• Education
    • Higher Education
    • Scholarships & Grants
    • Online Learning
    • School Reforms
    • Research & Innovation
  • Lifestyle
    • Travel
    • Food & Drink
    • Fashion & Beauty
    • Home & Living
    • Relationships & Family
  • Technology & Startups
    • Software & Apps
    • Startup Success Stories
    • Startups & Innovations
    • Tech Regulations
    • Venture Capital
    • Artificial Intelligence
    • Cybersecurity
    • Emerging Technologies
    • Gadgets & Devices
    • Industry Analysis
  • About us
  • Contact
  • Advertise with Us
  • Privacy & Policy
Today Headline
  • Home
  • World News
    • Us & Canada
    • Europe
    • Asia
    • Africa
    • Middle East
  • Politics
    • Elections
    • Political Parties
    • Government Policies
    • International Relations
    • Legislative News
  • Business & Finance
    • Market Trends
    • Stock Market
    • Entrepreneurship
    • Corporate News
    • Economic Policies
  • Science & Environment
    • Space Exploration
    • Climate Change
    • Wildlife & Conservation
    • Environmental Policies
    • Medical Research
  • Health
    • Public Health
    • Mental Health
    • Medical Breakthroughs
    • Fitness & Nutrition
    • Pandemic Updates
  • Sports
    • Football
    • Basketball
    • Tennis
    • Olympics
    • Motorsport
  • Entertainment
    • Movies
    • Music
    • TV & Streaming
    • Celebrity News
    • Awards & Festivals
  • Crime & Justice
    • Court Cases
    • Cybercrime
    • Policing
    • Criminal Investigations
    • Legal Reforms
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • World News
    • Us & Canada
    • Europe
    • Asia
    • Africa
    • Middle East
  • Politics
    • Elections
    • Political Parties
    • Government Policies
    • International Relations
    • Legislative News
  • Business & Finance
    • Market Trends
    • Stock Market
    • Entrepreneurship
    • Corporate News
    • Economic Policies
  • Science & Environment
    • Space Exploration
    • Climate Change
    • Wildlife & Conservation
    • Environmental Policies
    • Medical Research
  • Health
    • Public Health
    • Mental Health
    • Medical Breakthroughs
    • Fitness & Nutrition
    • Pandemic Updates
  • Sports
    • Football
    • Basketball
    • Tennis
    • Olympics
    • Motorsport
  • Entertainment
    • Movies
    • Music
    • TV & Streaming
    • Celebrity News
    • Awards & Festivals
  • Crime & Justice
    • Court Cases
    • Cybercrime
    • Policing
    • Criminal Investigations
    • Legal Reforms
No Result
View All Result
Today Headline
No Result
View All Result
Home Science & Environment

A Year on Planet Earth — Part 3 todayheadline

January 1, 2025
in Science & Environment
Reading Time: 8 mins read
A A
0
A Year on Planet Earth — Part 3
7
SHARES
16
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

In this final installment of a three-part series recapping some of the most dramatic and significant events of 2024, I’ll start with a look at the record-setting hurricane season that recently ended. And then, to balance things out, I’ll finish with some dazzling events that brought us great beauty during the year.

But first, for Part 1 of the series, go here. And for Part 2, here.

And now, let’s get to it — Part 3 of “A Year on Planet Earth”:

Above Average Atlantic Hurricane Season

The Atlantic Hurricane season didn’t quite live up to some forecasts of hyper-activity with as many as two dozen named storms. But it still set notable records — and some storms caused devastating damage.

During the official season, from June 1 to Nov. 30, 18 named storms swirled in the Atlantic basin. (Named storms have winds of 39 mph or greater.) Eleven of these had winds of 74 mph or greater, qualifying them as hurricanes. Of these, five intensified to major hurricanes with winds of 111 mph or more.

All told, five hurricanes swept onto land in the continental United States, with two of them making landfall as major hurricanes.

In Part 1 of this series, I featured an image of Hurricane Beryl taken from the International Space Station on July 1. It shows the sprawling storm from a dramatic oblique angle. At the time, the cyclone’s winds were howling at 150 miles per hour. Above, I’ve included a dramatic close-up satellite image of Beryl’s eye, also acquired on July 1.

