earthstory reblogged
I haven't shown you my new pet yet! This is Clarence. He is from my home province of Manitoba.
natgeo
Video by Bertie Gregory @bertiegregory | This beautiful female grey wolf approached us with her pack on the west coast of the Hudson Bay, Manitoba, Canada. She was bold and curious, and I distinctly remember hearing the crunching of the icy snow under her feet. Never once did we feel even remotely threatened. To see this close encounter, watch ‘Wild_Life: The Big Freeze’. Premiering this Friday, 8/16 at 9pm EST on Nat Geo Wild.
Source: instagram.com
An upside down channel
This is an esker, one of the coolest features left behind by glaciers.
Glaciers are big sheets of ice that carry lots of sediment and sometimes melt. When a glacier melts, it produces streams of flowing water on and within the glacier. Even though it’s flowing on ice, that water has the same properties as any other stream; it flows downhill and can shift sediment around its channel. A long, flowing river on a glacier will shift large amounts of the sediment being carried by the glacier into its channel. When the glacier melts, that channel of sediment can be simply dropped out onto the land surface below. This type of feature is called an esker; it's the remnants of the sediment collected in a channel by a river flowing on or within the massive ice sheets that once covered North America. There are literally thousands of these features across the flatlands of Canada and the United States today; this one is near Manitoba.
-JBB
Image credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pcamill/3475078644/
Read more: http://www.landforms.eu/cairngorms/esker.htm
Source: facebook.com
Dying lakes in Canada
For the last several hundred years, at this time of year, lakes like these in Wapusk National Park near Churchill, Manitoba would be covered with snow and frozen. But over the past few years…something has seriously changed. These lakes sit Canada just south of the Arctic Circle. Most of these lakes are about a meter deep. They fill up every year as the snow melts, evaporate a little over the summer, freeze, and are snow-covered as winter resumes.
Lakes are great places to preserve easily-dated sediments because the seasons create a cycle that shows up in the sediments. By counting the thin layers of sediment deposited at the bottom of these lakes, scientists from a variety of universities within Canada, led by Université Laval’s Dr. Frédéric Bouchard, found that these lakes have continued this cycle for at least 200 years.
But, starting in 2010, this changed. It hasn't happened in the deeper lakes yet, but the shallower lakes or lakes with less water started drying up completely, as you see here.
For many of these lakes, snowfall represents up to ½ of the total water supply. Meteorological records show that over the last few decades, snowpack in this area has decreased by about 17.5% per decade – even faster than the rate at which ice has been vanishing in the Arctic Ocean.
The climate of these lakes has been so stable that their cycles continued uninterrupted for 200 years…and the changes over the past few years have been so extreme they’ve disrupted that steady state.
-JBB
Image credit: Hilary White (unrestricted usage)
Original Paper (subscription): http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2013GL058635/full
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This beautiful image shows the northern lights (aurora borealis) as well as a shooting star (meteor) over Hecla/Grindstone Provincial Park in Manitoba, Canada. Auroras occur when solar activity in the form of highly charged electrons are blown towards earth in what is called “solar wind”. The electrons interact with elements in the earth's atmosphere. Solar winds stream away from the sun at speeds of about 1 million miles per hour. When they reach the earth, some 40 hours after leaving the sun, they follow the lines of magnetic force generated by the earth's core and flow through the magnetosphere. As the electrons enter the earth's upper atmosphere, they encounter atoms of oxygen and nitrogen at different altitudes, ranging from 20 to 200 miles above the earth's surface. The colour of the aurora depends on which atom is first struck and at what altitude. For example, the green colour in this image is the result of electrons interacting with oxygen molecules at an altitude up to 241Km (150 miles). The meteor on the other hand is visible as a result of what is called ram pressure; the pressure exerted on a body which is moving through a fluid medium, like air. As the meteorite is soaring through the atmosphere a shock wave is formed as a result of the compression of air. This in turn heats the air and subsequently heats the meteor as it flows around it. The intense heat vaporizes most meteors, creating what we call shooting stars, as in this image. -Jean Picture courtesy of Federico Buchbinder
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earthstory reblogged
The Canadian Shield is an expanse of Precambrian igneous and metamorphic rocks that form the core of the North American continent. This area has only shallow topsoil and rocky outcrops interspersed with numerous lakes define the ecosystem. Black Lake in Nopiming Provincial Park, Manitoba, Canada.
I present a 5-minute music video featuring the Northern Lights – the aurora borealis – captured in still images, panoramas, all-sky images, time-lapse videos, and ... in real-time videos! All are from early February and early March of 2016.
