See the original article here:
Are progressives working on a climate plan for 2021? You bet.
The official start to hurricane season is still two months away, but forecasters released their first previews of the season this week.
Both forecasts, from Colorado State University and AccuWeather, anticipate roughly near-normal hurricane activity in the Atlantic basin. Although that might sound good, it’s actually a bit of a surprise given the building El Niño, which typically dampens hurricane formation off the coastline of the eastern United States.
“A near normal season can be devastating,” CSU meteorologist Philip Klotzbach said in an interview with Grist. “Even a below normal season like 1992 can cause huge problems.”
That year, Category 5 Hurricane Andrew made landfall in South Florida. At the time, Andrew was the most damaging hurricane in U.S. history. Since then, five hurricanes have topped it, including three since 2017 — Harvey, Maria, and Irma. Last year, Hurricanes Florence and Michael both caused billions of dollars of damage in the Carolinas and Florida, respectively.
This year, forecasters expect 12 to 14 named storms, of which five to seven will become hurricanes, and two or three will grow into major hurricanes with sustained wind speeds exceeding 110 mph. That’s roughly in-line with long-term averages, though scientists think climate change is generally making stronger hurricanes more common.
Should El Niño strengthen more than currently forecast, wind patterns in the upper atmosphere might become increasingly unfavorable for stronger hurricanes, which could provide a much-needed break to regions that are still recovering from the last two disastrous hurricane seasons.
Read the article:
This story was originally published by Undark and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
In the closing months of World War II, Americans talked nonstop about how and when the war would end, and about how life was about to change. Germany would fall soon, people agreed on that. Opinions varied on how much longer the war in the Pacific would go on.
Amid the geopolitical turmoil, a small number of people and newspapers chattered about the dawn of another new age. A subtle shift was about to change the fabric of people’s lives: Cork was about to lose its dominance as a cornerstone of consumer manufacturing to a little-known synthetic substance called plastic.
In 1939, the future arrived at the World’s Fair in New York with the slogan: “The World of Tomorrow.” The fairground in Queens attracted 44 million people over two seasons, and two contenders laid claim to being the most modern industrial material: cork and plastic.
For decades, cork had been rising as the most flexible of materials; plastic was just an intriguing possibility. The manifold forms of cork products were featured everywhere, from an international Paris Exhibition to the fair in Queens, where the material was embedded in the Ford Motors roadway of the future.
Meanwhile, plastic made a promising debut, with visitors getting their first glimpse of nylon, Plexiglas, and Lucite. Souvenirs included colorful plastic (phenolic resin) pencil sharpeners, molded in the form of the fair’s emblematic, obelisk-shaped Trylon building. Visitors also picked up celluloid badges and pen knives, and a Remington electric razor made of Bakelite, along with plastic ashtrays, pens, and coasters.
In the months after the fair, as U.S. entry into the war became inevitable, the government grew concerned by American dependence on cork, which was obtained entirely from forests in Europe. The United States imported nearly half of the world’s production.
People in their 50s today remember when a bottle cap included a cork sliver insert to seal it. But in 1940, cork was in far more than bottle caps. It was the go-to industrial sealant used in car windshield glazing, insulation, refrigerated containers, engine gaskets, and airplanes. In defense, cork was crucial to tanks, trucks, bomber planes, and weapon systems. As the vulnerability for the supply of this all-purpose item became clear with the Nazi blockade of the Atlantic, the government put cork under “allotment,” or restricted use prioritized for defense. Information about cork supplies became subject to censorship.
In October 1941, the Commerce Department released a hefty report detailing the situation, titled: “Cork Goes to War.” Besides outlining the growing industrial use of cork, the report highlighted Hitler’s efforts to scoop up Europe’s cork harvests and the need for a systemic American response.
Part of that response was an intense research and development machine that ramped up the nascent synthetic industry to fill gaps in defense pipelines. Some were synthetics first developed by America’s enemies:Chemists at Armstrong Cork, an industry leader, crafted new products using materials research from Germany. Many synthetics were developed during the mad scramble to replace organic items that the blockade made expensive. To pay for the research and offset rising materials costs, Armstrong trimmed employees’ use of items like carbon paper and paper clips; the company’s accountants noted 95,000 clips used per month in 1944, a 40 percent decline since the war’s start.
