Tornadoes

Sunday night a large tornado smashed into Joplin Missouri. Right now there have been 122 confirmed dead as the tornado wiped out 3/4ths of Joplin and destroyed many homes and a hospital. Meteorologists could not figure out how dangerous it was but it was wrapped in rain (full of rain). Meteorologists also commented that on a scale of one to ten the tornado was about an 8 or 9.


I think the tornado was a tragic event because of the size of the tornado. Also, this is now one of the deadliest tornadoes (if not the deadliest) in American history. I think that state governments in the south should work to put up some sort of tornado walls to protect  cities and towns from further disasters.

Acid Rain

1.Sulfur Dioxide and Nitrogen Oxide.

2.pollutants from local sources and sources located in the Midwest.

3.sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides in the atmosphere combine with water to form sulfuric acid and nitric acid.

Guatamela mudslides.

Some natural factors causing mudslides in Guatemala are frequent earthquakes, hurricanes and heavy rains. One Human factor is deforestation which causes mudslides and protects villagers. The villagers will cut down trees for fire wood and they lose protection. We are planting pine trees (which have very long roots) to hold the ground together.

Graph

 

 The horizontal scale is going up by 20 years. It shows the Earth's surface temp for 140 years. The vertical axis is showing the average temperature of the Earth from 1860 to 2000. The units are .5 degrees. The total range is from .05 degrees to .5 degrees. I cannot tell where the data came from the image's home page.

4 Q's

• 1 - What do you think the global average temperature is?  This means the average for everywhere on Earth, day and night, for an entire year. Probably if you you took into account everywhere it is probably 65 degrees. Because in the places near the equator it is in the 90's but most places like Antarctica, Russia, ect. are pretty cold.
• 2 - People are often talking about "global warming."  How much do you think the average global temperature has increased in the past 100 years?  Do you think that this is a lot? It has probably increased about 1 degree. It is a lot if you're thinking about the next 10,000 years or so, or even million years. It seems like the earth is going to be really hot, but I think this is just a phase of maybe just cooling down from the ice age.
• 3 - What do you think is the hottest the Earth has ever been? (since there has been an atmosphere?)  How about the coldest the Earth has ever been?  Explain why you answered what you did. The hottest time was probably when the dinosaurs were alive because everywhere they went was tropical. The Coldest time was most likely one of our ice ages because the would freeze a lot of the planet and animals would have to adapt to survive (ex. Wooly mammoth needed fur)
• 4 - Are you concerned about "global warming?"  Why or why not? No, I personally do not think that it is an issue. Our has Earth Cooled down and Heated up many times in its 4 billion year history

Soil

The grassland cannot grow trees because the soil only receives enough rainfall to support grass. Whereas the forest land gets enough rain to have fertile soil able to support heavy forest and soil good for farming

Slump

Slump

A slipping of rock material along the curved surface of a decline. Slumps involve a mass of soil or other material sliding along a curved surface (shaped like a spoon). It forms a small, crescent-shaped cliff, or abrupt scarp at the top end of the slope. There can be more than one scarp down the slope. Mr. Green is awesome