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Posts Tagged ‘North Atlantic’

Volcanic eruptions: Guided by the lightning

December 16th, 2010 | No Comments

A new way of protecting planes from the ash from volcanoes

THE explosive eruption of Eyjafjallajokull, an Icelandic volcano, wreaked havoc on air travel over the North Atlantic for several weeks this spring. The very existence of the ash cloud thrown into the sky was bad enough. But an inability to predict the cloud’s behaviour made matters worse. In particular, sudden changes in its height made the job of flying safely above it a tricky one.

Now a team of researchers at the British and Icelandic Meteorological Offices, led by Alec Bennett, may have found a way round the problem of predicting the height of volcanic ash clouds like that created by Eyjafjallajokull. As they report in Environmental Research Letters, the lightning the ash generates tells all. …

A mysterious disappearance

August 23rd, 2010 | No Comments

Where has all the plastic gone?

THE amount of plastic thrown away by Americans increased fourfold between 1980 and 2008. It is a reasonable assumption that as more plastic is produced and discarded, this will affect oceanic pollution. But a study of the north Atlantic and the Caribbean, just published in Science, suggests things are not getting worse. Between 1986 and 2008 there was no increase in the concentration of plastic in the areas looked at despite a steady rise in the amount discarded. Kara Law and her colleagues at the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Massachusetts have no explanation for this lack of accumulation. A programme by the American plastics industry that resulted in a decrease in the number of pellets in the water is still insufficient to explain the data. Nor does the missing plastic seem to have sunk; trawls at depth show no sign of it. The Sargasso Sea of legend, and its modern equivalent, the Bermuda Triangle, are supposed to be places where things disappear without trace. Dr Law seems to have come up with a real example.

Read article …

Fisheries biology: War dividend

August 19th, 2010 | No Comments

The second world war led to a boom in North Sea fish numbers

SOME experiments are hard to conduct. Fisheries biologists are, for example, reasonably confident that creating protected areas in the sea, in which fishing is forbidden, encourages the recovery of those species that stay put in the area. This has worked in several places in the tropics, notably the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, where fish populations in protected zones have doubled in five years. They are less confident, however, that it applies to places where the fish of interest are migratory, as is often the case in temperate-zone fisheries like those of the North Atlantic and its adjacent seas.

Closing such places to fishing in order to find out is politically difficult. But 71 years ago politics did dictate one such closure, and a group of biologists, led by Doug Beare at the European Commission’s Office of Maritime Affairs, has now taken advantage of it. The closure in question was the little matter of the second world war, and Dr Beare and his team have been looking at its effects on the population of cod, haddock and whiting in the North Sea. …

Mistaken airstrike kills 33 in Afghanistan

February 23rd, 2010 | No Comments

A North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) airstrike in southern Afghanistan has killed 33 people after an aircraft fired on civilians mistakenly thought to be insurgents, the Afghan government said yesterday. The Afghan cabinet condemned the killings near the border of Uruzgan and Dai Kondi

Sept. 30, 1861: A Novelist With a Nose for Disaster

September 30th, 2009 | No Comments

1861: American novelist and short-story writer Morgan Robertson is born. His 1898 novel, Futility, eerily foretells one of the 20th century’s great man-made disasters: the sinking of the Titanic
The similarities between Futility and subsequent actual events are startling, beginning with the names of the ships. Morgan Robertson called his liner Titan, which is just a [...]

Alda Sigmundsdottir: Is Russia Iceland’s New Best Friend?

July 20th, 2009 | No Comments

At any rate, it seemed very strange to us that suddenly Russia wanted to be our new best friend — particularly as the US was perceived to have turned its back on Iceland a few months earlier by leaving it out of an important currency swap agreement

Airport passenger numbers fall 5.9%

July 10th, 2009 | No Comments

â€¢ 12.7m passengers pass through company’s seven airports
â€¢ Lowest figure for nine months
â€¢ Edinburgh bucks the trend

The number of travellers using major UK airports declined to its lowest level for nine months in June, BAA said today.

The airport operator said a total of 12.7m passengers passed through its airports last month, a reduction of 5.9% on the same period last year.

But the firm, which saw a 7.3% fall in May, said this was the best underlying figure since last September.

BAA had posted a 2.3% decline in passenger numbers in April but this rose to 6.8% when the effect of a late Easter was stripped out.

Heathrow recorded a comparatively modest fall of 3.1% because of its large number of transfer flights.

Stansted, the base for several low-cost carriers including Ryanair and easyJet, was the worst affected airport, falling 11.5%.

In the six months to June 2009, the Essex airport is down 14.4%, compared with the same period last year, as carriers have slashed capacity at the airport.

Domestic traffic was down 8.1% in June, European scheduled flight passengers were reduced by 2.8% and travellers on North Atlantic routes were 9.4% lower.

Long-haul flights were the most resilient sector, almost flat on last year at a 0.2% reduction.

Edinburgh was the only airport to register an increase in traveller numbers, at 1.4% â€“ its third month of growth.

Gatwick had 7.6% fewer passengers in June, while Glasgow and Aberdeen dropped 10.9% and 9.8% respectively.

BAA is embroiled in a battle against the Competition Commission’s decision to make it sell three of its airports.

The commission ruled earlier this year that BAA’s ownership of seven UK airports was anti-competitive and ordered the firm to sell Gatwick and Stansted airports as well as either Glasgow or Edinburgh.

BAA had already decided to sell Gatwick in West Sussex and said last month the sale process was continuing.

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