -5.3715335655123397E+01 Error: -5.37153E+01 (-1.0E-17)
MOM Day       5.000    360: En 1.826022E-05, MaxCFL  0.00053, Mass 5.288178268008E+18
    Total Energy: 42D5F4B97D5D13C3  9.6563312817231047E+13
    Total Mass:   5.2881782680077681E+18, Change:  -2.1099290705067006E+01 Error: -2.10993E+01 (-4.0E-18)
MOM Day       6.000    432: En 2.397431E-05, MaxCFL  0.00062, Mass 5.288178268008E+18
    Total Energy: 42DCD397A5E14CB5  1.2678043163166683E+14
    Total Mass:   5.2881782680077681E+18, Change:  -1.0757841703346941E+01 Error: -1.07578E+01 (-2.0E-18)
MOM Day       7.000    504: En 2.927962E-05, MaxCFL  0.00073, Mass 5.288178268008E+18
    Total Energy: 42E19A5109E607AC  1.5483585791186938E+14
    Total Mass:   5.2881782680077681E+18, Change:   4.6503600220410505E+01 Error:  4.65036E+01 ( 8.8E-18)
MOM Day       8.000    576: En 3.486441E-05, MaxCFL  0.00081, Mass 5.288178268008E+18
    Total Energy: 42E4F5D995BB3999  1.8436920009364478E+14
    Total Mass:   5.2881782680077681E+18, Change:   2.4524203108417453E+01 Error:  2.45242E+01 ( 4.6E-18)
MOM Day       9.000    648: En 4.195565E-05, MaxCFL  0.00090, Mass 5.288178268008E+18
    Total Energy: 42E9393C9CAC4D82  2.2186896584766006E+14
    Total Mass:   5.2881782680077681E+18, Change:  -2.0342624683786397E+01 Error: -2.03426E+01 (-3.8E-18)
MOM Day      10.000    720: En 4.604729E-05, MaxCFL  0.00100, Mass 5.288178268008E+18
    Total Energy: 42EBAEF71B9A7E17  2.4350627232664072E+14
    Total Mass:   5.2881782680077681E+18, Change:   2.2570880028229340E+01 Error:  2.25709E+01 ( 4.3E-18)FATAL: NETCDF ERROR: No such file or directory File=RESTART/MOM.res.ncFATAL: NETCDF ERROR: No such file or directory File=RESTART/MOM.res.nc--------------------------------------------------------------------------
MPI_ABORT was invoked on rank 0 in communicator MPI_COMM_WORLD
with errorcode 1.NOTE: invoking MPI_ABORT causes Open MPI to kill all MPI processes.
You may or may not see output from other processes, depending on
exactly when Open MPI kills them.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------
Primary job  terminated normally, but 1 process returned
a non-zero exit code.. Per user-direction, the job has been aborted.
-------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
mpirun detected that one or more processes exited with non-zero status, thus causing
the job to be terminated. The first process to do so was:Process name: [[19779,1],0]
  Exit code:    1
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thus we will get an error when we haven’t created a restart. We will do that now

mkdir -p RESTART
mpirun -n 1 ../../build/gnu/ocean_only/repro/MOM6

Next we will use two processors and we see that it runs faster now

mpirun -n 2../../build/gnu/ocean_only/repro/MOM6

https://github.com/NOAA-GFDL/MOM6-examples/wiki/Ubuntu-compiler-environment


Is ground level ozone dangerous to human health when other pollutants are not present, for example, at high altitudes?

Yes high ozone levels are bad for human health and plant development.

Integral to your question is the natural high ozone concentrations at altitudes where you are near the tropopause.  The stratosphere has a lot of ozone and it gets entrained to the air around high elevation mountains quite often.

You could read what the US EPA has to say about ground level ozone: http://www.epa.gov/airquality/ozonepollution/ which is relevant in terms of the health effects and the ecyosystem effects links.

It says: "Breathing ozone can trigger a variety of health problems including chest pain, coughing, throat irritation, and congestion. It can worsen bronchitis, emphysema, and asthma. Ground level ozone also can reduce lung function and inflame the linings of the lungs. Repeated exposure may permanently scar lung tissue."

The National Ambient Air Quality Standards for ozone is 75 ppbV for an 8-hr average.  This means that if a county has 4 days per year with exceedances of the 8-hr avg threshold (over a 3-yr average), the air quality does not meet the Federal standard.


How to predict when contrails are likely to form over a specific location using public data?

