Ecology
Ecology is the branch of biology which studies the interactions among organisms and their environment. Objects of study include interactions of organisms that include biotic and abiotic components of their environment. Topics of interest include the biodiversity, distribution and populations of organisms, as well as cooperation and competition within and between species. Ecosystems are dynamically interacting systems of organisms, the communities they make up, the non-living components of their environment. Ecosystem processes, such as primary production, nutrient cycling, niche construction, regulate the flux of energy and matter through an environment; these processes are sustained by organisms with specific life history traits. Biodiversity means the varieties of species and ecosystems, enhances certain ecosystem services. Ecology is not synonymous with natural history, or environmental science, it overlaps with the related sciences of evolutionary biology and ethology. An important focus for ecologists is to improve the understanding of how biodiversity affects ecological function.
Ecologists seek to explain: Life processes and adaptations The movement of materials and energy through living communities The successional development of ecosystems The abundance and distribution of organisms and biodiversity in the context of the environment. Ecology has practical applications in conservation biology, wetland management, natural resource management, city planning, community health, economics and applied science, human social interaction. For example, the Circles of Sustainability approach treats ecology as more than the environment'out there', it is not treated as separate from humans. Organisms and resources compose ecosystems which, in turn, maintain biophysical feedback mechanisms that moderate processes acting on living and non-living components of the planet. Ecosystems sustain life-supporting functions and produce natural capital like biomass production, the regulation of climate, global biogeochemical cycles, water filtration, soil formation, erosion control, flood protection, many other natural features of scientific, economic, or intrinsic value.
The word "ecology" was coined in 1866 by the German scientist Ernst Haeckel. Ecological thought is derivative of established currents in philosophy from ethics and politics. Ancient Greek philosophers such as Hippocrates and Aristotle laid the foundations of ecology in their studies on natural history. Modern ecology became a much more rigorous science in the late 19th century. Evolutionary concepts relating to adaptation and natural selection became the cornerstones of modern ecological theory; the scope of ecology contains a wide array of interacting levels of organization spanning micro-level to a planetary scale phenomena. Ecosystems, for example, contain interacting life forms. Ecosystems are dynamic, they do not always follow a linear successional path, but they are always changing and sometimes so that it can take thousands of years for ecological processes to bring about certain successional stages of a forest. An ecosystem's area can vary from tiny to vast. A single tree is of little consequence to the classification of a forest ecosystem, but critically relevant to organisms living in and on it.
Several generations of an aphid population can exist over the lifespan of a single leaf. Each of those aphids, in turn, support diverse bacterial communities; the nature of connections in ecological communities cannot be explained by knowing the details of each species in isolation, because the emergent pattern is neither revealed nor predicted until the ecosystem is studied as an integrated whole. Some ecological principles, however, do exhibit collective properties where the sum of the components explain the properties of the whole, such as birth rates of a population being equal to the sum of individual births over a designated time frame; the main subdisciplines of ecology, population ecology and ecosystem ecology, exhibit a difference not only of scale, but of two contrasting paradigms in the field. The former focus on organisms distribution and abundance, while the focus on materials and energy fluxes; the scale of ecological dynamics can operate like a closed system, such as aphids migrating on a single tree, while at the same time remain open with regard to broader scale influences, such as atmosphere or climate.
Hence, ecologists classify ecosystems hierarchically by analyzing data collected from finer scale units, such as vegetation associations and soil types, integrate this information to identify emergent patterns of uniform organization and processes that operate on local to regional and chronological scales. To structure the study of ecology into a conceptually manageable framework, the biological world is organized into a nested hierarchy, ranging in scale from genes, to cells, to tissues, to organs, to organisms, to species, to populations, to communities, to ecosystems, to biomes, up to the level of the biosphere; this framework exhibits non-linear behaviors.
Shimshal
Shimshal is a village located in Gojal Tehsil of Hunza District, in the Gilgit–Baltistan region of Pakistan known as Northern Areas of Pakistan. It is the highest settlement in the district, it is in the valley of a tributary of the Hunza River. Shimshal is a border village; the total area of Shimshal is 3,800 km2 and there are around two thousand inhabitants with a total of 240 households. Shimshal is made up of four major hamlets. Farmanabad is a new settlement. Aminabad is announced by vast fields of stones hemmed in by dry stone walls, fortress-like houses of stone and mud; as you approach Shimshal look for a glimpse of Odver Sar known as Shimshal Whitehorn. Shimshal has hydroelectricity from Odver stream for five months from June to October of the year. Non availability of electricity for seven months is a major problem of the local community because during this period they have had to rely on kerosene oil, solar plates and Compressed Natural Gas in cylinders as an alternatives. A small hydro electricity power station of 0.200MW is under construction at Kuk area of Shimshal, scheduled to be complete in 2017.
