Like What You Drive and How it’s Equipped? Thank the Military
SUVS, touchscreens, navigation systems all started in the armed forces.
The new Jeep Wrangler hybrid is the latest descendent of the original Willys-Overland MA.
Americans can take some things for granted, particularly how much our armed forces contribute to our health and well-being on a daily basis. Typically, it’s military’s technology needs that lead to breakthroughs in consumer products, like M&Ms and Cheetos.
Correspondingly, if you love driving your sport-utility vehicle with satellite navigation on a touchscreen while wearing aviators, thank the military. A surprising amount of what we take for granted in our cars, trucks and SUVs originated somewhere in the world as a military RFP.
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Fire and rain and the smoke that lingers
Scientists highlight the impact of huge pyrocumulonimbus clouds.
A pyrocumulonimbus cloud generated by the Orroral Valley bushfire burning to the south of Canberra on 31 January. Credit: Brook Mitchell / Getty Images
Wildfire-driven thunderstorms, such as those created in Australia a year ago, produce lingering impacts that may affect much of the globe, scientists have told the virtual annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
Such storms occur when fires funnel hot air upward, much like a massive chimney, says David Peterson, a meteorologist at the US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). When conditions are right, they can create giant pyrocumulonimbus clouds (fire-driven thunderstorms) that can punch all the way into the stratosphere.
Scientific American
Record-breaking blazes in Australia spewed as many particles into the sky as a volcanic eruption
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Satellite view of burned land and and bushfires on Kangaroo Island, Australia on January 9, 2020. Credit: Alamy
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Record-breaking wildfires in Australia at the start of the year caused an extraordinary weather phenomenon. They spawned a spree of towering fire-induced thunderclouds, which catapulted smoke 20 miles into the atmosphere.
Almost 12 months later, some of that smoke is still drifting around the planet.
These “pyrocumulonimbus” events, or “pyroCbs,” are impressive but not uncommon. They form when the heat from a wildfire strengthens currents of rising air in the atmosphere, generating large storm clouds and sending smoke spiraling skyward.
These smoke plumes did something else scientists weren t expecting. Findings published recently in Communications Earth & Environment and presented at the virtual American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference this week show that smoke acted like a planetary shade, reducing the amount of sunlight hitting Earth s surface for several months. David Peterson, a meteorologist at the US Naval Research Laboratory who presented separate findings at AGU detailing the smoke s persistence in the stratosphere, says the Australian event marks the second volcanic scale pyroCb outbreak documented in records going back about 20 years. The first, a large wildfire thundercloud that formed over a blaze in British Columbia, occurred in 2017.