Snow-covered pumpkins

Dreaming of a white Halloween? If you live in the Denver area and the foothills of the Rockies, you're in luck! Up to a foot of snow is possible for Denver, with other areas seeing upwards to two feet. The low pressure causing this headache (or laying down a nice base, if you're a skiier), is also whipping up winds in Southwest, where dust storms have been reported. When I was looking at weather reports, I saw gusts over 50 mph in some areas. Scary part is that I probably missed some even higher reports.

No, this doesn't mean global warming is done.

Weather News

There are two weather stories making headlines today.

First, there is some devastating flooding going on in Georgia right now. At least four deaths have been reported, parts of a couple of interstates are shut down, and there is widespread flooding through many areas of the state. The governor has declared a state of emergency. In fact, some towns to the west of Atlanta have seen almost two feet of rain. Unfortunately, scattered rain showers are in the forecast everyday this week. Hopefully it won't add the problems already there.

The other is on climate change side things. World leaders are meeting the U.N. to discuss the impact of climate change. As their all supposed to be talking today, maybe check back in the next day or two for updates on this story.

Typhoons

Closer to home, Hawaiians are getting ready to deal with Tropical Storm Felicia.

Further from home, people in Taiwan and Japan are dealing with a pair of typhoons that have already brought devasting amounts of rain (80 inches in some areas) to the area, resulting in widespread flooding and mudslides in Taiwan. Millions of people were evacuating from China as well as Typhoon Morakot moved into the country. Hundreds of people are still missing.

Another typhoon, Typhoon Etau, as already resulted in floodwaters and landslides in Japan. The typhoon is supposed to make its closest approach to Tokyo at around 9am local time.

So what are typhoons? They are what hurricanes are called in the western Pacific region. In Australia, they are called cyclones.

Lightning. In. Space.

Excuses, excuses (seriously click the link... it's worth just for the pretty pictures).

Though it is a good excuse. Lightning is not something airplanes deal with. Space shuttles are the same, only more so. Especially with precious cargo like the COLBERT treadmill. Named after, of course, this guy.

Lightning. In. Space.

Excuses, excuses (seriously click the link... it's worth just for the pretty pictures).

Though it is a good excuse. Lightning is not something airplanes deal with. Space shuttles are the same, only more so. Especially with precious cargo like the COLBERT treadmill. Named after, of course, this guy.

When good articles have bad titles

I am yet again pointing out an aricle on MSNBC.com, this time to call BS on the title of a piece about how climate affected the growth of the Inca Empire early in the last millenium.

The article is called "Global warming may have aided Inca Empire." Really? I thought. Now that is interesting. I love history and finding a historical link to my actually schooling and work as a meteorologist, I thought that was just fascinating.

Until, it turned out that it isn't actually "global" warming that the authors of the original study (PDF) say caused this, but rather an area of regional warming. The authors actually this toward the end of their actual study:

From an even broader perspective, the notion that temperatures were consistently higher than modern values during the 9th–14th centuries has received increasing attention in the Northern Hemisphere. The prevailing view of this interval, known commonly as the “Medieval Warm Period” (MWP), is that elevated temperatures were often only intermittently experienced and, in some regions, was apparently characterized instead by climatic anomalies such as prolonged drought, increased rainfall or a stronger monsoon system. However, evidence for the MWP being a global phenomenon is contentious, especially in the Southern Hemisphere, where there are few continuous, detailed palaeoclimatic records spanning this interval. Nevertheless, from the Marcacocha dataset we can infer that temperatures increased from ca. AD 1100 (after a period of relative aridity in comparison to much of the first millennium AD) and that conditions remained warm and stable for several centuries thereafter. (citations removed for clarity)

So, not global warming. Now the article on MSNBC.com doesn't actually credit global warming either. It uses phrased like "400-year warm spell." And the article does detail some important steps that Peru, currently feeling the affect of global warming due to glacial melting, could take to lessen the future impact. But it's not global warming. I can only imagine how some of the deniers will twist that headline...

Size does matter

Some French scientists have been looking into why we see different sized water droplets during a rain event, as seen in this report from MSNBC.com. One theory is that smaller water drops collide and collesce into larger water drops as they move through a storm cloud. This new study instead considers the movement on the droplet as it falls. They even have video of this (via LiveScience.com... there's an add before the video which may or may not have sound). The video shows a water drop falling, flattening out, talking on air at it falls, and then shattering into smaller droplets. It's an interesting theory and one that I'm sure will get some more looks in the meteorological research field.
In other weather news, it's hot in the Pacific Northwest. I'm not a fan of 100 degrees temps myself. Then again, I don't know any sane people who are. And don't give me the ol' "It's not the heat, it's the humidity" line either. Because it's humid there too. Plus, an oven is a dry heat too, but that's doesn't mean I want to sit in one.

