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The Most Groundbreaking Scientist You’ve Never Heard of – TED-Ed | Addison Anderson (2013)

February 11, 2018 at 11:41 am / Evolution, Global Patterns, Natural history

Seventeenth-century Danish geologist Nicolas Steno [11 January 1638 – 5 December 1686] studied anatomical details of many species including cadavers at a young age. Steno’s contributions to geology influenced Charles Lyell, James Hutton and Charles Darwin. Here in this TED-Ed short animation Addison Anderson tells Steno’s little-known legacy. Steno was a groundbreaking scientist demonstrating the power of empiricism a scientific tradition that was started by Aristotle. Steno, in his Dissertationis prodromus of 1669 is credited with four of the defining […]

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Kīlauea Summit Eruption | Lava Returns to Halemaʻumaʻu – USGS (2017)

January 1, 2018 at 12:18 pm / Global Patterns, Video

The sight of liquid molten rock is a stunning experience and has inspired many filmmakers to capture it. The Greek geographer Strabo provides the first historical and technical account of a lava field from a belt of extinct volcanoes in Turkey. This area is now declared as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In March 2008, a new volcanic vent opened within Halema‘uma‘u, a crater at the summit of Kīlauea Volcano in Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park on the Island of Hawaiʻi. […]

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The Lava Affair – SKUNK BEAR/NPR (2015)

December 31, 2017 at 10:34 pm / Global Patterns, Video

Continents float on a massive ocean of magma and lava is what we observe when it reaches to the surface. The first technical description of lava flow comes from the Greek geographer Strabo in his book. He describes the Katakekaumene, which means the “burnt country” referring to a region of around 1,800 km2 in western Anatolia. The region harbors a dormant volcanic belt within the town of Kula which has been declared as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The volcanism […]

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How mountaintop mining affects life and landscape in West Virginia – PBS (2017)

September 15, 2017 at 11:15 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Global Patterns, Video

Coal has been one of the work horses of power generation but its dominance is dwindling. In 2016 U.S. coal energy industry employed around 160,000 workers while solar energy production employed around 370,000. Coal has been a massive contributor to the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere leading to mercury pollution with subsequent biomagnification throughout the food chain, ocean acidification and global warming. Some geologists propose that fossil fuel use including coal may be accepted as an indicator for […]

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Total Solar Eclipse in North America – Path of Totality – NASA/SVS (2017)

August 7, 2017 at 8:34 am / Global Patterns, Video

During the August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse, the Moon’s umbral shadow will traverse across the North American continent, from Oregon to South Carolina. Transition from west to east coast will last a little over 90 minutes. Along the path of totality, observers will see the Moon completely obscure the Sun for about two and a half minutes. The math used to calculate the trajectory of the eclipses to create maps such as the one featured here was worked out […]

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Keeling’s Curve: The Story of CO2 – Science Bulletins – AMNH

June 7, 2017 at 10:09 pm / Global Patterns, Video

Keeling’s Curve: The Story of CO2 was produced by Laura Allen for the Science Bulletins of the American Museum of Natural History. Science Bulletins is a production of the National Center for Science Literacy, Education, and Technology (NCSLET), part of the Department of Education at the American Museum of Natural History. Ice cores drilled from the glaciers, Greenland and the Antarctic have shown that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere is tightly linked to the average temperature of the Earth. […]

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Acid Test – Natural Resources Defense Council (2009)

April 8, 2017 at 5:05 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Global Patterns, Video

Since the beginning of the industrial revolution a quarter of the carbon that has been released into the atmosphere was absorbed by the oceans. As a result the acidity of the oceans has increased by %30. Increasing acidity makes it corrosive dissolving the calcium shells of marine organisms. Among them are planktons, corals and pteropods which form the base of the food web. Carbon dioxide dissolves higher quantities in cold water, therefore first biological signs of acidification is observed closer […]

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Cloud-Aerosol Transport System (CATS) on Board ISS – NASA/SVS (2017)

March 20, 2017 at 10:54 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Global Patterns, NatureDocumentaries.org, Video