In 1944, a book titled Plastic Horizons, by B.H. Weil and Victor Anhorn, documented the promise of plastic. A chapter titled “Plastics in a World at War” opens with a paean to the blood toll of war. But then the authors trace how war bends science to its needs for new both deadly and life-saving items: Physicists turn to aircraft detection, chemists to explosives. “Nylon for stockings has become nylon for parachutes. Rubber for tires has almost vanished, and desperate measures are required to replace it with man-made elastics.” That section concludes, “Plastics have indeed gone to war.”
In one dramatic example, the authors describe how plastics came to neutralize Germany’s secret weapon: a magnetic mine designed to be laid on the ocean floor and detonated by the magnetic field surrounding any vessel that passed over it. To counteract that, Allied scientists created plastic-coated electric cables that wrapped around the ships’ hulls and “degaussed” them, rendering the mines ineffective. Thanks, polyvinyl chloride!
The book got a glowing review in the New York Times, which noted that America was experiencing a chemical revolution.
Early plastics, as the book explained, covered a wide range of natural or semi-synthetics like celluloid and synthetic resins that could be molded with heat and pressure.
After the war, chronic shortages of common materials like rubber, cork, linseed oil, and paints forced chemists to scramble for substitutes, further speeding the embrace of plastics. Profitable bottling innovations included the LDPE squeeze bottle introduced by Monsanto in 1945, which paved the way for plastic bottles for soaps and shampoos, and the “Crowntainer,” a seamless metal cone-topped beer can.
There was also a shortage of tinplate for metal caps. Industry was quickly adapting to finding substitutes. Giles Cooke, the in-house chemist at one manufacturing leader, Crown Cork & Seal, was dabbling in research on synthetic resins for container sealants through the 1940s. In beverage bottling, cork’s quality remained unmatched. You could taste the difference between a cork-sealed bottle and one sealed with plastic. Recognizing that it would takes decades to replace cork as a sealant, Cooke and his colleagues hedged their bets with patents on both silicone film container liners and rubber hydrochloride.
In the end, Plastic Horizons undersold its subject. Its closing chapter hardly seems to anticipate the ubiquity of plastics we see today, along with its formidable waste problem. “In the future, plastics will supplement rather than supplant such traditional structural materials as metals, wood, and glass,” the authors wrote.
Get Grist in your inbox
Always free, always fresh.
Ask your climate scientist if Grist is right for you. See our privacy policy
“There may be no Plastics Age, but that should discourage no one; applications will multiply with the years,” they continued. “Plastics are indeed versatile materials, and industry, with the help of science, will continue to add to their number and to improve their properties. Justifiable optimism is the order of the day, and the return of peace will enable the plastics industry to fulfill its promise of things to come.”
By 1946, the transition to plastics had reached a new threshold. That year, New York hosted a National Plastics Exposition, where for the first time, a range of strong, new materials and consumer products headed for American homes were on display. One observer noted, “the public are certainly steamed up on plastics.”
The World of Tomorrow indeed.
View article:
What will your city feel like in the year 2080? If you’re a frequent traveler in these United States, you might already know. A study out Tuesday in the science journal Nature Communications breaks down future warming by drawing parallels for 540 North American urban areas.
In 60 years, New York could feel like today’s Arkansas. Chicago is on a crash course for Kansas City. San Francisco’s blustery weather is destined to warm to Southern California temperatures. Raleigh, North Carolina, will feel like Tallahassee, Florida. You get the picture. The study used the highest warming scenario, an outcome where we don’t mitigate emissions and the planet warms around 8.8 degrees F, to map it out.
As a New Yorker, I’m tempted to think a winter that’s 5 degrees warmer and around 20 percent drier wouldn’t be so bad. Fewer hours spent on a freezing subway platform? Sign me up. LA is supposed to feel like Cabo by 2080; does that mean residents of the City of Angels should be prepping for a permanent vacation? Hell no! If emissions stay on their current trajectory, the only vacation we’ll all be taking is a direct flight to purgatory.
