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Showing posts from March, 2018

The stone kingdom: Agura waterfalls (Russia) after months of drought

The Agura is a small river about 10 km. It arises at the foot of Alek crest about 300 m above sea-level. The Agura flows into the Black Sea. The river formed a picturesque gorge, striking with its odd and virgin beauty, located between Ahun Mount and the Eagle cliffs. The famous Agur waterfalls located in the gorge became a tourist attraction long ago; they were included in the earliest and most popular tourist route over Greater Sochi in the early 20th century.

Worldwide Climate Change (2000 - 2070)

ClimateEx (Climate Explorer) is an interactive web application for around the globe exploration of spatiotemporal changes in climate by means of the Climate Similarity Search. The user selects a location in the world and the point in time, examines a climatogram corresponding to this selection, selects a target point in time, and issues a query. In response to the query, ClimateEx generates a worldwide similarity map with colors encoding a degree of similarity between a query climate and local climates at the selected target time. With ClimateEx you can explore spatial variability of present-day climate and inspect climate trends without direct references to the numerical values of climatic variables.

Projected economic damage from climate change (% US county GDP) from 2080 to 2099

Climate change poses the greatest threat to the southern United States.

All-time temperature records

The map below shows 20 years of all-time temperature records from the 100,000 approved weather stations in the NOAA GHCN-Daily database. Each dot shows the highest or lowest min or max temperature ever recorded at a station. Around 40,000 all-time records were set in the last two decades, out of 500 million daily min and max entries. Source:  flourish.studio

White Rocks in the Colchis forests of the Caucasus

White rocks are one of the most amazing canyons of Sochi (Russia). Astonishing rock formations and unique vegetation, preserved from the Tertiary period, attracts tourists from all over the world. Unfortunately, the insect (Cydalima perspectalis) killing the boxwood trees. This insect was unintentionally brought from China during the greening of the Olympic city.

Billions of birds migrate

Different types of birds take routes of widely varying lengths. Some round-trip migrations can be as long as 44,000 miles, equivalent to almost two round-the-world trips. Others are much shorter. Some birds even migrate on foot. Many cover thousands of miles and move back and forth between continents. To conserve energy, migrating birds often take direct—and dangerous—routes, which can expose them to storms, predators, and disorientation from perilous navigation conditions. Migrations that cut across deserts or open water are especially risky. On rare occasions, a storm front or band of rain intersects the birds, killing thousands and forcing an entire sky full of them to stop at the first land they encounter. Birdwatchers revel in these events (known as fallouts). Colorful warblers, orioles, and tanagers decorate every bush and provide eye-level views as they forage ravenously to recover from the difficult flight. Human activity over the past century has increased the hazards