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Katrina-Like Storm Surges Could Become Norm

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New research shows that hurricane surges will become more frequent in a warmer climate. This is an illustration that suggests what could happen from the combined effects of sea level rise and more powerful storms. (Credit: Gordon Tarpley)

Last year's devastating flooding in New York City from Hurricane Sandy was the city's largest storm surge on record. Though Hurricane Sandy was considered a 100-year-event - a storm that lashes a region only once a century - a new study finds global warming could bring similar destructive storm surges to the Gulf and East Coasts of the United States every other year before 2100.

Severe storms generate both high waves and storm surge, which can combine to erode beaches and dunes and flood coastal communities. Storm surge is seawater pushed ahead of a storm, mainly by strong winds. Onshore, the surge can rise several feet in just a few minutes. High waves travel on top of the surge, and cresting waves raise the sea's height even more.

Looking at extreme events, which researchers called "Katrinas" after the 2005 hurricane that flooded the Gulf Coast, a new model predicts Katrina-like storm surges will hit every other year if the climate warms 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius).

That would be 10 times the rate seen since 1923, after which there has been a Katrina-magnitude storm surge every 20 years, the study, published in the March 18 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found.

In 2009, the world's nations agreed to try to limit climate change to a 2 C increase by 2100, but recent studies show temperatures could rise 7.2 F before the century ends.

But the tenfold increase in Katrina-like storm surges does not have to translate into a tenfold increase in disasters, said Aslak Grinsted, a climate scientist at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and the lead study author. "Every Katrina-magnitude event is not necessarily going to be a Katrina-magnitude disaster. It's all about planning smartly," he told OurAmazingPlanet.

Warmer seas spin stronger storms

Scientists know that warmer oceans will change how the Atlantic Ocean spawns hurricanes. More heat means more energy, and many models predict global warming will bring bigger, stronger storms, though the details between the model scenarios differ. But the models could be biased by changes in hurricane observational methods, such as the switch to satellites from planes and ships, which may impact records of wind speed and other storm data, Grinsted said.

Many studies have looked at how the frequency and size of hurricanes will change as global warming raises ocean temperatures, but few have investigated their impact on the Atlantic coast.

To better assess which model does the best job of divining the future, Grinsted and his colleagues constructed a record of storm surges from tide gauges along the Atlantic coast dating back to 1923. "Big storm surges give me a new view of hurricane variability in the past," Grinsted said.

Grinsted weighed each statistical model according to how well they explained past extreme storm surges. One way scientists test climate models is by seeing how well they predict the weather in the past.

Of the competing models, the top performer was one of the simplest. It relied on regional sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean hurricane birthing ground. The researchers also created a new global "gridded" model, incorporating ocean temperatures around the world. Grinsted said the top models agree roughly on the magnitude of the increase in storm surges, giving him confidence in the results. [Hurricanes from Above: See Nature's Biggest Storms]

A 0.4 C warming corresponded to doubling of the frequency of extreme storm surges, the study found. "With the global warming we have had during the 20th century, we have already crossed the threshold where more than half of all 'Katrinas' are due to global warming," Grinsted said.

James Elsner, a climate scientist at the University of Florida, said he agrees with the study's main finding, but thinks the modeling underestimates the effects of climate factors such as the El Niño/ La Niña Southern Oscillation (ENSO) index, and the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). Studies have shown that the warm El Niño events mean fewer hurricanes in the Atlantic, while the NAO influences storm tracks across the ocean basin.

"As the planet warms up and the oceans get warmer, the chances of stronger storms goes up," Elsner said. "I think it's an interesting exercise, but I think statistically, it's got some issues," he told OurAmazingPlanet.

Storm surges and sea level rise

Grinsted is concerned about the combined effects of future storm surge flooding and sea level rise, which adds to the base of the storm surge.

"I think what will be even more important is the background sea level rise, and that is something that is very hard to model," he said.

Hurricane Sandy brought an 11.9-foot (3.6 meters) surge to southern Manhattan, plus a boost from the high tide, creating a storm tide as high as 13.88 feet (4.2 m).

Hurricane Katrina caused storm surge flooding of 25 to 28 feet (7.6 to 8.5 m) above normal tide level along portions of the Mississippi coast and 10 to 20 feet (3 to 6.1 m) above normal tide levels along the southeastern Louisiana coast.