Get Grist in your inbox
Always free, always fresh.
Ask your climate scientist if Grist is right for you. See our privacy policy
Late last year, Grist took the latest federal climate science data and used it to break down what we can expect climate change to do to different regions by the end of the century. It’s not pretty. If warming temperatures existed in a vacuum, sure, why not take a permanent trip to Arkansas or Cabo, but rising temperatures are accompanied by a host of plagues that rival the ones Moses brought upon the people of Egypt.
My neck of the woods, the Northeast, is looking at the “the largest temperature increase in the contiguous United States.” That means more ticks, fewer dragonflies, a maple syrup deficit, delayed ski seasons, and “anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder” following extreme weather events. Fun!
The Southeast can expect hot nights that turn hotter days into a living nightmare. And don’t even get me started on the lionfish, which is going to make it’s creepy way closer to the Atlantic coast as waters warm. And what of California, where Los Angelinos can expect destination-wedding temperatures? The state has mega-droughts and wildfires in store for it, among other horrors.
Now that you’re sad (sorry!), here’s the good news: If we reduce emissions and get on track for a lower emissions scenario where the planet warms 4.3 degrees F, the temperature forecast looks less scary. Case in point: in this lower scenario, New York feels like Lake Shore, Maryland, Raleigh feels like Louisiana, and LA feels like neighboring Monterey Park, California.
Originally posted here:
This map shows you what your city will feel like in 2080 and boy, are we in for a treat
Dominion Energy’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline boondoggle only grows worse.
If all had gone according to the company’s original plan for the contentious Atlantic Coast Pipeline, it would already be well on its way to carrying fracked gas. But the completion of the 600-mile pipeline — planned to run from West Virginia into North Carolina — has been delayed until 2021.
According to a spokesperson for Dominion, Karl Neddenien, all construction is halted because of multiple factors including increasing costs, and in part over a dispute regarding permits to cross the Appalachian Trail and national forests. He says the delay, caused by what he calls “well-financed” opposition groups, are impacting more than just the construction schedules, according to Neddenien.
“Their impact [of these delays are seen] in the communities and the families in their region. It’s really time to stop these pointless delays and get back to work building the Atlantic Coast Pipeline,” he said. “These delays are not improving or increasing environmental protections. We already have in place some outstanding protections.”
Opponents to the pipeline project, on the other hand, were encouraged by the announcement of the new, pushed-back timeline. “Anytime there’s a delay, we’re happy.” Chad Oba, chair of the Friends of Buckingham, an organization of Virginia residents opposed to the pipeline, told Grist. “It gives the public more opportunity to be informed about fossil fuel projects and how we don’t need more of them.” Buckingham is a historically black community where Dominion is slated to build a natural gas compressor station for the pipeline. Last month, the state’s Air Pollution Control Board voted unanimously to approve permits for the station despite vociferous community opposition.
Beyond construction setbacks, the project is going to cost a pretty penny: Estimated costs for the pipeline have ballooned to $ 7.5 billion (the original project was budgeted for around $6 billion.) And considering how demand for the pipeline is dwindling — thanks to competition from cheap, renewable sources — some experts aren’t sure the project will get up on its feet again.
Patrick Hunter, a Southern Environmental Law Center attorney, said the barrage of legal challenges and missing permits “leaves us with a serious question as to whether this thing will ever be built.” The Southern Environmental Law Center is one of many organizations to challenge Dominion’s construction, calling for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to issue its own stop-work.
(Dominion Energy did not immediately respond to Grist’s request for comment.)
Though the delay is good news for environmental groups, it’s a bit too early to whip out the champagne: Dominion said it currently expects the now-halted construction could begin again later this year.
