Earth Day 2025

Today we celebrate our planet, our earthly home. At our home in the woods a celebration of the planet takes place in some way every day. Perhaps it's a seed order, a letter about water quality in the creek that crosses our property, admiring a blooming orchid or slicing into an amazing tomato harvested a few yards from the kitchen. More often these days I simply watch nature flowing through the seasons.

Our appreciation of nature persists in spite of the full-on seizure and politicization of environmental themes by the radical left - the green movement - that came with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990. Even the unhinged need an anchor and it is after all the birthday (1870) of the Communist butcher, Vladimir Lenin. Still, it's sad they selected such a universal idea. And now even our information technology isolates us from the outside making it more difficult to experience, understand, appreciate, and protect our planet. All of my adult life, I fought hard to dissolve the barriers between people and nature. Whether we like it or not we live IN nature. The sooner we recognize it the better off both we and the planet will coexist.

Father Mississippi                  Walter Inglis Anderson, U.S., ca. 1955

Experiencing the earth and the built environment upon it has been the greatest teacher over the years. The written word provided significant guidance along the way. First came the foundation heard from childhood:

Psalm 104

1 Praise the LORD, O my soul. O LORD my God, you are very great; you are clothed with splendor and majesty. 2 He wraps himself in light as with a garment; he stretches out the heavens like a tent 3 and lays the beams of his upper chambers on their waters. He makes the clouds his chariot and rides on the wings of the wind. 4 He makes winds his messengers, flames of fire his servants. 5 He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved. 6 You covered it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. 7 But at your rebuke the waters fled, at the sound of your thunder they took to flight; 8 they flowed over the mountains, they went down into the valleys, to the place you assigned for them. 9 You set a boundary they cannot cross; never again will they cover the earth. 10 He makes springs pour water into the ravines; it flows between the mountains. 11 They give water to all the beasts of the field; the wild donkeys quench their thirst. 12 The birds of the air nest by the waters; they sing among the branches. 13 He waters the mountains from his upper chambers; the earth is satisfied by the fruit of his work. 14 He makes grass grow for the cattle, and plants for man to cultivate-- bringing forth food from the earth: 15 wine that gladdens the heart of man, oil to make his face shine, and bread that sustains his heart. 16 The trees of the LORD are well watered, the cedars of Lebanon that he planted. 17 There the birds make their nests; the stork has its home in the pine trees. 18 The high mountains belong to the wild goats; the crags are a refuge for the coneys. 19 The moon marks off the seasons, and the sun knows when to go down. 20 You bring darkness, it becomes night, and all the beasts of the forest prowl. 21 The lions roar for their prey and seek their food from God. 22 The sun rises, and they steal away; they return and lie down in their dens. 23 Then man goes out to his work, to his labor until evening. 24 How many are your works, O LORD! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. 25 There is the sea, vast and spacious, teeming with creatures beyond number-- living things both large and small. 26 There the ships go to and fro, and the leviathan, which you formed to frolic there. 27 These all look to you to give them their food at the proper time. 28 When you give it to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are satisfied with good things. 29 When you hide your face, they are terrified; when you take away their breath, they die and return to the dust. 30 When you send your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth. 31 May the glory of the LORD endure forever; may the LORD rejoice in his works-- 32 he who looks at the earth, and it trembles, who touches the mountains, and they smoke. 33 I will sing to the LORD all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live. 34 May my meditation be pleasing to him, as I rejoice in the LORD. 35 But may sinners vanish from the earth and the wicked be no more. Praise the LORD, O my soul. Praise the LORD.

And here, from 1971, are words that to me reinforce that foundation:

...If you think that the world is going somewhere, that there are certain things that are supposed to happen and there are certain things that are supposed not to happen you never see the way it is like music. Music has no destination. We don' play it in order to get somewhere. If that were the way, the best orchestras would be those who got to the end of the piece the fastest. Music is a pattern which we listen to and enjoy as it unfolds. In the same way, "Where is the water going?" Where do the leaves go? Where are the clouds going? There not going anywhere because nature understands that the point of the whole thing is to be here, to be wide awake to the now that is going on. So when you listen to music you don't try to hold in your memory what is past or to think about what's coming. You listen to the pattern as it unfolds and so watch it as it moves now. It's a dance. And dancing is like music for when you dance you dance just to dance. You don't aim at a particular place on the floor that is your destination of the dance. You listen to the music and you move your body with it [as if] your eyes are following the patterns of the water.

 

The secret of...life is to spend some time every day in which you don't think but just watch, in which you don't form any ideas about life but look at it, listen to it, smell it, feel it. And when you get rid of all the talk in your head, all the ideas about what I do as distinct from what happen to me or what's the difference between man and nature or between what's mine and what's yours it all goes. And it's just the dancing pattern, what the Chinese call "li," the word that originally meant the markings in jade, the grain in wood, or...the pattern on water. When you let go of the definitions, of the attempt to try to pin down nature, to pin down life in your mind so that you can feel you are completely in control of it, its all based on the idea that you're different from it, that you have to master it. When you don't pin it down anymore, when you don't try to cling to it as if it was something different from you then your whole life has about it the sensation of flowing like water. It always goes away. but it always comes back because away and back are two sides of the same thing. Let it go!

Earth Day 2025 will soon be over in my woods but these passages where East meets West tell me that every day is an Earth day. For me the celebration indeed flows like water. Every day is a day to spend some time in observing nature and practicing its wise stewardship.

Five generations ago the Czech composer, Antonin Dvorak, spent his last summer in the United States in the Czech settlement of Spillville, Iowa. In two weeks there surrounded by a landscape of fields, farms, and families under the open skies of the prairie he composed what has become known as the American Quartet. It is a beautiful expression of the optimism of the American experience (see Alexis de Toqueville's Democracy in America) and a fine way to conclude remarks on what should be an uplifting celebration of the "big blue marble" we call Earth.

