Word: waterous
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...those who haven't had a meteorology class since middle school, a quick review of Weather 101: Colder air encourages precipitation, so when the temperature drops at high altitude, water naturally condenses out of the air. Clouds are formed when this moisture, suspended in tiny droplets or crystals, meets a condensation nuclei - small particles of dust or ice that are blown about the upper atmosphere. Without these small particles, clouds can't form...
...July, marked the first time the species Mnemiopsis leidyi, a thumb-size jellyfish known as the sea walnut, had been documented in the western Mediterranean Sea. Native to the Atlantic coast of the U.S., Mnemiopsis was introduced to the Black Sea in the 1980s - most likely from the ballast water of oil tankers - and played an instrumental role in the collapse of the region's fisheries. "Now the question is, Will it do in the Mediterranean the same thing it did in the Black Sea?" Boero says. "It's harmless for [humans], but it can be deadly for the fish...
...Israel, where tropical species have moved in through the Suez Canal, jellyfish floated in swarms more than 100 km long and 2 km wide. Blooms of Mnemiopsis, first documented off Israel last winter, clogged the filters of a desalination plant that supplies coastal communities with 100 million liters of water a day. At the height of the outbreak, water production at the plant dropped by more than a third as desperate workers tried to clear the filters. (See video: "Battle of the Endangered Species: Bats v. Trees...
Once a body of water becomes infested with jellyfish, it's not so easy to engineer a recovery. The Black Sea has begun to recuperate, but only after a convergence of several unlikely occurrences: many of the region's fisheries shut down when their stocks fell, the breakup of the Soviet Union sharply cut the amount of fertilizer in the sea, and another alien jellyfish, the Beroe ovata, which preys on the Mnemiopsis, not fish, was accidentally introduced to the water. "It's taken three separate events," Richardson says. "The point is you can't just stop overfishing and expect...
...rickety boat emitted signals of distress from the Sunda strait, a body of water sandwiched between the Indonesian islands of Java and Sumatra. Local authorities had no vessels in the area, and called on Australia for assistance. When H.M.A.S. Armidale, an Australian naval ship, approached the troubled craft, they found 78 Sri Lankan Tamil asylum seekers heading for Australia. Unsurprisingly, their wooden boat was not seaworthy, and those on board were transferred to the Oceanic Viking, an armed patrol vessel used by Australian customs to track poachers of the highly endangered Patagonian toothfish in these waters...