#Evaporative Coolers and Parts

[reasonsforhope]

"Amsterdam’s roofs have just been converted into a giant sponge that will make the city more climate resilient.

The Dutch have always been famous for their ability to control water, born out of the necessity of their homeland, much of which is below sea level.

Now, their expert water management skills are transforming the city skyline in the capital city of Amsterdam from one of terracotta tile, concrete, and shingles into green grass and brown earth.

It’s part of a new climate-resiliency trend in architecture and civic planning known as the ‘sponge city concept,’ in which a garden of water-loving plants, mosses, and soil absorbs excess rainwater before feeding it into the building for use in flushing toilets or watering plants on the ground.

If heavy rains are predicted, a smart valve system empties the stored rainwater into the municipal storm drains and sewers in advance of the weather, allowing the roof to soak up water and reduce flooding in the city.

In this way, the rooftops of buildings can be wrung out and filled up just like a sponge.

In Amsterdam, 45,000 square meters, or 11 acres of flat metropolitan rooftops have already been fitted with these systems, and the contracting firms behind the technology say they make sense in dry climates like Spain just as much as in wet climates like Amsterdam...

A 4-year project of different firms and organizations called Resilio, the resilient network for smart climate adaptive rooftops, rolled out thousands of square meters of sponge city technology into new buildings. As with many climate technologies, the costs are high upfront but tend to result in savings from several expenditures like water utilities and water damage, over a long-enough time horizon...

All together, Amsterdam’s sponge capacity is over 120,000 gallons.

“We think the concept is applicable to many urban areas around the world,” Kasper Spaan from Waternet, Amsterdam’s public water management organization, told Wired Magazine. “In the south of Europe–Italy and Spain–where there are really drought-stressed areas, there’s new attention for rainwater catchment.”

Indeed the sponge city concept comes into a different shade when installed in drought-prone regions. Waters absorbed by rooftops during heavy rains can be used for municipal purposes to reduce pressure on underground aquifers or rivers, or be sweated out under the Sun’s rays which cools the interior of the building naturally.

Additionally, if solar panels were added on top of the rooftop garden, the evaporation would keep the panels cooler, which has been shown in other projects to improve their energy generation.

“Our philosophy in the end is not that on every roof, everything is possible,” says Spaan, “but that on every roof, something is possible.”

Matt Simon, reporting on the Resilio project for Wired, said succinctly that perhaps science fiction authors have missed the mark when it came to envisioning the city of the future, and that rather than being a glittering metropolis of glass, metal, and marble as smooth as a pannacotta, it will look an awful lot more like an enormous sculpture garden."

-via Good News Network, May 15, 2024

[david-watts]

it reached almost 33 degrees here today probably higher because the weather station’s all the way out by the fucking river and it’s always milder than it actually is lol anyway I was just thinking ‘man my room would be Literally unliveable if I didn’t have air conditioning’ and then I thought ‘well this house was built somewhere around 1960 so when they built it they wouldn’t have had air conditioning so I can deal with it’ not only did fans exist and arguably the fans from then were probably better than the piece of shit from kmart that I had once considering that they hadn’t quite yet discovered they could make the absolute worst thing to sell for cheap. but also I looked up the 1966 temperature records (from a previous location that’s more accurate to here, they didn’t have 1960 though. I actually should’ve done 1967 since that’s when we moved here but oh well) and not only did it only get above thirty twice, and only about seven times did it get above twenty-seven. for the whole year. we’ve had five days above that this month. and most days in the really hot months of the year was twenty to twenty-four degrees. THAT’S COOL FOR JANUARY NOW.

[musings-of-miss-j]

no rest for the wicked (nor the foolish)

part five: in which the doctor extends an olive branch (of sorts) while childe and signora demand your cooperation and a certain someone laments your absence

a harbingers x gn reader series!! (includes dottore, childe, arlecchino and pantalone x reader. the rest of the harbingers will most likely not be romantic interests)

notes: very very slowburn, reader has an attitude and a touch of social anxiety, crack, fluff, vague flirting and emotionally constipated yet unfairly pretty people pining for you

warnings: blood and organs

as always, inform me if you find any pronoun slips!!

series masterlist

word count: 4722 words

author's note: next part will probably be out in the next two days :) please enjoy some weird mfs being simps in the meantime

*  ੈ✩‧₊˚*  ੈ✩‧₊˚*  ੈ✩‧₊˚*  ੈ✩‧₊˚*  ੈ✩‧₊˚**  ੈ✩‧₊˚*  ੈ✩‧₊˚*  ੈ✩‧₊˚*  ੈ✩‧₊˚*  ੈ✩‧₊˚**  ੈ✩‧₊˚*  

The Doctor was sitting at his desk reading over some files when you walked into the lab, his free hand holding a vial of bubbling golden liquid suspended in the air as though he’d been in the midst of something and got distracted by the paperwork. You idly wondered if the liquid would evaporate if he let it sit like that for too long while you briefly searched the lab for your cloak. You frowned when you didn’t find it. Where else could it possibly be? Dismissing the issue for now, you rolled up the sleeves of Childe’s coat yet again and checked on the fungi you were growing in petri dishes. If your hypothesis was correct, they’d mutate into the Tri-Lakshana fungi when exposed to concentrated Dendro energy, but before you could test that the samples had to grow. Which they were doing a fabulous job of; one strain in particular had completely covered the bottom of the petri dish, and you quickly transferred it to a larger surface to continue growing. A crow squawked from outside one of the laboratory’s enormous windows, and a cursory glance revealed it was one of the many that had taken to visiting your chamber’s window for food. It was easily identifiable from the purple stain across its claws; the wolfhook extract you’d used to mark them was clearly holding up well. 

So was the all-cure you’d taken that morning; reliable as always, it had reduced your headache to a tiny buzzing in the back of your skull, and the only thing that caused you mental pain at the moment was the thought of Signora and her unwelcome invitation. 

You chewed over the less-than-appealing prospect as you rummaged through the cabinets for a whopperflower stamen. The gala was bound to be uncomfortable, with the Harbingers and their political allies in attendance. You still hadn’t the slightest idea what had come over Signora to invite you; as far as you were concerned, you had absolutely no business being part of such an event. Not to mention the fact that you wouldn’t know anyone there, save for Childe, the Doctor and Signora, but you didn’t seek them out for conversation even in day to day situations, much less in galas where they’d no doubt have important people to chat up. All in all, the entire situation made you a little queasy, and you finished extracting the whopperflower nectar with an anxious sigh. 

You turned to take the bottles of nectar to the cooler, only to jump and stifle a yelp of surprise when you found the Doctor standing right in front of you. Honestly, what is it with these Harbingers and startling me?

“Doctor.” You acknowledged him with a nod. He leaned in closer still, resting his hands on the countertop behind you and effectively trapping you between it and himself. You were immediately struck by several revelations at once; the Doctor was significantly taller than you, tall enough to block out the light from the ceiling lamp and throw a shadow over you, and he was so incredibly close. For whatever reason, you suddenly found it a little hard to breathe.

“You left a few documents on your workbench last night.”

Your brow furrowed slightly. “Did I?”

“Yes,” he confirmed wryly, dropping a stack of paper on the countertop behind you. You transferred the bottle to one hand and picked the papers up with the other, a twist of nervousness settling in your stomach when you recognised them. You hadn’t meant for the Doctor to see these. 

“Ah, yes. I’ll take them back with me today.”

“Perhaps you’d like to explain why you have a comprehensive procedure for creating an artificial Vision in your possession,” he drawled, folding his arms across his chest and tilting his head to the side as he watched you. You swallowed. 

“It was a… pet project, I never pursued it to completion,” you replied, hoping he’d leave it at that. 

“It’s quite the blasphemous study, don’t you think? Trying to recreate the power of the gods?” 

“Hence why I never completed it.”

“These lovely notes you left in the margins state otherwise,” he remarked, tapping the paper with a gloved finger. “In my laboratory, no less.”

Oh dear. “I-”

“I’m sure you’re aware of the rules, my dear student,” he cut you off.  “Any experiments you wish to carry out on my premises must be approved first. And this”- he tapped the stack of paper again- “was never submitted.”

You felt an embarrassed flush rise to your cheeks. You’d been caught red-handed. Dottore found himself more interested in the blush on your cheeks than your questionable research. Sadistic as he was, watching you scramble for an explanation was rather enjoyable. 

“My apologies, doctor. I let my curiosity get the better of me.”

“You have a recurring habit of doing that,” he replied amusedly. It occurred to you that he didn’t seem particularly angry. You fiddled with one of the buttons on Childe’s coat. 

“I acknowledge it as one of my faults.”

“So very righteous of you.”

“Not particularly, considering I do nothing to remedy it,” you muttered sheepishly in response. The Doctor chuckled. He has a nice laugh. Appalled at yourself, you bury the thought deep in the back of your mind in an attempt to forget you’d ever conjured it. 

“Well, well, well. It seems my apprentice has a rebellious streak after all.” He grinned lazily, stepping back and resting his weight on the countertop behind him so you could slip past and store away the nectar to cool. 

