You are browsing the archive for September 2015 - Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal.
28 September 2015
Why Running Water on Mars is a HUGE Discovery
On Earth, where you find water, you find life, so today’s announcement from NASA of flowing water on Mars is far more important than you might imagine. The photos from the Mar’s rovers look almost like the high desert of the American West, but remember that Mars has only 1/100th of our atmosphere, and the temperature is well below zero most of the time. However, and this is key- when we …
23 September 2015
AP Changes Policy On Labeling Climate “Skeptics”
A lot of us who write blogs about science face the issue of how to label those who think climate change isn’t real, or who think the science is all wrong. Just to be clear, virtually none of these folks have any background in atmospheric science, as several studies have clearly shown, but that still leaves the issue to be dealt with. I can tell you from my own experience …
21 September 2015
The Equinox from Meteosat
The autumnal equinox is at 8:22 GMT or 4:22 am EDT on Wednesday. The two satellite images below from the European Meteosat show the sun angle on Earth from June 22 near the summer solstice and then today at the same time. Notice the sun angle has changed dramatically, and the High Arctic is no longer seeing 24 hour daylight. Below is today at the same time.
17 September 2015
It Was The Hottest Summer On Record & 2015 Will Be As Well
NOAA announced today that the summer of 2015 was the hottest on record, beating last year which held the record for only 12 months. August 2015 was also the hottest on record. More from NOAA: The globally averaged temperature over land and ocean surfaces for August 2015 was the warmest August on record, 1.58°F (0.88°C) warmer than the 20th century average, and surpassing the previous record set in 2014 by …
15 September 2015
Arctic Sea Ice Reaches 4th Lowest Extent on Record
The summer sea ice melt has ended in the High Arctic, and the ice pack melted back to the 4th lowest extent on the satellite record. From the Nat. Snow Ice Data Center: On September 11, 2015, sea ice extent dropped to 4.41 million square kilometers (1.70 million square miles), the fourth lowest minimum in the satellite record. This appears to be the lowest extent of the year. In response to …
2015 Temperatures Head for the Record Book
So how does 2015 compare with the warmest year on record (last year). Hat tip to Sou at Hot Whopper for this. (FYI: AUG. was second hottest on record behind last year (.01C difference). and this info map from NWS Fresno on the biggest fire in California history: How dry is it? New paper in Nature Climate Change shows this is the lowest snow pack in the Sierra in 500 …
14 September 2015
The Alarming Thing about History
The alarming thing about history is its seemingly inevitable habit of repeating itself. This alone is a good reason to learn as much of it as you have time to cram in, but as every history professor tells his students, the why is more important, than the what and and when. That’s why Timothy Snyder’s thoughtful piece in the NY Times this weekend is so worth reading.
10 September 2015
Questions About El Nino Answered
The 2015 El Nino event will go down in history as one of the strongest ever, and likely as THE Strongest. While it is impossible to give an exact idea of what this will mean for your area, we can give you some likely scenarios for the upcoming winter, with more confidence in some areas than in others. There are also some misconceptions out there that I hopefully will dispel in this post! First 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.