The outlook for the bushfire situation in Australia continues to be grim. This post is an update via NASA, containing NOAA-NASA satellite images of actively burning fires and the resultant billowing smoke.

They’re called Kelvin-Helmholtz clouds, aka billow clouds or shear-gravity clouds, and they look like breaking ocean waves.

Last month was the 2nd warmest November in the 140-year global climate record, and polar sea ice coverage shrank to near-record lows, according to a NOAA report. .

Scientists found fossilized root systems of ancient trees – from what’s now Earth’s oldest known forest – near Cairo, New York. They looked “surprisingly modern,” the scientists said.

How did whales that feed on tiny prey evolve into the largest creatures on Earth? And why don’t they get even bigger?