Ch+9

media type="custom" key="27972645"

media type="custom" key="23247978" .media type="custom" key="25580928"

Click here to download a pdf version of the slide show, with three slides per page and lines for notes.

= [|The Los Angeles Aqueduct in Pictures] =

[|Dust Cams of Owens Lake, California] Follow the link above to a lives cameras on Owens Lake River Maps

media type="youtube" key="cwB3W3-8YeU?fs=1" height="385" width="480"

media type="youtube" key="3niR_-Kv4SM?fs=1" height="340" width="560"
Disappearance of the Aral Sea media type="custom" key="8414826"

Cotton - Environmental Disaster and Lethal Pesticides media type="custom" key="8414860"

Lake Chad Disappears media type="custom" key="8414876"

On Thin Ice media type="custom" key="13163838"

[|Most Amazing Lakes in the World]



NASA has released the first full year of validated ocean surface salinity data from the agency's Aquarius instrument aboard the Aquarius/SAC-D spacecraft. The data cover the period from Dec. 2011 through Dec. 2012. Red colors represent areas of high salinity, while blue shades represent areas of low salinity. Among the prominent salinity features visible in this view are the large area of highly s aline water across the North Atlantic. This area, the saltiest anywhere in the open ocean, is analogous to deserts on land, where little rainfall and much evaporation occur. Aquarius is a focused effort to measure ocean surface salinity and will provide the global view of salinity variability needed for climate studies. The mission is a collaboration between NASA and the Space Agency of Argentina (Comision Nacional de Actividades Espaciales). Image credit: NASA/GSFC/JPL-Caltech

- See more at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-074#sthash.72FAJPQD.dpuf [|The Ozone Hole]

[|NASA| Aquarius: One Year Observing the Salty Seas]
media type="youtube" key="5xQP_B18vMw" height="315" width="560"



In a world now lost to antiquity, mariners once dreamed of being able to take a shortcut over the top of the world to get to the Orient more quickly. Many expeditions were mounted, both along the Northern Sea Route and in search of the fabled Northwest Passage. And many ships were lost, all in fruitless searches. @http://images.sciencedaily.com/2013/03/130304151800-large.jpg

Roald Amundsen was t he first to make a complete transit, taking more than three years to do so in his ship Gjoa (1903-1906). Later, Henry Larsen shortened that to 28 months in his ice-hardened ship the St. Roch (1940-1942).  http://www.skepticalscience.com/StRoch.html

The dreams of merchants and mariners were to remain unrequited for another 6 decades:

"I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky; and all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by." ~ John Masefield

Today, the ongoing demise of the once-perennial Arctic Ocean sea ice has renewed the dreams of commerce and ship captains everywhere. Over the past decade, the sea ice in the Arctic, once quite thick even in summer, has dwindled to the point where navigation of the Northern Sea Route over Russia and that even of the Northwest Passage itself has been achieved with regularity.

<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande',tahoma,verdana,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;"> http://icons.wxug.com/hurricane/2011/seaicecomp.png <span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande',tahoma,verdana,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;">(Image courtesy Jeff Masters/Wunderground and the University of Illinois/Cryosphere Today) <span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande',tahoma,verdana,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;"> http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2003&page=1

<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande',tahoma,verdana,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;">In 2011 alone 850,000 tons of cargo shipped along Russia’s northern coast. The factors limiting greater shipping quantities are the still-short duration of the shipping season and the ice still restricting the courses of the ships to relatively narrow and shallow waters. <span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande',tahoma,verdana,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;"> http://www.thearcticinstitute.org/2012/10/the-future-of-arctic-shipping.html

<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande',tahoma,verdana,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;">In fact, Russia is building more ships to attempt to double their shipped tonnage by 2016 and also will build emergency centers to provide support for that increase in shipping. <span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande',tahoma,verdana,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;"> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-28/russia-s-norilsk-plans-to-invest-370-million-to-double-arctic-shipments.html

<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande',tahoma,verdana,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;">In the future, the continued loss of Arctic sea ice may open up routes closer and closer to the North Pole itself, shortening the transit times of ships making the risky crossing yet further. Hopefully Santa will soon relocate base ops to Antarctica.

<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande',tahoma,verdana,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;">"A modern fleet of ships does not so much make use of the sea as exploit a highway." ~ Joseph Conrad

<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande',tahoma,verdana,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;">In my next articles, I will focus on the physical reasons causing the ongoing demise of Arctic sea ice…and what the expected future holds for it. Hint: it’s not pretty (in days of Oelde, it mayhap was called Dûr Helcaraxë, the Grinding Ice…some might now refer to it as Aear Forodgalad, the Sea of Northern Lights [from the Quenya]). B)

<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande',tahoma,verdana,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;">- DB

<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande',tahoma,verdana,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;">Source article: <span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande',tahoma,verdana,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;"> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130304151800.htm

<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande',tahoma,verdana,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;">Suggested resources:

<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande',tahoma,verdana,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;">Cryosphere Today <span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande',tahoma,verdana,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;"> http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/ <span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande',tahoma,verdana,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;"> http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seasonal.extent.1900-2010.png

<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande',tahoma,verdana,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;">HYCOM Ice Thickness and Drift: <span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande',tahoma,verdana,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;"> http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/navo/arcticictn_nowcast_anim30d.gif <span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande',tahoma,verdana,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;"> http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/arctic.html

<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande',tahoma,verdana,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;">National Snow & Ice Data Center: Arctic Sea Ice News & Analysis <span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande',tahoma,verdana,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;"> http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande',tahoma,verdana,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;">Neven’s Arctic Sea Ice Blog <span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande',tahoma,verdana,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;"> http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/

<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande',tahoma,verdana,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;">PIOMAS <span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande',tahoma,verdana,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;"> @http://psc.apl.washington.edu/wordpress/research/projects/arctic-sea-ice-volume-anomaly/

<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande',tahoma,verdana,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;"> media type="custom" key="22616494"

media type="custom" key="26319642" =[|Drought Lessons From Down Under]= media type="custom" key="26319640"

media type="custom" key="26364064" [|First of its Kind Map Reveals Extent of Ocean Plastic]

=$1.3 billion L.A. River Habitat:= media type="custom" key="27790585" =[|$1.3 Billion L.A. River Habitat]= media type="custom" key="27752123" [|How did the Ocean's Garbage Patches form?] media type="youtube" key="mMG1SdeYLFE" width="560" height="315" media type="custom" key="27797813"

media type="youtube" key="K-HC3zEQ6nw" width="560" height="315"

media type="custom" key="28389883"