Ford Becomes First Automaker to Join the Climate Registry

Last year we wrote about the Climate Registry. John said: "Good metrics are a necessity for reducing carbon dioxide emissions from stationary sources. "Good" means everyone uses an agreed-to baseline year, to which all changes are compared, uniform methods for estimating emissions, and validation by third parties. With good metrics, plans for reduction, regardless of whether they are voluntary or mandatory, will be of higher value. The Climate Registry meets all these prerequisites."

Well, this year Ford became the first automaker to join voluntarily the Climate Registry, showing that it at least has the intention (we'll have to see how much action will follow) to be more transparent and accountable when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions. Most members of the registry are states and provinces, and it is a good sign to see big companies also joining. We encourage others to follow Ford's example, and then to take action to reduce their emissions. ::Official Ford Announcement

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NASA Satellite Captures Image of Cyclone Nargis Flooding in Burma

NASA's Terra satellite captured this image of the Burma coast on April 15, 2008, before Tropical Cyclone Nargis flooded the region. Credit: NASA/MODIS Rapid Response Team
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> Labeled before and after images The first cyclone of the 2008 season in the northern Indian Ocean was a devastating one for Burma. According to reports from Accuweather.com, Cyclone Nargis made landfall with sustained winds of 130 mph and gusts of 150-160 mph, which is the equivalent of a strong Category 3 or minimal Category 4 hurricane. News reports stated that several thousand people have been killed, and thousands more were missing as of May 5.

Flood water can be difficult to see in photo-like satellite images, particularly when the water is muddy. This pair of images from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite use a combination of visible and infrared light to make floodwaters obvious. Water is blue or nearly black, vegetation is bright green, bare ground is tan, and clouds are white or light blue.

On April 15, rivers and lakes are sharply defined against a backdrop of vegetation and fallow agricultural land. The Irrawaddy River flows south through the left-hand side of the image, splitting into numerous distributaries known as the Mouths of the Irrawaddy. The wetlands near the shore are a deep blue green. Cyclone Nargis came ashore across the Mouths of the Irrawaddy and followed the coastline northeast.

NASA's Terra satellite captured this image of the Myanmar coast on May 5, 2008, showing the devastation of flooding caused by Tropical Cyclone Nargis. Credit: NASA/MODIS Rapid Response Team
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> Labeled before and after images

The entire coastal plain is flooded in the May 5 image. The fallow agricultural areas appear to have been especially hard hit. For example, Yangôn (population over 4 million) is almost completely surrounded by floods. Several large cities (population 100,000–500,000) are in the affected area. Muddy runoff colors the Gulf of Martaban turquoise.

The high-resolution image provided above is at MODIS’ maximum spatial resolution (level of detail) of 250 meters per pixel. The MODIS Rapid Response Team provides twice-daily images of the region in additional resolutions and formats, including photo-like natural color.
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Astronomers Discover Missing Mass

Missing Mass: Photo by ESA/ XMM-Newton/ EPIC/ ESO (J. Dietrich)/ SRON (N. Werner)/ MPE (A. Finoguenov)

Granted, it might not seem like such a big deal when astronomers find some of the missing mass in the universe, since there's very little that isn't missing. Roughly 95 percent of the cosmos is either dark matter or dark energy. About five percent of the universe is made up of the normal mass we're familiar with—baryonic matter. Yet by adding up the known stars and galaxies and gas, astronomers have only accounted for about half of that five percent.

Now, scientists using the XMM-Newton, ESA's super-sensitive detector, have begun to pick up some of that missing mass by studying X-ray emissions coming from tendrils of gas stretching between two galaxy clusters, Abell 222 and Abell 223. These gaseous filaments connect many other galaxies in the universe, forming a kind of cosmic web, and studying those other links will be the next task. "This is only the beginning. To understand the distribution of the matter within the cosmic web, we have to see more systems like this one," says astronomer Norbert Werner. "And ultimately launch a dedicated space observatory to observe the cosmic web with a much higher sensitivity than possible with current missions."

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