I hope this post encourages you to go OUTside and find your INside.

 



Sources

Text:

Psalm 104, Holy Bible, NIV

Alan Watts, writer/narrator, Buddhism, Man and Nature, Hartley Foundation, Inc., Cos Cob, Connecticut, 1968

Photos and Illustrations:
Anderson painting, porterbriggs.com

Krakatoa Then, Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apal Now

 

The Scream                     Edvard Munch 1893

Imagine waking up on this fine Tuesday morning to hear that a gigantic magnetic storm will disrupt much of the planet's electronics and communication networks in two days. This event simply isn't going to break up your digital reception of Saturday's big game  - Go Dawgs. It's going to require months of reconstruction - software and hardware - on power grids, communication systems and circuit boards on land, sea, air, and in space. I raise this issue not to alarm but to use coronal mass ejection (CME) and similar electromagnetic pulse (EMP) events as modern-day examples of climate issues that need to compete with the longer term phenomenon of global climate change. Furthermore, I am not about to deny or denigrate the existence and significance of global warming and cooling. It happens and I have no issue with mitigation and preparation for the consequences. On the other hand, sometimes our priorities don't seem to match the serious short-term and potentially catastrophic threats we face. Scientists and engineers already know of an event in 1859 that, had it occurred this morning in our high tech electronic world, would have caused widespread threats to social, political, and economic systems worldwide.

Why raise the issue today? This day marks the 141st anniversary of the massive volcanic explosion of the Indonesian island known as Krokatoa. The event killed over 36,000 people, sent a measurable shock wave around the world seven times and produced the loudest noise heard in recorded history, a noise heard in Perth, Australia, more than 2800 miles from the island. Geophysical impacts included a decline of over 2 degrees in the planet's average global temperatures and more than a decade of memorable atmospheric events including, vivid sunsets, lavender suns, and noctilucent clouds.

This was an astounding event in earth history and a modern-day lesson in the fragile nature of the planet and its inhabitants. As I've said before, nature in all her beauty can be a cruel mother. In light of the recent events like Mount St. Helens, record setting earthquakes, earth-grazing fireballs, and meteors, it's also a lesson that radical global climate change could occur tomorrow as well as a century from now. Granted, the sciences in question are little more than 150 years old but we have come a long way in understanding, yet we know there are some events beyond knowledge and control.


This is a timely anniversary given that an underwater volcano (Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apal) in Tonga, a Pacific island nation, erupted in January 2022 and thrust as much as 160 million tons of water vapor into the stratosphere. Climatologists soon determined this instantaneous 5% increase in water vapor could likely increase global temperatures for some years to come. For climate scientists this is a unique event as it is the first eruption of its kind that can be effectively measured and analyzed. In other words there is no forecast model for the Tonga volcano. All science can do is observe, provide some analysis, and issue essentially speculative forecasts on the impacts of the event. If this year's high temperatures - it's called weather - tell us anything it's that climate scientists seem to be on to something.

Do keep the faith, my friends. There's a really good probability for sunrise tomorrow. The chances for more tomorrows are equally high because some of our finest earth and space scientists study and stand watch for these threats, short-term and long-term. I can't imagine a more exciting career than one exploring the far reaches of the planet and its journey in the universe.

In case you're wondering: Edvard Muunch painted four versions of The Scream of Nature over a seventeen year period beginning in 1893. Some experts believe his depiction of the vivid orange-red sky came from his observations of similar sunsets caused by the explosion of Krakatoa a decade earlier. I wonder how many artists will be incorporating the effects of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apal on our environment over the next few decades.





Sources


Text:
The Tonga Volcano Shook the World: It May Also Affect the Climate, The New York Times, September 22, 2022

National Meteor Watch Day 2024

Perseid Meteor 2012

Today is National Meteor Watch Day. The date, June 30, was chosen because it is the anniversay of the Tunguska Event in Russia in 1908. On that day a meteor perhaps as wide as 260 feet exploded at an altitude of six miles over the wilderness. The blast destroyed forests and wildlife, including severl large reinbeer herds, over a area of 840 square miles. Although there is plenty of evidence of even larger explosions of this type the Tunguska Event remains the largest in recorded history. 

Fortunately destructive meteors are an exceptionally rare event and should not keep us from enjoying what we've come to know as shooting stars, Although meteor showers provide better opportunities for watching the show it goes on every night. If you have a clear sky tonight would be a fine time to go outside and watch these small bits of space debris as they burn up in our atmosphere. The waning moon will offer only limited interference this year so a clear sky away from light sources should make for excellent viewing. 

Most meteors only survive about one second as they hit the earth's atmosphere at around 25,000 to 160,000 miles per hour. The show takes place anywhere from thirty to seventy miles above in the atmospheric region known as the mesosphere. Depending on composition and speed, meteors can appear in a variety of colors including white, orange, yellow, blue, purple, and red. If a meteor reaches the ground it becomes a meteorite. Thankfully, few meteors actually hit the earth intact but about six tons of meteor dust settles on our planet every day. Although it's fun to watch the sky for meteors and other near earth objects the potential for significant environemntal impacts on the planet certainly warrant their observation and study. Here is a good example why.

This day is also a good reminder that the Perseid shower, the most reliable of the year, peaks on August 13. Unfortunately the moon will be just past full so there will be plenty of interference that evening. All is not lost because the Perseids begin around mid-July and end in late August so there will be plenty of hours of clear skies and good viewing during that five week period.

Here's a link for more information about National Meteor Watch Day. For a forecast of what you can expect to see in the weeks leading up to and including the Perseids you can check out the American Meteor Society's website here.