The village was inaccessible by motor road until October 2003, when a new road from the Karakoram Highway at Passu was constructed. The construction of non-metallic Jeep-able road started in 1985 and completed in 2003. Eighteen years of handwork become successful because of hard work and self-help, it become possible to connect Shimshal with rest of the world by mutual cooperation of the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme, Government of Pakistan and the local community. It now takes maximum three hours to reach Shimshal by jeep from Passu. Self-help or Nomus is the major factor for infrastructure development in Shimshal. Shimshalis use numerous seasonal mountain grasslands, located several days walk from the village, to sustain herds of yaks and sheep; the area was founded by his wife named Khudija. They have the only son Sher. According to Shimshal's history and tradition, their first child won the local polo game from Kargiz riding yak while the Chinese rode horses; the Shimshal River comes from this area and transforms the shape of Hunza River, which joins the Indus River below the capital city Gilgit.
The people of Shimshal are Wakhi and they speak the Wakhi language. They belong to the Ismaili sect of Shia Islam; the entire community is the follower of Aga Khan as their 49th spiritual leader, the direct descendant of Muhammad. Shimshal has produced several well known mountaineers for Pakistan. Everest and all highest peaks in seven continents around the globe. Rajab Shah has the honor of scaling all five highest peaks in Pakistan. Both Rajab Shah and Mehrban karim have received Presidential Award for Pride of Performance in the field of mountaineering. In fact Shimshalis are to Pakistan; some people call The Valley of Mountaineers in Pakistan. Shimshal is the largest village of Hunza valley, its extensive pasture lands include. The Shimshal Pamir lake attracts many tourists to it; the Lok Versa Museum of Shimshal has some antiques, musical instruments, daily life items made from wood and showcases the creativity and rich history of local community. Two books by Pam Henson are about Shimshal, "Shimshal" and "Women of Shimshal" have been published by the Shimshal Trust.
Henson is a teacher from New Zealand and wrote these books based on her experiences teaching and living in Shimshal. RIVER:- The river of Shimshal if formed by 3 sources: Khurdopin Glacier, Shimshal Pass and Zardgorban. While flowing it got some other water sources get add up in it and it gets add up in Khunjrab River to Passu River and ends up in Attabad Lake; the village of Shimshal was founded almostly 450 ago by Mamu Shing, he was a person from hunza and a member of the Wazir's family, means he belonged to the prime-minister's family He was sent to Sarikol with his wife Khodija, a wakhi person. He was sent there as an ambassador, but because of some worst situations between Sarikol and hunza he ran away from Sarikol with his wife, they were chased till the upper hunza. When they reached to shimshal it was such a remote place that his wife got angry but on they starting developing that area There Mamu Singh built up his flocks of sheep and goats, explored up the Shimshal Valley, he discovered a hole in the ground, whose mouth was covered with a great piece of slate.
When he succeeded in removing the stone, water came out from the hole and flowed along the remains of a channel, built by earlier travelers who had pass. He made a channel from. Sooner, Khodija gave birth to a son and they named him Sher, they started teaching him important things. Strangers and Sher both said that the Pamir is theirs’. So they ended up saying that the winner of the polo match that they will be playing will have the Pamir; the bet was if Sher drove the ball over Shimshal Pass toward Shuwert, he would win all territories from Shimshal to Raskam. After winning the area Sher started to explore it and on the other hand his family thought that h
Zermatt
Zermatt is a municipality in the district of Visp in the German-speaking section of the canton of Valais in Switzerland. It has a population of about 5,800 inhabitants and is classified as a town by the Swiss Federal Statistical Office, it lies at the upper end of Mattertal at an elevation of 1,620 m, at the foot of Switzerland's highest peaks. It lies about 10 km from the over 10,800 ft high Theodul Pass bordering Italy. Zermatt is famed as a ski resort of the Swiss Alps; until the mid-19th century, it was predominantly an agricultural community. The year-round population is 5,643, though there may be several times as many tourists in Zermatt at any one time. Much of the local economy is based on tourism, with about half of the jobs in town in hotels or restaurants and just under half of all apartments are vacation apartments. Just over one-third of the permanent population was born in the town, while another third moved to Zermatt from outside Switzerland; the name of Zermatt, as well as that of the Matterhorn itself, derives from the alpine meadows, or matten, in the valley.