NASA’s Cloud-Aerosol Transport System is a remote-sensing instrument installed on the International Space Station (ISS) in 2015. Using LIDAR technology it scans a vertical slice of the atmosphere for natural as well as human made aerosols and clouds. The near-real-time data transmitted from the ISS enables CATS team to process it within six hours. One of the natural aerosol sources is volcanoes. In April 2015, the CATS instrument provided a detailed profile of the south Chilean volcano Calbuco when it […]

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A Tour of the Cryosphere – NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (2009)

February 19, 2017 at 10:26 pm / Global Patterns, Video

The cryosphere covers parts of the Earth’s surface where water is found in the form of snow, sea ice, glaciers, permafrost, ice sheets, and icebergs. Ice and snow exist close to their melting point. Fluctuations in surface temperatures of our planet leads to frequent state changes in water from solid to liquid and back. Using satellite observations scientists monitor such changes in the global and regional climate. The Earth’s cryosphere shrink and expand on a yearly basis. Antarctica The animation […]

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Ecology from the Air – Greg Asner (2009) TED Talk

January 30, 2017 at 1:44 am / Ecological Documentaries, Global Patterns, Video

Being able to measure interaction of the living and the non-living at large continental-scales is eye opening. That’s what successful scientist Greg Asner does with the Carnegie Airborne Observatory (CAO). NASA’s Landsat earth observation satellites have been feeding us invaluable global-scale data for more than 40 years. The new satellite Landsat 8 began transmitting near-realtime information. Thanks to these earth observation satellites we can instantly know scale of natural or human-made impacts on ecosystems. Deforestation for oil palm plantations in […]

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Geological History of the Continents/Paleomap Project – Christopher Scotese (2015)

January 5, 2017 at 9:28 pm / Evolution, Global Patterns, Video

Geology and biological evolution of life are inseparable. More than half of the minerals now incorporated into the upper crust of our planet were produced by living organisms. The movement of continental plates has played a fundamental role in the recycling of mineral resources by the biosphere. Scientists now predict that tectonic activity may have been one of the prerequisites for the origin of life. The acceptance of continental drift by the scientific community and how it affected Earth’s history […]

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Earthquakes and Tsunamis – PTWC/NOAA (2016)

December 9, 2016 at 12:11 pm / Global Patterns, Video

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) of NOAA has produced a set of educational videos to inform public about earthquakes and tsunamis. The playlist includes seismological analysis of many destructive earthquakes and dynamics of subsequent tsunamis from tectonically active regions of the world. The first animation in the playlist graphically compares the relative sizes of some notable earthquakes by their moment magnitudes. Each circle’s area represents its relative energy release. Color of the circles indicate their tsunami potential. Their labels […]

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How to Build a Climate Laboratory – Julia Slingo – Royal Institution (2016)

October 19, 2016 at 6:03 pm / Global Patterns, Video

Climate models have revolutionized our understanding of the world. Julia Slingo, the Met Office Chief Scientist and High Level Group Scientific Advisor to the European Commission, examines the processes controlling the planetary climate system. Realistic encapsulation of these processes in models increases our predictive power tremendously. Climate science works at so many different fields and scales with a common goal of converging into a common truth. Some scientists study mass balance of glaciers measuring growth and shrinkage of the cryosphere. […]

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Climatic Dynamics of Monsoons – NASA SVS (2016)

September 30, 2016 at 10:18 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Global Patterns, NatureDocumentaries.org, Video

The monsoon was noticed for the first time in India. It is a seasonal rain and wind pattern that occurs in many places on our planet. The quasi-regular atmospheric pattern is hugely influential in Human history. The first truly global economy was established in the Indian ocean by sea faring merchants who traveled from Africa and middle east all the way to Indonesia and Malaysia and back. Predictability of the wind patterns around the Indian Ocean was the defining factor. […]

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Journey Into The Sun – KQED QUEST (2010)

August 22, 2016 at 11:08 pm / Global Patterns, Video

The Sun is the most influential celestial object for life as we know it. Understanding and predicting its behavior is essential for our existence. Plants are green because our Sun is a red star. However in the early days of life this relationship was quite different. The young Earth was spinning much faster and the days were 8 hours long. The Sun was less bright and cooler. The early photosynthesizing organisms were purple to maximize light harvesting in liquid environment. […]

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