See the article here:
READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS
Douglas Adams & Mark Carwardine
Genre: Nature
Price: $11.99
Publish Date: February 13, 1991
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Seller: Penguin Random House LLC
New York Times bestselling author Douglas Adams and zoologist Mark Carwardine take off around the world in search of exotic, endangered creatures. Join them as they encounter the animal kingdom in its stunning beauty, astonishing variety, and imminent peril: the giant Komodo dragon of Indonesia, the helpless but loveable Kakapo of New Zealand, the blind river dolphins of China, the white rhinos of Zaire, the rare birds of Mauritius island in the Indian Ocean. Hilarious and poignant—as only Douglas Adams can be— Last Chance to See is an entertaining and arresting odyssey through the Earth’s magnificent wildlife galaxy.   Praise for Last Chance to See   “Lively, sharply satirical, brilliantly written . . . shows how human care can undo what human carelessness has wrought.” —The Atlantic “These authors don’t hesitate to present the alarming facts: More than 1,000 species of animals (and plants) become extinct every year. . . . Perhaps Adams and Carwardine, with their witty science, will help prevent such misadventures in the future.” —Boston Sunday Herald   “Very funny and moving . . . The glimpses of rare fauna seem to have enlarged [Adams’s] thinking, enlivened his world; and so might the animals do for us all, if we were to help them live.” —The Washington Post Book World   “[Adams] invites us to enter into a conspiracy of laughter and caring.” — Los Angeles Times   “Amusing . . . thought-provoking . . . Its details on the heroic efforts being made to save these animals are inspirational.” — The New York Times Book Review
See more here:
READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS
This Is Your Brain on Parasites
How Tiny Creatures Manipulate Our Behavior and Shape Society
Genre: Life Sciences
Price: $2.99
Publish Date: May 16, 2017
Publisher: HMH Books
Seller: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company
“Engrossing … [An] expedition through the hidden and sometimes horrifying microbial domain.” — Wall Street Journal “Fascinating—and full of the kind of factoids you can't wait to share.” — Scientific American   Parasites can live only inside another animal and, as Kathleen McAuliffe reveals, these tiny organisms have many evolutionary motives for manipulating the behavior of their hosts. With astonishing precision, parasites can coax rats to approach cats, spiders to transform the patterns of their webs, and fish to draw the attention of birds that then swoop down to feast on them. We humans are hardly immune to their influence. Organisms we pick up from our own pets are strongly suspected of changing our personality traits and contributing to recklessness and impulsivity—even suicide. Germs that cause colds and the flu may alter our behavior even before symptoms become apparent.   Parasites influence our species on the cultural level, too. Drawing on a huge body of research, McAuliffe argues that our dread of contamination is an evolved defense against parasites. The horror and revulsion we are programmed to feel when we come in contact with people who appear diseased or dirty helped pave the way for civilization, but may also be the basis for major divisions in societies that persist to this day. This Is Your Brain on Parasites is both a journey into cutting-edge science and a revelatory examination of what it means to be human.   “If you’ve ever doubted the power of microbes to shape society and offer us a grander view of life, read on and find yourself duly impressed.” —Heather Havrilesky, Bookforum  
Read More:
This story was originally published by WIRED and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Instead of figuring out how many Pacific hake fishermen can catch sustainably, as his job demands, scientist Ian Taylor is at home with his 4-month-old daughter, biding his time through the partial government shutdown.
Taylor’s task is to assess the size and age of hake and other commercially harvested fish species in the productive grounds from Baja California to the Gulf of Alaska. These stock assessments are then used by federal managers to approve permits to West Coast fishing boats. Without Taylor’s science report, the season could be delayed — and the impact of the shutdown could spread beyond the 800,000 government employees now on furlough to include boat captains, deck hands, and others working in the seafood industry who won’t be able to head to sea on schedule. That’s what happened to Alaska crabbers during the last big federal shutdown in 2013.
Taylor, an operations research analyst at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center, says he’s frustrated that he can’t do his job. He can’t even make phone calls or use email. “It feels like a terrible situation,” he says. “Important work is not getting done.”
President Trump says he will not sign legislation to operate large chunks of the federal government unless Democrats agree to approve more than $5.7 billion for a wall along the Mexican border. Trump said Monday he plans to visit the border Thursday, hinting that any compromise will likely not happen before then.
Some federal science agencies are open, such as the National Institutes for Health and the Department of Energy, since their appropriations bills were already signed by Trump. Others, such as NASA, are continuing to operate key programs such as the International Space Station, although 95 percent of its 15,000 workers were sent home on December 22.