As described here, condensation of cloud particles (i.e., contrail formation) will occur if the mixing between hot and moist exhaust from an aircraft engine and ambient environmental air results in the mixed air exceeding the ice saturation vapor pressure as its temperature changes. A conceptual diagram of this mixing process is shown here, for exhaust (parcel A) and environmental air (parcel B) with generic temperatures and saturation vapor pressures is shown here:

However, this would require knowledge of these specific temperatures and corresponding saturation vapor pressures. More practically, contrail prediction often just assumes that the air at altitudes where jets typically cruise (commonly, though not always, above 8 km/26,000 ft and at air temperatures below -40°C) is near or above supersaturation with respect to ice. This assumption is used operationally, for example, in NASA's publicly-available persistent contrail forecast. Note that the first source indicates that low wind speeds are also useful in identifying likely regions of persistent contrails.

Several sources of data may be useful in constructing similar analyses or forecasts and comparing to what might be expected on an average day, based on the local climatology. Observational data from radiosondes (i.e., weather balloons with instruments measuring temperature, moisture, and winds) is available globally in near-real time. This provides actual measurements of weather conditions through the relevant altitudes for contrail formation, and is particularly useful if measurements are needed relatively close to a radiosonde launch site.

For broader coverage in both space and time, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration provides archives of past weather analyses and operational forecast model output that can be requested by the general public. These datasets contain gridded model output with common parameters at various levels through the atmosphere on a national to global scale. While these datasets do not strictly consist of observed measurements, they are useful for analyses extending beyond the relatively limited set of observations available in most circumstances. Output from various operational forecast models is available for near-current or future conditions, whereas the reanalysis datasets provide similar information obtained from model analyses of past weather.

For a given location, the reanalysis datasets can be used to identify climatological temperature, moisture, or wind characteristics for a given location and date or season. Information from radiosondes or model forecasts can then be used to identify how conditions at a near-current (or future) time compare to these "average" conditions.


How are the banded-iron-formation iron-ores formed?

A few elements to complement @Siv answer, and some alternatives hypotheses:

Originally the idea was that the Fe2+ oxidation into Fe3+ that lead to the formation of the BIF ("banded iron formations") was an indirect consequence of the increased atmospheric pO2 caused by the photosynthetic activity of, then freshly appeared, cyanobacteria (see e. g. Cloud 1973  which, along with Cloud 1968, are i think the first occurrence in the literature of such an idea).

Later, the idea that the cause of the iron oxidation was linked to a specific metabolic reaction involved in anoxygenic photosynthesis (i. e. a different way of fixing CO2 that does not create O2) in bacteria was also introduced (Hartman 1984; Konhauser et al. 2005).

Another possibility invoked by Holm 1989 is the active oxidation of Fe2+ by "chemolithoautotrophic" bacteria (using it directly as energy source).

Finally, the only (as far as I can see) non-bacterial hypothesis on the BIF formation is that of photo-oxidation (Braterman et al. 1983): the oxidation and precipitation of Fe2+ in Fe3+ being indeed possible without oxygen, in strongly acid conditions with a little help from UV photons.

References:
Braterman P. S., Cairns-Smith A. G., Sloper R. W., 1983. Photo-oxidation of hydrated Fe2+ – significance for banded iron formations. Nature, 303: 163-164.
Cloud P., 1968. Atmospheric and hydrospheric evolution on the primitive earth. Science, 160, 729–736.
Cloud P., 1973. Paleoecological Significance of the Banded Iron-Formation. Economic Geology and the Bulletin of the Society of Economic Geologists, 68: 1135-1143.
Hartman H., 1984. The evolution of photosynthesis and microbial mats: A speculation on the banded iron formations. In Y. Cohen et al. (Eds), Microbial  Mats: Stromatolites, Alan Liss Inc. (New York): 449–453.
Holm N. G., 1989. The 13C/12C ratios of siderite and organic matter of a modern metalliferous hydrothermal sediment and their implications for banded iron formations. Chemical Geology, 77: 41-45.
Konhauser K. O., Newman D. K., Kappler A., 2005. The potential signiﬁcance of microbial Fe(III) reduction during deposition of Precambrian banded iron formations. Geobiology, 3, 167–177.