I shot all scenes at the Churchill Northern Studies Centre, near Churchill, Manitoba, on the shore of Hudson Bay at a latitude of 58° North. Churchill’s location places it under the usual location of the auroral oval, providing spectacular displays of Northern Lights even on nights when locations to the south are seeing nothing.
I was at the CNSC to present sets of 5-night aurora viewing programs to guests from across North America. See churchillscience.ca for more details on their programs.
I shot all images with Canon 6D and Nikon D750 DSLR cameras, usually at ISO 3200. The fish-eye all-sky sequences were with a Sigma 8mm lens on the Canon, while most of the still images and other full-frame time-lapses were with the Sigma 20mm Art lens on the Nikon. For the “rapid-cadence” time-lapses I used 1- to 2-second exposures at an interval of one second.
The all-sky time-lapses are intended to be projected in digital planetarium theatres, recreating the scene on their 360° domes. Most full-dome sequences were processed through LRTimelapse software to handle the huge range in brightness of the Lights.
The real-time video clips were with the Nikon – set to ISO 25600 – and the Sigma wide open at f/1.4. While these clips are prone to digital noise, they do record the fast movement and subtle colour of the aurora much as the eye saw it. These were processed through Photoshop and the Camera Raw filter. Temperatures ranged from a bitter -35° C to just (!) -15° C on most nights. I kept the long-duration, all-sky, time-lapse camera going by placing it in a Camera Parka (atfrostedlens.com) and inserting disposable hand warmer packs inside the insulated parka. It worked very well, making it possible to shoot for up to 3 hours. Without it, the battery died after an hour.
Music is by one of my favourite artists, John Adorney, the selection If a Rose Could Speak, from his 2013 album The Wonder Well. It features vocals by Daya. The selection is used by kind permission from EverSound Music (eversound.com). Many thanks!
Frozen landscape surrounding Pisew Falls, the 2nd highest waterfall in the province of Manitoba.
--Sun Pillar--
Seen during sunset over Lake Winnipeg near Victoria Beach, Manitoba, a single, majestic beam of light stretches straight up into the sky creating the visual phenomenon called a “sun pillar.”
A sun pillar is created by sunlight bouncing off free-floating ice crystals in the atmosphere. These free-floating crystals, however, must be arranged in a similar orientation and be slightly tipped toward the viewer in order for the sun pillar to form.
The variety of shades of red perceived on the clouds is created by higher amounts of light scattering when the sun is close to the horizon. While this sun pillar is yellow, shades of lemon to lavender have been observed from other sightings.
-Stephen M.
Photographer: Federico Buchbinder; <http://federicobuchbinder.com/> Photo Details: NIKON D700; Lens: 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8; Focal Length: 70.0 mm; Aperture: f/22.0; Exposure Time: 0.500 s (1/2): ISO equiv: 200.
Link: http://epod.usra.edu/blog/2012/11/sun-pillar-over-victoria-beach-manitoba.html
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The sky ablaze
Over the past several days, an active region on the sun fired out several coronal mass ejections in Earth’s direction. The charged particles from those CMEs arrived in the Earth’s area in the evening/early morning on Monday June 22 into Tuesday June 23. The combination of their charges, direction, and intensity produced a geomagnetic storm – surges of electricity and charged particles within the atmosphere that gave rise to impressive auroras across the planet.
Photos came in from all around the world and this is a sampling of the ones that have been freely shared online. These come from Manitoba in Canada, Washington State, and as far south as Kansas.
-JBB
Image credits: https://flic.kr/p/uNHjRf https://flic.kr/p/uNLFQx https://flic.kr/p/v4GCS2
Read more: http://wapo.st/1K7YenP
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An upside down channel This is an esker, one of the coolest features left behind by glaciers. Glaciers are big sheets of ice that carry lots of sediment and sometimes melt. When a glacier melts, it produces streams of flowing water on and within the glacier. Even though it’s flowing on ice, that water has the same properties as any other stream; it flows downhill and can shift sediment around its channel. A long, flowing river on a glacier will shift large amounts of the sediment being carried by the glacier into its channel. When the glacier melts, that channel of sediment can be simply dropped out onto the land surface below. This type of feature is called an esker; it's the remnants of the sediment collected in a channel by a river flowing on or within the massive ice sheets that once covered North America. There are literally thousands of these features across the flatlands of Canada and the United States today; this one is near Manitoba. -JBB Image credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pcamill/3475078644/ Read more: http://www.landforms.eu/cairngorms/esker.htm