NASA: The Freezing Snowy Nightmare Before Christmas Santa Claus better bundle and buckle up. Forecasters are warning that a blast of Arctic air will bring dangerously cold conditions to parts of Canada and the central and eastern U.S. in the days before Christmas 2022. The map above shows the surface air temperature anomalies forecasted for December 23, 2022. It was produced by combining satellite observations with temperatures […] Weather WeatherBrains | December 22, 2022 0 Comments
NASA: La Niña 3 Times – Looking at This Relatively Weak but Unusually Prolonged Event In December 2022, Earth was in the grips of La Niña—an oceanic phenomenon characterized by the presence of cooler-than-normal sea-surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific. The current La Niña, relatively weak but unusually prolonged, began in 2020 and has returned for its third consecutive northern hemisphere winter, making this a rare “triple-dip” event. Other triple-dip La Niña’s […] Weather WeatherBrains | December 8, 2022 0 Comments
NASA: Phytoplankton May Be Abundant Under Antarctic Sea Ice A decade ago, scientists on a NASA-sponsored ocean expedition found massive populations of phytoplankton blooming beneath sea ice in the Arctic Ocean. Now scientists using underwater instruments and a NASA satellite have found evidence of potentially significant blooms beneath the sea ice encircling Antarctica. The findings were recently published in the scientific journal Frontiers. Phytoplankton is to the ocean what […] Brains SnowBrains | November 29, 2022 0 Comments
Mount Terror: The 10,000-Foot Antarctic Volcano This article originally appeared on nasa.gov Mount Terror might sound like a place to avoid. But this Antarctic volcano is not as terrifying as its name implies. From a geological perspective, the mountain itself is relatively benign. It is a shield volcano located on the eastern side of Ross Island and consists of numerous pyroclastic cones and lava domes. But […] Brains SnowBrains | November 4, 2022 0 Comments
NASA’s DART Mission Hits Asteroid in First-Ever Planetary Defense Test After 10 months of flying in space, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) – the world’s first planetary defense technology demonstration – successfully impacted its asteroid target on Monday, the agency’s first attempt to move an asteroid in space. Related: Friday 13th, 2029 – The Day a Huge Asteroid Dubbed ‘God of Chaos’ Will Fly Underneath Our TV Satellites Mission […] Brains SnowBrains | September 27, 2022 0 Comments
NASA: All Eyes on the Snow as Water Supplies Dwindle As the American West suffers a 22-year-long “megadrought” that researchers say is the worst in at least 1,200 years, water managers now have a new level of insight into just how much water will be available for their communities. Water departments in the West are using maps and models originally created by a NASA team to help track water and […] SnowBrains | September 26, 2022 0 Comments
NASA: Smoky Fires Rage in the Northwest The scorching weather of summer 2022 has left much of the Northwestern United States primed to burn with wildland fires. In early September, the northern Rocky Mountains and the Cascade Range billowed with smoke that was slowly wafting across the continental U.S. and southern Canada. Related: [VIDEO] Big Bear Ski Area, CA, Employees Fire Up Snowguns to Slow Encroaching Wildfire […] Fire Firebrains | September 12, 2022 1 Comment
NASA: Late Season Melting in Greenland – Most on Record for Any September In September 2022, vast areas atop the Greenland ice sheet melted. Some scientists think the widespread late-season melting—the most on record for any September—could have implications for the ice sheet next year. Greenland’s melting season typically runs from May to early September. The 2022 season started slowly, as lower-than-average air temperatures in May and June culminated in the least amount […] SnowBrains | September 9, 2022 1 Comment