You feel yourself flush anew. Archons, this is horrifically embarrassing. “Once again, I apologise for acting without approval.”

“And if I don’t accept your apology?” Dottore asked, more to see you squirm than anything else. 

“I suppose I’ll conveniently vanish from the face of Teyvat without a trace, doctor.”

He let out a surprised bark of laughter. “Why, are you implying I’d have you killed?”

“Well, consider this: your interpretation is ultimately a reflection of your subconscious,” you replied, shooting him a lopsided, slightly uncertain smile over your shoulder. This was unfamiliar ground, joking around with the Doctor, and you were afraid to overstep. He returned the smile with twice the intensity and amount of teeth; you caught a glimpse of his fangs. 

“If that is true, then perhaps you’d do well to watch your mouth.”

You turned away to hide your widening smile, chuckling softly under your breath. Exchanging barbs with the Doctor was proving to be incredibly fun. 

“Would you like me to offer you a third apology?”

“I’m feeling generous,” he replied, amusement evident in his tone. “I’ll forgo causing your disappearance in exchange for your assistance in an experiment.”

“Deal,” you agree with a mock-serious nod, shrugging off Childe’s coat when the sleeves slipped past your fingertips for the millionth time. It wouldn’t do to have them in the way, and besides, the lab was warmer than the rest of the palace. “What’s the procedure?”

Three hours later, you slumped over the marble workbench with a groan. Blood stained your arms all the way up to your elbows, and your favourite turtleneck was utterly ruined. The experiment was a lengthy, gory process; the removal of organs for individual study. Though you were hardly one to shy away from getting your hands a little dirty, this was a little much even for you. You’d gone through thirteen scalpels alone, but at the very least the liver, brain and kidneys you’d extracted were perfectly intact and more than suitable to be experimented on. You wished for an immediate solution to your agonising back pain after holding yourself stiffly over a corpse for hours, though; you couldn’t even keep yourself upright, your forehead pressing against the cool surface. It helped with the headache that was gradually squirming its way back into your skull. 

“Tired?” The Doctor asked, sparing your collapsed body an amused glance. He was somehow perfectly fine, much to your indignation. 

“I think tests on my organs would reveal unprecedented results at this moment,” you grumbled without lifting your head. Your hair splayed across the marble, which you recognised as a potential source of contamination yet wholeheartedly dismissed in favour of giving your aching muscles a rest. Dottore tugged off his bloodied gloves, watching you with a bemused smirk. 

“That can certainly be arranged,” he replied, baring his teeth in a shark-like smile. You shot him a withering glare then fumbled with the chain attached to your belt to check the time; your pocket watch smugly informed you that it was close to midnight. A muttered curse slipped past your lips, foul enough to make even Dottore raise his eyebrows behind his mask and do a double take while you ruminated over the unpleasant possibility that the dining hall would be closed at this time, and you idly wondered if dried jueyun chilis would serve as an adequate substitute for fresh ones (you knew perfectly well they didn’t even compare, but deluding yourself was an infinitely more appealing prospect at the moment.) You heard the clinking of jar lids, specially sealed with an anti-moisture formula developed from the pollen of Nilotpala lotuses. 

“Add a little slime condensate to the brain,” you muttered into the countertop with an absent-minded gesture of your hand. 

“My, my, how brazen of you to issue orders to your superior.”

“Please add a little slime condensate to the brain, doctor,” you quipped back with enough sarcasm to make the title sound like an insult. 

“No,” Dottore replied pleasantly, sealing away the liver and kidneys. “It’ll disrupt the ion concentration and water content.”

“That would be true if I said concentrate, but I didn’t. Slime condensate is dilute enough to not interfere with the neurons' cytoplasm, but it’ll keep the brain fresher.”

“Very good,” he said approvingly. He’d heard you, and he knew you were right, but he’d wanted to test you. “You retain your focus even in subpar conditions.” 

“As expected of any scientist worth their salt,” you said wryly, lifting your head to rub your eyes and grope along the countertop for your glasses. You were a little miffed that he’d felt the need to test your understanding of such a simple concept. 

You rubbed your eyes again. “Doctor, can you see my glasses?” You asked, squinting to observe the array of equipment strewn across the workbench. 

“No,” he lied, twirling them between his fingers and watching you search for them. You clicked your tongue with dissatisfaction, leaning in closer to the workbench’s surface in an attempt to see more clearly. Dottore bit back a chuckle. 

“Oh, damn it all. I could’ve sworn they were right here…” 

“Can’t find them?” He asked, an obvious lilt of amusement in his voice. You looked up, narrowing your eyes at him. 

“You have them, don’t you?”

“Ah, you saw through me so quickly,” he said, sounding simultaneously impressed and disappointed. “Am I really so obvious?”

“Hand them over,” you demanded, holding out your hand. 

He grinned so wide that you saw the flash of white from his teeth even with your vision blurred. 

“Such a shameful manner to adopt with a superior,” he said with a shake of his head. 

You rubbed your eyes and let out an exasperated huff. You could sense a shift in your dynamic with the Doctor, but clearly he was the only one who knew how to navigate it, leaving you disoriented and unsure of how to respond. 

“Doctor. It’s nearing one in the morning, and I have to return to my dormitory. Which I can’t safely do without being able to see half a metre in front of me.”

“Surely your eyesight isn’t quite that terrible.” He knew it was. In fact, he had a perfect copy of your first diagnosis and most recent check-up in his file of you. That file had grown to concerning sizes ever since your apprenticeship began. The Doctor reasoned that it would be a scientific sin if he didn't document everything he could about such a fascinating test subject. You sighed; you had hoped it wouldn’t come to this.

“Please give me my glasses.”

You didn’t he could possibly grin any wider, but he proved you wrong. Despite his amusement being at your expense, you still found yourself thinking that his smile wasn’t unpleasant to look at. Objectively speaking, of course.

“In exchange for what?” He drawled, raising his eyebrows behind his mask.

An indignant flush rose to your face. In your defence, it was late, and the Doctor really was being an ass.

“In exchange for your DNA cloning not to be tampered with,” you fumed. “It would be a shame if someone were to denature the enzymes. Or accidentally alter the base sequence.”

“My dear student, are you threatening me?”

“The glasses, doctor.” You held out your hand again.

Dottore sighed mock-defeatedly, rounding the workbench and making his way towards you.

“You are so terribly demanding,” he remarked. You glowered at him, arms folded, until his gloves fingers took hold of your chin, tilting your face upwards. Your eyes widened in shock as he came close enough for you to make out the detailing of his mask. “Just demanding enough for me to listen to you,” he murmured, lifting you glasses and setting them on the bridge of your nose. His grasp on your chin didn’t loosen, and he was incredibly thankful for his mask in that moment. It hid the way his eyes couldn’t help but gravitate towards your lips. You stood there frozen from shock until your limbs regained the ability to move and you stepped away with a nervous mumble; “I should be going now.” Dottore watched you hurry away with a self-satisfied smirk.

Disconcerted by the Doctor’s behaviour, you didn’t notice Childe’s sleeping form sprawled in front of the laboratory door until you tripped over him. He jerked awake as you steadied yourself.

“Trixy!” Rubbing his eyes with one hand, he clambered up from the floor and instinctively grabbed onto you for support when he swayed a little on his feet. You did your best to support his much taller body with your own.

“Eleven? What are you doing here?” You asked, bewildered. He leaned heavily against your shoulder, stifling a yawn. His movements were oddly uncoordinated, you noticed.

“You promised you’d come to dinner and you didn’t.” He was practically pouting. It was almost cute, if you convinced yourself to forget that he was a Harbinger. “I was waiting for you!”

“Why in Teyvat”- with a grunt, you pushed him off you. “What possessed you, you buffoon? Dinner was six hours ago!”

“If you keep calling me names I won’t give you these chillies I brought from the kitchen.”

“Oh, Childe,” you murmured, dragging a hand down your face. “Are you sober?”

He giggled.

“Nope.”

“Didn’t think so,” you agreed, looping his arm over your shoulder. You could faintly smell the wine on him. Red, if your nose was accurate. “Move it,” you ordered, dragging him towards the stairs. He grumbled a protest, burying his face in the crook of your neck.

“You took off my coat.”

“The sleeves were too long,” you replied, carefully navigating the stairs with him in tow. Surprise, surprise, it was far from easy to descend a spiral staircase with an overgrown Harbinger who refused to look where he was going leaning against you. “Eleven, for Celestia’s sake.” You rapped your knuckles against his skull to get him to look up. “Raise your head and tell me where your bloody dorm is.”

“Trixyyy, don’t yell at me,” he whined into your neck.

“Focus, Eleven. You’re drunker than a single father on a Friday night and you need to rest. Now exert a little effort and tell me where your dorm is, or Archons help me I’ll leave you right here in the hallway.”

His incoherent mumbling echoed through the empty corridor, the palace eerily silent save for your footsteps and breathing. The foggy glow from the lamps glinting off the silver in the walls and throwing large shadows across the floor only added to the unnerving atmosphere, and you found yourself slowly getting nervous. With a muttered curse, you decided to drag him to your room instead. You knew where that was, at least.

