This December is going to be a a great month for amateur astronomers, and anyone else who wants to take a moment to appreciate the natural wonders of the night sky. The Geminid meteor shower returns every year, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t consider letting the kids stay up a late on December 13th (or get them up early, the showers will peak at 6AM in the Eastern time zone of the United States, at which point it will be low in the Western sky) to catch sight of one of the most mysterious astrological phenomena out there.
“The Geminids are my favorite, because they defy explanation,” NASA astronomer Bill Cooke, a meteor expert at the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama told Space.com. Meteor showers are the result of the Earth passing through a stream of space rocks, which light up the atmosphere with “shooting stars.” Comets are the source of most of these fields, but the Geminids are different. Their source is a mysterious rocky object called 3200 Phaethon, which doesn’t shed nearly enough derbies to explain the size of the Geminid meteor showers.
Even if you miss the Geminid’s this year, don’t skip the total lunar eclipse that will be visible from North America on the night of December 20th this year. Our continent won’t get another this good until April 2014.
For the Western Hemisphere, the eclipse will “officially” begin on Dec. 21 at 12:29 a.m. EST (9:29 p.m. PST on Dec. 20) as the moon begins to enter Earth’s outer, or penumbra shadow. The eclipse should last about 73 minutes. References : http://www.kidglue.com/2010/12/09/geminid-meteor-shower-and-lunar-eclipse-2010-the-best-show-on-earth/
Natural disasters are often frightening and difficult for us to understand, because we have no control over when and where they happen. What we can control is how prepared we are as communities and governments to deal with the dangers that natural disasters bring.
Places that are more likely to have natural disasters, such as the earthquake-prone Pacific Ring of Fire, or coastal areas vulnerable to hurricanes, require accurate methods of predicting disasters and warning the public quickly. Once the people have been informed, evacuation routes must be provided so that they can all leave quickly and safely, even if they travel by foot. Emergency warnings and evacuation plans are not enough, though. Where there is a high risk of earthquakes, buildings need to be strong and flexible enough to survive a quake without collapsing. Where hurricanes and flooding are a problem, levees and dams must be strong enough to hold floodwaters, and natural drainage systems must be maintained to allow waters to flow back into the ocean. The failure of the levee and drainage systems was responsible for most of the destruction and flooding in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. It was the poor planning of evacuation routes and assistance for those trapped by the flooding that resulted in the many tragic fatalities.
Flooding in New Oleans, LA September ,2005
People need to be educated on the risks in their area, and what to do when a disaster strikes. After a disaster, even if no one has died, there is a lot of damage to people' homes, farms and workplaces that must be repaired. This takes a lot of time and money to fix, and a country damaged by a disaster usually needs a large amount of international help to get better. Donated food, clothing, medicine and experienced professionals are all important when there is a disaster, but when the emergency is over it can take years to rebuild and make sure that future disasters can be managed. The boxing-day tsunami which devastated Indonesia and the 2005 earthquake in Kashmir, Pakistan were both natural disasters whose effects were made worse by underdeveloped infrastructure and widespread poverty. Tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes or any other natural disaster can't be avoided, but with good preparation and well-organized help after the fact, it is possible to survive and go back to normal life afterwards.
Emergence aid during the flood in Pakistan, August, 2010.
after earthquake in Haiti, 2010
References from http://issues.tigweb.org/disasters
The greenhouse effect: puncturing the ozone layer, this layer are effective in preventing UV projection down to earth, the ozone loss region is desert land, no work to reduce daytime temperatures to rise night temperatures of the day was very hot, very cold at night - The process of industrialization, modernization generates a variety of types of jet emissions, waste directly into the environment, dust billions of vehicles using fossil fuels such as gasoline, these wastes most of the CO2, if the atmosphere is too much gas, when the sun shines on trapped heat will increase the temperature of the earth's surface. According to natural gas, the CO2 will be re-tree photosynthesis to produce oxygen, but because of deforestation should be fully and not enough trees to CO2 resolution - Forest destroyed all that sun has no reference to the earth's green-canopied trees to block the direct reference to the ground, forming the dry areas, such as the desert heat. The rainy season does not hold water forest should happen to flood the dry season, drought should end nc. - Forest fires, volcanic eruptions also produce a large volume of CO2 - All causes of increased temperature on the surface of the earth to do with the two poles melts, exposing permanent CO2 ice, and it will enter the circulation of CO2 on Earth so on earth and the temperature increased. - Until now, people no longer able to overcome. If you cut off all the CO2 on earth are going we can not overcome its consequences DC. And by now just about 100nam the earth temperature increases 2do In short: the earth temperature rises, the main reason is because the amount of CO2 in the earth's surface is increasing.
Some impacts from increasing temperatures are already happening.
Ice is melting worldwide, especially at the Earth’s poles. This includes mountain glaciers, ice sheets covering West Antarctica and Greenland, and Arctic sea ice.
Sea level rise became faster over the last century.
Some butterflies, foxes, and alpine plants have moved farther north or to higher, cooler areas.
Precipitation (rain and snowfall) has increased across the globe, on average.
Spruce bark beetles have boomed in Alaska thanks to 20 years of warm summers.
Flood is a form of natural disaster. It is an overflow of an expanse of water that submerges land.The EU floods directive defines a flood as a temporary covering by water of land not normally covered by water. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Flooding may result from the volume of water within a body of water, such as a river or lake, which overflows or breaks levees, with the result that some of the water escapes its usual boundaries.While the size of a lake or other body of water will vary with seasonal changes in precipitation and snow melt, it is not a significant flood unless such escapes of water endanger land areas used by man like a village, city or other inhabited area.Floods can also occur in rivers, when flow exceeds the capacity of the river channel, particularly at bends or meanders
Impacts of floods
As the other natural disaster, floods also impacts on the environment and society. Floods destroy drainage systems in cities, causing raw sewage to spill out into bodies of water. In the heavy flood, the house also can be destroy very easy. This can lead to catastrophic effects on the environment as many toxic materials such as paint, pesticide and gasoline can be released into the rivers, lakes, bays, and ocean, killing maritime life. Floods may also cause millions of dollars worth of damage to a city, both evicting people from their homes and ruining businesses. Floods cause significant amounts of erosion to coasts, leading to more frequent flooding if not repaired.
However, floods also have a slight positive impact on the environment.It spread sediment containing beneficial nutrients to topsoil that might never occur if do have floods.
From 1/10/2010 to 20/10/2010 there are two large floods come to all of the provinces in middle area of Vietnam .Following the data at that time , in the first floods, there are about 66 people dead, 18 people lost , the damage about 2 750 billion. In the second floods, there are about 35 people dead, 21 people lost. All in all, there are more than 169 000 houses were destroy.
receiving the data that the floods will come, the government also try to move people in the most dangerous area to another places.However, still have many people left , the rain still did not stop, every where in Ha Tinh (the name of the area ) no foods, no places to live. Everyone must be squeezed to exhaustion to withstand floods for centuries, all of this flood to flood other. Many houses were swept away and people back to nothing. They are hungry and have to find the food to maintain their breath difficultly.
This is the video below will show us more about that real situation.