Beryl was notable because it was the earliest Atlantic basin Category-5 hurricane on record, and the strongest June and July hurricane ever recorded in the basin. She roared across parts of the Caribbean and the Yucatán Peninsula, making landfall in the United States along the Gulf Coast as a Category-1 storm.

Sunlight falls on Hurricane Helene on Sept. 26, 2024, as seen in this image acquired by the GOES-16 satellite. (Credit: (CSU/CIRA & NOAA)

The usual peak of the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season saw a bit of a lull, but then activity came roaring back with record-breaking storms. Hurricane Helene was one of them. Seen in the GOES-16 satellite image above, it stretches across a vast swath of the eastern seaboard of the United States.

Helene truly was huge. At its biggest extent, it was 420 miles wide. That made her larger than all but two Gulf of Mexico storms since 1988, according to an analysis by Colorado State University hurricane scientist Phil Klotzbach.

Helene made landfall on the Florida Gulf Coast as a Category 4 storm on Sept. 26. After tearing things apart and pushing up inundating storm surges along the coast, Helene swept north, causing catastrophic flooding across the southern Appalachians, as well as widespread wind damage all the way to the North Carolina mountains. The storm ultimately killed more than 200 people.

Hurricane Milton also was a notable storm of 2024. It made landfall as a Category-3 near Siesta Key, Florida, on October 9, triggering an outbreak of 46 tornadoes, causing rainfall amounts of 10-15 inches (and higher) that led to flooding. Milton also pushed up a destructive storm surge between Siesta Key, Florida, and Ft. Myers Beach, Florida.

But arguably Milton’s biggest claim to fame was how quickly it intensified. Its 90-mile-per-hour increase in wind speed over 24 hours was among the most rapid intensifications ever observed in the Atlantic Basin.

On the flip side of this story is what happened in the Pacific. Hurricane season activity was below-normal for both the eastern Pacific basin and central Pacific basin and fell within predicted ranges, according to NOAA.

In Happier News, 2024 Brought us Much Beauty Too

An astronaut aboard the International Space Station captured this extraordinary view of the aurora borealis, or northern lights, on Oct. 11, 2024. (Credit: Don Pettit/NASA via X)

When I first saw the image above, it stopped me dead in my tracks. I’ve seen the aurora borealis many times from the ground in Northern Norway, and I’ve always been awe-struck. But this image, looking down from the International Space Station on the Northern Lights shimmering above the surface of the Earth was unlike anything I had seen before.

Here’s another view:

Astronaut Matthew Dominick took this photo of the aurora borealis on Oct. 7, 2024 from the Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft docked to the International Space Station. (Credit: Matthew Dominick/NASA via X)

I could imagine myself on the station (and, in fact, even had a dream about it), my face plastered to the oval window looking spellbound at what I might be tempted to call an “otherworldy” scene passing below — except for it being very much of our world.

As I wrote in a story about this on Oct. 22, the beautiful display was caused by a massive X-class solar flare, the largest kind, and an accompanying outburst of solar plasma and magnetic field called a coronal mass ejection, or CME, that raced toward Earth. (For an image of a large X-flare exploding from the Sun, see Part 1 of the series.) The result was that millions more people than usual were treated to displays of the red, green and pink auroral lights in the sky. You usually must travel to far northern areas (or far southern ones in the Southern Hemisphere) to see dramatic displays like this. But overnight on Oct. 10 and 11, they lit up the skies as far south as Texas!

As I’m writing this on New Years Eve, the sun has once again launched a series of CMEs at Earth, and these are already causing the skies to light up above Finland — as this screenshot of a live webcam view shows:

Screenshot of a live webcam showing the Northern Lights glimmering above Lapland in Finland at about 2 a.m. local time on Jan. 1, 2025. (Credit: Northern Light Live, Levi, Finland, North view, via Youtube.)

To check out the live webcam on Youtube for yourself, go here.