Email Becky Oskin or follow her @beckyoskin. Follow us @OAPlanet, Facebook or Google+. Original article on LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.

8 Ways Global Warming Is Already Changing the World

Natural Disasters: Top 10 U.S. Threats
Infographic: Storm Season! How, When & Where Hurricanes Form

Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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Superstorm Sandy

 

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Thousands Without Power After Storms Rake South

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A woman tries the front door of her new double-wide trailer that was rolled over by high winds in Leighton, Ala., Monday afternoon March 18, 2013. (AP Photo/Times Daily,Matt McKean)

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - Tens of thousands of people are still without power after powerful winds and massive hail hammered the South.

In Mississippi, hail busted car windows and pelted homes and businesses after the storms passed through Monday. Some hail was as large as baseballs in some areas in and around the capital of Jackson.

In Alabama, utility officials say straight-line winds gusting as high as 80 mph toppled trees and power lines. One person had to be rescued from a house in Rainbow City after a tree fell on it. More than a dozen people in that state were sent to hospitals.

Alabama Power says some 98,200 people were still without power around 6 a.m. Tuesday. The utility says it sent out crews early this morning and is bringing in reinforcements from other states.

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VW Snow Sculpture Given Parking Ticket

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(Image credit: CEN)

German traffic wardens were a bit too overzealous in distributing parking tickets recently, giving a citation to a Volkswagen Beetle -- made of snow. The life-size snow sculpture was built in a no-parking zone in the town of Aachen, reports the website Orange, and featured details such as side-view mirrors and outlines for headlights.

One local told the website, "It was incredibly realistic looking. It looked like you could get into it and drive away once you'd swept the snow off."

The officers realized their mistake after they attempted to scrape snow from the license plate to read the tag numbers and discovered there was no plate, only more snow.

While a lot of people have gotten a good laugh over the stunt, the local police aren't chuckling.

"We can take a joke as well as the next person and it was a very convincing prank," the site reports a spokesman as saying. "But whether it was made of metal or snow it was still obstructing a road that should have been clear."

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'Dear Winter': 17 Tweeters Who Are So Over the Season

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Today's 10 Must-See Photos: 3-19-2013

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Epic Snow Walls from America to Japan

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Asteroid Threat Collides with Budget Realities in Congress

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A meteorite contrail is seen in this frame grab made from a video captured on a highway from Kazakhstan to Chelyabinsk region, Russia, on Friday, Feb. 15, 2013. (AP Photo/Nasha gazeta, www.ng.kz)

In the wake of last month's meteor strike in Russia and a close asteroid flyby on the same day, members of Congress asked NASA, White House and Air Force officials what they're doing to combat the threat of near-Earth asteroids during a hearing today (March 19) on Capitol Hill.

By and large, the experts stressed that the two space rock events were a coincidence and that the chance of a catastrophic asteroid impact to Earth any time soon is remote. On Feb. 15, a surprise meteor exploded in the sky over Russia's Ural Mountains, just hours before the 150-foot-wide (40 meters) asteroid 2012 DA14 flew close by Earth in a pass that had been predicted beforehand by scientists.

"The odds of a near-Earth object strike causing massive causalities and destruction of infrastructure are very small, but the potential consequences of such an event are so large that it makes sense to take the risk seriously," John Holdren, science advisor to President Barack Obama, told the Science, Space and Technology Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Still, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), chairman of the Science, Space and Technology Committee, said it was "not reassuring" to learn that NASA has so far detected only about 10 percent of the near-Earth objects that are wider than 459 feet (140 meters) across. Holdren estimated that there may be hundreds of thousands of such objects within one-third the distance from Earth to the sun that remain unknown. [Meteor Streaks Over Russia, Explodes (Photos)]

In 2005, Congress directed NASA to detect, track and characterize 90 percent of these space rocks - those near-Earth asteroids larger than 459 feet feet (140 m). The space agency's chief, Charles Bolden, said today that NASA was unlikely to meet that deadline given its current budget.

"Our estimate right now is at the present budget levels it will be 2030 before we're able to reach the 90 percent level as prescribed by Congress," Bolden said.

Bolden criticized the lawmakers for slowing NASA down through budget cuts. "You all told us to do something, and between the administration and the Congress, the bottom line is the funding did not come," Bolden said.