Thunderstruck!

Ever been struck by lightning? Hopefully not, because I'm sure that it hurts. There are a lot of myths about lightning out there and about the dangers of lightning. As far as "severe" type weather, lightning is the most frequent. If you hear thunder, there is lightning. It's as simply as that. With so much lightning out there, MSNBC.com has an article about lightning and its dangers. If you're more into pretty pictures, there's also a slideshow with some nice pictures of lightning storms.

Clouds at night

Here's a little something that was new to me when I read it: Noctilucent Clouds.

What the heck are those? That's actually a pretty good question. They are clouds that develop during the summer months over the poles and are the highest elevation clouds that this world has. They develop in the mesosphere, a whole lot higher than most clouds develop. There isn't a lot known about them, other than they appear enhanced thanks to things like volcanic eruptions and shuttle launches. The Wikipedia entry for the phenomonon has some more info as well as some pretty pictures.

Who ordered sunspots?

A while back, I talked about the possibility of a new Little Ice Age thanks in large part to a lack of sunspot activity on the sun leading to less solar activity and therefore cooler temps back on Earth. Well, so much for that.

I'm no expert on helioseismology, but apparently some people are, because a group of scientists used that technique to study a jet stream through the interior of the sun. This jet stream is one of the sources of sunspot activity, according to the scientists. Once this jet stream reachs 22 degrees latitude, an uptick in sunspot activity is generated. Guess what? The jet stream is creeping closer. If everything works as expected, we'll see increased sunspot activity.

No wholly mammoths for you.

"Way too close?" Ya think?

Don't try this at home (warning: sound).

It it a nice shot of a huge freaking tornado and shows the kind of damage that can be done to a hopefully empty building. It also shows exactly why I don't storm chase. Because who would want to be that close to a huge freaking tornado? Not me, that's who.

AF447

I've been not posting about Air France 447 for a reason: because it's hard to say what actually caused the crash. I've ready a lot of articles about the tragic flight, and many of them cite weather as one possible cause. There is chance that we'll never know what exactly happened. But there is a still a chance that the weather was at least a factor. I've heard from multiple sources that storms were in the area at the time of the crash.

A recent article on CNN.com highlights not the specifics of AF447, but rather the general dangers of the region that the flight was traveling through. This region around the equator is called the Intertropical Convergence Zone, or ITCZ. This region near the equator is known for persistant thunderstorms. It is a ring of low pressure that wraps around the globe. This low pressure allows parcels of moist, unstable air to rise, forming thunderstorms. If you look at a global satellite picture, you will likely see these thunderstorms in a broken line through the tropics. This time of year, with more sunlight falling on the northern hemisphere, the ITCZ is to the north of the equator. During the northern hemisphere winter, it is located to south of the equator.

What can make this region dangerous to flying is the height that the storms reach. At their peak, thunderstorms cap off at the tropopause. This is the reason that anvil heads are prevalent for large storms. The rising, unstable air reaches the stable boundary between the troposphere and the stratosphere and is stopped in its tracks. The clouds can't rise, so it stretches out in the direction that the upper level winds are blowing. This happens in the ITCZ as well, only the stable layer is much higher. The tops of these storms can reach up to 50,000 feet, higher than commerical planes can fly. As a result, if a pilot cannot avoid the thunderstorm and fly around it, they may need to fly through it. Within the storm, the plane will feeel a lot of turbulence because of rising and falling air within the thunderstorm, as well as the possibility of frequent lightning and hail. Weather radar equiped on all aircraft helps pilots avoid the worst of it. And better technology for everything from forecasting to the design of aircrafts mean that flights can fly through the ITCZ without issue.

Earth 2100

Do you need to stay up late tonight, but you're afraid that you might doze off? Have I got the (potential) remedy for you!

ABC is airing a special called Earth 2100, about the changes that humans are helping to make to the earth and where our world will stand if things don't change. It will deal with more than just climate change (something I'm big on, obviously), including things like resource depletion and population growth. You may have heard this before, but water is the next oil. Climate change and available water are completely and totally linked. As climate change causes weather patterns to shift, where the water falls as rain changes as well. As populations grow, more water is need. Desertification is a very big problem in many areas of the world. I haven't seen the show yet (I'll be recording it, just in case I can't watch it tonight), but it has all the potential to keep you anxiously awake all night. So, you're welcome, I suppose.

