In The Field

AGU: Other blogs, other bloggers

Here are some other blogs and posts coming from AGU.

Erik Klemetti is blogging on matters volcanic at the suitably titled Eruptions. An interesting tidbit:

the Kasatochi eruption released the most sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere since the 1991 Pinatubo eruption

Andrew Alden is blogging at about.com. A nice quote from Ken Edgett:

“short of being on Mars, picking up a piece of rock and seeing ”https://geology.about.com/od/geology_co/ig/triceratrail/triceratrail8.htm">fossil impressions of raindrops on it, this is the best evidence for actual rainfall on Mars in the past."

(As it happens, I just heard in another session that people are looking at ancient fossil raindrops on earth as a way of learning about past atmospheric pressure. More on that anon.)

As Andrew mentions, the Wiredlings are blogging up a storm (though maybe they’ll slow down tomorrow, after their office party tonight). Here’s something that I will be worrying about when I fly home:

“Everywhere we look, we’re seeing x-rays and gamma rays flying out of thunderstorms and lightning,” said Joseph Dwyer, a physicist at the Florida Institute of Technology and lead author of the study. “The gamma rays coming out of thunderstorms are so intense we can measure these 600 kilometers away and so bright that it almost blinds the spacecraft.”

The Martian Chronicles are here, and not confining themselves to Mars.

Emily Lakdawalla is putting up lovely long posts on her Planetary Society blog. Here’s a neat insight:

I was struck by something that one of the Cassini spectroscopists, Tom McCord, said as he opened his talk: that even though Cassini has now completed its primary mission at the Saturn system, which included dozens of Titan flybys over four years, and has now gone on to an extended mission, “the science is the least mature of any [extended] mission I’ve ever worked on.” It’s not for lack of effort; it’s just that Titan is fiendishly difficult to study.

Liz Kalaugher is blogging for the IOP environmentalresearchweb blog. Some food for thought from a post on climate research strategies:

Decision-makers need information on a local and regional scale that climate models can’t always provide. So UCAR-member universities have started discussions with decision-makers about their requirements; these discussions were extended to other academics at an AGU session.

“We need more user/stakeholder-driven research, not curiosity-driven research,” agreed Jonathan Overpeck of the University of Arizona, who has been considering what a national climate service could offer decision-makers.

More blogs as I notice them — feel free to use the comments to get my attention

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