The name appeared first as Zur Matte and became Zermatt. It may have been employed long before. Praborno or Prato Borno are the older names of Zermatt; the Romand-speaking people from the Aosta Valley and from the Romand-speaking part of canton Wallis used this name until about 1860 in the form of Praborne, or Praborgne. The reason of this change from Praborno to Zermatt is attributed to the gradual replacement of the Romance-speaking people by German-speaking colony; the town of Zermatt lies at the southern end of the Matter Valley, one of the lateral branches of the grand Valley of the Rhône. Zermatt is completely surrounded by the high mountains of the Pennine Alps including Monte Rosa, Switzerland's highest peak at 4,634 metres above sea level, it is followed by the Dom, Liskamm and the Matterhorn. Most of the Alpine four-thousanders are located in the neighbouring valleys. Zermatt is traversed by the main river of the valley: the Matter Vispa, which rises at the glaciers at the feet of the highest peaks: the Gorner Glacier on the east side near Monte Rosa and the Zmutt Glacier on the west side between Dent d'Hérens and Dent Blanche.
The town of Zermatt, while dense, is geographically small. There are three main streets which run along the banks of the Matter Vispa, numerous cross-streets around the station and the church which forms the centre of Zermatt. In general anything is at most a thirty-minute walk away. There are several "suburbs" within Zermatt. Winkelmatten/Moos, once a separate hamlet, lies on a hill on the southern side. Steinmatten is located on the eastern bank of the main river. Many hamlets are located in the valleys above Zermatt, however they are not inhabited all year round. Zum See lies south of Zermatt on the west bank of the Gorner gorge, near Furi where a cable car station is located. On the side of Zmutt valley lies the hamlet of Zmutt, north of the creek Zmuttbach. Findeln is located in the eastern valley above the creek Findelbach, it lies below the Sunnegga station. Located near a train station of the Gornergratbahn, Riffelalp is one of the highest hamlets with a chapel. Zermatt had an area, of 242.91 km2.
Of this area, about 9.4 % is used for agricultural purposes. Of the rest of the land, 0.8% is settled and 85.2% is unproductive land. Over the past two decades the amount of land, settled has increased by 54 ha and the agricultural land has decreased by 160 ha; the village was "discovered" by mid-nineteenth-century British mountaineers, most notably Edward Whymper, whose conquest of the Matterhorn made the village famous. The Matterhorn was one of the last alpine mountains to be conquered, the first expedition that reached the top ended with only 3 of the 7 climbers surviving the descent; the story is related in the Matterhorn Museum. Zermatt is a starting point for hikes into the mountains, including the Haute Route that leads to Chamonix in France and the Patrouille des Glaciers. Cable cars and chair lifts carry hikers in the summer, it is possible to cross into Italy via the Cervinia cable car station. A rack railway line runs up to the summit of the Gornergrat at 3,089 m. Zermatt is the western terminus for the Glacier Express rail service connecting to St. Moritz and the MGB.
Together with eleven other towns Zermatt is a member of the community Best of the Alps. To prevent air pollution that could obscure the town's view of the Matterhorn, the entire town is a combustion-engine car-free zone. All vehicles in Zermatt are battery driven and completely si
Gilgit-Baltistan
Gilgit-Baltistan known as the Northern Areas, is the northernmost territory administered by Pakistan. It borders Azad Kashmir to the south, the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to the west, the Wakhan Corridor of Afghanistan to the north, the Xinjiang region of China, to the east and northeast, the Indian-administered state of Jammu and Kashmir to the southeast. Gilgit-Baltistan is part of the greater Kashmir region, the subject of a long-running conflict between Pakistan and India; the territory shares a border with Azad Kashmir, together with which it is referred to by the United Nations and other international organisations as "Pakistan administered Kashmir". Gilgit-Baltistan is six times the size of Azad Kashmir; the territory borders Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir state to the south and is separated from it by the Line of Control, the de facto border between India and Pakistan. The territory of present-day Gilgit-Baltistan became a separate administrative unit in 1970 under the name "Northern Areas".