The word collapse is not appropriate in the case of a hanging glacier such as the one you mention in your question. A hanging glacier is a glacier that terminates at a cliff edge. Since glacier ice is constantly moving towards the cliff, the terminus will occasionally lose sufficient support and detach from the glacier causing an ice avalanche. As long as the glacier feeds ice to the cliff edge ice avalanches will continue to occur. How often will largely depend on the ice velocity moving ice towards the cliff edge. This is thus a natural behaviour and not a collapse, or at least not named collapse in glaciology.
The word collapse is not a scientific term and does not have a unique definition in glaciology. In the case of an ice shelf that suddenly breaks apart such as the Larsen B (Rott et al. 1996) the term collapse has been used in articles. In this case the event was sudden and the entire ice shelf broke up and was lost during a few months. At the same time collapse is commonly used to describe other phenomena such as the loss of an ice sheet or part of an ice sheet (for example, Brendryen et al., 2020). Such a process is much slower than the ice shelf collapse, perhaps lasting many hundreds or thousands of years. But the word is used because it describes an irreversible event or development.
So coming back to the hanging glacier, its avalanches is an ongoing process and the word collapse gives the wrong impression. The glacier is not collapsing. Given climate warming the glacier will likely decrease in size and the avalanching change, possibly stop depending on the bedrock morphology on which the glacier sits. If the climate warming causes the glacier to completely melt away, then that could be considered a collapse of that glacier. But when you read different scientific articles on glaciers you will see the word used in many different ways so a tricky word to use in a good and consistent way.
References
Helmut Rott, Pedro Skvarca, Thomas Nagler, 1996 Rapid Collapse of Northern Larsen Ice Shelf, Antarctica. Science, 271 (5250) 788-792
Brendryen, J., Haflidason, H., Yokoyama, Y. et al. 2020 Eurasian Ice Sheet collapse was a major source of Meltwater Pulse 1A 14,600 years ago. Nat. Geosci. 13, 363–368.


This is probably an observational effect that is quite common in the Earth Sciences. In scientifically progressing societies there is a higher proportion of observations due to a number of effects:

awareness of science (not interpreting it as a wonder)
ability to record events
ability to observe (think 12 hour day in the factory vs. free weekend)
technology to do remote observations
...

This is also why more and more meteorites are observed falling. In the middle ages you were either too busy to care, took it as a wonder, or found a meteorite, but had no ability to write it down. Similar scenario for volcanic eruptions. I could imagine that actually all those ships, airplanes, and oudoor-activities (no offense) lead to more observations of eruptions, but that people were to busy recording and writing them down. The geologists of their time were probably busy finding war-necessary resources.

Sources:

http://www.volcanodiscovery.com/de/volcanoes/faq/is-volcanic-activity-increasing.html


What are the top 21 meetings regarding climate change?

As Isopcycnal Oscillation has noted in the comments, you've probably misheard, and what they were talking about was COP 21 (not "top 21"), the 21st summit of the UNFCCC parties in Paris, December 2016.


Elemental ratios in rocks and stream water

There's no simple answer to this. The elemental ratios are a function of proximity to the ocean (Na, Cl, Br, I, etc), relative abundance and mode of weathering of feldspar, rate of weathering, rock Mg-Fe ratio and redox state (especially in relation to iron), the degree of rock mineralization (SO4, Cl, F), rock heterogeneity, and how close the rock-water system is to thermodynamic equilibrium.
There are many good books on the subject, of which my long-standing favorite is John Hem's classic US Geological Survey Water Supply Paper 2254, Study and Interpretation of the Chemical Characteristics of Natural Water, 3rd Edition, available online as a PDF.


Building with timber is more sustainable than building with concrete at least in terms of the production of green house gases.  A timber building is using a raw material, trees, that have been sequestering carbon till they are cut.   Cement, or concrete, on the other hand is made by cooking off carbon dioxide from the calcium carbonate, limestone, to produce the lime which makes up a large part of the concrete.  In the production of lime you have CO2 released from the limestone and from the fuels used to heat the limestone, see Lime in Wikipedia.  In addition the timber panels are significantly lighter than the cement components which should also make the timber construction more sustainable.

Most trees used for timber production are grown in sites that are not generally ideal for other types of agriculture, though this is a gross generalization.  They get their phosphorous through local sources, primarily the soil, so forest growth wouldn't have an impact on the phosphorous used for agricultural processes.

The following quote from the North Carolina State University project site summarizes the overall impact on timber construction.  It is important to note that until the advent of CLT, cross laminated timber, it was effectively impossible to build larger structures out of wood.

  CLT paneling is also thermally efficient, requiring 1/3 the heating and cooling energy compared to other traditional building systems. CLT paneling is also beneficial to the environment.  Wood is the only major building material that grows naturally and is renewable, CLT also outperforms steel and concrete in terms of embodied energy required to make the product. It also has a less of an effect on air pollution (stores carbon) and water pollution. CLT Panels USA


Large scale structures in the Sahara – what are they?

These features are created by the wind.You will note that the upper left portion has a small dark spot. This is known as Waw al-Namus, or the "Oasis of Mosquitoes." It has a path of material in the same curved  manner as the surrounding features you mention.

