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Earth Science

Launched Q&A site for those interested in the geology, meteorology, oceanography, and environmental sciences.

8
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4
answers

Remote sensing in Geoscience?

apr 8 '17 at 22:36 Community♦ 1
1
vote
0
answers

Is the geology proposal redundant to the Earth Science one?

may 22 '16 at 22:18 b_jonas 171
3
votes
1
answer

Would Langley calibration questions be on topic

apr 9 '14 at 1:33 Community♦ 1
0
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2
answers

Some other possible geo sciences to be supported here

feb 20 '14 at 16:49 Community♦ 1
2
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2
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The problem of more than one answer

jan 22 '14 at 9:56 Community♦ 1

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discuss this proposal

88 Example Questions

active newest votes
up vote 15 down vote
What tools are there to read a [GeoTIFF,KML,FITS,CDF,NetCDF,HDF] file?
added by Joe Dec 23 '11 at 16:36
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3  
That's pretty well covered by gis.stackexchange.com – underdark Apr 10 '13 at 6:15
@underdark : GIS will allow questions about FITS and CDF? – Joe Apr 10 '13 at 21:25
@Joe: Personally, I only know NetCDF and that it's supported in GIS. In my opinion those questions would be allowed and welcome on GIS. – underdark Apr 11 '13 at 6:04
1  
@nodnarb do you mean gis.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/netcdf and gis.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/kml ? – underdark Apr 19 '13 at 6:08
2  
Regardless of whether these particular file formats are used in GIS, there are certainly geoscience file formats which have no relevance to GIS applications. ZVI (Zeiss microscope image), for instance, or CIT (CalTech magnetometer format). – Pont May 5 '13 at 7:26
show 4 more improvement suggestions
up vote 11 down vote
How do Milankovitch Cycles force atmospheric CO2 levels?
added by winwaed Jan 6 '12 at 14:33
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3  
This would fit well in the Climate Change proposal. Fits well here too though. Good argument for merging. – naught101 Feb 7 '12 at 5:36
up vote 10 down vote
Why do earthquakes appear in clusters?
added by Richard Nov 9 '11 at 19:03
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up vote 10 down vote
What are the requirements for a storm to be classified as a hurricane?
added by Richard Nov 10 '11 at 18:16
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up vote 10 down vote
Why is pyroclastic flow so dangerous?
added by Richard Nov 10 '11 at 18:19
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4  
Define "dangerous"? Perhaps being too close to an active volcano is actually what's dangerous? This isn't worded very well for a scientific SE – naught101 Feb 7 '12 at 5:33
2  
I agree that it's vaguely worded but I think it's a promising question. Suggested more-specific version: "Why do pyroclastic flows pose a greater hazard to human life than many other eruption-related phenomena, such as lava flows and bombs?". A volcanologist / hazards person (which I am not) could probably do a better job of rewording this. – Pont Apr 16 '13 at 10:11
up vote 10 down vote
What is the current status of Raymo&Ruddiman's "Uplift of the Tibet Plateau cooled the Earth" hypothesis?
added by winwaed Dec 10 '11 at 0:47
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up vote 10 down vote
Where can I find historical data on [rainfall] in [the Amazon Basin]?
added by Joe Dec 23 '11 at 16:34
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duplicate of "I am looking for a dataset on <Topic X>" – underdark Apr 11 '13 at 16:26
@underdark : interesting definition of 'duplicate' when that was asked 10 months after this one. – Joe Apr 11 '13 at 16:46
up vote 10 down vote
How do the jet streams affect the pole-to-equator temperature gradient?
added by InquilineKea Jan 22 '12 at 2:02
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up vote 10 down vote
Is plate tectonics possible without water?
added by winwaed Jan 26 '12 at 13:51
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up vote 10 down vote
What events can reset or distort paleomagnetic signals in rocks?
added by jurassic Feb 3 '12 at 18:20
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up vote 10 down vote
Are all granites formed in basically the same way, or are there multiple mechanisms that produce a granitic composition?
added by jurassic Feb 3 '12 at 18:32
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3  
"basic granites" - haha! Bad Geology Puns rule :-) – winwaed Feb 27 '12 at 15:54
up vote 10 down vote
When and how did plate tectonics begin on the Earth?
added by jurassic Feb 3 '12 at 18:51
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pretty much as soon as the crust formed. – Sean Dec 27 '12 at 23:43
up vote 10 down vote
What is a good open source package to process 2D [reflection,refraction,passive] [land,ocean] seismic data?
added by Leo Uieda May 25 '12 at 17:15
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I'd call this a "narrow but wide" question; narrow, because it refers to seismic data processing, but wide because it doesn't specify reflection/refraction/passive, land/marine/transition, 2D/3D, academic/commercial, volumes of data to be processed etc etc. As a result it will be hard to answer without additional questions and/or have no "definitive" correct answer. – GuyM Dec 7 '12 at 19:01
1  
Consider "What is a good open source package to process 2D reflection land data collected on a 48-channel system for accademic research? We may need to include our own algorithms as part of the research we are doing. It needs to be able to run on our Windows laptop in the field?" – GuyM Dec 7 '12 at 19:03
