NASA data contrasts average Spring temperatures for the 1950s and 2090s.
Thereâs no shortage of maps or data sets that show the long-term climatic effects of rising temperatures. But what about a map showing the temperature of your block in 2087?
You could find that in newly released temperature projections from NASA. Using information from historical measurements, local geography, and greenhouse gas statistics, the maps derived from the data display the most localized climate change picture to date.
Up to this point, the smallest scale for a climate change model has been 100 kilometers. But NASAâs new data zooms in to project changes at a much higher resolution. The result is a data set that localizes climate change to the scale of 800 meters, around the size of a neighborhood.
Texas is the nationâs leader in oil, natural gas, and wind production. But what parts of the state are doing the heavy lifting when it comes to energy?
Last week, StateImpact Texas used data from the Railroad Commission of Texas and thewindpower.net to answer that question. We created maps that showed how much oil, natural gas, and wind energy each county produced between June 2012 and June 2013.
After digging even deeper into the data, weâve come up with five key takeaways for what those maps mean, and why theyâre important.
Pecos County is Texasâ All-Around Energy Leader
Out of Texasâ 254 counties, remote and arid Pecos County is the only one that ranks in the top 25 for oil, natural gas, and wind energy production. Few counties in the Trans-Pecos region are rich in fossil fuels, so Pecos Countyâs oil and natural gas operations (21st and 19th in the state, respectively) are unusual. Its wind production though is right in line with other West Texas counties — it clocks in as the state’s fifth-best.
Texas is oil country. It leads the nation in oil production, and would be one of the top oil-producing nations if it were its own country. This map illustrates those points by breaking down Texas’ oil production by county.
The data for the map comes from the Texas Railroad Commission’s data query feature. This particular data set shows how many barrels of oil each county produced between June 2012 and June 2013.
Not surprisingly, the most intense production came from the Eagle Ford Shale and Permian Basin regions. The most prolific county over the past year was Karnes County, which is about 60 miles southeast of San Antonio. Oil operations in Karnes County shipped out over 46 million barrels of oil last year. The only regions which did not produce much oil were the Hill Country and the extreme northeast part of the state.
Texas holds about 23 percent of the country’s natural gas reserves. And thanks in large part to the advent of drilling techniques like horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” Texas is producing more of it than any other state.
This map shows how much natural gas each county produced from wells between June 2012 and June 2013. Like our oil production map, the data comes from the Railroad Commission of Texas’ data query feature.
Drive west from Austin or Dallas-Fort Worth towards cities like Midland, Amarillo, or El Paso, and you’re bound to see your share of wind turbines dotting the landscape.
That’s because Texas leads the nation in wind capacity, and more wind farms are on the way. That’s reflected in this map, which shows each county’s annual wind energy production in gigawatt hours. (One gigawatt hour is enough to power 200,000 Texas homes during peak summer energy demand, and many more than that during cooler times.)
Photo by UPI/Pat Benic/LANDOV
Texas has more wind energy than any other state.
It’s important to note that the values for this map are not exact. The data comes from The Wind Power, a wind industry website, which maintains a database of every wind farm in the world. While the group records the county and annual production of each wind farm, some farms span multiple counties, which means that some production data had to be approximated. Still, this map is a reasonably accurate representation of where Texas’ wind production is coming from.
Even though Texas is the nation’s wind leader, only 46 of its 254 counties are wind producers. The vast majority of these are found in West Texas and the Panhandle, although coastal counties like Kenedy and Willacy are also represented. Wind farms along the Gulf Coast might become more prolific in the future as companies continue to develop onshore wind, and look to offshore wind capabilities as well.
Texas leads the nation in wind energy production and capacity. Now the federal government is getting in on the action in an effort to clean up its carbon-emitting act.
The Department of Energy announced this week that Texas will be the home of the countryâs largest federally-owned wind farm. The farm will be built at the Pantex Plant, which is the nationâs primary site for nuclear weapon maintenance. The plant, located about 20 miles northeast of Amarillo, will have 60 percent of its energy needs met by the farm.
To his surprise, Jerry Bates has had a busy summer.
Bates owns Frio River Outfitters & Happy Hollow Grocery in Concan, a small Hill Country community 90 minutes west of San Antonio. In addition to selling basic groceries and camping equipment, Happy Hollow’s main business is renting out tubes and kayaks to tourists on the Frio River.
Bates’ livelihood depends on the Frio, and even though the river has been down, business is up.
âItâs been probably one of the busiest summers weâve ever had,â he said. âWhich is amazing, because the river levels are pretty low right now.â
The low levels are a consequence of Texasâ drought, which continues to dry up bodies of water throughout the state. That includes rivers like the Guadalupe, Comal, San Marcos, and Brazos, all of which are popular tubing destinations. Continue Reading →
The Texas Water Development Board’s most recent drought report showed that 97 percent of the state is still experiencing some level of drought. So what does a state that parched look like?
Scientists in the Gulf are conducting groundbreaking research on shark behavior.
Itâs early August, and that means that this week millions of Americans are watching one of TVâs greatest aquatic traditions: Shark Week on the Discovery Channel.
Texans, whose state borders a body of water teeming with sharks of all sizes and species may want to take special notice. According to Dr. Greg Stunz, there are some sizable specimens in the Gulf of Mexico.
âBig ones,â he said in describing some of the Gulfâs sharks. â9-feet, 600-pound kind of [sharks]. âThey-could-easily-eat-peopleâ kind of size.â
Dr. Stunz is a Professor of Marine Biology and an Endowed Chair for Fisheries and Ocean Health at Texas A&M University â Corpus Christiâs Harte Research Institute. Heâs currently researching shark behavior and population trends off the Padre Island National Seashore.
Stunz is one of the first scientists to gather data on shark growth and movement in the Gulf. He and his team have tagged over one thousand sharks in order to better understand which species are most common, where they occur, and how often they breed.
âWe donât have answers to those questions,â Stunz said.
Graduate research assistant Kyle Knust holds a water chip.
It would be easy to mistake the small, translucent, object in Kyle Knustâs hand as just another cheap piece of plastic. With dozens more scattered around his section of a buzzing graduate assistantâs lab at the University of Texas, the thumbnail-sized chips donât appear to be worth much.
And thatâs because theyâre not. At 50 cents apiece, the chips are pretty cheap to make. But the technology inside of them â a method of water desalination thatâs potentially cheaper and more efficient than any other â could prove to be invaluable.
Along with other researchers and private companies, Knust is helping to develop a desalinating âwater chipâ that uses a charged electrode to separate salt from water. The new technique could revolutionize how people get water, as well as how much they pay for it.
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