Furthermore, he said the goal of finding a way to respond to asteroid threats has been repeatedly put off by lawmakers who cite a lack of money.

Rep. Bill Posey (R-Fla.) asked what NASA would do if a large asteroid headed on a collision course with Earth was discovered today with only three weeks before impact.

"The answer to you is, 'if it's coming in three weeks, pray,'" Bolden said. "The reason I can't do anything in the next three weeks is because for decades we have put it off."

Budget concerns also hamper the military's ability to monitor near-Earth objects and other space threats, such as orbital debris (defunct satellites and spent rocket stages that litter Earth orbit).

"We are clearly less capable under sequestration," Gen. William Shelton, the current commander of the U.S. Air Force Space Command, told the committee. He said that any further budget cuts could have dire consequences.

"Our dependence on space, not only for our way of life but also for military operations, is very high, so we would sacrifice that," Shelton said.

This story was updated at 4:56 p.m. ET to correct the size of large near-Earth asteroids (459 feet, or about 140 meters) NASA seeks to identify under its 2005 congressional mandate.

Follow Clara Moskowitz on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on SPACE.com.

Copyright 2013 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

 

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Snow Ushers in Spring in Northern New England

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A pedestrian walks through the campus of Phillips Academy during a winter storm in Andover, Mass. Tuesday, March 19, 2013. (AP Photo/Winslow Townson)

BOSTON (AP) - New Englanders were preparing for another messy day of snow as they welcomed spring's unseasonable arrival.

Forecasts called for as much as 16 inches of snow in parts of northern New England through Wednesday morning, bringing slippery road conditions. Snow was expected to taper off in other locations.

"It's the real deal - the heavy, wet snow," said National Weather Service forecaster John Cannon in Gray, Maine. "Travel will be treacherous into the early morning hours."

Snow and sleet blasted the Northeast on Tuesday, where some places received over a foot of snow. Classes were cancelled in some districts in Massachusetts, Connecticut and upstate New York, adding a few more snow days to the calendar.

Snow also socked other parts of the northern U.S., with as much as 2 feet forecast in parts of Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

Icy roads caused numerous auto accidents. In Marlborough, Mass., the Harlem Globetrotters' bus collided with a car on Interstate 290, but no one was hurt and the bus was able to drive away, the state police said. No citations were issued.

There was nothing unusual about a snowstorm in the Northeast this late in the season, when it can still get plenty cold.

"They don't happen all the time, but it's not, you know, unheard of," said Alan Dunham, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Taunton, Mass.

Nina Walker, of Woburn in suburban Boston, said she had to shovel about 8 inches of snow off her driveway before driving to Boston's South Station to take a train to New York. As a lifelong New Englander, she takes the snow in stride, but draws the line at storms after March 31.

"Once I hear the word April, I am really offended when I hear the word snow," she said. "So this is OK today, but a couple of weeks from now, it had better not happen."

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Southern States Clean Up After Fierce Hail Storms

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In Tupelo, Miss., an overturned tractor trailer hangs off a bridge after it was blown off by high winds that hit North Mississippi Monday, March 18, 2012. (AP Photo/Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, Thomas Wells)

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - Several southern states are cleaning up after powerful winds and massive hail hammered the region.

Mississippi's insurance commissioner says the wind and hail storm that hit the state could result in 35,000 to 50,000 insurance claims. Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney said Tuesday those numbers are based on information provided by insurers and include automotive and property damage claims. A lot of damage is in the Jackson area, where hail as big as baseballs pounded some spots Monday night.

The National Weather Service confirmed one tornado in Georgia and two in Alabama. Authorities also reported that a man was killed in Polk County, Ga., after a tree fell on his vehicle.

About 69,000 Alabama Power customers and 13,500 Georgia Power customers remained without power Tuesday night, a day after storms with the force of hurricane winds toppled trees and utility lines.

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Sandy-Damaged Statue of Liberty to Reopen in July

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In a Nov. 30, 2012 photo, parts of the brick walkway of Liberty Island damaged in Superstorm Sandy are shown during a tour of the Island. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

NEW YORK (AP) - The Statue of Liberty, closed since Superstorm Sandy damaged the island where it stands, will reopen to the public in time for Independence Day, officials said Tuesday.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced the timeline for the reopening along with U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer of New York.

