Those long, intense plumes of moisture in the sky known as atmospheric rivers are a vital water source to communities along the U.S. West Coast. In their absence, desiccating droughts can develop. But in their presence, they can cause extreme rain and floods that can disrupt travel, cause landslides, and trigger infrastructure failures.
>> Read the Full Article
Struggling to keep my balance, I teeter along a narrow plankway that wends through the rolling foothills near Denali National Park and Preserve. Just ahead, Northern Arizona University ecologist Ted Schuur, a lanky 6-footer, leads the way to Eight Mile Lake, his research field site since 2003. Occasionally I slip off the planks onto the squishy vegetative carpet below. The feathery mosses, sedges and diminutive shrubs that grow here—Labrador tea, low bush cranberry, bog rosemary—are well-adapted to wet, acidic soils.
>> Read the Full Article
The Silk Road pattern in meteorology, is a wave-like teleconnection pattern in summer propagating eastward under the wave-guidance of the upper-tropospheric Asian westerly jet stream. It shows up as alternate southerly and northerly anomalies (or cyclonic and anticyclonic circulation anomalies) along the jet, and is the leading mode of the interannual variability of upper-tropospheric meridional winds. It is interesting that this meteorological teleconnection pattern covers most domains along the ancient Silk Road, and exerts significant influences on climatic anomalies over a broad area of the Eurasian continent.
>> Read the Full Article
