"From hell's heart I stab at thee." Sound familiar? That was the famous line that Captain Ahab uttered in Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Speaking of white whales, scientists have found another one in Alaskan waters - only it's a killer whale, not a sperm whale. More on this rare creature in the full article after the jump.

The appearance of a new sunspot may not be cause for alarm, but the arrival of a new solar cycle might make you pause. Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recently reported that our sun may be entering a new 11-year cycle, called Solar Cycle 24.

The increase of sunspots associated with Solar Cycle 24 could have adverse effects on electronic technology, putting them at risk. To know more about the effect of Solar Cycle 24, head on over to the full article.

Scientists have just a completed a study called State of the Arctic report which seeks to determine just what state the northern polar region is currently in. The results are not very encouraging. As a matter of fact, one might conclude that they're downright grim.

Scientists now fear that the melting of the polar ice may already have exceeded the "tipping point" which is the imaginary threshold of ice melting without permanently damaging the region. If the worst has come to pass, this will severely impact the world in more ways than one.

The loss of sea ice near the North Pole and the gradual thinning of ice layers in the Arctic are just some of the manifestations that climate change is taking a toll in nature. Scientists now say that ecosystems in land and sea are at risk more than ever.

And unlike in Las Vegas, "what happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic," says research administrator Richard Spinrad as he points to the temperate regions as the next in line to become affected of what's going on in the Arctic.

James Overland, a scientist with National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory explains that the damage they've seen this year was so great that it would be a long shot at best to get the region back to where it was two decades ago. "It won’t necessarily be a continued acceleration of more ice lost, but we’re certainly not going to go back to where we were before," he adds.

Scientists continue to disagree on when exactly the Arctic tipping point lies, or if we've already crossed the line. The only thing certain is that if we're not there yet, we're certainly closing in on "full steam ahead".

According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration or NASA, it is highly possible that our Sun has finally reached a stage referred to as solar minimum. It means that it is currently almost without spots. A spotless sun signifies that there's minimal solar activities such as solar flares.

However, the area of concern here is that a solar minimum is followed by its exact opposite event, the solar maximum. Suns under this condition become very violent, oftentimes hurling billion-ton clouds of electrified gas into space caused by solar storms.

NASA reasoned that the next solar maximum could begin as early as March 2008. Maybe you're wondering right now as to how this affects our little quiet lives here on planet Earth. Take note that solar storms are capable of wreaking havoc to our satellites, power grids, and radio communication, including the Global Positioning System (GPS).

Given our dependency to technology, the worst thing that could happen is crashing world's tech-dependent industries. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Environment Center in Boulder, Colorado added that the solar maximum stage should reach its peak during late 2011 or 2012.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) just launched a new service in Second Life and what's their agenda this time? The weather bureau just bought a whole island to themselves and will be offering some educational experiences to your virtual avatars.

Called Meteora, the new island was launched last Thursday by NOAA's Earth System Research Lab. They'll have a planetarium, a tsunami-training beach, and offer submarine, hurricane, and weather balloon rides. As part of a statement, ESRL director Alexander MacDonald said:

We're experimenting with new ways to conduct science and public education that appeal to a different sensibility and may help a new audience get excited about Earth science... Our site offers visitors a way to experience the planet through reality-based virtual adventures...

Having Earth science research take this initiative to bridge a gap to a new audience, especially one of the virtual next-gen, is a good sign. Who knows how far the NOAA's mission will arrive? Only time will tell, but in the mean time, hooray for weather balloon rides (even though they're just viurtual)!

Tree rings could finally settle what Al Gore could not: the debate on whether global warming is making hurricanes stronger.

Several studies made since early 2005 have linked global warming to the increasing occurrence and strength of hurricanes like Katrina over the last decade. But these conclusions have been debated because they relied on potentially flawed data.

The issue could finally be resolved using the technique developed by researchers from the University of Tennessee: measuring different isotopes of oxygen present in the rings. Big hurricanes produce large amounts of precipitation with lower oxygen isotope composition compared with the isotopes in dew or smaller storms.

By looking at older trees, the researchers have been able to create a record of hurricane activity in the Southeastern US dating back 220 years, more than double the current record. In fact, the study suggests that data up to 500 years can be accessed in future studies.

The research could help create a reliable record of hurricanes, including frequency and intensity, that goes beyond the records kept by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Atlantic (NOAAA) in its hurricane database. NOAA 's records stretch back to the last 100 years. But because storm data from more than 20 years ago are not very accurate, researchers cannot make a credible baseline that accurately compares storm frequency and strength over time.

Dendroclimatology is the science of extracting past climate information from trees. Tree ring information can reconstruct climate conditions at the trees' growing site for certain seasons back to thousands of years. It's possible to reconstruct records much older than the oldest living trees, either by using dead trees that are still in place or trees that were cut and used for building long ago.

