The Earth wasn't always a friendly place to live. Not only was it covered in lava and constantly eruption, its atmosphere was chocked with volcanic gases like carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide. How and when did the atmosphere reach its current oxygen-rich state? This post will walk through the processes as well as some of the evidence that allows us to understand what happened. While I describe as a series of apparently discrete steps, it's important to remember that these processes sometimes overlapped and that they occurred over a span of time, often millions or billions of years.
Easy Science: The Great Oxygenation Event
Cortney Science & Technology + ancient earth, archean, atmosphere, Easy Science, geology, precambrian, volcanoes
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Very awesome animated map of current global wind conditions
Cortney Science & Technology + atmosphere, climate, earth science, winds
Head on over to earth.nullschool.net to see animated global wind conditions and be prepared to spend a few minutes just staring; it's very hypnotic. How does it stack up to what you would expect wind patterns to look like? One thing that popped out to me was the clearly northward position of the ITCZ relative to the equator. Read more →