It took entirely too long to reach the door to your room; Childe was not only ridiculously tall, but also heavy and resolutely uncooperative. You fumbled for your key with one hand while the other supported his limp body; after a moment of struggling with the chain at your belt you managed to get it unhooked and unlocked the door, dumping Childe onto the nearest armchair.

“Damn you,” you muttered.

“So mean,” he protested, staring up at you as you made your way to the bathroom. He really wasn’t that drunk; a little tipsy, sure, but he was definitely playing it up. If it got him an ounce of your attention then he’d gladly throw his dignity to the four winds, shameless as it was.

“Don’t move,” you instructed him with a stern look before disappearing into the bathroom. He heard rushing water and concluded you were probably getting rid of the mysterious blood stains all over your torso.

To your eternal horror, when you emerged from the bathroom La Signora was lounging in the other armchair by the fire smoking a pipe of some mysterious substance you were quite certain you’d smelled in the Jade Chamber before. Perhaps Lady Ningguang and La Signora had similar smoking habits.

“L-lady Eight?”

She turned slightly to shoot you a knowing, dangerous smile after darting a look loaded with meaning between you and Childe passed out drunk in the other armchair. You blushed scarlet from your neck to the tips of your ears, clearing your throat and towelling your hair dry.

“A pleasure to see you again, my lady.”

“Is it really, little one?” She countered, surveying you with her one visible eye and taking a long drag from her pipe. “I seem to have come at a bad time.”

“Not at all,” you insisted. “Lord Eleven- well, I tripped over him while exiting the Doctor’s laboratory. He seems to be fairly… intoxicated.”

Signora hummed, resting her chin in her hand and tapping her manicured nails against her cheek as she watched you dry off your hair. No doubt you’d been preparing to go to sleep.

“Is there anything you require my assistance with, my lady?” You ventured.

“Yes, as a matter of fact,” she replied, calm and unhurried.  “Come here.”

You stepped towards her.

“Closer, little one.”

Another couple of steps.

“Perfect. Now…” She rose from the chair and held you by the shoulders, manoeuvring you into it instead. Setting the pipe aside, she bent over to scrutinise you thoughtfully, tilting your face to assess how you looked at different angles and in different lighting. Truly a work of art, she thought. You held your breath and sat as still as possible, your back ramrod straight.

“Lady Eight…?”

“You have nothing to wear for the gala. We’ll have to remedy that,” she murmured, tapping her finger on your cheek. You weren’t surprised that she knew the contents of your wardrobe in the slightest; the Fatui probably knew things even you didn’t know about yourself yet. (You were right).

“You’d look ravishing in red,” she mused.

“I’m sure your opinion on such matter is indispensable.”

“Quite right,” she agreed, moving away from you a little. “And my opinion is that we should dress you in red.”

“As my lady wishes.”

Childe had had quite enough of listening to Signora fawn over you, and chose that exact moment to get up and stride over.

“I think blue would be a better choice,” he interjected. You shot him a disbelieving look.

“You put on quite a convincing act of being unconscious, don’t you, my lord?”

Signora appraised him coolly. “Nonsense, Childe. Red.”

“Blue,” he argued, grazing his knuckles across your jaw. You shivered.

“Let us discuss this in the morning,” you suggested, moving to get up. Both Childe and Signora pushed you back down while glaring heatedly at each other. The air crackled with tension you could identify but not recognise; the two were clearly locked in some battle of wills.

“You should wear something blue, Trixy.”

“The gala is still months away-”

“Red is a much better choice. You agree, don’t you, little one?” Signora interjected, stroking your hair.

“Objectively speaking, it’s hardly relevant nor important what colour I wear,” you pointed out.

“Nonsense,” Signora said dismissively. “You’ll be the gem, the star of the gala. Of course it matters.”

Childe nodded, as much as he hated to agree with Signora. You massaged your temples.

“That’s simply not true. Lady Eight, you told me yourself this gala is an event reserved for the maintenance of the Fatui’s connections. My personal appearance doesn’t factor into the equation in any way, shape or form.”

“Maybe our enjoyment depends on you,” Childe said with a grin, taking your hand and brushing a kiss across your knuckles. Oh, Archons. He’s completely drunk. Utterly sloshed. You were beginning to feel a little cloistered with both of them hovering over you, making nonsensical claims and debating irrelevant points.

“Blue.”

“Red.”

“A coin toss in the morning will decide,” you announced firmly, rubbing your eyes. It was appallingly late, and you knew waking up for the Doctor’s seven am lab session was going to be an evil experience. You really weren’t keen on making it any worse because two Harbingers couldn’t hold back their egos over something as trifling as your outfit.

Of all the ways to establish superiority, why did they have to pick one that involves me?

“My lord, my lady, please allow me to see you out,” you continued, rising from where you were seated. Childe pouted.

“I’m drunk, Trixy. You have to nurse me back to health.”

Signora clicked her tongue derisively, and you mentally agreed with her. With a sigh, you rummaged through your medicine drawer for the tonic you’d concocted for hangovers. Though you weren’t a big drinker yourself, during your Akademiya years many of your friends indulged in the bad habit of drinking themselves half-blind (usually Kaveh and Dehya) and you didn’t have the patience to deal with their slurring words and careless behaviour. Hence your useful tonic. You shoved a vial of it at Childe.

“Drink this,” you ordered.

“What is it?”

“If you want to be ‘nursed back to health’ then drink what I give you without asking questions.”

He shrugged and knocked back the tiny vial in one fell swoop, grimacing as the bitter taste settled on his tongue.

“Is this poison?” He exclaimed, wrinkling his nose in distaste. Signora rolled her eyes.

“Yes, you fool,” she said contemptuously. “The little one had the utter gal to poison you in front of a Harbinger. That’s absolutely what happened.”

He muttered a derisive comment or two under his breath while you tried to push him towards the door. When he didn’t budge an inch, your patience finally snapped.

“Damn it all, won’t you leave, both of you?! I have more important matters to concern myself with than an overgrown child and a tempestuous mistress!”

Stunned by your outburst, they both left without another complaint. Childe even uttered a ‘Sorry, Trixy…” as the door closed behind him. You locked the door, stomped over to the bed and went to sleep without even bothering to fully dry your hair.

You regretted that in the morning as you wrestled the unkempt, tangled strands into a semi-acceptable state. Panic prevailed; you didn’t have anything stored away to eat for breakfast, and a trip to the dining hall would definitely make you late. You cursed the Doctor to the lowest ring of hell, making a mad dash to grab a bite to eat anyway; it was his fault you woke up so late, keeping you in the lab until after midnight. You nearly crashed into Anya in the hallway in your haste, and you called out an apology that was quickly swallowed by the chatter of recruits and their footsteps. The dining hall had never seemed so far away, and you kept stealing glances at your pocket watch as you leaped down a full flight of stairs and all but tripped through the enormous doors, making a beeline towards the tables with the intention of wolfing down a leftover slice of pie at the very least. Damn it all. Even your precious morning tea was forgone in favour of scrambling back to the door and attempt to make it to the lab in time.

But you didn’t even make it to the door; a hand grabbed the back of your coat (Childe’s coat, really, that you’d thrown on in a fit of desperation) and yanked you away from the door.

“What”- you whirled around and were met by a rather familiar masked face inches from yours. The strange woman who you’d taken to calling ‘Arlie’ as a nickname. “Release me this instant, I’m late.”

She tsked, pulling you closer by your collar this time.

“Where have you been?”

You shot a desperate glance at your watch. In all fairness, her irritation could very well be justified; you often took dinner together and chatted over dessert at least every other day. Besides, the sheer authority she exuded was enough to make you feel rather guilty. You hadn’t been to the dining hall in nearly a week, surviving off jars of reheated soup and candied amakumo fruit. Clearly your presence was more impactful to Arlie than you’d thought (she thought it was rather obvious; going to the trouble of a disguise just to indulge in conversation with you should’ve been an adequate indicator).

“It’s been an awfully busy week, Arlie, I’m sorry,” you said hurriedly, licking a few crumbs from the pie’s crust off your fingertips. Much to her relief, her mask concealed the way her eyes immediately latched onto your mouth and tongue. The room felt a little hotter all of a sudden. “I really must be going, the Doctor will have my bones on a silver platter if I keep him waiting any longer.”

Arlie rolled her eyes. As if she’d let any harm come to her little pet, by the hand of Dottore or otherwise. Nevertheless, she released you.

“I’d like to see you at dinner today.” It was more of a warning than an invitation. You were too rushed to protest her patronising tone, and you rather enjoyed the meals you shared too.

“You will,” you promised, and then rushed out of the door towards the lab. She watched the white velvet of your coat disappear with a slight frown; now how could she get you to stop wearing that fool’s clothes?

 

The door to the laboratory was hanging ajar. Thoroughly unusual, but you were fifteen minutes late by then and a lapse in the Doctor’s obsessively maintained habits took a backseat. You stepped into the lab with as much dignity as you could muster, determined not to look guilty; everyone was late now and then, the Doctor could bloody well suck it up-

A pair of hands grabbed you by the shoulders and dragged you the rest of the way into the lab, shaking you vigorously. With an irritated, surprised yell, you tried to shove away the assailant, and when that didn’t work you resorted to your trusty glare.