In some species of reptiles, gender is determined by the temperature at which the egg is incubated. Warmer temperatures often produce more females, while cooler temperatures produce males, and because of this, scientists believe that global warming could have a major impact on the endangered Hawaiian green sea turtles by changing its natural sex ratio.

Researchers at Sea Life Park, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the University of Alabama have been studying how temperature affects gender determination of Hawaiian green sea turtles as they develop in their eggs. "With the results of this research, we will be able to predict with quite a bit of accuracy how weather patterns impact the reproductive colonies (of the sea turtle)," according to Renato Lenzi, general manager of Sea Life Park.

In order to determine how temperature affects sex determination in the animals, about 250 sea turtle eggs at Sea Life Park were harvested and divided among three incubators set at different temperatures. The researchers will then use a harmless surgical procedure to check the sex of each individual turtle. Scientists will insert a tiny micro-laparoscope — the size of a strand of hair — into each turtles' sex organ to identify its gender.

The data will help researchers predict how climate changes will affect the sea turtle population years from now and how conservation organizations can address the possibility of gender imbalance.

El Nino, the Dennis the Menace of weather systems, has started to develop in the tropical Pacific and is likely to continue into early 2007 according to scientists. But scientists at the National Weather Service in Monterrey, Ca. say, "Worry about something else."

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the main U.S. agency in charge of forecasting and tracking the El Nino phenomenon, says weak conditions exist but could strengthen into a moderate event by winter. At its worst, the phenomenon was described as akin to a low-grade fever and should not cause any major upheavals.

In fact, the development of El Ni?ould help explain why the current Atlantic hurricane season has not been as active as expected. Early this week, Hurricane Gordon was downgraded to a Category 1 - one of the early effects of El Nino.

If El Nino continues to hold, scientists say the U.S. should expect wetter-than-average conditions over portions of the Gulf Coast and southeastern states in the first three months of 2007. While the West, the northern Great Plains, and the upper Midwest could experience warmer-than-average conditions.

Elsewhere, El Nino effects have already been observed in Indonesia, Malaysia and most of the Philippines with drier-than-average conditions.

NASA and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) will use a small, flying model airplane to study the mechanics of hurricanes.

Unlike your own radio-controlled airplane, however, this little gem - called the "aerosonde" - costs $50,000. Still, as far as scientific studies go, it's a bargain. The aerosonde will fly through the 200 MPH + winds at an altitude of only six to nine hundred feet or so in order to measure temperature, pressure, humidity and wind velocity inside the storm.

This information will be used to help scientists more accurately predict changes in hurricane strength - something that is difficult to do at present. In 2004, "Hurricane Charley went from Category 1 to Category 4 in six to eight hours," says NOAA's Joe Cione. "We don't understand that at all."

Currently, NASA and NOAA monitor hurricanes from satellites and manned aircraft that fly through the upper layers of the storm, dropping instrument packages called "dropsondes" into the maelstrom. In order to gain a better understanding of hurricanes - which are basically "giant heat engines," powered by evaporation - it is necessary to have instruments as low in the air as possible without actually being on the ground or in the water. "It's far too dangerous to get there with manned aircraft," says  Cione.

Each aerosonde carries a five to six pound package of instruments. Capable of flying for 18 hours, they will (hopefully) transmit data on the transfer of heat energy from the sea to the atmosphere as they spiral into, and then out from the storm.

All that is needed at this point is an actual test. The problem is that a hurricane has yet to come close enough to the Key West (Florida)  Naval Air Station this season, where one of the aeorsondes are being kept. "Mother Nature is laughing at us," says Cione. They hope to launch an aerosonde in October, if funding can be maintained.

Scientists from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration(NOAA) are expectant that the hole in the ozone layer may fully heal over the next 60 years. Earth's ozone layer is composed of ozone molecules (three oxygen atoms), which is responsible for filtering out harmful ultra-violet radiation (less than 290 nanometres) from the Sun. But over the past years, the ozone layer is thinning out in an alarming rate that the hole over Antarctica has steadily grown in size (up to 27 million sq. km.) and length of existence (from August through early December) over the past two decades.

The deterioration of the ozone is mainly contributed by human activity such as the use of CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) from products such as aerosol sprays and refrigerators. However. the production of these chemicals are restricted by the Montreal Protocol after the ozone hole was discovered in 1985 by British scientists Joesph Farman, Brian Gardiner, and Jonathan Shanklin of the British Antarctic Survey.

Dr. David Hofman, Director of the Global Monitoring Division, said "I'm very optimistic that we will have a normal ozone layer sometime, not in my lifetime, but perhaps in yours." But the effort to fully heal the ozone layer is no easy task and the call for everybody to contribute in the success of the recovery of the ozone layer is still up.