Geotechnology

The Palisades fire ignited around 10:30 a.m. on January 7, 2025, near the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. By midday the next day, the fire had grown to over 11,000 acres (44 square kilometers), and after one week, it had consumed nearly 24,000 acres (97 square kilometers) of wildland and developed areas.

A deadly cyclone ripped through the islands of Mayotte on December 14, 2024. Cyclone Chido’s hurricane-force winds downed electric poles, uprooted trees, and tore roofs off homes in the French territory, according to news reports.

The Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT) is revolutionizing our understanding of the planet's surface by using a state-of-the-art imaging spectrometer. Mounted on the International Space Station (ISS), EMIT focuses on detecting and analyzing mineral dust sources, which play a critical role in Earth’s climate and ecosystem dynamics.

“This dataset provides daily surface meteorological data from 1979 onward, designed for use in agricultural and agroecological studies. Known as AgERA5, it is based on hourly ECMWF ERA5 surface-level data. The acquisition and preprocessing of the original ERA5 data are complex and specialized tasks. By providing the AgERA5 dataset, users can bypass this process and directly access meaningful information for analysis and modeling. The variables provided in this dataset are tailored to meet the input requirements of most agricultural and agroecological models. The data has been aggregated into daily intervals in local time zones and corrected for more accurate topography with a spatial resolution of 0.1°. Corrections were made using grid- and variable-specific regression equations applied to the ERA5 dataset, interpolated to the 0.1° grid. These equations were trained on the high-resolution (HRES) ECMWF operational atmospheric model at a resolution of 0.1°. This adjustment ensures the data aligns with the most accurate topography, land-use patterns, and land-sea delineation of the ECMWF HRES model.”