Oh. The man looked remarkably like the Doctor. The same curly, silver-blue hair and stubborn set to his jaw. And the same curve to his top lip.

The jarring similarities made you pause and scrutinise the man a little more closely.

“Who are you?” You asked bluntly, frowning as you tried to remember if the Doctor ever mentioned having siblings. You could hear more voices coming from further inside; tiptoeing, you caught sight of several more Dottore-like people. So definitely not siblings, then. The not-Doctor tsked, then shook you hard again to regain your attention. “Who are all of these people? Why do you all look like the Doctor?”

At the sound of your voice, all the Dottore clones went scampering away through exits you hadn’t even known existed.

“Where were you, you disagreeable fool?”

You stared up at the clone who still hadn’t let go of you.

“I’d like an explanation as to why there are apparently multiple copies of my supervisor.”

“You’re every bit as nosy as Prime said…” he muttered.

“And who, pray tell, is Prime? Is that some sort of a code name for my Doctor?”

“Quite right,” a familiar, drawling voice responded. The clone tensed up then hurried off, leaving you off-balance and stumbling. “You are late. Inexcusably so,” the Doctor said, watching you steady yourself.

“Why are there seven clones of you?”

*  ੈ✩‧₊˚*  ੈ✩‧₊˚*  ੈ✩‧₊˚*  ੈ✩‧₊˚*  ੈ✩‧₊˚**  ੈ✩‧₊˚*  ੈ✩‧₊˚*  ੈ✩‧₊˚*  ੈ✩‧₊˚*  ੈ✩‧₊˚**  ੈ✩‧₊˚*  

[jayrockin]

Inktober 9 is tipsy scribbles of bug ferret heat-seeing “eyes.” I’m still working on it but the pupil is actually a hole with a thin membrane behind it that senses heat gradients and thus “sees” infrared. They sniff rapidly though their cheek to evaporatively cool the membrane, since it doesn’t work unless it’s cooler than the surrounding environment.

Inktober 10 is Pinkie and Brownie being lovey dovey. I'm thinking of making their BFL-2 names "Hook 10 Palm Thrice" and "Point 5-6 Flick Once." BFL-2 (Bug Ferret Language 2) is the most widely spoken sign language in the BFGC (Bug Ferret Galactic Community) and has tactile and visual sign variants.

Tactile signs are tapped against parts of the arms and chest, given numerical values in English transliteration. Visual BFL-2 replaces tapping with a handshape, vocalization, or spatial approximation, making it slightly slower and less clear than tactile language. Vocal languages tend to be much more limited, highly regional, and are usually used in conjunction with sign. Bug ferrets have poor vocal control and frequently struggle to approximate the other sophonts’ spoken languages.

PATREON | STORE | Runaway to the Stars

[bekolxeram]

7x03 analysis part 3 — Stormy Weather

We have established in the last part that Tommy is actually trailing behind the hurricane, not flying directly into its eye. While the wind is weaker among the outer rainbands comparing to near the eyewall, these rainbands behave more like regular thunderstorms. This time, we are going to discuss the unique set of risks a thunderstorm brings to aviation. (If you want to learn more about or you want source on the nature of a hurricane's outer rainbands, you can read section 8 of this paper.)

Anatomy of a thunderstorm

A thunderstorm typically happens in a cumulonimbus cloud (CB). It is a tower of cloud built up from the large amount of evaporated water vapor from the ground. The genesis of a thunderstorm requires 3 ingredients:

High humidity

Unstable air

A lifting mechanism

A cloud is made out of water droplets and/or ice crystals, so naturally a thunderstorm needs moist air.

Unstable air means an air mass that will keep rising or falling once you give it a nudge, typically due to large difference of temperature between warm surface air heated by the sun and cool air high up in the sky. As warm air is less dense than cool air, it floats into the sky, while cooler air sinks down.

While air heated by the sun eventually rises on its own due to density change, it can also be lifted up physically by terrain like mountains, or weather fronts wedging a warmer air mass on top of a cooler one.

The life cycle of a thunderstorm can be divided into 3 distinct phases: cumulus stage, mature stage and dissipating stage.

In the cumulus stage, the cloud is dominated by upward movement of air from the ground. Water vapor condenses when it gets high enough in the sky, and since condensation releases more heat, the process heats up surrounding air further, hence contributing to more air rising, forming a cumulus cloud. (Cumulus meaning "heap" or "pile" in Latin.)

The humid updrafts stop being able to rise further when they encounter a warmer air mass and start going horizontally outward instead, giving the cloud a flat-top anvil shape. The highest a cloud can grow is typically at the tropopause, but in rare cases powerful enough updrafts can blow right past the boundary layer into the stratosphere.

At the same time, water droplets continuously lifted up by updrafts bump into each other and coalesce into bigger drops. If the environment around them (mostly the case once they get high enough) is below freezing point, they also start freezing into ice crystals. Eventually, the ice crystals and/or water droplets grow so heavy that the air currents can no longer support their weight, so they start falling down to the ground, dragging along surrounding air, creating downdrafts.

When updrafts and downdrafts exist at the same time, the thunderstorm has officially entered its mature stage. The cloud can now be classified as a cumulonimbus once precipitation starts. Falling ice crystals typically melt back into liquid water once it reach the warmer environment at lower altitude, resulting in rainfall. If the updrafts are strong enough, ice particles spend more time tumbling around at higher altitude and congregate into larger hailstones, which may not be able to completely melt before hitting the ground, resulting in hail fall.

Ice particles carried upward by updrafts and precipitation falling downward rub against each other, creating static electricity. It is like walking around a carpeted room barefooted for a while, when you want to leave and touch the doorknob, it zaps you. A lightning strike works similarly, only in a colossally larger scale. Once the charge imbalance within the cloud gets big enough, it discharges and zaps the nearest area of opposite charge, on the path with the least resistance. Most of the time it happens within the cloud or in between clouds, but about 20% of the time it strikes ground objects. The higher up an object is, the higher the probability of it being struck, it can be a tree, a skyscraper, a tower or a firefighter on a ladder.

Once the updrafts are cut off and can no longer feed the storm, it has entered the dissipating stage. It can be due to the air running out of moisture, the sun going down hence removing the heat source, or the sheer power of the downdrafts cancelling out upward air movements. In this stage the thunderstorm is dominated by downdrafts and precipitation, until it eventually rains itself out.

Hazards associated with thunderstorms in aviation

Thunderstorms are the big daddies (heh) of hazardous weather conditions in the aviation world. No pilot would willingly fly into a CB cloud unless they are insane, suicidal, or with the Coast Guards. In fact, most of them would rather fly into the inner part of a hurricane than a thunderstorm, as winds in a hurricane mainly go in one direction (into the eye), unlike the unpredictable turbulent conditions inside a thunderstorm.

Commercial and general aviation pilots usually fly at least 20 miles away from any thunderstorm activity just as the FAA advises, but search and rescue missions operate more on an "at-your-own-risk" basis. When there are people in need of rescue, the US Coast Guards regularly fly into post-hurricane adverse weather just to save them, so if they refuse to fly out, you can start kayaking. Every stormy mission they go on, they have to weigh urgency of people in distress against the following risks associated with thunderstorms:

Lightning

Ah, it's everyone's least favorite recurring character. As you can see from the mechanism of thunderstorm above, higher up objects have a higher probability to be stuck by lightning, flying into a storm cloud makes the risk even more serious because of the prevalence of intra-cloud static discharges, aircrafts are simply prime targets for lightning strikes. Commercial airliners, for example, get struck by lightning 1-2 times per year on average.

The metallic body of an aircraft acts as a Faraday cage, shielding its occupants from the lightning strike. Electricity travels from one end of the aircraft, around its body, and out of the other end. A jet airliner would fair better in a lightning strike, because all of its crucial components are covered by metal, including the cowlings around the engines. A helicopter on the other hand, has its rotors out in the environment, heat damage on rotor blades is common during a lightning event. Lightning might not be enough to bring down a helicopter on its own, but an emergency landing might be necessary. It can also fry the antenna or electrical systems on board the helicopter, rendering instruments and communication non-functional.

Flashes of lightning can also affect the pilots' vision, making it more difficult for them to monitor their instruments.

Precipitation

While water ingestion has caused engine flameouts way back in the days, modern aircraft engines are typically designed to handle even the worst rainstorm.

The biggest threat heavy rain brings to a rotorcraft is the decreased visibility. One of the most common causes of helicopter crashes is unknowingly flying into bad weather while operating on visual flight rules. It is human nature to fly using geographical references outside the window instead of solely referring to instruments, it takes a while transitioning between the two. Pilots may accidentally fly into terrain if they are not aware of their surroundings. In our case, Tommy knows he is flying into low visibility conditions in the middle of the night, so it is actually easier for him to keep his eye on the avionics. Since they are out in the middle of the ocean, there is nothing they can fly into other than the water surface, which can be easily avoided by closely monitoring the attitude indicator.