"Hurricane Sandy inflicted major damage on facilities that support the Statue of Liberty," Salazar said. "Based on the tremendous progress we have made, Lady Liberty will be open to the public in time for the July 4th celebration."

The statue itself was spared in the late October storm, but its surrounding island was badly damaged. Railings broke, paving stones were torn up and buildings were flooded. The storm also destroyed boilers, sewage pumps and electrical systems on the island.

As much as three-fourths of Liberty Island's 12 acres (5 hectares) was flooded, officials estimated, with water reaching as high as 8 feet (2.5 meters).

An exact opening date wasn't set. Before the statue can reopen, a security screening process for visitors must be worked out with the New York Police Department. Salazar said an announcement was expected in the next week or so.

About 3.7 million people visited the statue in 2011, making it the 19th most visited national park.

Schumer emphasized how important it was to the New York economy to have the statue open.

"Being open for the summer tourism season isn't just important symbolically, it's a boon to the city's economy and businesses, as the statue attracts millions of tourists from all over the world to our shores," he said.

Sandy came one day after the Statue of Liberty's 126th birthday and the reopening of the crown, which had been closed for a year for a $30 million upgrade to fire alarms, sprinkler systems and exit routes.

The storm also inflicted major damage on nearby Ellis Island. More than 1 million historical artifacts and documents were moved because of the impossibility of maintaining the climate-controlled environment necessary to preserve them.

A reopening date for Ellis Island hasn't been set, National Park Service Northeast Region Director Dennis Reidenbach said.

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Nuisance Snow to Brush DC, NYC, Boston

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A weak storm tracking over the Florida Peninsula Wednesday will turn northward along the East Coast Wednesday night into Thursday morning, producing a bit of wet snow in some areas.

The storm will have only limited moisture to work with, but can bring a coating to an inch of snow on grassy and elevated surfaces from eastern Virginia and Delmarva to southeastern New England.

In some areas, the snow will mix with rain and simply will not accumulate. However, there could be a few pockets where enough wet snow falls to make some roads slippery.

The best chance for a couple of inches of snow will be on eastern Long Island and over Cape Cod Thursday morning.

AccuWeather.com meteorologists are keeping an eye on a potential storm for early next week that is likely to hit parts of the Central States with snow and perhaps the South with with severe weather and flooding rain over the Palm Sunday weekend.

RELATED:
Midwest, East: More Snow, Cold for First Part of Spring
Major Storm Potential Palm Sunday Weekend
Growing Season Outlook for 2013: Better for Corn, Northeast Fruit


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Want to Explore Everest Without the Trek?

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Google Maps unveiled stunning images from the Mt. Everest base camp and three other mountains around the world. (Credit: Google Maps)

Those unwilling to face the altitude sickness, crevasses and avalanches of Mount Everest can still explore the world's highest mountain from home.

Google Maps has unveiled stunning, panoramic imagery from some of the highest, most remote places on Earth, including the 18,192-foot-high Mount Everest base camp. (Everest's peak is at an altitude of 29,035 feet)

Previous exploration-themed additions to maps on Google Earth have included views of the topography of the ocean floor and Google street-view looks of the Amazon rainforest.

The maps now include 360-degree views of four of the seven summits, the highest peaks on all seven continents. Users can virtually hike snow-covered Mount Elbrus, the highest peak in Europe, hang out at the Plaza Argentina base camp at Aconcagua, the highest peak in the Andes Mountains, and walk amid the clouds at the base camp for the world's tallest peak.

The new imagery also allows users to climb 19,341 feet to Mount Kilimanjaro's Uhuru, the highest point in Africa. Mount Kilimanjaro is actually a stratovolcano that formed about a million years ago from layers and layers of volcanic ash, lava, pumice and tephra.

To capture the photos, the team used a lightweight camera and tripod with a fish-eye lens.

In 2011, the Google Maps team spent 12 days, hiked more than 70 miles and reached an altitude of 18,192 feet at the Everest base camp. As part of the process, they faced earthquakes, flash floods and mudslides, Sara Pelosi, a manager at the company, wrote on Google's lat-long blog.

The images can be viewed in Google Maps on iPhones or Android phones.

Follow Tia Ghose on Twitter @tiaghose. Follow us @OAPlanet, Facebook or Google+. Original article on LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.

