The Agulhas Leakage

Image from NOAA showing Agulhas leakage.

I know I have made a ridiculous number of posts this month, but I have been doing a lot of reading/ and thinking, and have even been catching up on a few subjects that I've been meaning to write about for a while, but didn't have time to.
Anyway something interesting I read in the Book Atlantic by Simon Winchester, was about a thing called the Agulhas leakage. I had never heard of it before, and so I did some searching around on the Internet to learn more. Basically it is warm water from the Indian Ocean that is curling past the tip of South Africa, and entering the Atlantic.
But a little bit of history is needed to really understand why it is referred to as a leakage versus a current.
In the southern hemisphere between the latitudes of 30 and 60 degrees are winds called the "westerlies". (And big surprise they blow from the west!) Anyway, the strength of these winds has declined over the last 30 years and no one really knows why. Some folks think they are moving farther south and filling in where there hole in the ozone was created, but it's still pretty inconclusive at this point. The thing is that the westerlies used to keep the water from the Indian Ocean out of the Atlantic. But with the weakening of the winds, that is no longer the case, and so the warm and extra salty waters are seeping in, and slowly making their way up the west coast of Africa.
No one knows really what the effects of this will be, but since the oceans of the world are run on very strange and sensitive relationships between temperature, salinity and weather, the consequences could be anywhere from negligent to quite severe. I read the abstract of an article published in Nature that links the leakage with the change in the winds, and they say that should the Gulf Stream shut down, the Aguihas leakage could provide Great Britain with an alternative source of warmth.

Assembling California

This months selection for book club was Assembling California by John McPhee. You may recall that he also wrote Basin and Range. I think he is a really great writer, and despite the book being somewhat outdated, it is pretty good. Any volume on geology that can contain the words pluton, xenolith, and ophiolite, and still be interesting to the average reader is truly a treasure. Trust me I know;) McPhee mixes it up by talking a little geology, and then inserting a slightly irrelevant, but none-the-less interesting topic like the names of mining towns, or a childhood history, before going back to the geology at hand.
I also appreciate the way he chose only a few aspects of California's geologic history to focus on, letting others pass unexplained. There is just too much to say about the geology here to write an inclusive book intended for the general populace. So I am glad he didn't try. It would have ended up confusing and uninteresting. I believe his strategy was similar to the one I had for the lab classes I taught. I kept it simple, picked things that were a.) exciting, b.) not to difficult to understand, and 3.) inspiring.
The book is organized so the reader accompanies McPhee from eastern California (at the latitude of Lake Tahoe along Interstate 80) to the western coast. As he hops from outcrop to out crop, road cut to road cut, he jumps back and forth in time as well. He might be inspecting an ophiolite sequence in the present, then switch to describing it as it would have been millions of years ago, and miles from it's present location. Then he moves back up in time, but not quite to the modern day, and tells a story about an old 49er (in 1849) named Jim-Bob who had a placer mine just down the slope. In that way he weaves geologic time with historical time, and manages to tell a pretty good story.

Reading on a bench outside the library.

It's also a pretty great historical text because most of the people he interviewed for his book (and much of the commentary) revolve around the "newly" accepted theory of plate tectonics. I sometimes forget that it was only in the 1960's that plate tectonics theory was developed. Up until then geology had been stuck in a rut with several unsatisfying hypotheses for the formation of mountains and the like. As McPhee points out, there are marine fossils on the top of Mount Everest, the highest mountain in the world. For a long time no one could explain how they got there. Plate tectonics changed all that.
I also thought it was interesting to learn that the origin of the state was from a story written in the 1500's by a Spaniard, about an island called California (after their Queen Califia) full of black amazon women with gold weapons and armor, who ate men and male babies and flew on griffins;)  I think it's at least partly fitting since California is a collection of island arcs accreted onto the western coast of North America, and because there is so much gold here. I tried to find a copy of the story, but to no avail. The best I could get was the summary from wikipedia. It's an interesting read though.
Anyway, it was an excellent book, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the geology of California, geology in general, or the mining towns in the western foothills of the Sierra.

SJC to MSP

Hello? Is anybody home?