It was formed by the amalgamation of the former Gilgit Agency, the Baltistan district and several small former princely states, the larger of which being Hunza and Nagar. In 2009, it was granted limited autonomy and renamed to Gilgit-Baltistan via the Self-Governance Order signed by Pakistan president Asif Ali Zardari, which aimed to empower the people of Gilgit-Baltistan. However, scholars state that the real power rests with the governor and not with chief minister or elected assembly; the population of Gilgit-Baltistan wants to be merged into Pakistan as a separate fifth province and opposes integration with Kashmir. The Pakistani government has rejected Gilgit-Baltistani calls for integration with Pakistan on the grounds that it would jeopardise its demands for the whole Kashmir issue to be resolved according to UN resolutions. Gilgit-Baltistan covers an area of over 72,971 km² and is mountainous, it had an estimated population of 1,800,000 in 2015. Its capital city is Gilgit. Gilgit-Baltistan is home to five of the "eight-thousanders" and to more than fifty peaks above 7,000 metres.
Three of the world's longest glaciers outside the polar regions are found in Gilgit-Baltistan. The main tourism activities are trekking and mountaineering, this industry is growing in importance; the rock carvings found in various places in Gilgit-Baltistan those found in the Passu village of Hunza, suggest a human presence since 2000 BC. Within the next few centuries after human settlement in the Tibetan plateau, this region became inhabited by Tibetans, who preceded the Balti people of Baltistan. Today Baltistan bears similarity to culturally. Dards are found in the western areas; these people are the Shina-speaking peoples of Gilgit, Chilas and Diamir while in Hunza and in the upper regions Burushaski and Khowar speakers dominate. The Dards find mention in the works of Herodotus, Megasthenes, Pliny and the geographical lists of the Puranas. In the 1st century the people of these regions were followers of the Bon religion while in the 2nd century they followed Buddhism. Between 399 and 414, the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Faxian visited Gilgit-Baltistan, while in the 6th century Somana Palola was ruled by an unknown king.
Between 627 and 645, the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang travelled through this region on his pilgrimage to India. According to Chinese records from the Tang dynasty, between the 600s and the 700s, the region was governed by a Buddhist dynasty referred to as Bolü transliterated as Palola, Balur, they are believed to be the Palola Sāhi dynasty mentioned in a Brahmi inscription, are devout adherents of Vajrayana Buddhism. At the time, Little Palola was used to refer to Gilgit, while Great Palola was used to refer to Baltistan. However, the records do not disambiguate the two. In mid-600s, Gilgit came under Chinese suzerainty after the fall of Western Turkic Khaganate due to Tang military campaigns in the region. In late 600s CE, the rising Tibetan Empire wrestled control of the region from the Chinese. However, faced with growing influence of the Umayyad Caliphate and the Abbasid Caliphate to the west, the Tibetans were forced to ally themselves with the Islamic caliphates; the region was contested by Chinese and Tibetan forces, their respective vassal states, until the mid-700s.
Rulers of Gilgit held back the Arabs with their help. Between 644 and 655, Navasurendrāditya-nandin became king of Palola Sāhi dynasty in Gilgit. Numerous Sanskrit inscriptions, including the Danyor Rock Inscriptions, were discovered to be from his reign. In late 600s and early 700s, Jayamaṅgalavikramāditya-nandin was king of Gilgit. According to Chinese court records, in 717 and 719 delegations of a ruler of Great Palola named Su-fu-she-li-ji-li-ni reached the Chinese imperial court. By at least 719/720, Ladakh became part of the Tibetan Empire. By that time, Buddhism was practiced in Baltistan, Sanskrit was the written language. In 720, the delegation of Surendrāditya reached the Chinese imperial court, he was referred to by the Chinese records as the king of Great Palola. The Chinese emperor granted the ruler of Cashmere, Chandrāpīḍa, the title of "King of Cashmere". By 721/722, Baltistan had came under the influence of the Tibetan Empire. In 721–722, Tibetan army attempted but failed to capture Gilgit or Bru
Europa (moon)
Europa is the smallest of the four Galilean moons orbiting Jupiter, the sixth-closest to the planet of all the 79 known moons of Jupiter. It is the sixth-largest moon in the Solar System. Europa was discovered in 1610 by Galileo Galilei and was named after Europa, the Phoenician mother of King Minos of Crete and lover of Zeus. Smaller than Earth's Moon, Europa is made of silicate rock and has a water-ice crust and an iron–nickel core, it has a thin atmosphere composed of oxygen. Its surface is striated by cracks and streaks, but craters are few. In addition to Earth-bound telescope observations, Europa has been examined by a succession of space probe flybys, the first occurring in the early 1970s. Europa has the smoothest surface of any known solid object in the Solar System; the apparent youth and smoothness of the surface have led to the hypothesis that a water ocean exists beneath it, which could conceivably harbour extraterrestrial life. The predominant model suggests that heat from tidal flexing causes the ocean to remain liquid and drives ice movement similar to plate tectonics, absorbing chemicals from the surface into the ocean below.