Hail is a whole different beast. Since it is solid, it can break windshields, knock rotor blades out of balance, damage engine components after being ingested, or in severe case, cause structural damage to the aircraft itself. Luckily, the environment in the outer rainbands of a hurricane is not favorable for large hail formation.

Damage caused by an intense hailstorm on an Austrian Airlines A320 in June this year.

Turbulence and downdrafts

This biggest risks associated with flying in or near a thunderstorm though, is the violent and turbulent air.

Flying into a thunderstorm cloud in its mature stage means being tossed around up and down repeatedly by the chaotic mixture of updrafts and downdrafts, like a rollercoaster from hell, seriously stressing the structural integrity of the aircraft.

The downdrafts are especially dangerous for helicopters, because they operate at a much lower altitude than pressurized aircrafts. Search and rescue helicopters fly even lower, as they have to search for stuff on ground level, they usually fly at a few thousands feet or less above ground. If a particularly strong downdraft hit the helicopter, it would be pushed downward in an instant, leaving very little space to maneuver its way out of the descent.

Look at how this Coast Guard helicopter struggle to take off in severe downdraft during hurricane Florence. Listen to its engine, see how hard it is fighting against the downward air movement. If a military helicopter struggles this much, a small single engine AStar would not fair any better.

After the updrafts of a thunderstorm have hit their maximum intensity and start dying out, the downdrafts push back down violently in a phenomenon called downburst, or microburst if it happens in a small localized area.

In a microburst, wind typically over the speed of 100 km/h gushes down in a column together with precipitation. Once it hits the ground, it radiates outward then wraps back up into itself, creating turbulent vortexes in all directions.

The strongest microburst ever recorded reached a windspeed of 240.5 km/h, basically the power of a cat 4 hurricane, but straight down.

If an aircraft gets caught under the column of downdraft in the middle of a microburst, it would undoubtedly be slammed towards the ground. A giant jet airliner or a military helicopter might be able to outclimb it and get to safety, but not a single engine light duty helicopter like the one we see in 7x03 and 7x04.

An aircraft operating near the ground, be it for take off, landing or rescue missions, is particularly susceptible to powerful downdrafts. If Tommy's helicopter gets caught in the middle of a microburst, it would be pushed into the ocean immediately. Even if it is just near a microburst not in it, horizontal gusts produced by strong downbursts hitting the ground may blow the aircraft off target, making it dangerous when it is trying to land on a precise location, like the belly of a capsized cruise ship. It can very much be swept into the ocean instead.

Ditching

If Tommy's helicopter encounters any serious malfunction in the thunderstorm, it will have to be put down on the ground as soon as possible, like every professional pilot is trained to do. Being way out at sea means possibly emergency landing would be a water landing, or ditching as they say in the aviation world.

If you are old enough to have witnessed the emergency landing of US Airways Flight 1549, or the Miracle of the Hudson, you would have seen the A320 floating on the Hudson River after a bird strike forcing the aircraft to make an emergency landing.

But helicopters are not like airplanes, helicopters are top-heavy, with most of their crucial components on top near the main rotor. When a helicopter hit the water without any floatation device, it quickly flips over and sink.

Although helicopters, especially the ones used for search and rescue, are usually equipped with emergency floatation device with life rafts attached, a sudden change of meteorological condition like a microburst can catch pilots off guard, thus not activating emergency floating device in time.

Even if the floatation device is successfully deployed, rough sea conditions due to the hurricane can still flip the aircraft and the lift rafts over, so the 118 squad definitely should not have been joking around on board. If the helicopter is forced to land in water, its occupants would have seconds to plot their way out of the aircraft before sinking and drowning in it.

Conclusion

It is generally not advisable for any aircraft to fly into a thunderstorm, or any severely adverse weather. Tommy agreeing to fly near a cat 5 hurricane, because the 118 tell him there are people in danger at sea, is in itself an act of brave heroism. It also takes skills and experience to navigate across the turbulent conditions near the Uno.

If anyone gives Tommy shit for getting a medal of valor just because he "drives the helicopter", or for him making an "enjoy it while it last" joke at the ceremony, I would like to remind you that he did risk his career and life just to save people on the cruise ship, and without him Bathena would be sushi already.

(I planned to write about the operational side of the helicopter rescue mission too in this part, but it's getting waaaay too long. I cut down quite a big chunk of it just to make it readable. I may have to write a part 4 in order to address the call sign and radio communication part of the flight. I know this mess is sloppy and oversimplified but I've been sitting on it for weeks. I just have to get it out, so forgive me for the drop in quality later on. Actually feel free to ask me about weather or aviation stuff if you want, I can put a Q&A in my next part.)

[regardingcomic]

It's a hot one. Like 7 inches from the midday sun.

°°PREVENT OVERHEATING°°

>>Air conditioning if temps are over 77° F (25° C). Oscillating fans if no air conditioning. >>Trim away excess fur — ‘puppy’ haircuts for fuzzy bunnies. >>Relocate bunny to a cooler part of the house. >>Keep out of sunlight. >>Mist bunny’s ears — evaporating water will help with cooling. >>Set up a fan to blow over a bowl of cold water or a wet sheet. >>Place frozen water bottles near bunny. >>Freeze ceramic tiles for 15 minutes for bunny to lie on. >>Wrap a frozen 2L bottle with a towel as a bolster to lean against. >>Add ice to bunny’s water crock.

°°RECOGNIZE THE SYMPTOMS OF HEAT EXHAUSTION°°

>>Fast, shallow breathing. >>Wetness around the nose. >>Listlessness. >>Hot ears. >>Tossing head back while breathing rapidly from open mouth.

These symptoms indicate an EMERGENCY. Take immediate action! Relocate to a cool place, keep out of sun, dampen ears with cool water, give cold water to drink, and call an experienced exotics veterinarian for further instructions.

More Information: www.specialbunny.org/overheatinghttps://rabbit.org/faq-warm-weather-concernsby

Amy Ramnaraine House Rabbit Society Educator, Minnesota https://rabbit.org/keep-your-rabbit-cool-in-the-summer.

[mariacallous]

Hurricane Beryl’s record-shattering intensification into a scale-topping Category 5 storm has stunned even the most seasoned experts. This storm is the nightmare scenario that meteorologists were worried about heading into the 2024 hurricane season.

All the warning indicators were blinking red in the weeks and months leading up to Beryl’s formation. The ocean is a veritable sauna ready to support any tropical disturbance that can get its act together this year.

The storm slammed into the islands of Grenada and Carriacou as a high-end Category 4 on Monday, July 1, bounding into the Caribbean, where it quickly grew into a Category 5. Forecasters expect Beryl to hit Jamaica as a major hurricane on Wednesday, July 3, before trekking over Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula by July 4. The storm’s future is uncertain once it emerges into the Gulf of Mexico by this weekend.

Beryl’s litany of records would be impressive during the peak of hurricane season, but that isn’t even close yet. The hurricane was the Atlantic’s earliest Category 4 and Category 5 storm on record, beating out the historic duo of Dennis and Emily, respectively, from July 2005. It was also the farthest east in the tropical Atlantic we’ve ever seen a hurricane form so early in the season.

It’s a grim sign that something is seriously amiss in the Atlantic when a storm sets these historic milestones before we’ve even reached the July 4 holiday.

Fueling the storm were some of the warmest sea surface temperatures ever observed during the months of June and July. Beryl traversed waters that were 28 to 30 degrees Celsius, providing more than enough energy to help the storm reach its full potential. This is the kind of heat you’d expect to see in the tropical Atlantic during the peak of the season in late August and early September.

Hot water provides the energy hurricanes need to grow and thrive. Gusty winds evaporate a tiny bit of water off the sea’s surface. This warm water vapor rises into the clouds and releases its heat, which powers the thunderstorms that drive a hurricane’s intensity.

The Atlantic Ocean has been running a fever for the past year and a half. Sea surface temperatures across the ocean were the warmest on record for almost all of 2023 and continuing into 2024.

It’s not just that sea surface temperatures are running historically hot—that heat also stretches hundreds of meters deep beneath the surface.

Scientists use ocean heat content (OHC) to measure the depth of the heat through the ocean. A hurricane’s intense winds churn the ocean and force cooler waters from below to rise to the surface, leaving behind colder waters in the storm’s wake.

Higher OHC values limit the amount of cooling left behind by a storm, which allows the ocean to more easily support high-end storms later on down the line.

OHC values across the tropical Atlantic and the Caribbean far outpace normal values for this point in the summer, and that’s unlikely to change much as we inch closer to the peak of the season.

All that potential energy is what has meteorologists so worried heading into the rest of hurricane season. NOAA and Colorado State University both released aggressive seasonal forecasts calling for as many as two dozen named tropical storms this year.

Experts knew that the ocean would be capable of supporting frightening storms this year. The only surprise is that Beryl formed so soon. This early-season storm could serve as an omen for any storms that form later this year.

Water temperatures are only part of the equation. A tropical cyclone is an exceptionally fragile structure that also requires vigorous and organized thunderstorms, low wind shear, ample moisture in the atmosphere, and few obstacles in its way in order to grow into a formidable beast.

