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Pastimes : R. Harmon's Earth 101 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: long-gone who wrote (132)	4/14/2000 11:42:00 PM
From: Lilian Debray	Respond to of 183

Re: tornadoes. It is probably better to invest in lumber than in insurance. UMass Researchers Find Key To Spurring Methane Conversion In the summer of 1999, Lovley and Anderson examined the site of a contaminated aquifer where crude oil had spilled, 30 feet below the surface of the earth near Bemidji, Minnesota. With the help of a $325,000 grant from the National Science Foundation's Life in Extreme Environments Program, the two were studying anaerobic metabolic processes of microbes living in and around the oil spill. The contamination had changed the composition of the microbial community from what was normally found in the Minnesota soil to something similar to what would be found near oil reservoirs. Unlike soil found much deeper in the earth, however, there was no sulfate in this soil. Until Lovley and Anderson's study, sulfate was thought to be a necessary ingredient in the process microbes use to break down oil. sciencedaily.com

To: long-gone who wrote (132)	4/26/2000 1:18:00 PM
From: Lilian Debray	Respond to of 183

NASA Scientist: Lightning Studies May Provide Earlier Tornado Alerts "Lead time for tornado warnings is better than it's ever been," Goodman says. "It's gone from eight to 12 minutes nationally. But the false-alarm rate hasn't changed. Only 30 percent of rotating storms ever make a tornado. That leads to a lot of false alarms lulling the public into ignoring the threat." It's been a year almost to the day, but NASA researcher Dr. Steve Goodman still hasn't forgotten May 3, 1999. On that date, more than 50 tornadoes cut a killer swath across the Great Plains of Kansas and Oklahoma. Property damage was estimated at $1.2 billion. More than 40 people died. In hope of avoiding another May 3, 1999, Goodman and other scientists at the Global Hydrology and Climate Center, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., are studying new methods of predicting severe storms. "Our studies show a very big spike in the lightning's flash rate prior to formation of a tornado," Goodman says. "It's an early clue for weather forecasters to take a more detailed look at other storm characteristics with radar. And perhaps a chance for them to get warnings out earlier, saving more lives." Spotting the telltale lightning flashes isn't as easy as keeping an eye on the sky from your front porch. According to Goodman, the type of lightning NASA is researching occurs within clouds, invisible to the naked eye by day. To properly monitor this type of lightning takes special equipment like NASA's Lightning Imaging Sensor, an instrument flying aboard the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite launched in 1997. The sensor tracks worldwide lightning strikes and their relationship to storm centers. sciencedaily.com