From the link provided below:

  However, Waw al-Namus and its plume are not the only "wind records"
  in the area. As you utilise higher resolution images - of the order of
  1 km or better, other, somewhat different "long-term wind tracers" are
  revealed at almost every place across the Sahara Desert. These
  generally take the form of small-scale, long, parallel thin lines, as
  if being drawn across the desert by a giant pencil. One of the most
  spectacular places with long-term wind streamlines imprinted into the
  landscape can be found further southeast of Waw al-Namus, to the
  southeast of the Tibesti Mountains.

http://oiswww.eumetsat.org/WEBOPS/iotm/iotm/20060115_wind/20060115_wind.html


Why are most cirrus clouds present over the equator and over tropical continents?

Clouds require moisture and therefore high clouds will exist in regions with upper-level moisture.  Synoptic scale ascent is on the order of cm/s and this is not an efficient way to bring moisture from the surface to the upper levels.

Consider this water vapor imagery:

Source: College of Dupage NEXLAB

In this image, the color represents the humidity of the mid and upper levels of the troposphere.  Brighter colors represent moisture at higher levels.  Darker colors represent moisture at mid levels.  Black represents dry mid and upper levels.

The brightest whites (highest level moisture) at this time are along the ITCZ and associated a mid-latitude cyclone in the northeastern US.  These are areas associated with convection, which unlike the synoptic scale flows is an efficient transport of moisture into the upper troposphere.  This convective outflow will first be associated with the "anvil" top of the thunderstorm, but as it is advected at the upper levels can manifest as cirrus clouds.  The ITCZ is driven by equatorial convergence and the upward branch of the Hadley cells.
Mid-latitude cyclones have a so-called "wet conveyor belt" that transports near-surface moisture into the mid and upper levels which can then manifest as upper level clouds (or lots of rain/snow).

To answer "why are most cirrus clouds in the tropics?" I would associate that with the large transport of water vapor into the upper levels by the persistent convection in the ITCZ.


Was the Caribbean Sea a closed sea during the last glaciation?

Thanks to @Eartworm I learned today I was totally uncorrect: there are more than 2000 meters deep in the straits.

Tool to see bathymetry, navionics.com


Why does foliage coloration vary on north/south sides of ridge (Northeast USA)?

Your photo doesn't show the strip of autumn-coloured trees very well; without your description I would have taken it for a strip of bare earth. All sorts of things could account for the autumn shades, there are too many unknowns to give a definite answer.       We don't know whether the red-leaved trees are the same species as the others, for example.

I doubt if sun exposure alone could account for it, though it might be a combination of sun exposure and soil conditions, or soil conditions alone. The red trees seem to follow a line where strata different from the rest reach the surface. This would affect the soil conditions, nutrients and perhaps available moisture. Without an investigation on the ground it is impossible to be sure what the cause is, but I think a difference in soil conditions is the most likely explanation.


Is it possible to infer the depth of a river from the shapes of the islands and the banks?

The island morphology isn't necessarily an indication of the river's depth because the river can be bimodal, with shallows and deeply incised trenches. One thinks of the River Congo which has many islands, but depths of up to 220 metres in its main incised channel. That said, however, if the river has a multi-channel, heavily braided morphology, as in the Waimakariri in New Zealand, or the Brahmaputra in Assam, then one can be fairly certain that the intense sediment load would have filled in any deep pools (excluding local scour in sharp bends, caused by super-elevated flow). In such cases, one may assume a shallow river profile, governed only by storm-flow peak stages.
Where there are few or no islands coupled with geomorphologic indications of rapid cut back or rejuvenation, such as the Mekong upstream of its delta, then one may suspect very deep channel profiles. In general though, islands and bank morphology are not reliable indicators of a river's cross section.


Why in different places seems directions are changed?

Even though sun always moves from east to west, latitude affects the north-south perception.
If you are in the north hemisphere, beyond the tropic of cancer, the sun will be most of the time in the south hemisphere (except close to dawn and dusk, where it might cross to the other hemisphere during summer). While if you're in the south hemisphere, beyond the tropic of capricorn, the sun will be at north.
Usually I use the sun to check where is the north in a map, but I must remember the north-south rule, otherwise I might choose the wrong direction to follow... that's why a bougth a cheap compass.

Since you're talking about two places that are in the tropical belt, most part of the year the sun will rise in the north-east, move later to the south and it will end in the north-west. But during the winter the sun probably will be always in the south hemisphere.

Probably the difference they are seeing between two close towns is due to different times of the year or due to a mountain that covers the exact sunset in the horizon in one place.


Is it true that aquaponics yield crops with a lower nutritional value than soil-agriculture?

