You are browsing the archive for October 2011 - Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal.
31 October 2011
Happy Halloween!
“Starting now, we cannot soap all your windows and steal all your garden gates by tomorrow night, so we did the next best thing. We annihilated the World before your very ears, and utterly destroyed the CBS. You will be relieved, I hope, to learn that we didn’t mean it, and both institutions are still open for business.” “So, goodnight everybody, and remember for the next few days …
True Color View of The Rare October Snowstorm From Space
Danbury, Ct received 17 inches of snow from this rare October event, and the fact that leaves were still on many trees caused massive power outages. On a side note, Central Park has now reached its 3rd wettest year on record. See more snowfall totals from the NWS in New York, NY below:
28 October 2011
NPP Weather/Climate Satellite Rides A Delta Two Into Orbit!
NASA released this long exposure shot of the launch. The polar orbiting satellites go into orbit from Vandenberg AFB in California. Why is this such a big deal??
27 October 2011
Climate Skeptics Find The Truth Is Getting Ever More Inconvenient
One of U.C. Berkeley’s most popular undergraduate courses is Physics For Future Presidents. It’s taught by Professor Richard Muller who is a very well-known physicist who has worked in nuclear and particle physics at U.C. Berkeley and is a senior faculty member at Lawrence-Berkeley Laboratory. His book, Physics For Future Presidents, is absolutely excellent as well and I highly recommend it, but this is a story about climate change and …
Northern Lights Visible As Far South As Alabama Monday Night (Updated)
BREAKING NEWS! Saturday’s coronal mass ejection has sparked a moderate to strong geomagnetic storm and the aurora borealis is visible as far south as North Alabama tonight. Go outside and look for a red/greenish glow in the sky. The Kp index is at 7 and this indicates a major geomagnetic storm. Spaceweather.com has some pics already up on their site and more to come I suspect. The best view will …
24 October 2011
Quantum Physics is Not Difficult- Brian Cox on BBC Radio 4
I have mentioned before that Brian Cox’s BBC series on the Wonders of the Universe and the Wonders of the Solar System were fantastic programs. For those that did not get to see them, here is a six-minute interview from the BBC Radio 4 Today program this morning. You do not have to be able to do differential equations in your head to understand quantum physics! On the other hand, …
22 October 2011
After April 27th, Would Congress Cut Weather Radar??
I’m just back from attending the GOES Users Conference (GUC) in Birmingham, AL. The GOES images are the cloud pictures you see on almost every TV weathercast in America, and for that matter, the Western Hemisphere. These satellites are positioned above the Equator at a very high altitude-about a tenth of the way to the Moon! As you likely already know, they are so high because at that height they …
19 October 2011
Quantum Locking- The future is getting scary!
I spotted this on YouTube today- The quantum world is so different from what we experience everyday but it’s just as real. Imagine the possibilities with this technology. Our descendants will live in a fantastic world if we do not destroy our home first. Just noticed Greg Laden has this on his exc. blog as well- but it deserves to be spread around the net! Joe Hansen on It’s OK …
17 October 2011
Developing La Nina Cools The Planet in September
The developing La Nina in the Pacific has brought the global temperature in September down slightly, but it was still the 8th warmest on record. NASA does a separate calculation and ranks Sep. 2011 as 9th warmest. When a La Nina develops the world’s largest ocean sees noticeably cooler surface waters. This chills the air enough to bring the global temperatures down, while El Nino does just the …
Dan Satterfield has worked as an on air meteorologist for 32 years in Oklahoma, Florida and Alabama. Forecasting weather is Dan's job, but all of Earth Science is his passion. This journal is where Dan writes about things he has too little time for on air. Dan blogs about peer-reviewed Earth science for Junior High level audiences and up.