Apparently really, really early on Thursday morning is a good time to fly out of San Jose International Airport. I got there and I was first in line at the ticket counter, the ONLY person (besides the TSA Agents) at the security checkpoint, and the sole inhabitant of the right side of terminal A.
My flight to Minneapolis was equally as pleasant, as there was no one next to me and I could spread out my stuff, and take pictures as we flew into the sunrise. Here are a few highlights:

Taking off from SJC

The San Francisco Bay Area

Sunrise over the Sierra

Early morning over Lake Tahoe

Sunrise over the Basin and Range

Winter morning, countryside Minnesota

Reflection of Sunrise on fields, Minnesota

(All photo's taken with my NEW camera I got for Xmas! Thanks again guys! I LOVE it!)

Across America From East to West: Part 2

Lake Tahoe, Nevada/California

Crop "Circles" Sierra Foothills, California

The San Joaquin Valley, California

Retention Ponds, Central Valley California

Palm St. San Jose, California

Notes: The last photo is of the street (running east-west) in San Jose where the BF's sister and mom live. You can see his special edition Harley Davidson F150 truck (gray and black) parked on the "upper" side of the street:)

Across America From East to West: Part 1

Green Bay and Lambeau Field, Wisconsin

St. Paul, and the Mississippi River, Minnesota

The Missouri River, Pierre, South Dakota

Dry Lake Beds, central Nevada

Salt Farm, western Nevada

Mt. Rose Ski Resort, Reno, Nevada

Notes: You can see Lambeau Field in the bottom left quadrant of the first picture. It's the oval shaped thing. In the last photo is of the ski resort that I went to in December where I tried to snowboard and failed.

Japan Quake

Today is my day for posting about geology! But I wanted to write one more quick blog about the earthquake in Japan a couple days ago, and some thoughts I have about it as a geologist.

I think that everyone should make the attempt to learn at least a little about geology. Even if you aren't into the romantic aspects of it, there are many practical applications. Most people think "what's there to know about rocks?" but then you have something like the 8.9 earthquake in Japan, and suddenly it seems pretty important. Everyone was wondering how an earthquake causes a tsunami, ( and some wondered if the tsunami makes it's way to California would it cause earthquakes here!)
A lot of people here, on the West Coast, could have been spared the terror of believing something straight out of movies like 2012 was going to occur if they had just the smallest understanding of geology. For example people along the California coast were freaking out and racing for higher ground early this morning in their pajamas when the tsunami wave was just about reaching Hawaii, a full six or seven hours before it was likely to reach here. (Actually I don't have a problem with evacuating as an extra precaution, it was probably a good idea. It's just that people were doing it terrified that they would be engulfed in a 200' high wall of water if they didn't move now.) And that is totally ridiculous. They panicked and scared the crap out of themselves for no reason. They imagined California being wiped off the map. Knowing about geology, topography, and that the Pacific Ocean is pretty freaking huge, I predicted that at worst there would be some flooding around the bay, and some damage to boats in the marinas, and maybe the loss of some waterfront property.
I bet the people who were sitting in their cars on the side of mountain roads, imagining their homes being washed away and settling to the bottom of the dark ocean (with all their family pictures and heirlooms) would have appreciated knowing that the possibility of that happening was almost zero.

Another interesting thing to think about from a geologic perspective is that because of the news, and the videos of the devastation, many people probably don't realize how much worse the damage and death toll would have been if it had occurred anywhere else in the world. Most people don't realize that Japan is prepared for an event like this (well, as prepared as anyone can be for a natural disaster), that they have the strictest building codes in the world, and that hundreds of thousands of lives were spared two days ago because of a combined effort (over several decades) of geologist, geotechnical engineers, engineering geologist, and civil engineers. These people  found ways to design buildings that don't collapse around workers and families during earthquakes through an understanding of geology, plate tectonics and engineering. It's hard to count how many people aren't dead that should have been if not for the meticulous building codes, but I'd guess the number would be in the tens of thousands.
The earthquake and tsunami are a horrible disaster for the Japanese people to be sure (and the nuclear power plant situation is worrying) but it could have been a lot worse. And we have an understanding of geology (and other sciences) to thank for that!