In Images: Hiking the Himalayas
Infographic: Tallest Mountain to Deepest Ocean Trench
The World's Tallest Mountains

Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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22 Surefire Signs of Spring

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Dear Commander Hadfield: What's It Like to Have 16 Sunrises a Day?

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Source: YouTube

Dear Commander Hadfield,

It's okay if I watch the videos where you answer questions from kids, right? Because I kind of love those. Their questions are great. I'd never given a whole lot of thought to what it must be like to taste food in space. I loved watching you unpack that care package of Canadian food, too, not just because of its contents, but because of the way each object floated off on its own trajectory. I watched that box of maple cookies float toward the camera and then off the screen. I hoped it might magically float right into my living room, and then, surprised by gravity, drop to the floor.

I like thinking about how everything is in motion: The box of cookies and you inside the ISS, which is orbiting around Earth, which itself is moving around the sun, which, in turn, is in motion in the ever-expanding universe.

A guilty confession: I kind of like the song "Gravity" by John Mayer. Do you have it on your space playlist? I can't imagine you don't. It's bluesy and a little bit sad and slow, and it's nice to listen to while watching those cookies and can of salmon paté and squeeze-tube of maple syrup float with you in space.

"Keep me where the light is," John Mayer sings, with background vocals that just barely suggest a gospel choir. "Keep me where the light is." When you have 16 sunrises a day, you are always heading into the light, aren't you? I wonder, in addition to leaving behind the pull of gravity, do you also leave behind our ideas of time? Can you still have a weekend when there are 16 sunrises a day? I know it's an artificial construct, but I'm trying to do the math on this: If a week is seven days and there are 16 sunsets a day, is every 10th hour a Saturday? I went looking for answers and now know that you are on Greenwich Meantime and that you do have something of a weekend, but it still feels strange to think of so many sunsets in a day, a week, a month. Does your internal clock find its own time?

I wonder if these accelerated days are like jetlag. That's a feeling I know very well - that feeling of not quite being sure what day it is, what time it is. I find myself thinking, weirdly, about how it feels to wake up in hotel room in the dark and to go out into a hallway that is full of artificial light. Maybe you take a bus to the airport and while you're on the plane, the sun finally comes up, and it all feels very strange.

Whenever I sleep in new time zones, I leave the curtains open so the light tells me what I need to know, it is but with so many sunrises, how do you manage?

Maybe it's not like jetlag at all. I'm earthbound while you have no such restrictions, so my rules for traveling surely don't apply. But I like to think about what it would feel like to see the sun move so rapidly across the sky, and to think about always being where the light is.

Yours from the surface,
Pam

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Today's 10 Must-See Photos: 3-20-2013

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Universe Ages 80M Years; Big Bang Gets Clearer

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George Efstathiou, a European Space Agency astrophysicist speaks in Paris, Thursday, March 21, 2013 in front of the most detailed map ever created of the cosmic microwave background. (AP Photo/Francois Mori)

PARIS (AP) - New results from a look into the split second after the Big Bang indicate the universe is 80 million years older than previously thought but the core concepts of the cosmos - how it began, what it's made of and where it's going - seem to be on the right track.

The findings released Thursday bolster a key theory called inflation, which says the universe burst from subatomic size to its now-observable expanse in a fraction of a second.

The Big Bang is the most comprehensive theory of the universe's beginning. It says the visible portion of the universe was smaller than an atom when, in a split second, it exploded, cooled and expanded rapidly, much faster than the speed of light.

The European Space Agency's Planck space probe looked back at the afterglow of the Big Bang, and those results have now added about 80 million years to the universe's age, putting it 13.81 billion years old.

The probe also found that the cosmos is expanding a bit slower than originally thought, has a little less of that mysterious dark energy than astronomers figured and a tad more normal matter. But scientists say those are small changes in calculations about the cosmos, nothing dramatic when dealing with numbers so massive.

"We've uncovered a fundamental truth of the universe," said George Efstathiou, director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmology at the University of Cambridge who announced the Planck satellite mapping. "There's less stuff that we don't understand by a tiny amount."

The $900 million Planck space telescope was launched in 2009. It has spent 15 1/2 months mapping the sky, examining light fossils and sound echoes from the Big Bang by looking at the background radiation in the cosmos. The device is expected to keep transmitting data until late 2013, when it runs out of cooling fluid.