Sea salt from a subsurface ocean may be coating some geological features on Europa, suggesting that the ocean is interacting with the sea floor. This may be important in determining. In addition, the Hubble Space Telescope detected water vapor plumes similar to those observed on Saturn's moon Enceladus, which are thought to be caused by erupting cryogeysers. In May 2018, astronomers provided supporting evidence of water plume activity on Europa, based on an updated critical analysis of data obtained from the Galileo space probe, which orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003; such plume activity could help researchers in a search for life from the subsurface Europan ocean without having to land on the moon. The Galileo mission, launched in 1989, provides the bulk of current data on Europa. No spacecraft has yet landed on Europa, although there have been several proposed exploration missions; the European Space Agency's Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer is a mission to Ganymede, due to launch in 2022, will include two flybys of Europa.
NASA's planned. Europa, along with Jupiter's three other large moons, Io, Callisto, was discovered by Galileo Galilei on 8 January 1610, independently by Simon Marius; the first reported observation of Io and Europa was made by Galileo on 7 January 1610 using a 20×-magnification refracting telescope at the University of Padua. However, in that observation, Galileo could not separate Io and Europa due to the low magnification of his telescope, so that the two were recorded as a single point of light; the following day, 8 January 1610, Io and Europa were seen for the first time as separate bodies during Galileo's observations of the Jupiter system. Europa is named after Europa, daughter of the king of Tyre, a Phoenician noblewoman in Greek mythology. Like all the Galilean satellites, Europa is named after a lover of Zeus, the Greek counterpart of Jupiter. Europa became the queen of Crete; the naming scheme was suggested by Simon Marius. The names fell out of favor for a considerable time and were not revived in general use until the mid-20th century.
In much of the earlier astronomical literature, Europa is referred to by its Roman numeral designation as Jupiter II or as the "second satellite of Jupiter". In 1892, the discovery of Amalthea, whose orbit lay closer to Jupiter than those of the Galilean moons, pushed Europa to the third position; the Voyager probes discovered three more inner satellites in 1979, so Europa is now considered Jupiter's sixth satellite, though it is still sometimes referred to as Jupiter II. Europa orbits Jupiter in just over three and a half days, with an orbital radius of about 670,900 km. With an orbital eccentricity of only 0.009, the orbit itself is nearly circular, the orbital inclination relative to Jupiter's equatorial plane is small, at 0.470°. Like its fellow Galilean satellites, Europa is tidally locked to Jupiter, with one hemisphere of Europa facing Jupiter; because of this, there is a sub-Jovian point on Europa's surface, from which Jupiter would appear to hang directly overhead. Europa's prime meridian is a line passing through this point.
Research suggests that the tidal locking may not be full, as a non-synchronous rotation has been proposed: Europa spins faster than it orbits, or at least did so in the past. This suggests an asymmetry in internal mass distribution and that a layer of subsurface liquid separates the icy crust from the rocky interior; the slight eccentricity of Europa's orbit, maintained by the gravitational disturbances from the other Galileans, causes Europa's sub-Jovian point to oscillate around a mean position. As Europa comes nearer to Jupiter, Jupiter's gravitational attraction increases, causing Europa to elongate towards and away from it; as Europa moves away from Jupiter, Jupiter's gravitational force decreases, causing Europa to relax back into a more spherical shape, creating tides in its ocean. The orbital eccentricity of Europa is continuously pumped by its mean-motion resonance with Io. Thus, the tidal flexing kneads Europa's interior and gives it a source of heat allowing its ocean to stay liquid while driving subsurface geological processes.
