Weather
gregladen | February 22, 2009This story:
10 tornadoes confirmed in Ga., including one with winds topping 160 mph
Ten tornadoes, one packing winds of more than 160 mph, touched down in parts of Georgia on Wednesday, the National Weather Service said Friday.
The storms caused an estimated $25 million in insured losses, said John W. Oxendine, the state's insurance commissioner.
"I spent some time surveying damage and talking to residents in Jasper, Putnam and Hancock Counties" on Friday, Oxendine said in statement. "I believe claims will easily reach $25 million. Actual losses are much higher when you consider things like…
cmooney | February 5, 2009My latest Science Progress column takes on those, like right wing columnist Deroy Murdock or Lou Dobbs, who persist in trying to claim that winter weather refutes global warming. There are so, so, so many reasons this argument is dumb; and yet at the same time, who can dispute that the prevailing weather at a given time does highly influence the trajectory of the climate debate?
So while it's intellectually silly to pretend that winter weather refutes global warming, it was also strategically silly to hold the giant United Nations conference in Copenhagen this December.
You can read the full…
clock | January 20, 2009Last year, the only snow day in the Triangle was January 20th. I remember, because a number of locals could not drive to the 2nd Science Blogging Conference. This year we were wiser so we organized it a few days early. And, lo and behold, on January 20th this year, we had snow again:
This was also the first time Juno saw snow. It took her three walks to lose the fear of this strange, white substance:
clock | January 12, 2009The weather prediction for this week is cold and clear to partly cloudy. If you are coming from Canada, you'll probably think that's warm, but for us here, this is very cold. At least, it appears at the moment, we will avoid snow unlike last year:
sheril | June 20, 2008NOAA's Conrad Lautenbacher describes it as 'science without borders': Scientists around the world are converging data on health, weather, behavior, and disasters to anticipate illness and prepare for pandemics.
It's called the Global Earth Observation System of Systems, recognizing that patterns and behaviors all about planet earth are intimately connected. Man-made delineations aside, we truly are One World and I'm encouraged that 73 countries and more than 50 international organizations have joined so far:
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A cyclone wrecks coastal Myanmar, spawning outbreaks of malaria…
grrlscientist | June 12, 2008tags: tornado, Manhattan Kansas, weather
"Hello? Dad? Can I borrow your car?"
Image: Dave Rintoul, 12 June 2008 [larger view].
[Includes slideshow]
After I returned from Manhattan, Kansas, I thought of it as a wonderful, magical place where I would always be able to return, to see birds and photograph lots of native wildlife, to find a warm and safe place with my good friends, Dave and Elizabeth. (I am sure all of you know Dave quite well, since his gorgeous photographs are often featured as the "Image of the Day" on this site.) But while I was preoccupied with my imaginings, I was…
grrlscientist | May 19, 2008tags: surface temperature, global warming, climate change, weather, environment, streaming video
This streaming video reveals the temperatures of the Earth's surface since 1884. The video released by NASA and GISS. The only problem with this video is that I think it should run a little more slowly so it's easier to see the details. Note: Yellow = warmer than usual, Blue = cooler than usual, White = usual [0:32].
bleimanb | March 25, 2008A student at Aberdeen University in the U.K. is engaged in a groundbreaking study to see if we might be able to monitor the behavior of sharks in order to predict the weather. When Hurricane Gabrielle arrived in Florida in 2001, shark researchers noticed that young black tipped sharks (who presumably had been tagged) moved to deeper depths as the storm approached.
Lauren, seen here, recreating the effects of a high pressure front by squeezing a dogfish.
P.H.D. student Lauren Smith is using spotted dogfish and a device at the university called an "altitude chamber" to...
...simulate the…
scientificactivist | October 13, 2007Anyone who has lived outside of the United States or practiced science for a significant amount of time can vouch for the wonder that is the metric system. However, since an unfortunate majority of Americans do not fit this description, we're subject to outbursts like these:
NO, on celsius. This is the United States of America. We speak English and use Fahrenheit. Well, I guess you could show wind speed in kilometers, too. Where does it stop? I guess when we become a Spanish speaking nation.
Yes, this was just one the many responses to an announcement by Chief Meteorologist Tim Heller on…
scientificactivist | September 25, 2007Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming
by Chris Mooney
Harcourt: 2007, 400 pages.
Buy now! (Amazon)
At 2:09 am on September 13, 2007, Hurricane Humberto made landfall just east of Galveston, Texas--still the site of the deadliest natural disaster in US history, the Galveston Hurricane of 1900. With maximum sustained winds of 85 mph, though, Hurricane Humberto was just a Category 1 storm (the weakest category on the Saffir-Simpson Scale). While it was the first hurricane to make landfall in the US since the record-breaking and devastating 2005 hurricane…
cmooney | January 22, 2007
[Huge waves slam the port city of Wimereux in Northern France.]
Last week I griped about how various media organizations were calling the large scale cyclonic system that slammed Europe a "hurricane." In this post, I'd like to be a bit more positive and look more closely at this weather phenomenon that was dubbed "Kyrill." (Not Hurricane Kyrill.)
The storm had a central pressure that dropped down as low as 964 millibars, according to Wikipedia (which I'm relying on because I can't read German). That helped produce winds as strong as 125 miles per hour. I'm not sure if these are gusts or…
cmooney | January 21, 2007
The story goes that when Jule Gregory Charney, at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, ran an early numerical weather prediction in 1953, he and his colleagues managed to correctly hindcast a big snowstorm that had hit Washington, D.C., the previous year (fooling forecasters at the time). The quotation above is what Charney apparently said in a late night call to Harry Wexler, research director of the U.S. Weather Bureau. The moment has come to be regarded as a kind of turning point in meteorological history.
I couldn't help thinking of those words as our first snowfall--or at least,…
illconsidered | March 26, 2006This is just one of dozens of responses to common climate change denial arguments, which can all be found at How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic.
Objection:
Scientists can't even predict the weather next week, so why should we believe what some climate model tells us about 100 years from now?
Answer:
Climate and weather are really very different things and the level of predictability is comparably different. Climate is defined as weather averaged over a period of time, generally around 30 years. This averaging over time removes the random and unpredictable behaviour of weather. Think of it as…
illconsidered | February 25, 2006This is just one of dozens of responses to common climate change denial arguments, which can all be found at How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic.
Objection:
It was way colder than normal today in Wagga Wagga, this is proof that there is no Global Warming.
Answer:
Does this even deserve an answer? If we must...
The chaotic nature of weather means that no conclusion about climate can ever be drawn from a single data point, hot or cold. The temperature of one place at one time is just weather, and says nothing about climate, much less climate change, much less again global climate change.
This…