I agree that is was too broad. I changed it to be a bit more specific but not too much since these are only example questions. Is that appropriate? – Leo Uieda Dec 10 '12 at 16:19
As I understand it, these questions are supposed to be samples of something you might find on the site once it becomes active, rather than descriptions of a category of question. Highly specific questions should therefore be fine. I don't think there's much harm in slightly broadening it as your current formulation does, though. – Pont Apr 23 '13 at 12:13
up vote 10 down vote
What is the period of the thermohaline circulation in the ocean?
added by naught101 Aug 24 '12 at 1:17
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up vote 10 down vote
What do weather forecasters mean when they say "50% chance of rain"?
added by naught101 Aug 24 '12 at 1:20
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Even more confusing: the weather report that I read often says something like "30% chance of rain. >10mm", then the next day "70% chance of rain <1mm". WTF? – naught101 Oct 2 '12 at 2:05
I heard once that the National Weather Service rarely puts the chance at 50% -- they prefer 40% or 60% as it seems less like a flip of the coin. I've never tried looking at the data to see if it's true or not, though. – Joe Oct 20 '12 at 2:52
up vote 10 down vote
What parts of the fossil record are most lacking in specimens?
added by naught101 Aug 24 '12 at 1:22
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up vote 10 down vote
How high can meteorological sounding balloons fly before they break?
added by Mchaiiann Aug 31 '12 at 6:27
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up vote 10 down vote
I am looking for a dataset on <Topic X>
added by david valentine Oct 11 '12 at 23:43
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3  
Answers may not always be found or even asked in this community. For example, in GIS.stackexchange.com, "Looking for Mid-Holocene (~6000 BP) bioclim dataset" gis.stackexchange.com/questions/21195/… Ideally these types of questions will be asked here. – david valentine Oct 11 '12 at 23:45
1  
(gis.stackexchange.com/questions/11507/…) Global solar radiation data – david valentine Oct 11 '12 at 23:48
1  
Historical Hurricane Tracks gis.stackexchange.com/questions/34400/… – david valentine Oct 11 '12 at 23:51
1  
Where can I find spatial data on Runoff Data and peak discharge data of asia region gis.stackexchange.com/questions/34035/… – david valentine Oct 11 '12 at 23:52
up vote 10 down vote
How did the Earth's faster rotation rate in the Precambrian era affect its jet streams?
added by InquilineKea Dec 3 '12 at 23:17
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up vote 10 down vote
Why is an Iridium anomaly important?
added by FossilizedCarlos Dec 11 '12 at 9:32
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up vote 10 down vote
Which current and planned Earth Observation satellite image sensors would be suitable for detecting large fires from space?
added by Ries Jan 14 '13 at 18:24
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up vote 10 down vote
Since fossil record is necessarily incomplete, why should we rely on it to define GSSPs? Would not a physical/chemical event be a better choice?
added by furins Jan 28 '13 at 23:12
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GSSPs = en.wikipedia.org/wiki/… – Nick Jun 6 '13 at 0:15
up vote 10 down vote
What, if any, paleoclimate data can be derived from stromatolite fossils?
added by Paul A. Clayton Feb 11 '13 at 14:27
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1  
It might be good to try to figure out where the boundary is between this proposal and Biology.SE. More questions like this would help! – naught101 Apr 2 '13 at 4:35
1  
In this case, I'd say it's clearly appropriate for geoscience because (1) it's specifically about fossils, not living organisms and (2) the interest is in the geoscientific data we can get from the fossils, rather than the organisms per se. There's a clear potential for overlap though, especially when you start trying to calibrate your fossil data against nearest-equivalent living organisms in present-day environments. – Pont Jun 3 '13 at 10:56
up vote 10 down vote
What is the origin of isolated Montmartre mountain in the flat Parisian area?
added by tohecz Mar 4 '13 at 19:50
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Nice, although perhaps a little too localised. Could be broadened with "Are there other mountains around the world that have a similar origin?" – naught101 May 8 '13 at 4:59
1  
IMHO not TL as is. It can be widened in some sense, but these questions are a good content-maker, and usually questions like this are well indexed by search engines, bringing people to the site. – tohecz May 9 '13 at 8:45
up vote 10 down vote
To what degree do oceans 'buffer' atmospheric CO2 levels and what is their approximate 'buffer capacity'?
added by Lorentz May 14 '13 at 21:00
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up vote 10 down vote
Why is it that Earth and Venus, whilst having many similar properties (bulk composition, size, uncompressed density) have such different atmospheres?
added by Shane Hunt Jun 9 '13 at 13:17
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up vote 9 down vote
How can magnitude of fault rupture change along fault length? Doesn't this produce a spacial discontinuity?
added by jurassic Feb 3 '12 at 18:38
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up vote 9 down vote
Why don't cold fronts and other steep-gradient weather effects just dissipate?