Sources:

Photos:
Visian ICL Blog, visianinfo.con, Roberto Porto

Text:
wikipedia.com
nationalcalendarday.com

From Northern Lights To Summer Sprites

Sprites                  Lomonosov Moscow State University

Earlier this month a large part of the US was treated to the best display of the northern lights in decades. We're not likely to see a show like that again this year but a forecast for thunderstorms this afternoon reminded me that it's time to mention another spectacular atmosperic event, the sprites. A sprite is a member of a family of upper atmosphere lightning phenomena called transient luminous events or TLE's. They actually occur rather frequently in a split second and are visible to the naked eye. Other members of the TLE family include blue jets and elves. All are associated with thunderstorms and although reports of sightings go back centuries they were unknown to science a little more than a generation ago. Digital photography and advanced computer technology enabled both their imaging and analysis beginning around 1995. 

Source: Centre Nationales D'Etudes Spatiales

I find these atmospheric events fascinating, beautiful, and mysterious but the probability of observing them in real time is practically nil. I have yet to see one in person. For certain I won't be seeing anything from my woodland home in Georgia or the eastern U.S. for that matter. When you find yourself in a thunderstorm-rich location with unlimited visibility beyond the horizon you have found the ideal conditions for LTE observation. In other words, our readers in Oklahoma, Texas, and other wide open spaces need only step out on the porch and into a comfortable chair to enjoy the possibility of seeing a rare and still mysterious show in the distant sky.

Below is an amazing video by the quintessential storm chaser, Pecos Hank, and the world's leading TLE photographer, Bill Smith. They are also credited with the discovery and naming of a new TLE they called the ghost. It's ten minutes of breathtaking photography and excellent instruction in what could be a complex subject for non-science folks. I can only hope the high standards of science instruction found in this video is in every classroom in the US.

In this brief video Pecos Hank documented the TLE activity over Texas on May 17, 2021, when he witnessed his "most incredible sprite storm...to date." As a weather observer for seventty years I can so appreciate his enthusiam on seeing such an amazing phenomenon.

These videos are but a small sample of Pecos Hank's award winning work focused on super-cell thunderstorms and tornadoes. If you enjoy weather science and storm chasing combined with high production values his You Tube channel is your destination.


Keep looking up!

Earth Day 2024

Today we celebrate our planet, our earthly home. At our home in the woods a celebration of the planet takes place in some way every day. Perhaps it's a seed order, a letter about water quality in the creek that crosses our property, admiring a blooming orchid or slicing into an amazing tomato harvested a few yards from the kitchen. More often these days I simply watch nature flowing through the seasons.

Our appreciation of nature persists in spite of the full-on seizure and politicization of environmental themes by the radical left - the green movement - that came with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990. Even the unhinged need an anchor and it is after all the birthday (1870) of the Communist butcher, Vladimir Lenin. Still, it's sad they selected such a universal idea. And now even our information technology isolates us from the outside making it more difficult to experience, understand, appreciate, and protect our planet. All of my adult life, I fought hard to dissolve the barriers between people and nature. Whether we like it or not we live IN nature. The sooner we recognize it the better off both we and the planet will coexist.

Father Mississippi Walter Inglis Anderson, U.S., ca. 1955

Experiencing the earth and the built environment upon it has been the greatest teacher over the years. The written word provided significant guidance along the way. First came the foundation heard from childhood:

Psalm 104

1 Praise the LORD, O my soul. O LORD my God, you are very great; you are clothed with splendor and majesty. 2 He wraps himself in light as with a garment; he stretches out the heavens like a tent 3 and lays the beams of his upper chambers on their waters. He makes the clouds his chariot and rides on the wings of the wind. 4 He makes winds his messengers, flames of fire his servants. 5 He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved. 6 You covered it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. 7 But at your rebuke the waters fled, at the sound of your thunder they took to flight; 8 they flowed over the mountains, they went down into the valleys, to the place you assigned for them. 9 You set a boundary they cannot cross; never again will they cover the earth. 10 He makes springs pour water into the ravines; it flows between the mountains. 11 They give water to all the beasts of the field; the wild donkeys quench their thirst. 12 The birds of the air nest by the waters; they sing among the branches. 13 He waters the mountains from his upper chambers; the earth is satisfied by the fruit of his work. 14 He makes grass grow for the cattle, and plants for man to cultivate-- bringing forth food from the earth: 15 wine that gladdens the heart of man, oil to make his face shine, and bread that sustains his heart. 16 The trees of the LORD are well watered, the cedars of Lebanon that he planted. 17 There the birds make their nests; the stork has its home in the pine trees. 18 The high mountains belong to the wild goats; the crags are a refuge for the coneys. 19 The moon marks off the seasons, and the sun knows when to go down. 20 You bring darkness, it becomes night, and all the beasts of the forest prowl. 21 The lions roar for their prey and seek their food from God. 22 The sun rises, and they steal away; they return and lie down in their dens. 23 Then man goes out to his work, to his labor until evening. 24 How many are your works, O LORD! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. 25 There is the sea, vast and spacious, teeming with creatures beyond number-- living things both large and small. 26 There the ships go to and fro, and the leviathan, which you formed to frolic there. 27 These all look to you to give them their food at the proper time. 28 When you give it to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are satisfied with good things. 29 When you hide your face, they are terrified; when you take away their breath, they die and return to the dust. 30 When you send your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth. 31 May the glory of the LORD endure forever; may the LORD rejoice in his works-- 32 he who looks at the earth, and it trembles, who touches the mountains, and they smoke. 33 I will sing to the LORD all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live. 34 May my meditation be pleasing to him, as I rejoice in the LORD. 35 But may sinners vanish from the earth and the wicked be no more. Praise the LORD, O my soul. Praise the LORD.