Officials at NASA, which also was part of the experiment, said this provided a deeper understanding of the intricate history of the universe and its complex composition.

Outside scientists said the result confirms on a universal scale what the announcement earlier this month by a different European group confirmed on a subatomic scale - that they had found the Higgs boson particle which explains mass in the universe.

"What a wonderful triumph of the mathematical approach to describing nature," said Brian Greene, a Columbia University physicist who was not part of the new research. "It's an amazing story of discovery."

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Amazon CEO Recovers Apollo Engines From Atlantic

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This image provided by Bezos Expeditions shows a thrust chamber of an Apollo F-1 engine on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in March 2013. (AP Photo/Bezos Expeditions)

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Rusted pieces of two Apollo-era rocket engines that helped boost astronauts to the moon have been fished out of the murky depths of the Atlantic, Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos and NASA said Wednesday.

A privately funded expedition led by Bezos raised the main engine parts during three weeks at sea and was headed back to Cape Canaveral, Fla., the launch pad for the manned lunar missions.

"We've seen an underwater wonderland - an incredible sculpture garden of twisted F-1 engines that tells the story of a fiery and violent end," Bezos wrote in an online posting.

Last year, the Bezos team used sonar to spot the sunken engines resting nearly 3 miles deep in the Atlantic and 360 miles from Cape Canaveral. At the time, the Internet mogul said the artifacts were part of the Apollo 11 mission that gave the world "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

Bezos now says it's unclear which Apollo mission the recovered engines belonged to because the serial numbers were missing or hard to read on the corroded pieces. NASA is helping trace the hardware's origin.

Apollo astronauts were launched aboard the mighty Saturn V rocket during the 1960s and 1970s. Each rocket had a cluster of five engines, which produced about 7 1/2 million pounds of thrust. After liftoff, the engines - each weighing 18,000 pounds - fell to the ocean as designed, with no plans to retrieve them.

Bezos and his team sent underwater robots to hoist the engines, which are NASA property. In a statement, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden called the recovery "a historic find."

Bezos plans to restore the engine parts, which included a nozzle, turbine, thrust chamber and heat exchanger. Amazon.com Inc. spokesman Drew Herdener declined Wednesday to reveal the cost of the recovery or restoration.

NASA has previously said an engine would head for the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum. If a second was recovered, it would be displayed at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, where Amazon.com is based.

The ocean floor off Cape Canaveral is strewn with jettisoned rockets and flight parts from missions since the beginning of the Space Age. What survived after plunging into the ocean is unknown.

In one of the more famous recoveries, a private company in 1999 hoisted Gus Grissom's Mercury capsule that accidentally sank in the Atlantic after splashdown in 1961. The capsule is now featured at the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center.

Besides running the online retailer, Bezos founded Blue Origins, one of the companies with a NASA contract to develop a spaceship to carry astronauts to the International Space Station.

In a previous posting, Bezos said he was inspired by NASA as a child, and by recovering the engines "maybe we can inspire a few more youth to invent and explore."

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Major Storm Potential Across US This Weekend

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Another major storm will cross the nation from coast to coast with heavy snow, flooding rain and severe thunderstorms. The worst conditions with the storm may center over the Palm Sunday weekend.

Like many storms during the second half of the winter, this first major storm of the spring could threaten lives and property, bring significant travel disruptions and foil outdoor plans.

After bringing drenching rain and heavy mountain snow to the Northwest and part of the Rockies later this week, a storm from the Pacific will reorganize over the Central states this weekend.

A weaker storm will push eastward across the South later this week, ahead of the main storm coming this weekend.

The exact track of the main storm as it heads from the Rockies to the Atlantic coast will determine the portions of states along the way that will be on the receiving end of heavy snow versus drenching rain.

The storm will move eastward along a strong temperature contrast from south to north. Almost midwinter cold will linger in the northern tier states, while warmth and humidity build along the southern tier states. This temperature contrast will likely be compressed in the middle with a distance of a couple hundred miles or less potentially separating temperatures in the 80s from the 20s and low 30s.

The temperature contrast will make for very challenging forecasts when determining which areas near the storm track will get snow versus rain. However, this stored energy can yield very dramatic results ranging from a foot or more of snow in some areas to a half a foot of rain with flooding and a severe weather outbreak.

