Apollo News Snippets – May 2020

You will need a bit of extra time to read our juicy list of tech advances below, so sit back and enjoy!
Research shows cracks in low-cost perovskites solar panels can be healed easily.
Protein nanowires produce energy out of thin air, literally!
Protective layer allows for multiple recharges of next-gen lithium batteries.
Could this low-cost catalyst help solve our climate crisis?
Major leap forward in solar cell efficiency with quantum dots.
This new device harvests energy in heating/cooling devices that would have been lost in the past.
A rust-based catalyst combined with light and organic waste produces significant amounts of hydrogen gas.
New catalyst to convert carbon dioxide to methane at low temperatures invented.
Self-healing low-cost potassium-based batteries could be commercially viable sooner than later.
Layering two solar cell varieties increases efficiency by capturing more of the Sun’s spectrum.

As you might expect, the March 2020 temperature departure map shows lots of red for warm weather, with record warmth over all of the continents other than Australia. There were large pockets of record warmth over eastern Asia and southern South America with some pockets of cooler weather in India and North America.

It does not look like the global slowdown due to the coronavirus has made a dent in climate change as the March 2020 NOAA Global Climate report shows that it was a warm month, ugh. In fact, March 2020 ties February 2020 and December 2015 as the third warmest month ever on record with temperatures 2.09°F (1.16°C) above the 20th Century average–placing behind only February and March 2016 when there was a very strong El Niño over the Pacific Ocean warming global temperatures. And as the globe struggles with the COVID-19 pandemic, the Trump administration is busy destroying the world by rolling back Obama-era fuel standards…

Did you know that May 10^th is National Shrimp Day? I certainly didn’t so in honor of this important discovery my Google search of the month was, “GIS and shrimp.” And of course, the internet never fails as there is this excellent paper that utilizes both satellite imagery and GIS to make conclusions about the sustainability of shrimp farming in the Mekong Delta–nice work Jacques Populus et al.!
Last month we featured less-than-ideal links for the GIS resources of Rhode Island’s second largest town, and for this month we move down the Atlantic coast with a visit to Charleston, South Carolina and a review of their online GIS resources.
Charleston, SC GIS Website
Charleston, SC GIS Contacts (check the right sidebar)
Charleston, SC GIS Web Map
Charleston, SC GIS Map Collections (about half way down the page, look for the PDF Maps section)
Charleston, SC GIS Direct Downloads