First look at the article, is cites no sources and is not written by an an expert. It is written without peer review and does not seem to understand how to measure nutritional content (brix is only a measure of sugar not minerals) or what controlled conditions are. No methodology for collection, type of hydroponics, sample size, or anything else is given, this is important becasue many many thing unrelated to the farming method can effect Brix. So you can safely ignore the unscientific claim of the article and go with scientific ones, which show no difference when tested.

First always look at the source of a claim and when in doubt search google scholar first.

This is clearly editorial click bait.


When does the Northern Hemisphere reach minimum land area covered by solid H2O?

A little Google searching and I found this:

Source:  https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/sotc/snow_extent.html

Snow-cover is considered an important factor in climate change study, so it's tracked pretty carefully.   There's probably a specific average minimum date out there somewhere if you're really interested but I didn't see it.  Judging from the chart, somewhere around mid August.

Sea ice cover is later, that reaches a minimum in September most years, but oceans are slower to change than land and air, so that should be expected.   The hottest day on average, if you care about that, is July 24.   http://m.weatherbug.com/weather-news/weather-reports/5225


What constitutes a blizzard in meterological terms?

A blizzard is defined as

sustained wind or frequent gusts >= 16 m per second (30 kt or 35 mi per hour)
falling / blowing snow, frequently reducing visibility to less than 400 m (0.25 mi)
3 hours or longer in duration

A storm meeting these qualifications is a blizzard.  Note that snowfall is not necessary, a sustained 35 kt wind blowing snow for 3 hours with low visibility is a blizzard.

  A severe weather condition characterized by high winds and reduced visibilities due to falling or blowing snow.

  The U.S. National Weather Service specifies sustained wind or frequent gusts of 16 m per second (30 kt or 35 mi per hour) or greater, accompanied by falling and/or blowing snow, frequently reducing visibility to less than 400 m (0.25 mi) for 3 hours or longer. Earlier definitions also included a condition of low temperatures, on the order of -7°C (20°F) or lower, or -12°C (10°F) or lower (severe blizzard). The name originated in the United States but it is also used in other countries. In the Antarctic the name is given to violent autumnal winds off the ice cap. In southeastern France, the cold north wind with snow is termed blizzard (see also boulbie).
  Similar storms in Russian Asia are the buran and purga. In popular usage in the United States and in England, the term is often used for any heavy snowstorm accompanied by strong winds.

Source: AMS Glossary: Blizzard


Using NASA's radiance calculator to make a graph to find the where the peak radiation emission are?

The graph looks correct, and after having a look at the NASA/USGS Radiance calculator, it seem that curves can't be annotated. However, below the plot there is a button to download the source data of the plot as a comma separated file (CSV), that you can open in Excel or any spreadsheet manager program and plot it with annotations and all the customization you want.

For the wavelength of the peak in emission you don't have to look further than the box below the graph titled "Wavelength of Maximum Radiance", which for the Sun should say something like 0.52 micrometers as in the screenshot below:


How long would it take for Mars to cool after asteroid impact?

It would be interesting to read peer reviewed scientific papers that discuss the feasibility of "restarting Mars' core" via an asteroid impact. Some links would be appreciated.

I am very sceptical that it could be achieved in such a manner. Small asteroid impacts would change the topography of the surface by creating new craters and spraying crater ejecta over the surface.

Impacts from extremely large asteroids would only create larger craters or possibly blast out large chunks of Mars and even destroy the planet: such as a collision with Ceres.

One of the flaws I see in trying to "restart the core" is how to keep a solid inner core within a molten outer core, while at the same time creating relative movement between the two.

The Earth's magnetic field exist because its solid inner iron-nickel core and the metallic molten outer core move relative to one another creating a geodynamo. Without a solid core and relative movement between the two the only thing that will be achieved will be a molten core without a magnetic field.

If it were possible to remelt the core of Mars, a magnetic field would not be created by simply remelting the core.

The other flaw I see is that if it were possible to remelt the core, the core will expand due to thermal expansion. This will then increase ground stresses within the overlying rock which will result in cracking of the overlying rock and the generation of Mars-quakes.

Another flaw I see is concerns the energy required to remelt the core. A significant volume of core would need to be remelted. That would require a lot of energy over a prolonged period of time. The effect of an asteroid impact would dissipate quickly.


How do we allocate partial CO2 doublings for Empirical Climate Sensitivity?

To get a rough estimate you should be using a logarithmic interpolation rather than a linear interpolation. The response to added $\text{CO}_2$ would be linear if the atmosphere had barely any $\text{CO}_2$ in it. Even 280 ppm does not qualify as "very little". "Very little" would mean a handful of parts per million, at most.

