Apollo News Snippets – January 2020

Let’s get this first New Snippets of 2020 kicked off on the right foot with some exciting tech news!
From carbon dioxide to methanol using just solar power and low-cost catalysts.
A nickel-platinum catalyst boosts the power of hydrogen gas while at a lower cost.
Major leap forward in thermoelectric materials which can absorb ambient heat and convert it to energy.
Using humid air to produce sustainable energy, cool!

The November 2019 NOAA temperature departure map shows lots of record warmth in the Southern Hemisphere and then some cooler than average pockets over the East Coast of North America and central Asia.

The November 2019 NOAA Global Climate report is out and if you guessed the warming continued, well then you guessed correct! Your prize, well nothing more than a constantly warming planet threatening the human population, but hey, who’s counting?! November 2019 was 0.92°C (1.66°F) above the 20^th Century temperature average, marking the second warmest November on record and the 419^th month in a row above this average. And as the warming continues, Trump decides to attack a young climate activist rather than tackle the problem head on, classic and sad.

In honor of this frosty month here in the USA, my Google Search of the month was, “frost and GIS.” If you scroll through the frosty results, you might find this gem by Mahmoudi of the University of Sistan and Baluchestan, where the author uses a variety of spatial datasets to analyze the relationship between frost and geography. Mahmoudi uses some of our favorite products in his analysis including SRTM DEMs, contour lines, Global Mapper and of course, GIS!
Last month we checked out the GIS resources of Ohio’s second largest city, Cleveland, and for our first GIS website review of 2020 we head west to Tulsa, Oklahoma:
Tulsa, OK GIS Website (sorry just a general website)
Tulsa, OK GIS Contacts (no city directory, ugh)
Tulsa, OK GIS Web Map
Tulsa, OK GIS Map Collections (same link as above unfortunately)
Tulsa, OK GIS Direct Downloads