And here, from 1971, are words that to me reinforce that foundation:

...If you think that the world is going somewhere, that there are certain things that are supposed to happen and there are certain things that are supposed not to happen you never see the way it is like music. Music has no destination. We don' play it in order to get somewhere. If that were the way, the best orchestras would be those who got to the end of the piece the fastest. Music is a pattern which we listen to and enjoy as it unfolds. In the same way, "Where is the water going?" Where do the leaves go? Where are the clouds going? There not going anywhere because nature understands that the point of the whole thing is to be here, to be wide awake to the now that is going on. So when you listen to music you don't try to hold in your memory what is past or to think about what's coming. You listen to the pattern as it unfolds and so watch it as it moves now. It's a dance. And dancing is like music for when you dance you dance just to dance. You don't aim at a particular place on the floor that is your destination of the dance. You listen to the music and you move your body with it [as if] your eyes are following the patterns of the water.

 

The secret of...life is to spend some time every day in which you don't think but just watch, in which you don't form any ideas about life but look at it, listen to it, smell it, feel it. And when you get rid of all the talk in your head, all the ideas about what I do as distinct from what happen to me or what's the difference between man and nature or between what's mine and what's yours it all goes. And it's just the dancing pattern, what the Chinese call "li," the word that originally meant the markings in jade, the grain in wood, or...the pattern on water. When you let go of the definitions, of the attempt to try to pin down nature, to pin down life in your mind so that you can feel you are completely in control of it, its all based on the idea that you're different from it, that you have to master it. When you don't pin it down anymore, when you don't try to cling to it as if it was something different from you then your whole life has about it the sensation of flowing like water. It always goes away. but it always comes back because away and back are two sides of the same thing. Let it go!

Earth Day 2023 will soon be over in my woods but these passages where East meets West tell me that every day is an Earth day. For me the celebration indeed flows like water. Every day is a day to spend some time in observing nature and practicing its wise stewardship. Five generations ago the Czech composer, Antonin Dvorak, spent his last summer in the United States in the Czech settlement of Spillville, Iowa. In two weeks there surrounded by a landscape of fields, farms, and families under the open skies of the prairie he composed what has become known as the American Quartet. It is a beautiful expression of the optimism of the American experience (see Alexis de Toqueville's Democracy in America) and a fine way to conclude remarks on what should be an uplifting celebration of the "big blue marble" we call Earth.

I hope this post encourages you to go OUTside and find your INside.

 



Sources

Text:

Psalm 104, Holy Bible, NIV

Alan Watts, writer/narrator, Buddhism, Man and Nature, Hartley Foundation, Inc., Cos Cob, Connecticut, 1968

Photos and Illustrations:
Andrew Weyth, Airborne (1996), porterbriggs.com

A Great Earthquake And Fire Hits San Francisco in 1906

At one time San Francisco was one of my favorite cities and, as cities go, the museums, restaurants, and parks made it one of the best anywhere. Many of those features remain but the social and political climate these days make the city a far less attractive destination for tourists as well as residents. What also remains is that splendid natural setting, a combination of its bay, the coastal mountains, and Mediterranean climate. But there is a more subtle nature to that setting and one that was completely unknown on the early morning of April 18, 1906 when a great earthquake shook the town and started a massive fire. At that time the concept of earth science was a very young discipline. The idea that San Francisco sat astride two massive and drifting plates, one of which was moving toward Alaska, would have been laughable. Fifty years later, such thinking was widely accepted in the theory of plate tectonics.

On that morning and in the days that followed, "theory" wasn't on the minds of San Franciscans. They wanted to survive. This is how the opening paragraphs of the National Archives entry describe the event:

On the morning of April 18, 1906, a massive earthquake shook San Francisco, California. Though the quake lasted less than a minute, its immediate impact was disastrous. The earthquake also ignited several fires around the city that burned for three days and destroyed nearly 500 city blocks.

 

Despite a quick response from San Francisco's large military population, the city was devastated. The earthquake and fires killed an estimated 3,000 people and left half of the city's 400,000 residents homeless. Aid poured in from around the country and the world, but those who survived faced weeks of difficulty and hardship.

 

The survivors slept in tents in city parks and the Presidio, stood in long lines for food, and were required to do their cooking in the street to minimize the threat of additional fires. The San Francisco earthquake is considered one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history.

You can read the rest of the article and view scores of historic photographs and documents related to the event here. Below are several stereoscope cards from the family archives showing the scene following the earthquake and fire.

If you want to see remnants of the earthquake first hand and learn a bit more about it, plate tectonics, and continental drift there's no better place in my opinion than the Earthquake Trail at Point Reyes National Seashore. (Point Reyes is a spectacular resource in the National Park Service. Plan two or three days minimum to explore all of it) The Seashore is accessible from Highway 1 at Olema about eighteen miles north of the Golden Gate. The trail - an easy half-mile - is at the Bear Valley Visitor Center. The trail's focal point is the famous old fence displaced eighteen feet by the quake

April 20, 1906 marked the third day following the quake. On that day the horrific fires that had caused far more destruction than the shaking began to decline in part because there was little left to feed the flames. Over 80% of the city was in ruin but a sense of community emerged and its citizens began to think about recovery rather than immediate survival.

Speaking of immediate survival, I have experienced only one earthquake - Alaska in 2000 - that really concerned me. It lasted about thirty seconds and was strong enough to keep me swaying in my seat in a dark theater while the sound of thunder and rock slides rumbled outside. Standing would have been difficult, walking nearly impossible. Our guides told us not to worry because they happened all the time at the site and the building was designed to withstand far worse shaking. Easy for them to say.