The issue is that the atmosphere is rather opaque at those frequencies where $\text{CO}_2$ absorbs and emits thermal infrared radiation. Instead of a linear response, the response in terms of radiative forcing is roughly logarithmic. This is why climatologists talk about the effect of a doubling the $\text{CO}_2$ levels. The radiative forcing of an increase from 140 ppm $\text{CO}_2$ to 280 ppm is more or less the same as the response to an increase from 280 ppm to 560 ppm, or to an increase from 560 ppm to 1120 ppm.


How does the sand appear on Hawaiian beaches

I think the easy answer comes from the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources:

  Beaches in Hawaii may be made of 'black sand' derived from the erosion of volcanic rocks, of 'white sand' made by marine organisms, or a mixture of both. On the windward side of the Big Island, for example, black sand beaches are very common. The beach at South Point is almost entirely green sand composed of olivine, a common mineral found in the volcanic rocks here in Hawaii. On the Kona coast of the Big Island and on the other islands, the beaches have a range of mixed compositions, some with a high volcanic (detrital) component, some dominated by calcareous (reef-derived) sediment. Beach and submarine sands in Kailua Bay on windward Oahu (my research area) are almost entirely composed of calcarous, reef-derived material. On average, only about 5% of the sand grains are volcanic minerals or rock fragments. Every beach is unique and has its own source and type of sediments.

They even address some of the questions regarding "foreign import" here.


What data of agricultural yield to use for India?

In case you cannot access official local data, I recommend the use of the IFPRI resource MapSPAM2010.
Quoting the description of the dataset:

  Using a variety of inputs, IFPRI's Spatial Production Allocation Model (SPAM) uses a cross-entropy approach to make plausible estimates of crop distribution within disaggregated units. Moving the data from coarser units such as countries and sub-national provinces, to finer units such as grid cells, reveals spatial patterns of crop performance, creating a global grid-scape at the confluence between geography and agricultural production systems. Improving spatial understanding of crop production systems allows policymakers and donors to better target agricultural and rural development policies and investments, increasing food security and growth with minimal environmental impacts.

The dataset makes available data about agricultural variables for 42 crops at 10km resolution for the whole world. More info are available in the MapSPAM website, while the full dataset is available here.

Reference: International Food Policy Research Institute, 2019, "Global Spatially-Disaggregated Crop Production Statistics Data for 2010 Version 1.1", https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/PRFF8V, Harvard Dataverse, V3

You can download the global rasters and then clip the area you are interested in and make your own estimates regarding specific crops and production technologies.

The information in this dataset, would help you to set up a relatively simple crop model, such as the FAO AquaCrop. This system, even with a approximative calibration, could help you to understand some of the impacts of the

  meteorological factors on the agricultural yields.


Why is Great Oxidation Event associated with Iron oxidation but not Aluminum or Silicon?

Because Al and Si were already oxidised to begin with.

When the Earth formed, it had some amount of metals (Fe, Si, Mg, Al, Ca, etc) and a fixed amount of oxygen to bond with those metals. Certain metals with bond with oxygen preferentially. Mg and Ca are usually the first to take up oxygen, followed by Al, Si, and then Fe comes last (out of the short list I just provided). Turns out that there is not enough oxygen left for all of the Fe!

As you probably know, Fe oxides come in two states, ferrous iron (Fe2+) and ferric iron (Fe3+). So to put it simply, the amount of oxygen left in the Earth after being used up in the other more-easily-oxidised metals was enough to oxidise just a small part of the Fe0 to Fe2+. That's why Earth has a metal core - that's where all of the Fe0 is. The crust, however, had only Fe2+ in it. Once you start pumping out oxygen to the atmosphere, this Fe2+ starts oxidising to Fe3+, which is the stable form of iron in the Earth's surface in the presence of oxygen (as you can tell by iron rusting everywhere quite rapidly). This buffers the amount of oxygen you had in the atmosphere until you run out of Fe2+ and then oxygen can really increase.

Some corrections:
Al2O3 is not clay. It is an important component of clay minerals, but it is definitely not clay. Clay minerals have both Al2O3 and SiO2 in it.


This is a very good question. There a few main heat sources: Heat(and work) left over from the formation of the earth, work (potential energy) generated by dense iron sinking into the center of the earth and forming a core, and radioactive energy. Since the Thermal diffusivity of the materials that make up the earth is low, heat transport is very slow and thus the planet retains a significant amount of its heat.

Another reason why the earth is so hot, is that mantle convection is a very inefficient way to transport said heat, and thus the earth loses energy very slowly.

We know how hot the interior of the earth might be because of laboratory experiments, and also volcanic eruptions. How much energy(temperature) does it take to melt gabbro (mantle rock)?