Plenty of those ingredients are also expected throughout this hurricane season as forecasters watch the potential for La Niña to develop later this summer. La Niña patterns can make conditions more favorable for Atlantic storms by decreasing wind shear over the region.

It’s not just the number of storms that could form this year that has experts concerned, but their nature. Beryl just proved that any storm that takes root in a favorable environment could use those exceptionally warm waters to swirl into the record books. Any one of the many storms expected this season could have the opportunity to grow into a destructive hurricane that warrants extra attention and preparation.

Folks who live along or near the coast should use the relative quiet of the early hurricane season to prepare for whatever comes your way later this summer. Make sure you’ve got an emergency kit packed with supplies to deal with long-lasting utility outages. Plan what to do and where to go if your area is told to evacuate ahead of a storm.

[secretmessages1983]

ive been so interested jn all your homeowner posts this year!! what would say have been your fave and/or least fave parts of it (either the process or the aftermath)?

my fav part was def finally closing on it and realizing i have my own little place to call home but also realizing that i could actually buy it

i rented this place before i bought it and when the owner offered to sell it to me at first i was like there is no way i can and im gonna have to find a new job bc there's no where else to rent in my town but then i found out about the one loan and i was like oh i actually can buy a house 😵‍💫

one of the benefits though of living in a small town is that everyone who helped me with the process like my work friend's uncle inspected the place and helped me with a bunch of maintence and i've taught my mortgage lender's kids

it has a lot of character to it and it's super old my house was built in 1903!

doing maintenance on my own sucks though i had to install a pipe on my water heater and cried for a day about it

and this was just a hassle but bc i live in the southwest basically i don't have normal ac i have an evaporation cooler and winterizing it and draining it was super annoying and gross it was full of dead bugs

and this is kind of house related but my street has been under construction for like 9 months on and off and i only have street parking and it's been driving me nuts i have to park so far away

but in the long run it's super nice to be able to say i own something and being able to do whatever i want to the place without a landlord is so nice

here's my crib

[kp777]

By Julia Conley

Common Dreams

Aug. 4, 2023

The global average ocean surface temperature is expected to rise even further in the coming months as El Niño strengthens.

Climate scientists on Friday said the rapidly rising temperature of the planet's oceans is cause for major concern, particularly as policymakers in the top fossil fuel emissions-producing countries show no sign of ending planet-heating oil and gas extraction.

The European Union's climate agency, Copernicus Climate Change Service, reported this week that the average daily global ocean surface temperature across the planet reached 20.96°C (69.7°F), breaking the record of 20.95°C that was previously set in 2016.

The record set in 2016 was reported during an El Niño event, a naturally occurring phenomenon which causes warm water to rise to the surface off the western coast of South America. The weather pattern was at its strongest when the high ocean temperature was recorded that year.

El Niño is forming this year as well, but has not yet reached its strongest point—suggesting new records for ocean heat will be set in the coming months and potentially wreak havoc in the world's marine ecosystems.

Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Copernicus, told the BBC that March is typically when the oceans are at their hottest.

"The fact that we've seen the record now makes me nervous about how much warmer the ocean may get between now and next March," she told the outlet.

The warming oceans are part of a feedback loop that's developed as fossil fuel emissions have increasingly trapped heat in the atmosphere.

Rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are warming the oceans, leaving them less able to absorb the emissions and contributing to intensifying weather patterns.

"Warmer sea surface temperatures lead to a warmer atmosphere and more evaporation, and both of these lead to more moisture in the atmosphere which can also lead to more intense rainfall events," Burgess told "Today" on BBC Radio 4. "And warmer sea surface temperatures may also lead to more energy being available for hurricanes."

The warming ocean could have cascading effects on the world's ecosystems and economies, reducing fish stocks as marine species migrate to find cooler waters.

"We are seeing changes already in terms of species distributions, prevalence of harmful algae blooms popping up maybe where we would not necessarily expect them, and the species shifting from warmer southern locations up into the colder regions as well which is quite worrying," Helen Findlay, a biological oceanographer at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory in the United Kingdom, toldThe Evening Standard.

"We are also seeing more species coming up from the south, things like European anchovy or recently examples of Mediterranean octopus coming up into our waters and that is having a knock-on impact for the fish that we catch, and consequences of economics," she added.

Certain parts of the world's oceans provoked particular alarm among scientists in recent days, with water off the coast of Florida hitting 38.44°C—over 101°F—last week.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told the BBC that ocean temperatures in that area typically hover between 23°C and 31°C at this time of year.

Since scientists first began measuring ocean temperatures using satellites and research buoys about four decades ago, the global average sea surface temperature has gone up by roughly 0.6°C.

On social media, climate scientists urged news outlets to explicitly connect the rising ocean temperatures to fossil fuel companies and the policymakers who are enabling them to continue fueling the climate emergency—such as British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who announced more than 100 new oil and gas licenses in the North Sea this week.

The New York Times this week reported "terrifying Earth breakdown but barely [mentioned] the cause is the fossil fuel industry," said National Aeronautics and Space Administration climate scientist Peter Kalmus.

"The more we burn fossil fuels, the more excess heat will be taken out by the oceans, which means the longer it will take to stabilize them and get them back to where they were," Burgess told the BBC.

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

[climate-crisis]

The Arctic ice sheets are melting. Many already understand that is will lead to sea-level rise, but there is another effect that this may have on the world. In the past the melting of large masses of ice in the Artic Ocean has happened before and they had massive effects on the climate. Europe cooled dramatically, especially in winter, and Asia showed signs of desertification. Climatologists believe that these temporary climatic shifts may happen again now that the Arctic ice sheets are melting due to human driven climate change.

You may wonder how melting ice sheets may make parts of the world cooler. Some might know of the albedo effect. The white of the ice reflects the energy of the sun back into space. As the ice melts there is less white to reflect the energy and more heat remains on Earth. If the heat is increasing, then how can parts of the world become cooler? This is because the chain reaction that leads to potential cooling isn’t linked to the amount of ice left, but the amount melted. When ice melts, fresh water is added to the ocean and this influences how the ocean functions.

Oceanic circulation is often called a conveyor belt by oceanographers. Ocean waters rise in the Northern Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean. Then they travel across the surface to eventually sink again in the North Atlantic Ocean. From there they travel across the bottom of the ocean back to the Pacific and the Indian Oceans. Figure 1 shows this circulation. It takes centuries for waters to travel along the entire conveyor belt, but if the circulation gets disturbed the effects may be noticeable quite a bit faster. This may be a good hundred years, but that is quite fast on a geological time scale.

Figure 1: This map shows a simplified image of the Great Ocean Conveyor Belt. Arrows indicate the direction in which the water travels. Blue indicates deep water currents and red indicates surface water currents (Source: IPCC 1996, based on Broecker (1987)).

So what happens if a lot of fresh water from icebergs gets added in the area where the waters sink? To answer this question we need to know the mechanisms behind the sinking of these waters or, as it is also called, the North Atlantic Deep Water formation. The warmer waters that arrive from the south are saltier without being heavy. This is due to the different properties water can have at different temperatures. As the waters travel north they become colder. The higher salt content causes the waters to become heavier and eventually sink. Much like water evaporates more when the air is warm and then falls down as rain when the air cools. When fresh water is added to these waters their salt concentration decreases and therefore the speed at which they sink decreases as well.

Scientists have measured a slowing down of North Atlantic Deep Water formation in certain places in recent years. They have also observed mass melting of icebergs in the distant past. These are called Heinrich events and can be observed in oceanic sediment by the large rocks that fell as the icebergs melted. Both computer models and natural records from prehistoric times show a chain of events caused by this melting and subsequent slowing and/or stopping of the North Atlantic Deep Water formation. Figure 2 shows a simplified map of climate anomalies from an event that happened 8,200 years ago. Lands near the North Atlantic cooled down, especially during winter, Africa and Asia saw decreases in rain, and the Americas suffered from increased winds.

Figure 2: Summary map of climate anomalies during the 8k event (from Alley & Argustsdottir (2005)).

But how can one part of this circulation cause effects as far away as India? Lets go back to the name ‘conveyor belt’. If you stick a screwdriver in the place where the conveyor belt at a supermarket cash registry disappears down, the whole belt will stop moving. The same applies to the oceanic conveyor belt to a degree. If no more water sinks in the North Atlantic Ocean the rest of the system will slow down and stop as well. The oceans have a massive influence on the climate of the world, especially on landmasses near these oceans. Warm waters from the equatorial region move north and release their heat (also shown in figure 1). During winters this means that temperatures do not get as low as they could. If no more warm waters move north this influx of warmth is also gone. North America and Europe suffer much colder winters in this scenario. Models and prehistoric records have shown the formation of sea ice in Europe in these conditions. In Africa and Asia monsoons are very important for the formation of rain. Monsoons form due to the balance of ocean temperatures and land temperatures. The slowing and/or stopping of the ocean conveyor belt will change this balance and the characteristics of the monsoons will change, leaving Africa and Asia drier than before.