Sources

Photos and Ilustrations:
Stereoscope views, OTR family archives

Text:

National Archives, Washington, DC
Point Reyes National Seashore, National Park Service, Washington, DC

Why Climate Change Is Way Beyond Fossil Fuel And Potentially Our Ability To Manage It

For the past two months or so some serious solar flares have washed our planet. The series of solar storms emitting these strong flares from the surface of the sun has rotated from view and no longer pose a threat to Earth. On the other hand as we approach 2025 and the peak of the current sunspot cycle we could soon be washed in an abundance of electromagnetic energy. Although a very, very minimal threat to life thanks to our ozone layer these storms could be a serious threat to a society that relies on electricity.

Solar flares are a frequent occurrence and scientists have measured their strength for a century. The last flare to seriously impact the world's electrical systems and components was in 1972. That event degraded satellite performance, blocked radio frequencies, disrupted electrical grids, produced high current surges in telephone lines, detonated magnetic sea mines, and produced auroras so bright they cast shadows. To say the least it was a dramatic happening.

In February 2022 Elon Musk's SpaceX program launched another series of Starlink telecommunications satellites. Before they could be moved to their final orbit the headwinds of a strong solar flare doomed them to a degrading orbit and an eventual fiery end in our atmosphere. It's only the latest consequence of our experience with solar winds.

On September 1-2, 1859, the high technology of the day had a similar experience that heliophyisicists call the Carrington Event. It was named after British astronomer Richard Carrington who with fellow astronomer Richard Hodgson first documented a solar flare in detail. We can only imagine the impact of that event given our reliance on electricity today. 

The Carrington Event literally "turned on the lights." Our friends at spaceweather.com wrote this about the event:

...a billion-ton coronal mass ejection (CME) slammed into Earth's magnetic field. Campers in the Rocky Mountains woke up in the middle of the night, thinking that the glow they saw was sunrise. No, it was the Northern Lights. People in Cuba read their morning paper by the red illumination of aurora borealis. Earth was peppered by particles so energetic, they altered the chemistry of polar ice.

 

Orange dots mark sighting of auroras on the morning of September 2, 1859

The geomagnetic storm that day was so powerful that telegraph keys sparked and caught fire. Even with power lost in the lines, the storm electrified them to the point that messages could still be sent. Given our dependence on technology today, such storms pose a significant threat. Here's more from NASA's Science News page:

...a huge solar flare on August 4, 1972, knocked out long-distance telephone communication across Illinois. That event, in fact, caused AT&T to redesign its power system for transatlantic cables. A similar flare on March 13, 1989, provoked geomagnetic storms that disrupted electric power transmission from the Hydro Québec generating station in Canada, blacking out most of the province and plunging 6 million people into darkness for 9 hours; aurora-induced power surges even melted power transformers in New Jersey. In December 2005, X-rays from another solar storm disrupted satellite-to-ground communications and Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation signals for about 10 minutes.

Read more about past CME events in this link on the spaceweather.com page.

There is one certainty and that is the more our knowledge expands the more we understand how little we really know. Perhaps it is time to pay as much attention to coronal mass ejections and solar flares as we do to climate change. Both could pose significant world-wide threats. Both deserve more study. 

And for the philosophers among us there's always the challenge of pondering what we don't know about what we don't know. 

Enough for now. I'll let you explore the very new issue of near earth objects (NEO) on you own for now and leave my comments for another day.

Instant Climate Change: Krakatoa Then, Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apal Now

 

The Scream                                    Edvard Munch 1893

Imagine waking up on this fine Sunday morning to hear that a gigantic magnetic storm will disrupt much of the planet's electronics and communication networks in two days. This event simply isn't going to break up your digital reception of Saturday's big game. It's going to require months of reconstruction - software and hardware - on power grids, communication systems and circuit boards on land, sea, air, and in space. I raise this issue not to alarm but to use coronal mass ejection (CME) and similar electromagnetic pulse (EMP) events as modern-day examples of climate issues that need to compete with the longer term phenomenon of global climate change. Furthermore, I am not about to deny or denigrate the existence and significance of global warming and cooling. It happens and I have no issue with mitigation and preparation for the consequences. On the other hand, sometimes our priorities don't seem to match the serious short-term and potentially catastrophic threats we face. Scientists and engineers already know of an event in 1859 that, had it occurred this morning in our high tech electronic world, would have caused widespread threats to social, political, and economic systems worldwide. 

Why raise the issue today? This day marks the 140 anniversary of the massive volcanic explosion of the Indonesian island known as Krokatoa. The event killed over 36,000 people, sent a measurable shock wave around the world seven times and produced the loudest noise heard in recorded history, a noise heard in Perth, Australia, more than 2800 miles from the island. Geophysical impacts included a decline of over 2 degrees in the planet's average global temperatures and more than a decade of memorable atmospheric events including, vivid sunsets, lavender suns, and noctilucent clouds.

This was an astounding event in earth history and a modern-day lesson in the fragile nature of the planet and its inhabitants. As I've said before, nature in all her beauty can be a cruel mother. In light of the recent events like Mount St. Helens, record setting earthquakes, earth-grazing fireballs, and meteors, it's also a lesson that radical global climate change could occur tomorrow as well as a century from now. Granted, the sciences in question are little more than 150 years old but we have come a long way in understanding, yet we know there are some events beyond knowledge and control.

This is a timely anniversary given that an underwater volcano (Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apal) in Tonga, a Pacific island nation, erupted in January 2022 and thrust as much as 160 million tons of water vapor into the stratosphere. Climatologists soon determined this instantaneous 5% increase in water vapor could likely increase global temperatures for some years to come. For climate scientists this is a unique event as it is the first eruption of its kind that can be effectively measured and analyzed. In other words there is no forecast model for the Tonga volcano. All science can do is observe, provide some analysis, and issue essentially speculative forecasts on the impacts of the event. If this year's high temperatures - it's called weather - tell us anything it's that climate scientists seem to be on to something.  