Iceland Volcanic Eruption Redux

The first image I shared in Part 1 of the series was a view from space of a volcanic eruption last winter in Iceland that sent brilliant, burning orange lava coursing over white snow. In remote sensing images like that, the contrast between the fire and ice was quite stunning. So here’s another view of the scene acquired by a different satellite:

Landat 9 image acquired on Feb. 10, 2024. (Credit: NASA Earth Observatory)

That eruption was part of a series that began in December of 2023 and continued into early 2024. As predicted, it did not fade. And in November, satellites once again captured beautiful images of a new eruption — like this one:

The eruption of lava near Iceland’s world famous Blue Lagoon geothermal spa is seen here in an image acquired by the Landsat 9 satellite on Nov. 24, 2024. Infrared data collected by the satellite reveals the glow from the flowing lava on the Reykjanes Peninsula. (Credit: Landsat 9 data courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey, processed by Pierre Markuse)

In late November, lava crept into the outskirts of the world famous Blue Lagoon hot springs resort.

The Landsat view above truly does make it seem like Earth’s crust has cracked open, allowing us to peer into the burning bowels of the Earth. And in a sense, that’s right.

Iceland lies along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where the North America and Eurasian tectonic plates are pulling apart. On Iceland’s Reykjanes Peninsula, this is causing fissures to open in the curst, allowing lava to well up from a heat source deep in Earth’s mantle.

Last But Very Much Not Least, Hawaii!

On Dec. 24, 2024 the Landsat 8 satellite captured this image of lava filling the caldera of Hawaii’s Kīlauea volcano. The false-color image was created using several wavelengths of light captured by the satellite sensor, including infrared, which reveals the heat signature of the new lava in red and yellow colors. (Credit: NASA Earth Observatory)

You may well have heard of the spectacular pre-Christmas eruption of the Kīlauea volcano on Hawaii. (My colleague here at Discover Erik Klemetti wrote it about here.) It was heralded by a swarm of earthquakes, and then the opening of fissures in the floor of the Halema’uma’u caldera. Fountains of lava soon began spewing skyward, and the molten rock spread out quickly along the bottom of the caldera.

It somehow seems appropriate and uplifting to finish this series with images of these volcanic events, which are helping to renew the surface of our ancient planet. They’re also providing spurts (literally and figuratively) of creative energy that reminds us just how dynamic, resilient and utterly awesome our home truly is.

Happy New Year everyone! I hope 2025 brings you happiness and many wondrous experiences of nature.

Tags: Climate ChangeEarth Scienceremote sensingweather
Previous Post

Distinct driving patterns seen for seniors with major depressive disorder

Next Post

China December new home prices rise a touch faster, survey shows By Reuters todayheadline

Related Posts

Smart device can measure how much milk breastfed babies really drink

Smart device can measure how much milk breastfed babies really drink todayheadline

May 14, 2025
6
To a boil | Astronomy Magazine

To a boil | Astronomy Magazine

May 14, 2025
4
Next Post
© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Sale signs adorn residential buildings under construction in Huizhou, Guangdong province, China October 10, 2024. Picture taken through a windshield. REUTERS/Nicoco Chan/File Photo

China December new home prices rise a touch faster, survey shows By Reuters todayheadline

  • Trending
  • Comments
  • Latest
Family calls for change after B.C. nurse dies by suicide after attacks on the job

Family calls for change after B.C. nurse dies by suicide after attacks on the job

April 2, 2025
Pioneering 3D printing project shares successes

Product reduces TPH levels to non-hazardous status

November 27, 2024

Hospital Mergers Fail to Deliver Better Care or Lower Costs, Study Finds todayheadline

December 31, 2024

Police ID man who died after Corso Italia fight

December 23, 2024
Harris tells supporters 'never give up' and urges peaceful transfer of power

Harris tells supporters ‘never give up’ and urges peaceful transfer of power

0
Des Moines Man Accused Of Shooting Ex-Girlfriend's Mother

Des Moines Man Accused Of Shooting Ex-Girlfriend’s Mother

0

Trump ‘looks forward’ to White House meeting with Biden

0
Catholic voters were critical to Donald Trump’s blowout victory: ‘Harris snubbed us’

Catholic voters were critical to Donald Trump’s blowout victory: ‘Harris snubbed us’