The ultimate source of this energy is Jupiter's rotation, tapped by Io through the tides it raises on Jupiter and is transferred to E
Ice calving
Ice calving known as glacier calving or iceberg calving, is the breaking of ice chunks from the edge of a glacier. It is a form of ice ablation or ice disruption and is caused by the glacier expanding, it is the sudden release and breaking away of a mass of ice from a glacier, ice front, ice shelf, or crevasse. The ice that breaks away can be classified as an iceberg, but may be a growler, bergy bit, or a crevasse wall breakaway. Calving of glaciers is accompanied by a loud cracking or booming sound before blocks of ice up to 60 metres high break loose and crash into the water; the entry of the ice into the water causes large, hazardous waves. The waves formed in locations like Johns Hopkins Glacier can be so large that boats cannot approach closer than 3 kilometres; these events have become major tourist attractions in locations such as Alaska. Many glaciers terminate at oceans or freshwater lakes which results with the calving of large numbers of icebergs. Calving of Greenland's glaciers produce 12,000 to 15,000 icebergs each year alone.
Calving of ice shelves is preceded by a rift. These events are not observed. Etymologically, calving is cognatic with calving as in bearing a calf, it is useful to classify causes of calving into first and third order processes. First order processes are responsible for the overall rate of calving at the glacier scale; the first order cause of calving is longitudinal stretching, which controls the formation of crevasses. When crevasses penetrate the full thickness of the ice, calving will occur. Longitudinal stretching is controlled by friction at the base and edges of the glacier, glacier geometry and water pressure at the bed; these factors, exert the primary control on calving rate. Second and third order calving processes can be considered to be superimposed on the first order process above, control the occurrence of individual calving events, rather than the overall rate. Melting at the waterline is an important second order calving process as it undercuts the subaerial ice, leading to collapse.
Other second order processes include tidal and seismic events, buoyant forces and melt water wedging. When calving occurs due to waterline melting, only the subaerial part of the glacier will calve, leaving a submerged'foot'. Thus, a third order process is defined, whereby upward buoyant forces cause this ice foot to break off and emerge at the surface; this process is dangerous, as it has been known to occur, without warning, up to 300m from the glacier terminus. Though many factors that contribute to calving have been identified, a reliable predictive mathematical formula is still under development. Data is being assembled from ice shelves in Antarctica and Greenland to help establish a'calving law'. Variables used in models include properties of the ice such as thickness, temperature, c-axis fabric, impurity loading, though'ice front normal spreading stress', is the most important variable, however it is not measured. There are several concepts upon which to base a predictive law. One theory states that the calving rate is a function of the ratio of tensile stress to vertical compressive stress, i.e. the calving rate is a function of the ratio of the largest to smallest principle stress.
Another theory, based on preliminary research, shows that the calving rate increases as a power of the spreading rate near the calving front. In October, 1988, the A-38 iceberg broke away from the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf, it was about 150 km x 50 km. A second calving created an iceberg 167 km x 32 km. A major calving event occurred in 1962 to 1963. There is a section at the front of the shelf referred to as the'loose tooth'; this section, about 30 km by 30 km is moving at about 12 meters per day and is expected to calve away. The largest observed calving of an ice island happened at Ward Hunt Ice Shelf. Sometime between August 1961 and April 1962 600 km2 of ice broke away. In 2005, nearly the entire shelf calved from the northern edge of Ellesmere Island. Since 1900, about 90 % of Ellesmere Island's ice shelves have floated away; this event was the biggest of its kind for at least the past 25 years. A total of 87.1 km2 of ice was lost in this event. The largest piece was 66.4 km2 in area, This large ice shelf, located in the Weddell Sea, extending along the east coast of Antarctic Peninsula, consists of three segments, two of which have calved.
In January 1995, the Larsen A Ice Shelf containing 3,250 km² of ice 220 m thick calved and disintegrated. The Larsen B Ice Shelf calved and disintegrated in February 2002. Known as the Ilulissat Glacier or Sermeq Kujalleq in western Greenland, in an ongoing event, 35 billion tonnes of icebergs calve off and pass out of the fjord every year. Photographer James Balog and his team were examining this glacier in 2008 when their cameras caught a piece of glacier the size of the Lower Manhattan fall into the ocean; the calving event lasted for 75 minutes, during which time the glacier retreated a full mile across a calving face three miles wide. Adam LeWinter and Jeff Orlowski captured this footage, featured in the film Chasing Ice. First conceived in 1995 by Ryan Casey while filming for IMAX, this sport involves a surfer being towed into range by a jet ski and waiting for a mass of ice to calve from a glacier. Surfers can wait for several hours in the icy water for an event; when a glacier calves, the mass of ice can produce 8 metre waves.