The shutdown has led to a hodgepodge of federal science-based activity across the country. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is sitting on a launch pad at Cape Canaveral ready for a planned launch on January 17, but without NASA personnel to oversee testing, that liftoff will be delayed. Crews that fly over the Atlantic to check on endangered Atlantic right whales and send those positions to commercial ships are still working, but they aren’t being paid.
Weather forecasters are working during the shutdown, but hundreds of scientists from NOAA and the National Weather Service have been banned from attending the annual American Meteorological Society meeting this week in Phoenix. Antonio Busalacchi was supposed to be on a panel with colleagues from federal weather agencies, but they didn’t show up. “Science is a community and this is where people come together to discuss common problems,” says Busalacchi, president of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, a consortium of academic institutions that conduct and promote the study of earth sciences. “Last month, we were talking about the workforce in the future, but now we can’t discuss how best to go forward.”
Busalacchi is worried that he may have to shut down a meteorological research program UCAR runs called COSMIC that uses a fleet of existing GPS satellites to measure the atmosphere’s temperature and humidity. The data is then sent to federal NWS forecasters who use it to make both short-term weather and long-term climate predictions. UCAR runs the program with funds from the National Science Foundation, which isn’t giving out grant money right now, as well as help from NOAA and NASA.
“We may be running the risk to shut this program down because we are not getting the funds from the government,” he says. If COSMIC gets shut down, data analysis would be paused, potentially weakening some forecasts. But equally frustrating is the fact that Busalacchi is left in the dark on how to handle the program. With no information coming from his federal partners, he doesn’t know whether to keep spending money to sustain the program, or pull the plug.
Reams of scientific data are still being collected remotely by federally operated satellites, automated river gauges, or non-federal scientists, but the policies and permits that rely on this science are now in limbo. As a result, one legal expert worries that the shutdown could result in more air and water pollution being discharged by companies with permits that expire during the shutdown.
“None of the federal environmental laws are written in such a way that if the government is shut down, you can’t do anything,” says Kyla Bennett, senior attorney for the nonprofit group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which advocates on behalf of federal workers, and a former EPA employee. Instead, the law implies that companies can proceed on their own. “It says, if you don’t hear anything, go ahead.”
The Environmental Protection Agency furloughed about 14,000 of its employees, leaving just 753 “essential” workers on the job. That might make it more difficult for the agency to meet legal deadlines later this year for safety assessments of about 40 chemicals, according to a news report in the journal Nature. The agency has already postponed at least one upcoming advisory committee meeting related to the work.
Federal science workers are making do. Leslie Rissler, an evolutionary biologist and program director at the NSF, tweeted last week that she had applied for unemployment benefits. “This is a ridiculous shutdown unnecessarily affecting thousands of federal employees and families. Wishing all of them, and this country, better days ahead.”
For his part, fisheries scientist Taylor is budgeting his savings and using his time wisely. “I’ve been watching Marie Kondo on Netflix,” he says from his home near Seattle. “We’ve been cleaning out our closets.”
See the original article here –
Invest in nonprofit journalism today.Donate now and every gift will be matched through 12/31.
This story has been updated.
There’s one kind of “gun” control that many south Carolinians seem to agree on — stopping the use of seismic airguns to search for oil and gas deposits in the Atlantic ocean.
OK fine, airguns are actually a kind of horn, but that doesn’t mean they’re harmless. Even before any new offshore drilling can take place in the Atlantic, this type of oil and gas exploration could be devastating to coastal communities and marine life — including endangered right whales.
Seismic airgun blasting works like this: a ship tows an array of airguns, which release powerful bursts of compressed air through the water and into the seabed approximately every 10 seconds. The blasts can continue 24 hours a day for weeks at time. By documenting the reverberations sent back up to the ship, surveyors can figure out what’s beneath the sea floor.
In November, the National Marine Fisheries Service, a federal agency responsible for conserving resources and preventing lost economic potential associated with unsustainable fishing practices, authorized five geophysical services companies to use sonic blasting off the shores of east coast states stretching from New Jersey to Florida. The permits give the companies permission to “incidentally, but not intentionally harass marine mammals” as they use airguns to search for fossil fuels along the ocean floor.