0
Body in Saitama sinkhole identified as that of truck driver

Body in Saitama sinkhole identified as that of truck driver

May 14, 2025
Michelle Obama 2.0 – the reinvention of the former first lady

Michelle Obama 2.0 – the reinvention of the former first lady

May 14, 2025

Novo Nordisk strikes $2.2 billion deal with Septerna to develop new obesity treatments

May 14, 2025

Calgary researchers discover that life has a literal glow

May 14, 2025

Recent News

Body in Saitama sinkhole identified as that of truck driver

Body in Saitama sinkhole identified as that of truck driver

May 14, 2025
2
Michelle Obama 2.0 – the reinvention of the former first lady

Michelle Obama 2.0 – the reinvention of the former first lady

May 14, 2025
4

Novo Nordisk strikes $2.2 billion deal with Septerna to develop new obesity treatments

May 14, 2025
4

Calgary researchers discover that life has a literal glow

May 14, 2025
3

TodayHeadline is a dynamic news website dedicated to delivering up-to-date and comprehensive news coverage from around the globe.

Follow Us

Browse by Category

  • Africa
  • Asia
  • Basketball
  • Business & Finance
  • Climate Change
  • Crime & Justice
  • Economic Policies
  • Elections
  • Entertainment
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Environmental Policies
  • Europe
  • Football
  • Gadgets & Devices
  • Health
  • Medical Research
  • Mental Health
  • Middle East
  • Motorsport
  • Olympics
  • Politics
  • Public Health
  • Relationships & Family
  • Science & Environment
  • Software & Apps
  • Space Exploration
  • Sports
  • Stock Market
  • Technology & Startups
  • Tennis
  • Travel
  • Uncategorized
  • Us & Canada
  • Wildlife & Conservation
  • World News

Recent News

The MAGA anti-woke right won in 2024. Now they’re turning on each other.

The MAGA anti-woke right won in 2024. Now they’re turning on each other.

May 14, 2025
Body in Saitama sinkhole identified as that of truck driver

Body in Saitama sinkhole identified as that of truck driver

May 14, 2025
  • Education
  • Lifestyle
  • Technology & Startups
  • About us
  • Contact
  • Advertise with Us
  • Privacy & Policy

© 2024 Todayheadline.co

Welcome Back!

OR

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Business & Finance
  • Corporate News
  • Economic Policies
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Market Trends
  • Crime & Justice
  • Court Cases
  • Criminal Investigations
  • Cybercrime
  • Legal Reforms
  • Policing
  • Education
  • Higher Education
  • Online Learning
  • Entertainment
  • Awards & Festivals
  • Celebrity News
  • Movies
  • Music
  • Health
  • Fitness & Nutrition
  • Medical Breakthroughs
  • Mental Health
  • Pandemic Updates
  • Lifestyle
  • Fashion & Beauty
  • Food & Drink
  • Home & Living
  • Politics
  • Elections
  • Government Policies
  • International Relations
  • Legislative News
  • Political Parties
  • Africa
  • Asia
  • Europe
  • Middle East
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Cybersecurity
  • Emerging Technologies
  • Gadgets & Devices
  • Industry Analysis
  • Basketball
  • Football
  • Motorsport
  • Olympics
  • Climate Change
  • Environmental Policies
  • Medical Research
  • Science & Environment
  • Space Exploration
  • Wildlife & Conservation
  • Sports
  • Tennis
  • Technology & Startups
  • Software & Apps
  • Startup Success Stories
  • Startups & Innovations
  • Tech Regulations
  • Venture Capital
  • Uncategorized
  • World News
  • Us & Canada
  • Public Health
  • Relationships & Family
  • Travel
  • Research & Innovation
  • Scholarships & Grants
  • School Reforms
  • Stock Market
  • TV & Streaming
  • Advertise with Us
  • Privacy & Policy
  • About us
  • Contact

© 2024 Todayheadline.co