Tornado Article

The town of Joplin was massively destroyed by a tornado that touched around 6pm. on a Sunday night. Police say that 30 were killed and 11 bodies have been found in one area. A major hospital had to be abandoned and moved across the street when it caught fire from a power outage. Even Firefighters had to help each other get out of the destruction caused by the tornado.
This one was just the latest in a string of other tornadoes that have killed hundreds of people in recent months, with Tuscaloosa, Ala., still recovering from one that also destroyed the center of the city in April. One officer had compared it to a tornado that hit May 2008 and had left the same damage as well.

Acid Rain

1. Acid rain is caused by sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides produced when fuels burn. Most sulfur dioxide is high-sulfur coal burned in power plants which is widely spread throughout Pennsylvania.

2. Many Power plants in the area.

3. Acid rain forms when sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides in the atmosphere combine with water to form sulfuric acid and nitric acid. These acids, mixed with rainwater, fall to Earth as acid rain, snow or fog.

Mudslides in Guatemala

Some of the natural causes in why the mudslides happen is that there are frequent earthquakes, muddy soil, and too much rain. A human cause of the mudslide is that the people who are living there don't know that the pine trees help keep the soil where it is, stop it from moving. So they tare out the trees, cut them down so they can plant their crops, and then when the rain comes the dirt can easily be carried off, this will cause a mudslide. They are now planting pine trees around their crops so there will be protection, and the future mudslides won't be as sever.

This data came from the NOAA (Earth System Research Laboratory). It tells what the temp. is in the atmosphere and it rises about 1% every year. The units are ppm and the horizontal axis goes from 1857 to 2007, (50 years). The vertical axis goes up by 10 from 300 to 380, (80). Something like that...

Four Questions...

• 1 - What do you think the global average temperature is?  This means the average for everywhere on Earth, day and night, for an entire year.  Explain why you answered what you did.

Maybe around 30-40 degrees. I think that because in a lot of places like Maine it is somewhat cold all year round and sometimes it's really warm, so kind of in between warm and cold.

• 2 - People are often talking about "global warming."  How much do you think the average global temperature has increased in the past 100 years?  Do you think that this is a lot?

 I think maybe the temperature has gone up about maybe around 5% something like that. Mostly because winter is not lasting as long and its been getting warmer outside even in winter.

• 3 - What do you think is the hottest the Earth has ever been? (since there has been an atmosphere?)  How about the coldest the Earth has ever been?  Explain why you answered what you did.

 Maybe the hottest would be like 120 degrees around there, and the coldest would be something like -200 degrees. I think that because we have had heat waves and the ice age.

• 4 - Are you concerned about "global warming?"  Why or why not?

Yes because there are so many green house gasses from all the cars and buisnesses and such that everything is getting so polluted and it's getting warmer all year round.

Qustion 4...

I think that places such as the desert get little rain because there wasn't much water there to begin with and after a while there was no more moisture around because it kept evaporating from the heat and the clouds disapeared from the heat. The rain depends on how much water is there to begin with because when the water on the ground evaporates then it goes into the air and into the clouds, and when the clouds fill up with too much water it begins to rain. The more water in the area, the more it rains.