I-5 and the San Joaquin Valley

The San Joaquin Valley is something to behold. Miles and miles of orchards and fields spread between the Sierra Nevada and Coast Range Mountains in a patchwork of unnatural green. I say unnatural because interspursed between the cherry orchards and vegetable rows are abandoned fields, yellow and dry as a bone. These anti-oasis all have one thing in common. They are marked with yellow signs that place the blame for their sorry state in four words: "Congress Created DUST BOWL". I am not sure exactly what that's all about (and maybe I should look it up and post a blog on it).
My most recent drive through the San Joaquin was just this past week, and in the summer it can be as hot in Wasco, and Kettleman City as anywhere in the Southwest United States. (And feels even hotter when you have to keep the a/c off because of car problems. I happen to know this from recent personal experience.) The humidity is much higher though than Phoenix say, so the air feels thick and heavy with plant detritus. It's very...organic. Speaking of Wasco, the wind (when you drive through town on Highway 46 in the middle of the summer) is saturated with the mixture of fresh and rotting flowers. It's a strange combination, and I am not sure if I like it or not. Mostly the flowers along the road were carnations but there were several other variety of flora in neat rows that flew past my window too quickly to be identified. It reminded me of driving through central Florida in the summer past the miles and miles of sugar cane plantations (except that in Cali the mosquitoes are much smaller (thank God!)).
The spring is the best time to head out through the Valley though. Once during April or May I was heading south down I-5 and I drove past a fruit orchard just coming into bloom and the little white flowers blew through the air, and collected on the roadside like snow. It went on for miles. It was so pretty on that cool windy afternoon, I have never to this day forgotten it.
The Interstate itself is pretty nice. Granted the exits are few and far between, and "points of interest" are non-existent, but I-5 has basically everything you'd want in an American thoroughfare, wide lanes, straight road, lots of trucks and truckers, pretty sunsets and a nice mixture of scenery (mountains to the west, fields to the east). The only flaw of the road in my opinion is the cow concentration camp near Coalinga. The smell is disturbing enough, but when I think about all those poor cows waiting to die...it makes me want to drive through the fence and set them all free. I love meat, but it makes me sad that places like that are why I can get it for 5.99 a pound. Eessh...anyway.
I like stopping for gas and seeing what the little convenience stores have for sale. Lot's of times they sell post cards for cities that are 100 or more miles away. I happen to know you can get a post card for Yosemite or Lake Tahoe at the Highway 152 interchange with I-5. Or a post card for Death Valley and Las Vegas on Highway 99 just north of Bakersfield. Sometimes they sell NFL stuff, or t-shirts for Route 66 (which isn't anywhere close by) or beer coozies that say "I don't get drunk, I get AWESOME" and so on. There is a Love's Travel Stop that I frequent at the exit for Lost Hills because they always have random stuff for sale that would not normally be of interest, but which I find irresistible when traveling. Once I stopped there and they had giant stuffed tigers for sale for 25.00. I thought to myself what a deal! and almost bought one! (I only refrained because I realized both myself and my tiger would not have fit in the tent that was to be my home for the next six weeks.) But since then I have purchased (at the Love's) bumper stickers, a cowboy hat, and an 80's Jams CD. This trip was no exception. Photo is of a couple treasures I acquired on my drive through the Valley on my way to Las Vegas this year (the lobster is a magnet, and his legs and antenna wiggle when you shake him). Enjoy!

The New and the Old

New Orleans: The French Quarter, broken levees , home of the reigning Superbowl Champs, and makers of some of the best jambalaya in the south. But if that's the "new" Orleans, where/who was the old one that the city was named after?

The old Orleans (or original I should say) was Philippe II, Duke of Orleans, who took over the throne of France in 1715 as Regent, because the next king Louie the XV was still a child.
Philippe relieved much of the oppression and religious intollerence forced on the French people by the previous king (good ol' Louis XIV, know for his enjoyment of high heels and appalling taste in furniture) and abolished censorship of reading materials going so far as to re-publish many works banned by the old king. He made the Sorbonne into a public institution and opened the Royal Library of France to the public. He was openly athiest, and I can't help but think he was one of the biggest influence in early 18th century France. He opened up stage for philosophers like Rousseau and Voltaire, who would been oppressed by earlier regimes. (That didn't stop them from criticizing Phillipe though.) Not that I am keeping score or anything but religion:0, athiests: 1.