Snowballs Entering The Earth’s Atmosphere?

Every child knows the water cycle and that the total volume of water on the planet stays the same. However, recent research suggests that snowballs the size of houses enter the atmosphere every few seconds, adding an additional 300 million tons of water a year, enough to increase sea levels by 0.1mm.
A bit more about it here here.

The Sahara greening? Is it possible?

Scientists are now seeing signals that the Sahara desert and surrounding regions are greening due to increasing rainfall.

Go to this link in the National Geographic to find out more.

Also worth a look is this link at the bottom of the page: a map of global warming’s impacts.) Click on each item and more explanation comes up about the effects of global warming

The power of water!

The Durham Grand Canyon: Flooding after heavy rain carves vast trench in farm land

By Neil Sears

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1201388/The-Grand-Canyon-Durham-Flooding-heavy-rain-carves-vast-trench-farm-land.html#ixzz0M22H8sJp
On Friday night, it was a perfectly ordinary, perfectly flat, cornfield.

By Saturday morning, it was riven in two by a vast trench up to 30m across, 5m deep and 200 metres long.

The enormous gully  -  so big that locals have called it ‘the Grand Canyon of Durham’  -  is believed to have been formed in a matter of minutes when millions of gallons of floodwater from surrounding farmland suddenly tore through the soil towards the River Wear.

Simultaneously, the high waters of the Wear had broken the banks at exactly the same point  -  and in an instant, a new tributary to the river was formed. Luckily, no buildings were near enough to be affected.

Now the floodwater has drained away and the river has returned to its normal level, an almost empty canyon remains, with just a trickle of water at the bottom.

It is an extraordinary illustration of the power of nature  -  and shows that enough water, flowing with enough force, doesn’t need decades to carve a path through the earth.

In fact, it is estimated that the water carried into the river up to 12,000 cubic metres of soil, weighing 15,000 tons, the volume of 25 swimming pools.

Durham experienced 80mm of rain in 24 hours, ten times the average, helping to create the new feature in a field belonging to Houghall agricultural college in the village of Shincliffe.

Pete Whitfield, from the college, discovered the canyon on Saturday morning when he rushed to work to sort out the flooding problems, which were so bad several pigs were drowned.

He was early enough on the scene to see the water thundering into it from the field.

‘I heard this rushing like Niagara Falls,’ he said. ‘And I could see this water wearing away the land. The field was perfectly flat 25 acres before. Now there’s only about 18 acres left.

‘It’s an amazing phenomenon, but I estimate it’s the result of water from up to 120 acres of flooded land.’

Organic farming ‘could feed Africa’

YES!

An analysis of 114 projects in 24 African countries found that yields had more than doubled where organic, or near-organic practices had been used. That increase in yield jumped to 128 per cent in east Africa. The study found that organic practices outperformed traditional methods and chemical-intensive conventional farming. It also found strong environmental benefits such as improved soil fertility, better retention of water and resistance to drought.

And there is more. Find out about Henry Murage here.

More for year 9 and IGCSE

Go to the year 9 page to find out more about Ike

Go to IGCSE to find out what happens when the levees are breached

Items on other pages : Year 9

There is something there for your Unit 2 on weather depressions – and don’t forget to take a look at ‘Wondering where the summer went?’ below

Wondering where the summer went?

What’s happened to global warming? The last 2 summers in the UK has been used by some to suggest it is all a myth. Apparently not! It is the jet stream that brings us good weather. However, due to La Nina weather system in the Pacific, the jet stream was pulled south leaving us with depression after depression from the Atlantic on the weather map – that means rain and more rain! But good news, La Nina is ‘dying’ and so by September, just in time to go back to school, the weather should improve – see this article

Coloured lightening

Over much of Southern England on Monday, unusual lightening was seen,  according to this article in the Times