Do keep the faith, my friends. There's a really good probability for sunrise tomorrow. The chances for more tomorrows are equally high because some of our finest earth and space scientists study and stand watch for these threats, short-term and long-term. I can't imagine a more exciting career than one exploring the far reaches of the planet and its journey in the universe.


In case you're wondering: Edvard Muunch painted four versions of The Scream of Nature over a seventeen year period beginning in 1893. Some experts believe his depiction of the vivid orange-red sky came from his observations of similar sunsets caused by the explosion of Krakatoa a decade earlier.

Sources

Text:

The Tonga Volcano Shook the World: It May Also Affect the Climate, The New York Times, September 22, 2022

 

Extreme Fire Season, Now And Then

 

Wallace, Idaho, after the Big Blowup of 1910

In the past two weeks wildfires have annihilated the town of Lahaina, Hawaii, and destroyed lives and property in large areas of the Northwestern US and Canada. To say the least it is evidence of another extreme fire season but nothing new in wildfire history. Recent wildfires in the West, particularly California, have rewritten the record books. Still, the US and Canada have a long list of massive and deadly wildfires that go back to 1825. 

For example, on this day in 1910 the fire season was equally extreme. High winds merged almost two thousand small forest fires across Washington, Idaho and Montana into a massive area of fire that burned 3 million acres of timber. This fire, known as the Big Blowup, destroyed several towns, miles of transportation infastructure, and took the lives of 87 people, 78 of them firefighters. The blowup ranked as the largest forest fire in U.S. history until it was passed by recent fires in Texas (2011) and California (2020).

Result of wildfire "hurricane" at St. Joe River, C'oeur d'Alene, Idaho

At the time of the fire the U.S.Forest Service (USFS) was a new and struggling agency in the federal government. This fire not only enhanced the agency's purpose but also gave it focus on the strategy and tactics of forest fire fighting. That focus produced the USFS's first legendary character, Ranger Ed Pulaski. An article by the Forest History Society tells the story:

Fighting a fire about ten miles southwest of Wallace, Idaho, Ranger Pulaski order his crew of forty-three men to follow him to a mineshaft to escape the inferno. They barely outran the fire. Pulaski ordered his men to lie down on the tunnel floor while he hung blankets over the entrance, threatening to shoot any man who tried to flee. He threw water onto the blankets until the smoke overwhelmed him. When the men awoke the next day, all but five had survived. Pulaski’s decisive actions and his courage in the face of death made for great copy. But it was his simple desire to get home to his wife and daughter in Wallace that struck a universal cord with the public and helped elevate him into Forest Service myth almost before the fires had stopped burning. It was not long before Pulaski became a hero—though he never comfortably wore that mantle—and his story legend. His legend was further cemented when he was credited with inventing the firefighting tool that bears his name. He received no compensation for either his wounds or his invention. The only compensation came in 1923 when he won $500 in an essay contest for the account of his actions in the Big Blowup.

Pulaski's eponymous invention, a combination grubbing hoe and ax

As you read this today, there's a good likelihood thousands of pulaskis are at work across the Northwest. Behind each one stands a firefighter risking life and limb to protect our resources and populations at almost any cost. Historic fires like the Big Blow led to policies that in the past gave them no options. In the last generation or so the USFS policy of total fire suppression has been questioned given our research in fire and forest ecology and our persistent settlement in what is called the wildland-urban interface. Essentially fire can be thought of as another tool under the right conditions. With new science and news tools, decision making for fire managers is certainly more complex today but it does make what will always be a dangerous job somewhat safer.

On this historic day, and every day we have men and women assigned to forest fires, we need to keep them in mind and more. It's a risky job whether you make the decisions, fly the aircraft or most certainly dig the fire lines, and we want every one of them to come home safe.




Sources

Photos and Illustrations:

National Photo Company Collection (Library of Congress) REPOSITORY: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.
state.sc.us/forest/edutools.htm, Pulaski photo


Text:


idahoforests.org, The 1910 Fire
wikipedia.org, Great Fire of 1910
foresthistory.org, The 1910 Fires
spokesman.com, Forest fire, the largest in U.S. History, left stories of awe, tragedy

National Meteor Watch Day 2023

 

Perseid Meteor 2012

Today is National Meteor Watch Day. It's a fine time to go outside tonight and watch these small bits of space debris put on a show. The moon will not interfer this year so a clear sky away from light sources should make for excellent viewing. Most meteors only survive about one second as they hit the earth's atmosphere at around 25,000 to 160,000 miles per hour. The show takes place anywhere from thirty to seventy miles above in the atmospheric region known as the mesosphere. Depending on composition and speed, meteors can appear in a variety of colors including white, orange, yellow, blue, purple, and red. If a meteor reaches the ground it becomes a meteorite. Thankfully, few meteors actually hit the earth intact but about six tons of meteor dust settles on our planet every day. Although it's fun to watch the sky for meteors and other near earth objects the potential for significant environemntal impacts on the planet certainly warrant their observation and study.  Here is a good example why.

This day is also a good reminder that the Perseid shower, the most reliable of the year, peaks on August 13. Unfortunately the moon will be just past full so there will be plenty of interference that evening. All is not lost because the Perseids begin around mid-July and end in late August so there will be plenty of hours of clear skies and good viewing during that five week period.

Here's a link for more information about National Meteor Watch Day. For a forecast of what you can expect to see in the weeks leading up to and including the Perseids you can check out the American Meteor Society's website here.





