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Showing posts from November, 2019

Rising Global Surface Temperature change 1850-2018

Global temperature has been consistently rising since the 1970s. These seemingly small increases in temperature may appear insignificant. However, all this accumulated heat drive regional and seasonal temperature extremes, reducing snow cover and sea ice, intensifying heavy rainfall, and changing habitat range for plants and animals-expanding some and shrinking others. This graphic signifies the change in global surface temperature relative to the 1951 - 1980 average. Reddit user: Robert Janezic Eight of the ten hottest years ever recorded have happened in the past ten years. 2016 was the hottest year ever recorded. In 2016 each continent recorded a top-five hottest year, with varying levels of an anomaly (how much warmer than average the most recent year was global).

The wonders of plant breeding

Wild cabbage  (Brassica oleracea L.), and is indigenous to seaside southern and western Europe. A hardy plant in its uncultivated form, its excellent tolerance for salt and lime, and its intolerance of competition from other plant species commonly restrict its natural occurrence to limestone rocks. Wild cabbage is a high biennial plant that forms a stout rosette of large leaves in the first year. This adaptation serves to save water and nutrients in its challenging growing environment. Wild cabbage has become entrenched as an essential human food crop plant, used because of its abundant food supplies, which are stored over the winter in its leaves. It is rich in vital nutrients, including vitamin C. Scientists consider it has been cultivated for many thousand years. Still, its history as a domesticated plant is not clear before the Ancient Greeks. Theophrastus describes three kinds of Brassica oleracea: a curly-leaved, a smooth-leaved, and a wild-type. The cultivars of wild

Which countries will double their population by 2050?

The World Population Data Sheet (2020) shows that the global population is forecasted to grow from 7.8 billion in 2020 to 9.9 billion by 2050. This level represents a rise of higher than 25 percent from 2020. First map - Medium-fertility is used; second map - low-fertility variable is used; the third map - high fertility variable is used. (Reddit user: abu_doubleu) More than 50% of the world population growth between now and 2050 is expected to occur in Africa.  Africa has the most significant rate of population increase among other continents. The population of Sub-Saharan Africa is predicted to double by 2050. Africa to move the world's population towards 10 billion by 2050. Nowadays, Sub-Saharan Africa is the youngest region globally, where 46 percent of the population is under age 15. Angola and Benin are forecasted to rise by at least 150 percent of their contemporary population between 2020 and 2050, while Niger's population is supposed to increase by about 175 perc

Tree Height Maps

Scientists from NASA created the map of the height of the planet’s forest. The map was generated using 2.5 million laser pulse measurements from space. The global's highest forest is Rockefeller Forest in Humboldt Redwoods State Park in northern California, consisting of dominant tree species -  the coast redwoods ( Sequoia sempervirens ). In this forest, about 130 trees are higher 107 meters (351 feet) tall, including 30 trees that are higher than 110 m (~361 feet). The tallest tree is Hyperion that was estimated at 115.85 meters or 380.1 feet. Other tallest trees are found in the other hemisphere.  Mountain ash ( Eucalyptus regnans ) in the rainy Tasmania region are 101 meters or 330 feet tall.  Another tree giant was found in Sabah's forests (Borneo), recently discovered exceptionally tall Yellow meranti ( Shorea faguetiana ) whose height is 100.8 meters or 330.7 feet. Areas like Tasmania, Borneo, and Northern California share significant rainfall, moisture, and low evapor

Global Remoteness

The maps below are based on remoteness from settlements, roads, railroads, and airports. The green areas depict areas where travel to the nearest settlement, road, and other transport facilities can be estimated in hundreds of kilometers. Most people dwell in red-colored areas, while more than 55% of the global population now resides in urban areas. Only 15% of people in developed countries live more than an hour of driving time from a city. These maps look like islands in the world ocean. Roads fragment the environment and function as hurdles to cross barriers for living organisms and cause the extinction of numerous species. Habitat loss, which can happen through habitat fragmentation, is estimated as the greatest threat to species. Population dynamics of split species populations tend to alter asynchronously. A declining population can be "saved" by migrating from an expanding neighboring population in an unfragmented environment. In a fragmented environment, the barri

The Warming in the Arctic As a Mountain

Climate change is to long-term changes in temperatures, precipitations, and weather patterns. These changes may be natural, but after the 1800s, human actions have been the central driver of climate change, principally due to burning fossil fuels, which contributes heat-trapping gases. Scientists are trying to predict climatic parameters for the future, taking into account various scenarios of human development. Four pathways were applied for climate modeling and research by IPCC. RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP6, and RCP8.5 variety of possible scenarios for changing the planet's climate based on the level to which humankind decreases its greenhouse gas emissions. The number of RCP match how many extra watts per square meter of radiative forcing we can expect from the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which in turn depends on how much greenhouse gas is really in the atmosphere of our planet. RCP8.5 is the most severe scenario, essentially with the assumption that we do entirely nothing to s