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The Great Salt Lake is a prominent feature of the Intermountain West landscape. Geologists who study the region believe that the size of the lake varies on long time scales. Trivia Question: 20,000 years ago, when Earth’s climate was much cooler and a massive ice sheet extended form the Arctic south all the way to [...]

As the Earth warms, a few things happen to the water cycle. Warmer temperatures mean more evaporation from the soil, which can cause land surfaces to dry. They also mean, however, that the air holds more moisture, which can lead to more rainfall in certain regions. The polar regions, for example, are wetter than they [...]

Trivia Question: True or False: Bacteria can cause rainfall. The correct answer is true. Bacteria are single-celled organisms that are found on every continent, at the bottom of the ocean and as high as 50 miles in the atmosphere. Each year, between 90 million and four billion pounds of bacteria travel from the Earth’s surface [...]

Between about 50 degrees north (the southern part of Ontario) and 70 degrees north (the northern tip of Scandinavia) lay the boreal forests, dominated by coniferous trees such as larches, spruces, firs and pines. To the north of these forests lies the tundra, lands with short growing seasons where the soil remains frozen for all [...]

Earth receives a lot of solar radiation – about 3,850,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 joules each year or 3,850 zettajoules! One joule is about enough energy to lift an apple one meter off the ground. For further comparison, how does this annual amount of solar radiation compare with human energy consumption? Trivia Question: How much time does it take [...]

The energy that makes the winds blow, ocean waters evaporate and fall as rain, plants grow, and tornadoes and hurricanes whirl about, comes from the Sun. The Sun drives all weather and all life on Earth despite being 93 million miles away. Not all of the radiation we get from the Sun actually winds up [...]

Meteorological spring is defined as the March, April and May period. Astronomically, it is defined as the period from around March 21 to June 21. On March 21, day and night are of equal length everywhere on the globe. From March 21 to June 21, the days get longer in the Northern Hemisphere and shorter [...]

Mid-latitude regions in the Northern Hemisphere, like the United States, are now experiencing short days and cold temperatures. In Australia, in the Southern Hemisphere, days are long and temperatures are warm. The farther away from the poles you go, the less difference there is between winter and summer. At the equator there are about 12 [...]

Like humans, birds can freeze when temperatures get too low – but unlike people, birds can’t go inside and turn the thermostat up during the winter. Once food starts to disappear and temperatures drop in the fall, many birds travel to someplace warmer with more food. Some birds fly thousands of miles from their summer [...]

Some winters are colder than others and some winters are wetter and snowier than others. Trivia Question: What is the best way to predict what kind of winter you will have? a) Look at how intense the Sun is right now b) Look at how much ice there is in the Arctic c) Look at [...]

Earth has warmed over the last few decades. But this warming is more noticeable in certain seasons than it is in others. Trivia Question: In the United States, which season is warming the most? a) Spring b) Summer c) Fall d) Winter The correct answer is d. While the United States is warming at a [...]

During winter in the United States, warm and moist air masses coming in from the Gulf of Mexico and Pacific Ocean battle the frigid and dry air coming down from the Arctic. Where collisions between the dry and cold and warm and moist air masses occur, snow often forms. One key tool meteorologists have to [...]

The oceans are currently absorbing about 22 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) each day and have absorbed an estimated 525 billion tons of CO2 over the last 200 years. Trivia Question: As the oceans absorb more carbon dioxide, they become… a. more basic (higher pH). b. more acidic (lower pH). c. richer in nutrients. [...]

Plants and animals that live high up in the mountains have to be able to tolerate strong winds and long durations of snow cover. Most animals, such as the yellow-bellied marmot, deal with long and cold winters by hibernating. Over the last century, the Rocky Mountain region in Colorado has warmed by between 1.5 and [...]

Warm ocean surface temperatures in the North Atlantic provide the warm and moist air that fuels hurricanes, which develop out of random disturbances in the tropics that provide the spark for these storms. Warmer waters in the North Atlantic generally mean more fuel for the storms. But did you know that surface temperature conditions in [...]

The term cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) is a fancy way of describing the tiny particles that even smaller water vapor droplets cling to as raindrops form. Once enough water vapor droplets gather on the nuclei, raindrops fall. This is a critical part of Earth’s water cycle, which moves water from the oceans to the land, [...]

By most estimates, Earth’s sea level rose by 3.5 mm per year between 1993 and 2006. About one-seventh of this sea level rise can be attributed to ice melt on one island – two to three days worth of the summertime melt water from the island could supply the New York Metropolitan area’s water needs [...]

The 1991 eruption of Mt. Pinatubo injected into the atmosphere about 20 million tons of a certain substance, which blocked the incoming sunlight causing a global cooling of one degree Fahrenheit over 18 months. Trivia Question: What was this substance? a. Carbon dioxide (CO2) b. Carbon monoxide (CO) c. Sulfur dioxide (SO2) d. Ash The [...]

The area around Vermont’s Green Mountains is a “transition zone” between the boreal forests in Canada, which are dominated by conifer species that are better adapted to the extreme winter cold, and the broadleaf forests that are familiar to residents of the eastern U.S. Higher elevation areas of the Green Mountains are significantly colder and [...]

Over the past century, the Arctic was cooler than normal from 1900-1915, warmer than normal during the 20′s, 30′s and 40′s, cooler than normal during the 50′s, 60′s and 70′s and has been warmer than normal from the early 1980′s to today. Trivia Question: During warm periods in the Arctic, is the Antarctic generally: a)   [...]