Sources:

Photos:
Visian ICL Blog, visianinfo.con, Roberto Porto

Text:
wikipedia.com
nationalcalendarday.com

The Sprites And Ghosts Of Summer's Fire In The Sky

Sprites                            Lomonosov Moscow State University

A forecast for potentially severe thunderstorms this afternoon reminded me that it's time to mention the season of the sprites. A sprite is a member of a family of upper atmosphere lightning phenomena called transient luminous events or TLE's. Other members of the TLE family include blue jets and elves. They are associated with thunderstorms and although observed earlier were unknown to science a little more than a generation ago. Digital photography and advanced computer technology enabled both their imaging and analysis beginning around 1995.

                        Centre Nationales D'Etudes Spatiales

I find these atmospheric events fascinating, beautiful, and mysterious but the probability of observing them in real time is practically nil. I have yet to see one in person. For certain I won't be seeing anything from my woodland home in Georgia or the eastern U.S. for that matter. When you find yourself in a thunderstorm-rich location with unlimited visibility beyond the horizon you have found the ideal conditions for LTE observation. In other words, our readers in Oklahoma, Texas, and other wide open spaces need only step out on the porch and into a comfortable chair to enjoy the possibility of seeing a rare and still mysterious show in the distant sky.

Below is an amazing video by the quintessential storm chaser, Pecos Hank, and the world's leading TLE photographer, Bill Smith. They are also credited with the discovery and naming of a new TLE they called the ghost. It's ten minutes of breathtaking photography and excellent instruction in what could be a complex subject for non-science folks. I can only hope the high standards of science instruction found in this video is in every classroom in the US.

 

In this brief video Pecos Hank documented the TLE activity over Texas on May 17, 2021, when he witnessed his "most incredible sprite storm...to date." As a weather observer for seventty years I can so appreciate his enthusiam on seeing such an amazing phenomenon.

 

These videos are but a small sample of Pecos Hank's award winning work focused on super-cell thunderstorms and tornadoes. If you enjoy weather science and storm chasing combined with high production values his You Tube channel is your destination. 

Keep looking up!

Earth Day 2023

Today we celebrate our planet, our earthly home. At our home in the woods a celebration of the planet takes place in some way every day. Perhaps it's a seed order, a letter about water quality in the creek that crosses our property, admiring a blooming orchid or slicing into an amazing tomato harvested a few yards from the kitchen. More often these days I simply watch nature flowing through the seasons.

Our appreciation of nature persists in spite of the full-on seizure and politicization of environmental themes by the radical left - the green movement - that came with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990. Even the unhinged need an anchor and it is after all the birthday (1870) of the Communist butcher, Vladimir Lenin. Still, it's sad they selected such a universal idea. And now even our information technology isolates us from the outside making it more difficult to experience, understand, appreciate, and protect our planet. All of my adult life, I fought hard to dissolve the barriers between people and nature. Whether we like it or not we live IN nature. The sooner we recognize it the better off both we and the planet will coexist.

Father Mississippi Walter Inglis Anderson, U.S., ca. 1955

Experiencing the earth and the built environment upon it has been the greatest teacher over the years. The written word provided significant guidance along the way. First came the foundation heard from childhood:

Psalm 104

1 Praise the LORD, O my soul. O LORD my God, you are very great; you are clothed with splendor and majesty. 2 He wraps himself in light as with a garment; he stretches out the heavens like a tent 3 and lays the beams of his upper chambers on their waters. He makes the clouds his chariot and rides on the wings of the wind. 4 He makes winds his messengers, flames of fire his servants. 5 He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved. 6 You covered it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. 7 But at your rebuke the waters fled, at the sound of your thunder they took to flight; 8 they flowed over the mountains, they went down into the valleys, to the place you assigned for them. 9 You set a boundary they cannot cross; never again will they cover the earth. 10 He makes springs pour water into the ravines; it flows between the mountains. 11 They give water to all the beasts of the field; the wild donkeys quench their thirst. 12 The birds of the air nest by the waters; they sing among the branches. 13 He waters the mountains from his upper chambers; the earth is satisfied by the fruit of his work. 14 He makes grass grow for the cattle, and plants for man to cultivate-- bringing forth food from the earth: 15 wine that gladdens the heart of man, oil to make his face shine, and bread that sustains his heart. 16 The trees of the LORD are well watered, the cedars of Lebanon that he planted. 17 There the birds make their nests; the stork has its home in the pine trees. 18 The high mountains belong to the wild goats; the crags are a refuge for the coneys. 19 The moon marks off the seasons, and the sun knows when to go down. 20 You bring darkness, it becomes night, and all the beasts of the forest prowl. 21 The lions roar for their prey and seek their food from God. 22 The sun rises, and they steal away; they return and lie down in their dens. 23 Then man goes out to his work, to his labor until evening. 24 How many are your works, O LORD! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. 25 There is the sea, vast and spacious, teeming with creatures beyond number-- living things both large and small. 26 There the ships go to and fro, and the leviathan, which you formed to frolic there. 27 These all look to you to give them their food at the proper time. 28 When you give it to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are satisfied with good things. 29 When you hide your face, they are terrified; when you take away their breath, they die and return to the dust. 30 When you send your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth. 31 May the glory of the LORD endure forever; may the LORD rejoice in his works-- 32 he who looks at the earth, and it trembles, who touches the mountains, and they smoke. 33 I will sing to the LORD all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live. 34 May my meditation be pleasing to him, as I rejoice in the LORD. 35 But may sinners vanish from the earth and the wicked be no more. Praise the LORD, O my soul. Praise the LORD.

