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You are browsing the archive for January 2011 - Page 2 of 2 - Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal.

12 January 2011

NASA/NOAA: 2010 tied with 2005 as warmest year on record. (updated)

It’s now official. In spite of the moderately strong La Nina in the Pacific, 2010 was tied for the hottest year on record. If you just look at the Northern Hemisphere, it WAS the hottest on record. The temp. anomalies from NOAA are below. So, was it the hottest year in the last 1000 years?  Answering that question is a bit more difficult, but the expert on that question is …

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How Nuclear Weapon Treaties Led To The Discovery That Thunderstorms Produce Antimatter!

NASA released a really cool piece of science this week. The story starts with the nuclear arms reduction treaties signed in the 1960’s between the U.S. and Russia. This was back in the middle of the cold war, and neither side trusted the other. Probably for good reason. So how could we be sure the Russians were not testing nuclear weapons without us knowing about it? Easy. Nuclear fission produces …

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10 January 2011

North Alabama Buried in Snow-Again!

I thought I’d share with you some of the images viewers sent in of the heavy snow event over North Alabama. In Huntsville, this is the third heaviest snowfall on record. Number one is the 17 inches that fell on New Year’s Eve in 1963. January 1988 brought 9.6″ and the total last night was 8.9″ at the Huntsville Airport. This event comes just 3 weeks after a very rare …

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9 January 2011

Deep South Snow

It looks like another big snow is about to hit the Deep South. It’s never easy to forecast snow here and this event is no exception. That said, it’s quite possible that this system will produce an event seen once every couple of decades. The images below are the snow forecasts from different numerical weather prediction models. Some have the snow northward into TN, and others lighter and further south. …

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5 January 2011

NOAA/NSIDC: December Arctic Sea Ice Lowest on Record

The National Snow Ice Data Center (NSIDC) released the Arctic ice summary for December today. It’s the lowest on record at 12 million square km. This is 270,000 sq. km below the previous record. The highly negative phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation is likely a contributing factor here.  The negative NAO has drained much of the polar cold down into two main regions; Eastern N. America and Western Europe. …

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4 January 2011

Ever Seen One of These In Your Bird Feeder??

A few weeks ago it was frost flowers and now another strange ice formation is spotted here in the Tennessee Valley. This time it’s an ice spike. Merlin (Mo) Marice of Huntsville in Alabama went out to check his bird bath Monday morning and was greeted with this! He called  and sent me the pic in search of an explanation. My initial guess was that the top of the ice …

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2 January 2011

Let’s Hope 2011 is a Brighter Year for Science than 2010 Turned Out To Be

I write this blog because the natural world is  amazing and I want to share what I find out with others. My background is in atmospheric science but I try to post frequently on any aspect of science that meets my definition of wild. It’s sad that so many people get caught up in these end of world myths like 2012. Even more are seduced by such laughable myths like …

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