Snow

The storm will gather enough cold air to begin producing a swath of heavy snow over parts of the central and southern Plains later Saturday and Saturday night. Parts of Kansas and Missouri appear to be in the middle of several different potential tracks at this time.

During Sunday, the band of heavy snow will nose eastward, most likely impacting some of the Ohio Valley states. A small shift in the storm track could mean the difference between heavy snow in Kansas City, St. Louis, Indianapolis and Dayton versus Omaha, Chicago and Cleveland.

By Monday, the zone of heavy snow will be impacting part of the central and southern Appalachians and could be aiming all the way to part of the mid-Atlantic coast and the I-95 corridor. Not only will the same challenges remain in the north-south orientation of the storm, but warm air from the Atlantic Ocean may play a role.

Severe Weather

There is the potential for severe weather to develop in portions of the Deep South from Texas to Louisiana and Florida with the storm system this weekend into the start of next week.

RELATED:
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South Severe Weather Risk Palm Sunday Weekend
Midwest, East: More Snow, Cold Despite Spring Arrival


Humid air will nose northward along the Gulf Coast as the storm tracks eastward to the north.
According to Severe Weather Expert Henry Margusity, "Such a setup can deliver thunderstorms with large hail, damaging wind and perhaps a few tornadoes."

The exact character of the potential severe weather event (straight-line winds and hail versus tornadoes) is not certain at this time but will be monitored closely through the expected date by AccuWeather.com meteorologists.

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Snow Brushing DC, Philly, NYC and Boston Thursday

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A weak storm that was over the Florida Peninsula Wednesday has turned northward along the East Coast as expected, producing a bit of wet snow and flurries along the mid-Atlantic and southern New England coasts.

The storm center will stay well offshore, but can bring spotty a dusting to an inch of snow in a few spots from the I-95 swath from Richmond and Washington, D.C. to New York City and Boston.

The best chance for a couple of inches of snow is on eastern Long Island and over Cape Cod Thursday afternoon and night. By this time the storm may be strong enough to start grabbing more moisture.

The main part of the storm will stay offshore over the Atlantic Thursday, but is forecast to swing ashore around the Gulf of St. Lawrence region, perhaps as a blizzard Thursday night into Friday. Canada Weather Expert Brett Anderson has more on the storm in his blog.

AccuWeather.com meteorologists are keeping an eye on a potential storm for early next week that is likely to hit parts of the Central States with snow and perhaps the South with with severe weather and flooding rain over the Palm Sunday weekend.

The cold weather pattern continues to unleash snow showers and bands of heavy lake-effect snow over the Upper Midwest and interior Northeast Thursday.

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Snow Day in San Diego?

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Panda cub Xiao Liwu climbs on top of his mom during a special snow day at the San Diego Zoo. (Credit: Ken Bohn, San Diego Zoo)

There was snow in San Diego this week - well, at least for a lucky group of giant pandas.

Over 15 tons of shaved ice were blown into the San Diego Zoo's panda exhibit March 19 to give the endangered bears a chance to play in the powder they would experience in their natural habitat.

The snow day was a first for Xiao Liwu - or "Mr. Wu," as keepers have taken to calling him. The charismatic cub was born over the summer to panda mom Bai Yun, who was making "snow pandas" on Tuesday while Xiao Liwu climbed on top of her.

"Xiao Liwu was jumping on Mom, wrestling with her and getting used to being thrown in the snow by mama bear," Jennifer Becerra, San Diego Zoo senior keeper, said in a statement. "He was definitely enjoying the snow and running around. I've never seen him so wired up."

Xiao Liwu, whose name means "Little Gift," was the sixth cub born to Bai Yun ("White Cloud"). All the San Diego Zoo giant pandas are on a research loan from China, as part of a long-term captive breeding program. (Four of Xiao Liwu's siblings have already been moved from California to China.)

Today there are 44 giant pandas living in zoos outside of China, where the bears' only current natural home exists. As just 1,600 pandas are thought to be left in the wild, researchers maintain that captive breeding is an important way study and conserve the endangered species. In addition to habitat loss from human activities and low reproductive rates, giant pandas' survival is also threatened by climate change. A study released in the journal Nature Climate Change last year found that global warming could wipe out much of the bears' chief food source, bamboo, over the next century.

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