The heliocentric view of Copernicus [1] As sure as night follows day, we know the Earth rotates on its axis. Clocks spring forward, fall back around the equinox, and the solstice that marks the longest day of Summer and shortest in Winter, tells us the Earth orbits the sun. Of course that was only made obvious when Copernicus (1543) [1], from celestial observation, placed the sun at the centre of the solar system. Before that, sunrise after the dark of night, fruitful summers

A climate history & crossroad to the future As sure as night follows day, the solstice marks the height of summer and depths of winter we know the Earth rotates on its axis and orbits our warming sun. Less obvious are the subtle peroidic changes in the tilt of Earth's rotation, as well as the eccentricity and "wobble" of it's orbit, which lead to large changes in climate on long geological time scales. Known as the Milankovitch cycles, their astro origins are expored in part

The Sun-Earth dance driving our climate As sure as night follows day, we know the Earth rotates on its axis. Clocks spring forward, fall back around the equinox, and the solstice that marks the longest day of Summer and shortest in Winter, tells us the Earth orbits the sun. Of course that was only made obvious when Copernicus (1543) [1], from celestial observation, placed the sun at the centre of the solar system. Before that, sunrise after the dark of night, fruitful summ

Earth's beautiful glow Teaching undergrad spectroscopy was much about theory, with a bit of lab practical, and little on critical applications. Greenhouse gases (GHGs) were covered in terms of line densities, atmospheric residence times and global warming potential (GWP), but no depth of analysis of radiative forcing, the key driver of warming and climate change. Shame on me! So here goes with the recipe for turning those age old infrared (IR) transmission spectra of CO 2 (c

The aerosol layer: courtesy of the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, NASA Johnson Space Center STS043-22-12 [1] Aerosols have had a PR problem in the past, but in the right place aerosols play a critical role in regulating the climate. Some of us remember a time when aerosol deodorant became an envrinmental nasty and roll-ons were the new norm. In this case, the change was less about the aerosol, and more about the propellent pushing the spray from the can. CFC (chlorofl

The climate pendulum As a first play with python on a mobile app, I was impressed by the seemless install, ease of coding, excution and neat graphical interface. Coding the dynamics of the double pendulum as an example to test imports of integration and graphing modules, it was apparent the coupled system provides a good analogue for the climate "chaos" (sorry, "transition" for a less dramatic take) that may follow the tipping points that are now talked about as part of the c

Footprints of the world wide web So the quick dive into shedding light on the dark "slide" (eek) of the webpage in pt I, becomes a full on jump down a rabbit hole in pt 11, to look at the footprint of all the magic that brings the page to the screen. Again excuse the title, paraphrased from Batman's line in Lego Movie and less relevant here, but it connects the posts and i'm all out of puns for now. There's a whole bunch of analyses of the energy demand and carbon emissions

Quick thoughts on the design of this website. What are the energy footprints of the components that make and deliver the webpage. It's by...

Sciart of time tinted of plasmofluidic flow From the coffee ring left on the desk, the tears of wine clinging from your glass of good vintage, the swirling rainbows patterning a bubble surface, the foam topped beer [1-4] ; you might ask, why the ring, the tears, the swirls, the head? Mundane matters perhaps, but the Marangoni effect that gives rise to these phenomana plays an important role in many industrial processes, modern tenchnologies and life itself. From the efficient

Solexa logo commissioned early '00 In 1998, Solexa sequencing emerged at the University of Cambridge from pioneering work of Sir Shankar...