Interestingly enough, the earth is cooling. And the inner core / outer core boundary is a freezing front (meaning turning from a liquid outer core to a solid inner core). Though, it is a very hot freezing front.


If gypsum turns into plaster around 210 F, is there any natural plaster deposits or formations out there?

Water is removed from gypsum hydrate about 300 F+ making it dry powder gypsum. Water is added to gypsum to make "plaster of Paris" , no particular temperature is involved. Not sure it answers the question , but gypsum commonly deposits in oil production tubing. The produced oil/water/gas  mix cools as it comes up the well tubing and deposits in the tubing,; very difficult to prevent or remove.


Does the Coriolis Effect affect a wind from East to West?

There have been a number of answers here that answer slightly different questions. As I understand it the question is "Why does the Coriolis force apply to objects (or air parcels) moving east and west, as well as those with a north/south component?"

It's a good question. The common intuitive explanation of the Coriolis effect, which you describe, considers only the horizontal forces acting on an object. That isn't quite right. This diagram adds two more forces that matter:

The arrow marked "g" is the force due to gravity, and is directed towards the centre of the planet.
The other arrow represents the centrifugal force that results from the earth's spin. Notice that it does not directly oppose gravity, but instead acts away from the earth's axis of rotation. In the absence of aerodynamics, buoyancy, etc, the vertical components of these forces must cancel out so that our particle maintains its altitude, but there is a resultant horizontal force towards the equator.

Let's assume that our red dot is stationary with respect to the earth's surface (the horizontal component of the centrifugal force must be balanced by something else). If the red dot accelerates to the east (away from us), meaning that its angular speed around the axis of rotation of the earth is increased, then the centrifugal force will increase, while the gravitational force will remain (very nearly) the same. Thus it's no longer in equilibrium. This has two effects: the vertical component of this is a force upwards which I believe is known as the Eötvös effect, and the horizontal component is a force towards the equator (a right turn in the northern hemisphere), which is Coriolis.

Similarly if the dot accelerates to the west (towards us), its angular speed decreases, the centrifugal force decreases, and it is pushed down and away from the equator (a right turn in the northern hemisphere).


Technically, this is a mathematical modelling problem. You just happen to be using earth science data - satellite LIDAR readings.

Ore reserve geologists constantly deal with this, but in three dimensions when they are required to create a block models of a geological deposit from drill hole data.

Scientific fields that use 2D data would include: forestry, meteorology and ground contamination studies looking into pollution effects of smelters.

Methods you need to consider are Inverse Distance Weighting and possibly variography and kriging. Variography and kriging are elements of geostatistics, also known as the Theory of Regionalized Variables.

With inverse distance weighting, the distance variable is usually raised to a power n, i.e. ${1/d^n}$. Choosing the appropriate value of $n$ is the tricky part. When geologists used inverse distance weighting, prior to primary using geostatistics, typically the value of $n$ used was 2, but values between 1 and 3 have been used for different deposits.

Given that you are using two dimension data, you may need to use GIS software or other modelling software that offers grid interpolation methods, such as I have mentioned to achieve what you want.


CAN you? Sure, nobody on here is stopping you.
Is it meaningful? Not really.
The RMM indices are two separate metrics corresponding to the phase (interpretable using a phase space diagram)

(Example from CPC)
If you want a more meaningful way to interpret the MJO, you can try $$\sqrt{RMM_1^2+RMM_2^2}$$ which should be the strength of the MJO, or the angle between $RMM_1$ and $RMM_2$ (probably using something like atan2 in your preferred programming language.


Every 202,500 years, Earth wanders in a new direction; does it affect climate?

Milankovitch cycles do affect climate on Earth. There are several cycles.

  "Variations in eccentricity, axial tilt, and precession of the Earth's
  orbit resulted in cyclical variation in the solar radiation reaching
  the Earth, and that this orbital forcing strongly influenced climatic
  patterns on Earth."
  source: wikipedia

Scientists of Pleistocene's climate evolution strongly correlate Milankovitch cycles with glacial/interglacial periods, affecting the Gulf Stream Current.
Other factors of Earth's internal system, such as volcanic events do affect climate, but changes in the magnitude of solar radiation are a well known climatic variability generator.


CMIP5 multi-model ensemble, can it be shown as ensemble average?

That is valid. You can show the average (or median if there is a reason to get rid of outliers), but it would be VERY misleading and arguably wrong if you don't show also the uncertainty associated  with that mean solution.
However, the whole point of getting the mean of many values is to reduce  the uncertainty. Therefore, just plotting a shaded area covering the range over which the original lines were distributed, would be an overestimation of the uncertainty (here I'm assuming that each original line have no uncertainty, which is wrong, but if you have that uncertainty data it can also be included).
A standard way to estimate the uncertainty of the average of many lines (a.k.a Time series) is calculating bootstrap confidence intervals.

