You are browsing the archive for September 2009 - Page 2 of 2 - Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal.
18 September 2009
21st Century Weather Forecasts On TV
I have been a little sparse in my writing here over the last few weeks, and for good reason. We have been installing a brand new state of the art weather computer system in the WHNT weather office. It’s actually a series of 6 very fast computers all networked together and integrated into the production switcher. It’s an amazing system. I can do things that I could not even image …
16 September 2009
If a Picture Paints A Thousand Words- Then Look at 3
NASA GISS has the Summer global temp. data online now. August 2009 was the Second warmest on record globally. The Northern Hemisphere meteorological summer of 2009 was the third warmest on record. Only 1998 was warmer. The reason 1998 was so warm is easily explained. The Pacific ocean was incredibly warm that year. The reason? The greatest El Nino event on record. That much warm water heated the surface temperature of …
12 September 2009
What Einstein Was Really Thinking About!
Sometimes, when people get together, the conversation will steer towards some of the very weird things predicted by Albert Einstein and his papers on relativity. Things like travelling at the speed of light, and how time travel into the future is possible. It’s a fun subject to speculate about, even if you’re not a certifiable science geek like me. (My wife would definitely agree on the certifiable part- but my …
10 September 2009
Extreme Ice Survey- The Pictures Tell The Story
I have linked to some of the excellent TED talks before in this space. This one is perhaps the best I have seen. There is an old saying that perception is reality. That seems to be the problem in regard to climate science. Many people think that scientists are still arguing over it. They are not. Getting that message out is one reason I started writing these ramblings about the …
5 September 2009
Climate News Going from Bad To Worse
A major study on the Arctic temperatures was published this past week in SCIENCE. It’s gotten a lot of press attention, and a huge amount of attention in the Science world. It’s not uncommon for those not familiar with the science to ask questions along the lines of “How can they possibly know what the temperature was 500 years ago! There were no thermometers!” If science education were better in …
1 September 2009
How Much Radiation Does it Take to Kill You?
It’s an interesting question isn’t it? Something you should probably know. A little bit if information that you HOPE you never NEED to know. As my sister once said, “Once you’ve seen one nuclear war, you’ve seen’em all!” In general people are afraid of radiation, and that is a good thing. It can be dangerous. It can also kill off a cancer that is eating you up. It can, and …
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.