However, we shouldn’t panic and start worrying about apocalyptic winters in Europe or massive crop failures in Africa and Asia just yet. The Earth’s climate is a system about balances. A balance can be upheaved, but as long as certain thresholds aren’t passed the balance will be restored. The slowing of North Atlantic Deep Water formation that has been measured in certain spots recently doesn’t mean that the whole system will be messed up. In other areas the waters are still sinking at regular speeds and scientists haven’t measured any of the other waters moving towards these sinking spots slowing down. Even if it came to it, the conveyor belt can restart and speed back up again, as it has in the past. This article isn’t written for the purpose of scaremongering. It is a look at a truly tiny part of the massive system of checks and balances that influence the climate on Earth. How complicated it is to predict how the human driven climate change will effect the Earth in the long term. There is a reason why we changed from talking about Global Warming to Climate Change. In the past Heinrich events and the climatic changes linked to it were most often observed at the end of ice ages. The Earth was warming, but would temporarily cool down again. However, the forcing behind the warming was too strong and the Earth would continue to warm. If the forcing had not been as strong, the Earth could have gone back to the way it had been before (the ocean conveyor belt never stayed still). This is why we talk about thresholds and tipping points. The Earth can regain her balance. It will take a long time, but we can help her along the way.

If you want to read more about the North Atlantic ‘conveyor belt’ and the associated climatic changes a good place to start is: Alley, R. B. (2007). Wally was right: Predictive ability of the North Atlantic" Conveyor belt" hypothesis for abrupt climate change. Annual Review of earth and Planetary sciences, 35(1), 241-272.

Reference:

Alley, R. B., & Ágústsdóttir, A. M. (2005). The 8k event: cause and consequences of a major Holocene abrupt climate change. Quaternary Science Reviews, 24(10-11), 1123-1149.

[loremonster]

Hey if you're experiencing a heatwave, here's some tips on keeping yourself comfy and cool

#1: open your windows in the early morning to let cool air in, and then shut your windows when outdoor temp exceeds indoor temp. This helps you start the day with a cooler home

#2: avoid running any appliance in your home that produces heat. This doesn't mean just not using your oven, but also leaving large screens off. They will heat up your space, and the bigger the screen the more surface area it has to diffuse it's heat into the air in your home.

#3: cold packs are your friends! Placing a cold pack on your chest, under your arm, or on your inner thigh directly under the groin will cool down blood by taking advantage of major arteries that run close to the skin. Your blood is a HUGE part of temperature regulation, and placing a cold pack on a high flow area can help your blood diffuse more heat out of your body and return to the deeper tissues at a cooler temperature.

#4: Help your pets keep cool by wiping them down with a damp towel. DON'T SCRUB IT INTO THEIR FUR! Evaporation is what is gonna help keep them cool, and the water will readily evaporate from the top layer of hair but NOT if it's soaked fully into the fur. That's why you use a damp towel, not a sopping wet one.

#5: Eat Cold Meals; if you don't have to heat it up that helps with minimizing appliance usage AND a cold meal is a chunk of mass that's going to be in the center of your body for a bit while digestion gets started. Just like sending cooler blood back into your system can help avoid overheating, so can choosing cold meals and liquids to put into your body on a hot day.

#6: Lay Your Ass Down. Seriously. It's a heatwave, stop trying to squeeze in yard work or extra chores. Sit your ass down and rest. PARTICULARLY if you have a medical condition relating to your heart, since the human body responds to heat stress by dilating the circulatory system and increasing the rate of circulation. That's why your skin flushes: your body opens up all the tiny capillaries to get more hot blood near the skin to cool off and dissipate heat.

#7: Take a shower, as cool as you can stand. Particularly if you're suffering from heat stress already and your skin has flushed. Expose all that blood and skin to cool water to help bring everything down a notch or six.

#8: I'm not gonna say Drink Water because we all know water is good when you're feeling hot. What I AM gonna say is remember YOUR BODY CANNOT UPTAKE ALL THAT HYDRATION WITHOUT SOME SUGAR, AND CANNOT RETAIN THAT WATER WITHOUT SALT! Without a small amount of glucose (simple sugar) your intenstines cannot take up all that water efficiently and you'll piss it out. Salt and other electrolytes help you hold on to your fluids. If you're drinking loads of water but your mouth is still dry, consider some OJ with a side of saltines.

[sonknuxadow]

Do you think something like Light Gaia and Dark Gaia exist in the Sol Dimension? If so, I wonder how they would be different. Maybe they would be water and fire instead of light and dark, since both of those elements are a huge part of Blaze's world

ive never thought about that before that would be really cool actually. i cant decide if the fire god would the the dark gaia equivalent and the water god would be the light gaia equivalent or if it would be the other way around. because water putting out fire makes more sense but also when specifically taking blaze and her powers into account i think it would be cooler if it was the other way around. plus iblis already exists and another fire god who lit the world on fire might be a bit boring. anyway what if instead of dark gaia splitting the world into pieces and light gaia putting it back together its like. a water god flooding the earth and a fire god evaporating the extra water with flames or some shit. and in a hypothetical blaze unleashed situation blaze would have to deal with losing her flames and temporarily having water powers instead. Idk

[legendary-pancakes]

trick or treat !!

trick!! you get a lesson on plant tissues!!!

There are three main types of plant tissues:

dermal tissue system

vascular tissue system

ground tissue system

Dermal Tissue System

The epidermal tissues (epidermis) form a thin layer of cells that cover and protect the surfaces of leaves, stems and roots. This is the dermal tissue of non-woody plant parts that consists of one or more layers of cells.

In some plant parts the epidermis is specialized:

Some cells are adapted for defence by producing chemical irritants. Examples include stinging nettle and poison ivy

In roots: the epidermis has long extensions called root hairs which increase the surface area for water and mineral absorption

In leaves: the epidermis is covered by a waxy cuticle which helps prevent water loss from evaporation/transpiration

Another modification to the epidermis is openings called stomata, which allow gases and water to move in and out of the leaf.

They are controlled by photosynthetic cells called guard cells.

How the guard cells work to open and close the stomate.

Stomata are surrounded by two guard cells that regulate transpiration rates, loss of water through evaporation. 

During the day, the stomata are open to allow CO2 in and O2 out. The guard cells have chlorophyll so when the sun is out they produce sugars. This causes water to move into the cells and they swell.

Stomata typically close at night or when the plant is losing water (if it is too hot). The guard cells don’t make sugars and will lose water and go limp.

There are typically more guard cells in the lower epidermis since this layer is not directly exposed to the sun and is cooler.

Vascular Tissue System

These cells transport water, minerals, and glucose around the plant. These cells form a network of tubes that connect the roots, stems, leaves, and flowers.

The two main types of vascular tissues are xylem and phloem.

Xylem Cells

Transports water and dissolved minerals up from the roots. 

The mature cells are basically hollow tubes with strong, rigid walls and no organelles.

They are no longer living cells. They are connected to each other to form long continuous pathways.

There are two types of xylem cells: 

tracheids (long cells with tapered ends) 

vessel elements (wider, shorter cells with less tapered ends).

The ends of tracheids or vessel elements overlap, forming tubes. The tubes are hollow because the cells are dead. Water passes from cell to cell through holes (called pits) and openings in the ends of the vessel elements. 

Phloem Cells

Consists of specialized cells which transport the sugars produced by photosynthesis throughout the plant in any direction.

The plant cells use the sugar for respiration. The sugars that are not used are transported to special areas for storage. 

Phloem cells are living tissues that form the tubes.

made up of chains of cells called sieve-tube members and that the end walls of these cells are like sieves, allowing the flow of fluid through pores. 

In addition, companion cells are linked alongside the sieve-tube members and provide other resources to those cells.

Fundamental or Ground Tissue

Ground tissues are the filler between the dermal and vascular tissues. They perform a variety of functions:

They photosynthesize when in the green parts of the plant

In the roots, they store carbohydrates

In the stems, they provide storage and support

There are three types of ground tissue:

Parenchyma

Unspecialized cells

Have thin cell walls

Have chloroplasts in the leaves and young stems

Used for food storage in roots, fruit, and portions of stem

Found in fruit and phloem cells

Collenchyma

Have unevenly thickened cell walls, elongated cells

May have chloroplasts

Used to provide strength and flexibility to the growing parts of leaves and stems

Some food storage in roots and fruit

Sclerenchyma

Have lignin-rich, think cell walls

Grow and then die in a mature plant part

Cell walls left behind form a skeleton to provide support 

Have no cytoplasm when mature

Example is xylem cells

[fanfalc-616]

Zane’s Original Body: Cooling

[Rundown Masterlist]

Fans:

The fans are his main cooling system, and they’re always active, even when he’s asleep. They’re stationed in the parts of his body that most need cooling; his chest near his power source, in his head near all his computing systems/his brain, and one smaller one in each limb.

The ones in his chest and the one in his head are always active, but the ones in his limbs only turn on during strenuous use or if he’s majorly struggling with overheating.

This is actually why he has an automatic breathing function! He doesn’t have vents like computers do, so the breathing is what brings in cooler air for his fans to spread around and removes the hotter air that’s been warmed from his systems. However, he can deactivate it either holding his breath like humans do, or by simply turning it off in his internal settings.

