29 June 2012

Colorado Wildfire Smoke Reaches U.S. East Coast

Posted by Dan Satterfield

From the Terra Satellite this evening. Click to enlarge. True colour image from NASA.

I could see the smoke in the air at sunset here in Salisbury, Maryland tonight as well. The folks at Climate Central has an interesting graphic that explains the wildfires. The much reduced snow pack has to be the main factor. The dead trees from the Pine Beetle most certainly are aggravating the situation.

Image ctsy. of Climate Central

It was 108 (44.5C) in St. Louis today, and Indianapolis had the warmest June day on record. Records in Indianapolis go back to the Grant Administration (1871) !

the 4km resolution WRF Model has been doing an excellent job of forecasting the surface temps. in this heat wave and it looks like tomorrow the south will be baked well done. It may top the century mark as far north as Philadelphia, PA and Wilmington in Delaware. The data from the Midnight GMT run of the WRF is below:

This Image and the one below are courtesy Penn State Weather. Click for the full resolution. These are temperature forecasts for 2 meters above the surface.

 Weeks like this make me worry that the climate models are underestimating the warming from the ever rising greenhouse gases. That’s possible, but these kind of events are just made more likely by the greenhouse warming that is underway. What’s even more of a concern is that this is only June. The drought is already doing damage to the corn crop, and the heat in Illinois and Indiana made it worse for certain. The Washington Post has some good reporting on that today.

In Other News Today:

So, how about the Arctic Sea ice?

It’s melting like an ice-cube on the hood of an Oklahoma Pickup truck right now. The folks that kept saying this was just a natural cycle, and predicting it would recover to pre 1990 levels each year since 2007, have been strangely quiet of late…

Welcome to the 21st century climate folks. Some years will be much better than this, but increasingly they will be as bad… and worse.

Some Other Climate and Weather Posts I Saw Today

Steve Scolnik has some more on the record heat.

The Kardashians get 40 times more news coverage than ocean acidification. (Ful disclosure I am not exactly certain what the Kardashians are, but my wife says not to waste my time finding out). Thank goodness for the BBC.

Real Climate has an excellent post on new research into sea level rise, and they also point out how the North Carolina legislators are doing their best to be dumber than a Texas school board! If you’re not familiar with this story go here. It just amazes me how political belief can cause people to behave so irrationally without having the slightest inkling that they are doing so. I think they just blew out Sagan’s candle in the dark in North Carolina…

..Sigh…