Tag: atmosphere

Auroral sounds

There are few more awe-inspiring sights in the sky than the northern lights. Probably everyone who lives in Saskatchewan has seen them multiple times, and those who live further north are even better acquainted with them…but that doesn’t mean we know everything about them. One mystery associated with the northern lights is the claim by …

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Rainbows

Saskatchewan has elected to call itself “Land of Living Skies.”  One good reason appeared in the sky on Canada Day following an afternoon thunderstorm:  a rainbow. In space, the sky is black and the sun appears white, and that’s all there is to it. But before the light of the sun reaches us down here …

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Paleoclimatology

This week an international expedition set out for Mt. Logan, Canada’s highest mountain (and yes, it’s still Mt. Logan, not Mt. Trudeau) to attempt to travel through time: to look back 10,000 years to see how climate has changed over the millennia–and how human activities are affecting climate now.  Two Canadian scientists will climb to …

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Sundogs

  When it’s -25 and the wind’s blowing, we tend to keep our faces turned firmly to the ground, with occasional glances up to make sure we’re not about to walk into traffic. But if, during the recent cold spell, you were brave (or foolish) enough to raise your head, you may have been treated …

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Lightning and humans

Being struck by lightning is one of those occurrences we consider highly unlikely. How often have you said, “You’re more likely to be struck by lightning than… (fill in the blank–win the lottery, for example). But for a surprising number of people every year, the unlikely becomes all too real. The National Weather Service in …

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Clouds

Cloud-watching is a favorite pastime of prairie people, probably because you can see them coming a long way off (clouds, that is, not people). “Nasty looking clouds over there,” we say, or “Looks like snow clouds blowing in,” or “I see a puppy dog. What do you see?” Whether you’re using clouds to forecast the …

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Lightning

Maybe it’s because, in the last couple of years, I’ve taken up golfing, but I’ve become increasingly fascinated by lightning. (There’s something about standing in the open holding a metal rod that’ll do that to you.) I’m certainly not alone. Lightning has fascinated people throughout history. It took Benjamin Franklin, though, to demonstrate its electrical …

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Mirages

There’s a scene that’s appeared in so many movies and TV shows that it’s become a cliché. You know the one: it’s where this guy is staggering, eventually crawling, through the desert. Cut to a shot of the sun glaring down at him. Cut to a close-up of his parched lips. Cut to a wide …

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Frost

We love to see it on trees, we hate to see it on our cars, and we fear it when our tomatoes are ripening: frost. Frost forms when water vapor in the air freezes onto cold objects. The Oxford English Dictionary defines three kinds: “hoarfrost,” the thick, crystalline stuff that makes your backyard look like …

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Auroras and meteors

If you’re in the habit of looking up at the night sky, there’s a good chance you’ve seen two very interesting sights: northern lights and falling stars. The proper name for the northern lights is “aurora borealis.” Aurora was the Roman goddess of the dawn, their version of the Greek goddess Eos; borealis basically means …

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Wind

A few years ago National Geographic, in an article on Saskatchewan, mentioned that we sometimes have a little wind. (I trust I’m not revealing any secrets.) But, one man was quoted as saying, “In Saskatchewan, we don’t consider it really windy until we have whitecaps in our bath water.” Wind and Saskatchewan seem to go …

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Ozone

Submitted for your consideration: a blue, pungent gas that used to be simple oxygen –but now is something quite different. You are about to enter…the O-Zone. Ozone, at first gasp, doesn’t seem like something to be concerned about. Normal oxygen molecules–the ones we breath–consist of two oxygen atoms. Add one more, and you get ozone. …

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