Here is an example from a paper I recently submitted:

The mean of all those black lines is the blue line. To expose the spread of the data I decided to show all the original lines. But, if I were to show this to a general audience, I would get rid of the thin black lines and show the mean (blue) and the confidence intervals (pink shades).
Those shades mean that with a 90% confidence the mean should fall within the dark pink shading, and with a 99% confidence within the light pink shading. Giving a sense of how much you can trust the blue line.


On what basis are hurricanes,cyclones or typhoons named?

The names are set well in advance. For example, the first four north Atlantic hurricanes in 2022 will be named Alex, Bonnie, Colin, and Danielle. In fact, the names of the north Atlantic hurricane in 2022 will be exactly the same as those in 2016, with one exception. Hurricane Matthew in 2016 was a catastrophic category 5 storm that claimed a number of lives and that resulted in large economic losses. The name Matthew has been retired because of this, so the 13th named north Atlantic storm in 2022 will be named Martin rather than Matthew.  The US recycles the names it uses on a six year basis, but the names of significant storms are retired and replaced with some new name.

Names for tropical cyclones elsewhere in the world follow a similar convention. Names are set well in advance, with the lists of names being recycled after some number of years. As was the case with Matthew, the names of catastrophic storms that result in a number of deaths and/or large economic impacts are retired from those lists.


What principles do we consider when selecting an air pollution monitor location?

Each one of the monitor siting examples you list has a different purpose.  As you have listed, a monitor will be sited for air regulatory compliance purposes (e.g. determining the highest concentrations downwind of a major source), understanding the region (e.g. representative site in well-mixed location), or health exposure risks (e.g. densely populated areas). From a health and regulatory perspective, those types of site locations are sufficient.  However, you may want to consider other monitor site locations in your network that will help to evaluate the performance of the air quality model and assess the importance of various sources:

Monitors at a variety of elevations, so that vertical mixing can be evaluated (or use sondes)
Monitors both upwind and downwind of major sources, so that their contributions can be determined to a greater accuracy than represented in the original emissions inventory.
Monitors behind complex terrain, which affects transport, and can be difficult to model correctly.

Air quality modeling helps to fill in the gaps left by monitoring networks, since they are expensive to site and maintain.  Monitor networks are relatively sparse compared to the number of major source and receptor locations.  So, it is important to carefully consider each site location and pick ones that satisfy multiple criteria.  Satellite retrievals and local testimonials can be used to evaluate the initial value of your network.  However, you will benefit from quality controlling your model in the areas where your model performs poorly.

For reference, here is an example of how modeling and air monitors can be used together to make quality forecasts.  Environment and Climate Change Canada’s FireWork air quality (AQ) forecast system for North America with wildfire emissions has a post process called UMOS-AQ (see below).  The Canadian researchers built a system that modifies their air quality predictions based on recent surface monitor model/observations comparisons.  The Regional Air Quality Deterministic Prediction System (RAQDPS)uses GEM-MACH (Global Environmental Multi-scale - Modelling Air quality and CHemistry) and BlueSky Canada.  Here is a paper that describes the process.

  The RAQDPS includes other components besides GEM-MACH. One postprocessing product is the Updateable Model Output Statistics for Air Quality (UMOS-AQ) package, which applies statistics for bias correction to compensate for systematic AQ model errors and account for unresolved subgrid-scale phenomena at particular locations, namely the locations of AQ measurement stations (Wilson and Vallée, 2002; Antonopoulos et al., 2010; Moran et al., 2012). Hourly model forecasts of both pollutant concentrations and meteorological quantities at specific locations are combined with available hourly surface AQ measurements to generate location-specific hourly statistical forecasts for areas where AQ is measured. The location-specific O3, PM2.5, and NO2 concentrations calculated by UMOS-AQ are also the ones used in the calculation of the AQHI values that are disseminated to the public.


Can we define "drainage density" for a soil column (point-scale)?

Fundamentally it doesn't make sense to describe the point scale model with hillslope length and drainage density. If you are looking to model a soil column, you could use Darcy's law or Richard's equation. If you are looking to model the catchment, the point scale is not appropriate, although you could always incorporate those point-scale appropriate equations into a more complete hydrologic model if you wish (something like HydroGeoSphere does), but that is still a catchment scale model.
In either case, this comes back to 1) what is the purpose of your modelling exercise, and 2) making sure that your choice of model is appropriate for that purpose. A hydrologic model that uses hillslope length for a point scale is not an appropriate choice for what (I think) you are trying to do.