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Black Friday bushfires
The Black Friday bushfires were a series of fires in Victoria, Australia, that culminated on 13 January 1939, killing 71 people and prompting the landmark Stretton Royal Commission.
Black ice
Black ice, also known as glare ice or Glatteis, is a thin, transparent coating of glaze ice on roads that is hard to see because the dark pavement shows through it.
Black shale
Black shale is a dark mudrock rich in organic matter and pyrite, defined by more than 1% total organic carbon, that can generate oil and natural gas.
Black smoker
A black smoker is a type of hydrothermal vent that emits superheated, mineral-rich water as dark, smoke-like fluid, first observed in 1979 on the East Pacific Rise.
Black Sunday (storm)
Black Sunday was the severe dust storm of April 14, 1935, that turned midday dark across the Great Plains and gave the Dust Bowl its name.
Blackwater river
A blackwater river, or blackwater stream, is a river stained tea-brown to black by dissolved humic acids from decaying vegetation, transparent and acidic; the Rio Negro is the largest example.
Blagodatnoye
Blagodatnoye is a large open-pit gold mine in the Severo-Yeniseisk district of Krasnoyarsk Territory, Russia, operated by PJSC Polyus. Commissioned in July 2010, it is Polyus' third largest mine.
Blancan
The Blancan is a North American land mammal age spanning most of the Pliocene, named for Mt. Blanco, Texas, and defined by the first appearance of voles.
Blanco, Cerro
Cerro Blanco (Robledo) is a 4,670 m Holocene caldera in Catamarca, Argentina, source of the Central Andes' largest Holocene eruption (~4.2 ka, >100 km3 tephra), now slowly subsiding with an active blind geothermal field.
Blizzard
A blizzard is a severe winter weather condition in which strong winds combine with falling or blowing snow to reduce visibility for at least 3 hours, regardless of how much snow falls.
Blizzard warning
A blizzard warning is an alert issued by a national weather service when strong winds and falling or blowing snow create dangerously low visibility for 3 hours or more.
Blocking high
A blocking high is a large, persistent anticyclone that interrupts the normal west-to-east flow of the midlatitude atmosphere, stalling weather systems for a week or more and causing prolonged heatwaves, drought, or flooding.
Blowing snow
Blowing snow is surface snow lifted and carried by the wind to heights of 2 m or more, unlike drifting snow, which stays near the ground.
Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory
Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory, also known as Blue Hill Observatory, is a weather station in Milton, Massachusetts, holding North America's longest continuous weather record since 1885.
Blue hour
The blue hour (heure bleue) is the twilight period when the Sun is 4 to 8 degrees below the horizon and the sky turns deep blue, before sunrise and after sunset.
Blueschist facies
The blueschist facies, introduced by Pentti Eskola in 1920 as the glaucophane-schist facies, describes low-temperature, high-pressure metamorphism in subduction zones, producing blue schists rich in glaucophane and lawsonite.
Bluestone
Bluestone is the trade name in the dimension stone industry for blue-gray, fine-grained igneous rock of basaltic composition, quarried in Victoria, Australia since the 1830s for buildings, kerbs, and laneways.
Boaty McBoatface
Boaty McBoatface is an autonomous underwater vehicle operated by the UK's National Oceanography Centre, named for the joke entry that won a 2016 poll to name a polar research ship.
Bobcaygeon Formation
The Bobcaygeon Formation is a Middle Ordovician limestone formation in southern Ontario, defined by B.A. Liberty in 1969 and named after the town of Bobcaygeon.
Boddington Gold Mine
The Boddington Gold Mine is a large open-pit gold and copper mine near Boddington, Western Australia, operated by Newmont and one of Australia's largest gold producers.
Bog iron
Bog iron, also called bog iron ore, is impure iron oxyhydroxide deposit formed in bogs and swamps, historically the main iron ore of Northern Europe.
Bolivian High
The Bolivian High is a warm-core upper-tropospheric anticyclone over the central Andes during the austral summer, driven by Amazonian heating and carrying moist air that supplies the Altiplano's rainy season.
Bølling–Allerød interstadial
The Bølling–Allerød interstadial was a warm interval of the last deglaciation, beginning about 14,700 years ago and ending with the cold Younger Dryas about 12,900 years ago.
Bomb pulse
The bomb pulse, also called the bomb spike, is the rise and decline in atmospheric carbon-14 from nuclear testing, peaking in 1963 and used to date organic material formed after about 1950.
Bond events
Bond events are proposed quasi-periodic cold episodes during the Holocene, identified by Gerard Bond and colleagues in North Atlantic sediments as pulses of ice-rafted debris.
Bonneville Salt Flats
The Bonneville Salt Flats, also known as the Utah Salt Flats, are a 30,000-acre salt pan in Utah where the 300 through 600 mph land-speed barriers were broken.
Bora
The bora is a cold, dry, gusty northeasterly downslope wind that blows from the Balkan interior over the Dinaric Alps onto the eastern Adriatic coast, strongest in winter.
Bora-Bericha-Tullu Moye
Bora-Bericha-Tullu Moye (BBTM) is an active silicic volcanic complex of three edifices and nested calderas in the central Main Ethiopian Rift, Ethiopia, last erupting about 1900 CE, with geothermal development and over 27 explosive eruptions in 100,000 years.
Borden Mine (Ontario)
Borden Mine is an underground gold mine near Chapleau in northern Ontario, Canada, which reached commercial production in October 2019 as Canada's first underground mine mostly powered by battery-electric vehicles.
Boreal summer intraseasonal oscillation
The boreal summer intraseasonal oscillation (BSISO) is a 30 to 90 day oscillation of tropical convection that governs the Asian summer monsoon's active and break cycles.