In most situations where he would turn it off, it actually isn’t needed at all. For example, most sources of water that he would go into are fairly cool, and the outside coldness would mean the fans don’t have to do as much, and the extra function is not needed. This is also true for space and areas with low oxygen/high altitude, as they are both also very cold and that eliminates the need for his fans to use a consistent air supply.

Liquid cooling:

Liquid cooling is a system that actually exists in real life! It takes a water-antifreeze mixture in tubes through the whole mechanical system- typically a computer or a car, but in this case Zane’s body- to help cool things off. The water is kept cold by circling back to a radiator filled with fans, then returns back around to go around his body.

In cars, the water is typically mixed with an antifreeze, and the combination of the two is often referred to as coolant. It runs through his systems in tubes not unlike arteries and veins in a human body, but is not quite as vital as blood is to a human- though it does need to be refilled, especially if some is lost somehow.

There are multiple types of antifreeze, and they range in colors. Although most headcanons like to make his blue- and that is entirely possible- there are many types and colors, with blue only being one of them. The coolant that he uses would have to be good for both electronics and mechanical parts, which narrows down the options.

Unfortunately, there are no types of commercial antifreeze or coolant that are effective for both computers and the mechanical systems he has, and given that mixing types can be very damaging, that means standard types are out of our options. Considering when Zane was built and how long ago it was in canon Ninjago lore, most types likely would not have existed then, either.

The most likely solution is isopropyl alcohol- also known as rubbing alcohol. It mixes well with water and lowers its freezing point- very useful for living in the freezing Birchwood Forest before being gifted his element- as well as being good at sterilizing, meaning that it is good for destroying bacteria, fungi, viruses and mold that may otherwise try to grow inside his systems. It also is a very poor conductor and widely used to clean electronics, meaning that even in a spill or damage, it would not cause any extra harm by leaking into his systems.

Other alcohol- and anything containing high concentrations of ethanol, which is typically alcohol- can also be used as both coolant and as biofuel.

This has the side effect of making him highly flammable, which is very inconvenient, but,,, well, it sucks to be Zane I guess. Maybe this is why he exploded so well at the end of season three of something.

Also, unfortunately, rubbing alcohol is clear, meaning that his ‘blood’ would not be bright blue- but hey, maybe there’s food dye in it or something.

Perspiration:

Yes, this is a strange thing for an android to have. But it works pretty similar to how sweating works for humans in this case! Sweat cools a human down by using our body heat to evaporate, therefore spending that heat by using it. Zane sweats pure water rather than the water, salt, and fat combination that humans have, but it still works the same way; using the heat his body generates to evaporate and cool him down.

Sleep:

Zane’s sleep mode does serve the same functions as a human’s- to allow his body and mind to take a break and not constantly run, because that takes a lot of energy- but it also has a secondary function; keeping him cool.

When sleeping, his body and mind use much less energy, meaning his power source has to produce much less, which prevents it from getting hotter and lets it cool down more, giving Zane’s other cooling systems- typically the first two unless he’s majorly overheating- a chance to get ahead and make sure that even after a stressful, strenuous day, his temperature stays within a controlled, reasonable range.

[archi-tech]

Handling the Heat Part 2: How Masterplanners are Designing for a Hotter Climate

In "Handling the Heat Part 2: How Masterplanners are Designing for a Hotter Climate," published on September 8, 2023, by Anna Highfield, the article delves into the strategies employed by masterplanners to combat the increasing challenges posed by overheating in urban areas, particularly in the UK.

Summary: The article discusses how architects and masterplanners are adapting their designs to address the growing problem of overheating in the UK due to climate change. It emphasizes the importance of masterplanning at a city-wide scale to create sustainable, cooler environments.

Data-Driven Approaches: Ed Baker, a masterplanner from Broadway Malyan, highlights the need for robust data modeling to mitigate extreme temperatures. Singapore's "digital twin" model serves as a valuable example for analyzing urban risks and optimizing infrastructure.

Urban Greening: Urban greening and planned shading are considered effective strategies for cooling cities. Adding vegetation can increase evaporation, reducing temperatures by up to 4.43°C. Examples include Stockholm's "smart streets" and projects in Leeds, Barking, and Croydon that prioritize green spaces and pedestrian-friendly designs.

Cool Roofs: Arup's proposal for "cool" roofs, painted with reflective white paint or fitted with solar panels, is suggested for high-risk areas in London to reduce heat absorption. Green roofs with deep soil, while challenging for retrofits, offer significant cooling benefits by absorbing heat energy.

Architectural Solutions: Anthony Brower of Gensler suggests controlling building geometry, using "umbrella" buildings for shade, and reprogramming facades to reduce overheating risks.

International Examples: The article highlights international initiatives such as Brussels' focus on green streets and Sweden's heat maps, demonstrating how other countries are tackling urban heat islands.

Community Engagement: Brower emphasizes the importance of architects and masterplanners engaging with local communities and policymakers to influence planning codes and regulations as a means to address overheating issues.

The third part of the series will explore UK building regulations and planning codes related to overheating and potential adaptations.

[mariacallous]

The North Atlantic Ocean has been running a fever for months, with surface temperatures at or near record highs. But cooling along the equator in both the Atlantic and eastern Pacific may finally be starting to bring some relief, particularly for vulnerable coral reef ecosystems.

This cooling comes from two climate phenomena with similar names: La Niña, which forms in the tropical Pacific, and the less well-known Atlantic Niña.

Both can affect the Atlantic hurricane season. While La Niña tends to bring conditions ideal for Atlantic hurricanes, the less powerful Atlantic Niña has the potential to reduce some of the hurricane risk.

We’re ocean and atmospheric scientists who study this type of climate phenomenon. It’s rare to see both Niñas at the same time, yet in August 2024, both appeared to be developing. Let’s take a closer look at what that means.

La Niña and Its Cousin, Atlantic Niña

La Niña is part of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation, a well-known climate phenomenon that has widespread effects on climate and weather around the world.

During La Niña, sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific dip below normal. Easterly trade winds then strengthen, allowing more cool water to well up along the equator off South America. That cooling affects the atmosphere in ways that reverberate across the planet. Some areas become stormier and others drier during La Niña, and the wind shear that can tear apart Atlantic hurricanes tends to weaken.

La Niña and its warmer opposite, El Niño, oscillate every three to four years or so.

A similar climate phenomenon, Atlantic Niña, occurs in the Atlantic Ocean but at a much smaller scale and amplitude. It typically peaks around July or August and tends to have a shorter duration than its Pacific cousin, and much more modest and local impacts. Atlantic Niñas generally have the opposite effect of Atlantic Niños, which tend to reduce rainfall over Africa’s Sahel region and increase rainfall in Brazil and the countries that surround the Gulf of Guinea, such as Ghana, Nigeria, and Cameroon.

While much weaker than their Pacific counterpart, Atlantic Niñas can, however, partially counteract La Niñas by weakening summer winds that help drive the upwelling that cools the eastern Pacific.

Why Are Both Happening Now?

In July and August 2024, meteorologists noted cooling that appeared to be the development of an Atlantic Niña along the equator. The winds at the ocean surface had been weak through most of the summer, and sea surface temperatures there were quite warm until early June, so signs of an Atlantic Niña emerging were a surprise.

At the same time, waters along the equator in the eastern Pacific were also cooling, with La Niña conditions expected there by October or November.

A map of sea surface temperature anomalies shows cooling along the tropical Atlantic and eastern Pacific regions, but much warmer than average temperatures in the Caribbean. Photograph: NOAA Coral Reef Watch

Getting a Pacific-Atlantic Niña combination is rare but not impossible. It’s like finding two different pendulums that are weakly coupled to swing in opposite directions moving together in time. The combinations of La Niña and Atlantic Niño, or El Niño and Atlantic Niña are more common.

Good News or Bad for Hurricane Season?

An Atlantic Niña may initially suggest good news for those living in hurricane-prone areas.

Cooler than average waters off the coast of Africa can suppress the formation of African easterly waves. These are clusters of thunderstorm activity that can form into tropical disturbances and eventually tropical storms or hurricanes.

Tropical storms draw energy from the process of evaporating water associated with warm sea surface temperatures. So, cooling in the tropical Atlantic could weaken this process. That would leave less energy for the thunderstorms, which would reduce the probability of a tropical cyclone forming.

However, the NOAA takes all factors into account when it updates its Atlantic hurricane season outlook, released in early August, and it still anticipates an extremely active 2024 season. Tropical storm season typically peaks in early to mid-September.

Two reasons are behind the busy forecast: The near record-breaking warm sea surface temperatures in much of the North Atlantic can strengthen hurricanes. And the expected development of a La Niña in the Pacific tends to weaken wind shear—the change in wind speed with height that can tear apart hurricanes. La Niña’s much stronger effects can override any impacts associated with the Atlantic Niña.

Exacerbating the Problem: Global Warming

The past two years have seen exceptionally high ocean temperatures in the Atlantic and around much of the world’s oceans. The two Niñas are likely to contribute some cooling relief for certain regions, but it may not last long.

In addition to these cycles, the global warming trend caused by rising greenhouse gas emissions is raising the baseline temperatures and can fuel major hurricanes.