And here, from 1971, are words that to me reinforce that foundation:

...If you think that the world is going somewhere, that there are certain things that are supposed to happen and there are certain things that are supposed not to happen you never see the way it is like music. Music has no destination. We don' play it in order to get somewhere. If that were the way, the best orchestras would be those who got to the end of the piece the fastest. Music is a pattern which we listen to and enjoy as it unfolds. In the same way, "Where is the water going?" Where do the leaves go? Where are the clouds going? There not going anywhere because nature understands that the point of the whole thing is to be here, to be wide awake to the now that is going on. So when you listen to music you don't try to hold in your memory what is past or to think about what's coming. You listen to the pattern as it unfolds and so watch it as it moves now. It's a dance. And dancing is like music for when you dance you dance just to dance. You don't aim at a particular place on the floor that is your destination of the dance. You listen to the music and you move your body with it [as if] your eyes are following the patterns of the water.

 

The secret of...life is to spend some time every day in which you don't think but just watch, in which you don't form any ideas about life but look at it, listen to it, smell it, feel it. And when you get rid of all the talk in your head, all the ideas about what I do as distinct from what happen to me or what's the difference between man and nature or between what's mine and what's yours it all goes. And it's just the dancing pattern, what the Chinese call "li," the word that originally meant the markings in jade, the grain in wood, or...the pattern on water. When you let go of the definitions, of the attempt to try to pin down nature, to pin down life in your mind so that you can feel you are completely in control of it, its all based on the idea that you're different from it, that you have to master it. When you don't pin it down anymore, when you don't try to cling to it as if it was something different from you then your whole life has about it the sensation of flowing like water. It always goes away. but it always comes back because away and back are two sides of the same thing. Let it go!

Earth Day 2023 will soon be over in my woods but these passages where East meets West tell me that every day is an Earth day. For me the celebration indeed flows like water. Every day is a day to spend some time in observing nature and practicing its wise stewardship. Five generations ago the Czech composer, Antonin Dvorak, spent his last summer in the United States in the Czech settlement of Spillville, Iowa. In two weeks there surrounded by a landscape of fields, farms, and families under the open skies of the prairie he composed what has become known as the American Quartet. It is a beautiful expression of the optimism of the American experience (see Alexis de Toqueville's Democracy in America) and a fine way to conclude remarks on what should be an uplifting celebration of the "big blue marble" we call Earth.

I hope this post encourages you to go OUTside and find your INside.

 



Sources

Text:

Psalm 104, Holy Bible, NIV

Alan Watts, writer/narrator, Buddhism, Man and Nature, Hartley Foundation, Inc., Cos Cob, Connecticut, 1968

Photos and Illustrations:
Andrew Weyth, Airborne (1996), porterbriggs.com

San Francisco 1906: Fire Follows Earthquake, Heart Of City Is In Ruins

At one time San Francisco was one of my favorite cities and, as cities go, the museums, restaurants, and parks made it one of the best anywhere. Those features remain but the social and political climate these days make the city a far less attractive destination for tourists. What also remains is that splendid natural setting, a combination of its bay, the coastal mountains, and Mediterranean climate. But there is a more subtle nature to that setting and one that was completely unknown on the early morning of April 18, 1906 when a great earthquake shook the town. On that date the concept of earth science was a very young discipline. The idea that San Francisco sat astride two massive and drifting plates, one of which was moving toward Alaska, would have been laughable. Fifty years later, such thinking was widely accepted in the theory of plate tectonics.

On that morning and in the days that followed, "theory" wasn't on the minds of San Franciscans. They wanted to survive. This is how the opening paragraphs of the National Archives entry describe the event:

On the morning of April 18, 1906, a massive earthquake shook San Francisco, California. Though the quake lasted less than a minute, its immediate impact was disastrous. The earthquake also ignited several fires around the city that burned for three days and destroyed nearly 500 city blocks.

Despite a quick response from San Francisco's large military population, the city was devastated. The earthquake and fires killed an estimated 3,000 people and left half of the city's 400,000 residents homeless. Aid poured in from around the country and the world, but those who survived faced weeks of difficulty and hardship.

The survivors slept in tents in city parks and the Presidio, stood in long lines for food, and were required to do their cooking in the street to minimize the threat of additional fires. The San Francisco earthquake is considered one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history.

You can read the rest of the article and view scores of historic photographs and documents related to the event here. Below are several stereoscope cards from the family archives showing the scene following the earthquake and fire.

If you want to see remnants of the earthquake first hand and learn a bit more about it, plate tectonics, and continental drift there's no better place in my opinion than the Earthquake Trail at Point Reyes National Seashore. [Point Reyes is a spectacular resource in the National Park Service. Plan two or three days minimum to explore all of it.] The Seashore is accessible from Highway 1 at Olema about eighteen miles north of the Golden Gate. The trail - an easy half-mile - is at the Bear Valley Visitor Center. The trail's focal point is the famous old fence displaced eighteen feet by the quake.

April 20, 1906 marked the third day following the quake. On that day the horrific fires that had caused far more destruction than the shaking began to decline in part because there was little left to feed the flames. Over 80% of the city was in ruin but a sense of community emerged and its citizens began to think about recovery rather than immediate survival.

Speaking of immediate survival, I have experienced only one earthquake - Alaska in 2000 - that really concerned me. It lasted about thirty seconds and was strong enough to keep me swaying in my seat in a dark theater while the sound of thunder and rock slides rumbled outside. Our guides told us not to worry because they happened all the time at the site and the building was designed to withstand far worse shaking. Easy for them to say.

Sources

Photos and Ilustrations:

Stereoscope views, OTR family archives

Text: 

title, headline from The Boston Post, April 19, 1906

National Archives, Washington, DC

Point Reyes National Seashore, National Park Service, Washington, DC