Rides of 300 metres lasting for one minute can be achieved. Ice sheet dynamics Ice shelf Glacier Ablation Holdsworth, G. 1971. Calving From Wa
Meteorology
Meteorology is a branch of the atmospheric sciences which includes atmospheric chemistry and atmospheric physics, with a major focus on weather forecasting. The study of meteorology dates back millennia, though significant progress in meteorology did not occur until the 18th century; the 19th century saw modest progress in the field after weather observation networks were formed across broad regions. Prior attempts at prediction of weather depended on historical data, it was not until after the elucidation of the laws of physics and more the development of the computer, allowing for the automated solution of a great many equations that model the weather, in the latter half of the 20th century that significant breakthroughs in weather forecasting were achieved. An important domain of weather forecasting is marine weather forecasting as it relates to maritime and coastal safety, in which weather effects include atmospheric interactions with large bodies of water. Meteorological phenomena are observable weather events that are explained by the science of meteorology.
Meteorological phenomena are described and quantified by the variables of Earth's atmosphere: temperature, air pressure, water vapour, mass flow, the variations and interactions of those variables, how they change over time. Different spatial scales are used to describe and predict weather on local and global levels. Meteorology, atmospheric physics, atmospheric chemistry are sub-disciplines of the atmospheric sciences. Meteorology and hydrology compose the interdisciplinary field of hydrometeorology; the interactions between Earth's atmosphere and its oceans are part of a coupled ocean-atmosphere system. Meteorology has application in many diverse fields such as the military, energy production, transport and construction; the word meteorology is from the Ancient Greek μετέωρος metéōros and -λογία -logia, meaning "the study of things high in the air". The ability to predict rains and floods based on annual cycles was evidently used by humans at least from the time of agricultural settlement if not earlier.
Early approaches to predicting weather were practiced by priests. Cuneiform inscriptions on Babylonian tablets included associations between rain; the Chaldeans differentiated 46 ° halos. Ancient Indian Upanishads contain mentions of seasons; the Samaveda mentions sacrifices to be performed. Varāhamihira's classical work Brihatsamhita, written about 500 AD, provides evidence of weather observation. In 350 BC, Aristotle wrote Meteorology. Aristotle is considered the founder of meteorology. One of the most impressive achievements described in the Meteorology is the description of what is now known as the hydrologic cycle; the book De Mundo noted If the flashing body is set on fire and rushes violently to the Earth it is called a thunderbolt. They are all called ` swooping bolts'. Lightning is sometimes smoky, is called'smoldering lightning". At other times, it travels in crooked lines, is called forked lightning; when it swoops down upon some object it is called'swooping lightning'. The Greek scientist Theophrastus compiled a book on weather forecasting, called the Book of Signs.
The work of Theophrastus remained a dominant influence in the study of weather and in weather forecasting for nearly 2,000 years. In 25 AD, Pomponius Mela, a geographer for the Roman Empire, formalized the climatic zone system. According to Toufic Fahd, around the 9th century, Al-Dinawari wrote the Kitab al-Nabat, in which he deals with the application of meteorology to agriculture during the Muslim Agricultural Revolution, he describes the meteorological character of the sky, the planets and constellations, the sun and moon, the lunar phases indicating seasons and rain, the anwa, atmospheric phenomena such as winds, lightning, floods, rivers, lakes. Early attempts at predicting weather were related to prophecy and divining, were sometimes based on astrological ideas. Admiral FitzRoy tried to separate scientific approaches from prophetic ones. Ptolemy wrote on the atmospheric refraction of light in the context of astronomical observations. In 1021, Alhazen showed that atmospheric refraction is responsible for twilight.
St. Albert the Great was the first to propose that each drop of falling rain had the form of a small sphere, that this form meant that the rainbow was produced by light interacting with each raindrop. Roger Bacon was the first to calculate the angular size of the rainbow, he stated. In the late 13th century and early 14th century, Kamāl al-Dīn al-Fārisī and Theodoric of Freiberg were the first to give the correct explanations for the primary rainbow phenomenon. Theoderic went further and explained the secondary rainbow. In 1716, Edmund Halley suggested that aurorae are caused by "magnetic effluvia" moving along the Earth's magnetic field lines. In 1441, King Sejong's son, Prince Munjong of Korea, invented the first standardized rain gauge; these were sent throughout the Joseon dynasty of Korea as an official tool to assess land taxes based
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