By the way, Bob Woodruff (host of "Earth 2100") was on the Daily Show June 1. Check out the interview here.

More old news

So I was just perusing around the interwebs today, looking at this and that and found an old article from February that I found somewhat interesting.

You have likely heard of that thing called globel warming. I may have even mentioned it a time or three. Well, one possible affect of it has been that the hottest day of the year now comes a couple days earlier. Some scientists did a statistical analysis on the temps and found that in the last 50 years or so, the hottest day of the year (typically July 21) is now occurring 1.7 days earlier.

Thinking about that now, I guess it's not a terribly big surprise. Sure temps are hotter, so you'd think that the statistically hottest day of the year would be hotter as well. However, as the article mentions, winter temps have been heating faster than summer. Because of this, there is fewer cold days lasting into the spring. There is less snow and ice keeping air temps colder. Temps will starting getting warmer because of this. I guess it's just another affect that people don't usually think about.

Auntie Em! Auntie Em!

You know the movie "Twister?" Of course you do. To a meteorologist, it's one of those movies where you shake your head at some parts and want to look at with scorn, but when if it's on TBS you refuse to change the channel.

Well, a group of scientists are taking the fictional "TOTO" to heart, with a new system called "VORTEX2" (or Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment 2, which is better than some acronyms you can find out there). With lots of funding in lots of places, their goals is to study how, when, and why tornadoes form. Over the next few weeks through the middle of June, researchers will try to locate these supercells and surround them with an plethora of instruments, such as radar, barometers, etc., to gain a three-dimensional picture of how the storms form and change. All this will be presented later this fall after they have a chance to crunch some numbers. Of course, the producers of Discovery Channel's Storm Chasers are filming these scientists in action. So if you can't get to Penn State to sit through the presentation, you could always tune in there.

Storm chasers are crazy, by the way.

Um, waaahh?

What do you do when a hurricane hits and knocks out the power for while? You're stuck at home since nothing is open and if you don't have a canoe, you really can't go anywhere. So you burn some candles, play some board games, make some babies?.

That's right. A Houston area hospital is actually expecting more babies to be born in June of this year thanks to Hurricane Ike, which impacting the Houston area in mid September of 2008. Let's just hope that the kids don't hear that story. The might end up scarred for life.

Little Ice Age?

So, did you hear that stuff about the new little ice age?. A lack of sunspots has been linked to the the Little Ice Age, which occurred back in the 17th and 18th Century. It was a period of unusually cold weather, not a full-scale, woolly mammoth ice age (or the movie. The theory goes that the prolonged decrease in sunspots, called the Maunder Minimum, caused this time of cooler temps. It's not a theory that is out-to-lunch by any stretch of the imagine. The sun is most active when there are a large number of sunspots. A less-active sun could mean cooler temps here on Earth.

That said, could this really lead to a new little ice age? Scienties have their doubts about that. While the connection between sunspot activity and temperatures on Earth are not well understood, their is a correlation there. But the other thing to keep in mind is that the Little Ice Age took place before the Industrial Revolution. There is more carbon dioxide in the air now than back then. With the current global warming trend, should a Maunder Minimum occur, all that may happen is that the warming trend will be knocked back a little. It would give the illusion that manmade global climate change is not occurring. Then when the cycle occurs once more, sunspot activity increases, and temps start to rise, we will be right back in the position we were in before. Which wouldn't be good.

Heckeva weather day

There are a few sprinkles around the northeastern U.S. right now. It'll rain later tonight. That's nothing compared to the crazy weather other parts of the country. Parts of Mississippi were hit with severe weather, including tornados that levels houses and injured a couple of dozen people. Parts of Colorado and the Plains states are seeing blizzard like conditions, dumping a foot of snow on areas that haven't had snow on the ground for a while.

To top it off, there's what's happening in North Dakota. The Red River looks like it'll crest on Sunday at record levels (the old record is 40.1 feet back in 1897). Residents are sandbagging like crazy. The goal is have the main dykes up to 43 feet to try to keep back the water. Should the dykes fail, a secondary system is in place. The snow they got up there yesterday really isn't helping these efforts.

Cross-country skiing for science

Three British explorers are going on a skiing trip. Sounds like a lot of fun. You know, being out in nature, hitting the slopes. Except these three people have something else in mind than just good ol' fun. They're out there measuring polar ice melting. These kinds of measurements can certainly be done with satellite and everything, but there is something invaluable about having the human element in this as well. For instance, they talk about one morning when they had to hurry up and move their tent because the ice was breaking up beneath them. If you're a slow waker in the morning, just imagine that wake up call.