added by naught101 Aug 24 '12 at 1:09
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up vote 9 down vote
Approximately what percentage of global warming in the last century is attributed to human influence? What other sources are attributed?
added by naught101 Aug 24 '12 at 1:23
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Copied from the climate change proposal. – naught101 Aug 24 '12 at 1:23
This is Not Constructive by definition, since there does not exist (and probably never will exist) a good and widely acceptable answer. This certainly asks for debates and flame wars. – tohecz May 9 '13 at 8:40
To some extent, any question on anthropogenic climate change risks flame wars. That's unfortunate, but we shouldn't avoid all discussion of it for that reason. Many papers have been published addressing this question. Perhaps they're not "widely acceptable", particularly to some people outside the geoscience community, but they provide pertinent and constructive answers to the question. – Pont May 9 '13 at 10:49
1  
Just because many people have opinions on something, we should not ignore the huge amount of quantitative research done on that topic! I think that for "trusted" sources, we should restrict ourselves to papers published in peer-reviewed journals (or summaries which specifically reference such papers); not that this guarantees they are the absolute and eternal truth, but it at least indicates a minimum standard of reasoned argument. I think that within the scientific literature -- at least within papers which stood up to subsequent criticism -- we'd find a far narrower range than 0-100%. – Pont May 10 '13 at 9:57
1  
Also, even if the answer really were "there is absolutely no consensus and studies show attributions ranging from 0% to 100%", we should cite the relevant sources and leave that as the answer. A question should not be deemed invalid just because the answer is currently not known with full certainty. – Pont May 10 '13 at 10:06
show 1 more improvement suggestion
up vote 9 down vote
What are some of the known biases of the current numerical weather models?
added by malonso Aug 24 '12 at 13:13
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1  
This is likely too broad to be answerable; most modern forecasting involves running multiple simulations w/ varying input (to represent measurement uncertainty), and then use the stack of results to get an estimate of likelihood of an event. – Joe Sep 25 '12 at 15:13
2  
No, I think this is an excellent question. There are simple, widely known biases that most models share. One that I'm aware of is that most models have too many "drizzle days" - that is, days with low-volume, constant precipitation. Total precipitation is generally good, but the distribution is not quite right. – naught101 Oct 2 '12 at 2:03
up vote 9 down vote
What evidence do we have that Venus, Earth and Mars started out with similar atmospheres, but Venus had runaway GH effect and Mars atmosphere froze?
added by gerrit Oct 16 '12 at 21:53
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up vote 9 down vote
I'm looking for a hydrological model to estimate various properties a river system. What are some publicly available software/modeling options?
added by Jezibelle Oct 27 '12 at 18:50
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up vote 9 down vote
Why was the 2012 hurricane Sandy stengthened by cold artic air?
added by JustinY Oct 29 '12 at 20:07
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up vote 9 down vote
How does climate change affect the speed and amplitude of Rossby Waves in the atmosphere?
added by InquilineKea Dec 3 '12 at 23:20
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up vote 9 down vote
What is the difference between a Geologist and a Geophysicist?
added by FossilizedCarlos Dec 11 '12 at 9:33
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2  
Holy shit ... hey, fellow geophysicists, this is rather provocative, is not it ;-) ? ualberta.ca/~unsworth/geophysicist_defn.pdf – ernestopheles Dec 12 '12 at 17:21
Joking aside, I think it's a good question: it's the kind of thing that's seldom explained explicitly, and you're just left to gradually figure it out for yourself. Questions like these, with good concise answers, would help to make the structure of the field a bit less opaque and confusing to newcomers and outsiders. – Pont May 28 '13 at 15:26
up vote 9 down vote
How does superposition help in determining the age of a layer of sediment?
added by FossilizedCarlos Dec 11 '12 at 9:34
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1  
"super position" should, presumably, be "superposition". – Pont Apr 23 '13 at 12:03
Corrected. Thanks! – FossilizedCarlos Apr 23 '13 at 23:55
up vote 9 down vote
Why do we get intraplate earthquakes?
added by a different ben Dec 19 '12 at 4:00
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up vote 9 down vote
What tools exist to read AVHRR GAC data?
added by gerrit Jan 15 '13 at 22:36
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Oooh, practical science questions. Nice! – naught101 Apr 2 '13 at 4:34
Yes -- one of those "didn't quite make it into the methods section" details that could save someone half a day of messing about if there's a good answer here. – Pont Jun 3 '13 at 10:51
@Pont can be considerably more than half a day actually. – gerrit Jun 3 '13 at 15:18
up vote 9 down vote
Do tectonic plate speeds move at different rates after an earthquake?
added by Reliable Source Jan 18 '13 at 15:33
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up vote 9 down vote
If an area is prone to fog in the mornings, is it less likely to rain?
added by user1707602 May 13 '13 at 20:39
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