That harassment has a lot to do with the deafening noise associated with the blasts. “Imagine a hand grenade going off around your house every 10 to 15 seconds,” says Scott Kraus, vice president and chief scientist of marine mammal conservation at the New England Aquarium. The blasts can continue to raise noise levels even miles away, he says.
The North Atlantic right whale could be extinct in as little as two decades. Scientists fear that allowing seismic airgun blasting now — which hasn’t been done in the region for over 30 years — could keep the species from bouncing back. Right whales are already under stress from ship strikes, commercial fishing (they get tangled in fishing lines), and climate change. “We need to minimize all potential stressors for it to recover and noise is a significant stressor,” says Kraus.
There were no calves born during right whales’ last breeding season. Kraus points to recent research from Syracuse University that shows that communication between mother right whales and their calves is extremely quiet, and a change in ambient noise levels could disrupt that communication.
Humans with a close relationship to the sea could also be harmed by the airgun blasts. It could disrupt the fishing industry and reduce catch by up to 80 percent, according to a statement released by the South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber is also concerned that the blasting could “release toxic chemicals from deteriorating canisters of conventional and chemical munitions and drums of radioactive waste that have been dumped along the Atlantic Coast, including South Carolina’s, for decades.”
In response to the newly issued airgun permits, two lawsuits were filed this month against the National Marine Fisheries Service. One was filed by the South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce and 16 cities along the state’s coast. Several leading environmental groups also filed suit, including the Sierra Club and the National Resources Defense Council.
The lawsuits allege that the Fisheries Service violated the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act when it granted the permits. The Fisheries Service is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the federal government’s scientific agency charged with “conserv[ing] and manag[ing] coastal and marine ecosystems and resources.”
On Thursday, Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh announced that he and eight other attorneys general from Maryland, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, and Virginia will file their own complaint against NOAA Fisheries.
“While the administration continues to place the interests of the fossil fuel industry ahead of our precious natural resources, attorneys general up and down the Atlantic coast will fight efforts to open the waters off our shores to #offshoredrilling. #blocktheblast.” Attorney General Frosch tweeted.
NOAA declined to comment on the suits, but said in a press release that its authorizations require “monitoring, reporting, and mitigation measures to reduce the impacts of survey activities on marine mammals.” The plaintiffs, however, say that it’s not enough.
“It’s hard to believe that NOAA, the agency charged with protecting species… would find a way to issue these permits,” says Catherine Wannamaker, senior attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center. “To find a way to authorize these permits against that backdrop is pretty incredible and pretty typical of what seems to go on the environmental world with the Trump administration.”
The seismic airgun survey permits are all part of the president’s larger proposed plan to open up 90 percent of U.S. waters to offshore oil drilling.
“All of this is needless harm. And completely out of step with coastal communities who have the most to lose from dangerous seismic airgun blasting,” says Diane Hoskins, campaign director at the advocacy group Oceana — another plaintiff in one of the suits. She adds that it’s a precursor to a larger threat: “Seismic airgun blasting is the first step to offshore drilling. When they drill they spill. We cannot afford another disaster like BP’s Deepwater Horizon.”
Dig this article?Support nonprofit journalism
. Help us raise $50,000 by December 31! A little bit goes a long way.
Donate today and your gift will be matched
.
More here:
Groups sue Trump administration for “harassing” whales with seismic blasting
READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS
Atlantic Seashore
A Field Guide to Sponges, Jellyfish, Sea Urchins, and More
Kenneth L. Gosner & Roger Tory Peterson
Genre: Nature
Price: $2.99
Publish Date: August 5, 2014
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Seller: OpenRoad Integrated Media, LLC
Explore the shore with this beautifully illustrated nature guide!   Using the renowned Peterson Identification System, this easy-to-use guide, sponsored by the National Audubon Society, the National Wildlife Federation, and the Roger Tory Peterson Institute, is the perfect companion for exploring the seashore.   More than one thousand illustrations, arranged according to visual similarities, show plant and animal species of the Atlantic Coast from the Bay of Fundy to Cape Hatteras. This guide includes information on how to locate each species by geographic range, tidal range, tidal level, season, topography, and climate.  
Read more:
Libros