Experiments and measurements like these are very important for the further understanding of the way our climate works. I've mentioned this before, but climate is not the same thing as weather. As it been cold in the northeastern U.S. this winter. My heating bills say "yes." But one chilly season does not mean that global climate change is over and done. The key words in that phrase of "global" and "climate." Snow in March in NYC does not mean the Earth is getting colder. Climate scientists are concerned that the years ahead will see no ice at all in the Arctic Ocean in the summer. That's kind of a big deal because the Arctic ice acts as a sort of climate regulator for the entire globe. Sunlight is reflected back to space, meaning that less radiation is absorbed by the Earth. Less radiation means less climate change. Everything is stabilized. Take away the Arctic ice, the stability is thrown out the window.

Important stuff, and worth keeping an eye on, no matter if you think climate change is real or a bunch of hooey.

What a job

I love "The Soup" on E! It always, always, always makes me laugh. Last Friday, they had there annual Soup Awards, where they give out tin cans with bit of paper glued to them for all the "winners" (and if you've seen the show, that word means something different than Webster had in mind).

Well, one such catagory was for Weather Woes, and The Today Show's Al Roker came away as the winner. The best part? The acceptance speech. Yes, I too wish I was able to get rich doing 8 minutes of work and never, ever needing to be right while doing it. It is every meteorologists dream job. We salute you, Al Roker!

The Truth is Out There

Paging Fox Mulder: I think we have something he may interested in here. Apparnently, some smart people have an idea that might explain some UFO sightings. What does this have to do with the weather? Well, according to this article, some of these might be attributed to a meteorological phenomonon called a sprite (check out this really cool pic of a sprite).

Sprites are formed during thunderstorms, when the air is electromagnetically destabalized due to the lightning in the air. The particles end up getting charged. This creates a polarization that Mother Nature really doesn't like. As a result, the creates a discharge of energy and results in a sprite.

Sorry, that I have to play the part of Scully in all of this...

Stormchaser season keeps coming earlier...

A tornado touched down in Oklahomatoday. Some buildings were damaged and there were plenty of downed power lines, but thankfully there have been no reported injuries.

TV for nerds

This is why I like Entertainment Weekly. 14 Weather Movies. Okay, mostly of them are, well, pushing it. The frogs in Magnolia? Really? Well, at least they have "Twister" right there at the beginning. Meteorologists can wail all they like about the science and whatever, but if it's on TNT, your local meteorologist is watching it.

Damn you, Punxsutawney Phil!

Well, it's official. Six more weeks of winter, people, whether you like it or not. More snow, more cold, more wind. Ah, lovely. Take heart, though, because Phil is even less accurate than the average meteorologist. 39%?. And he still has a job? That's some nice job security...

Summer vacation in Antarctica

So, even Antarctica is feeling the effects of global warming. Aside from the "well, duh, it's global warming" effect, scientists were going largely on the temps recorded at stations in the eastern part of the continent, in conjunction with the loss of ozone, and seeing that temps were actually cooling in there. New satellite data is showing that warming is occurring on the western side of Antarctica however, enough to offset the temp drops in the eastern portion.

The best part of the article: when one of the author of the report sited in the link above, Eric Steig, summed up climate science in one sentence

"Simple explanations don't capture the complexity of climate," Steig said.

Well, duh.

Survey says...

So, apparently a survery of scientists around country was conducted recently to see where they stood on global warming. So absolutely no one's surprise, a little under half of petroluem geologists said that the rise in temps had nothing to do with humans. Given the nature of their job, that's to be expected. Unsurprising, nearly all of the climatologists surveyed believed that humans do play a part in the rise in temps.

What might come as a surprise are the meteorologists, of whom 64% believed humans had a hand in global warming. I'm not too terribly shocked by this personally. I think it's real and that humans are playing a part in this. But for meteorologists, "long-term" means seven days out, not seven years or seventy years. Meteorologists study what's happening in the literal tomorrow instead of the figurative one. Meteorologists laugh at 10-day model data.

More interesting would be seeing an expected version of the meteorologists answer, because I imagine that it would be nuanced that that. Meteorologists know as well as climatologists that "weather" is very different from "climate." Just because it's cold or hot in a given week, doesn't discount the overall trend. My guess is that you would get a lot of hedging from the meteorologist set, a bit more "well, it wouldn't surprise me if that was the case, but we really don't have the data, so I'm going to go with no." In a black-and-white survey, that "maybe" would be a "no."

Global climate change is a tricky business. Us meteorologists know that, believe me.