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You are browsing the archive for August 2011 - Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal.

31 August 2011

Thoughts on Education-How Finland Does It

Guest post by by Dr. John O. Annexstad (Retired  professor and a lover of “the ice” (21 visits to Antarctica). A recent article by Eggers in the Bemidji Pioneer stated that our schools need to abandon the grading system. The reason he gives is that all students are capable of learning, and assigning grades tends to impede the progress of many. In today’s article I will examine this idea from …

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Swamp Fire Chokes The Big Easy

The image above is from the NASA Terra satellite. Click it to see the higher resolution.   The smoke is from a marsh fire near New Orleans and the state doesn’t have enough money to charter planes to drop water on it and  the reason is explained by the graph below. Most of Louisiana has only received about 25% of normal rainfall, in the last 30 days. This is called …

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30 August 2011

New Record Low For Arctic Ice Very Possible

  For a while, it looked unlikely the summer melt would bring a new record low in Arctic sea ice this year, although it looked likely to reach the top 3 or 4. No more though, the data from NSIDC shows the summer melt is running near 2007’s record low extent, and still dropping.  Another independent analysis (using a different satellite and sensor) of arctic ice is done by the …

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29 August 2011

Bright Meteor Lights Up Skies From Huntsville, Alabama to Georgia

More here.

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28 August 2011

Is This Tropical Storm Katia??

The track/intensity models are indicating development, but hint at a real possibility of an eventual NW track before it approaches North America. I suspect it will be upgraded to a named storm within 36 hours. The next 2 weeks are the most active of the hurricane season.

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One Gorgeous Image of A Windy Lady

From NASA’s Aqua satellite. Taken with the MODIS sensor which has channels in the wavelengths of red, green, and blue light, so it’s true colour. Click for the HUGE “print that puppy and slap it on the wall” version.

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Don’t Blame The Forecaster for Media/Politician Hype

  You can see some experimental surge forecasts here, but  they are based on a model underdevelopment, so do not base decisions on this alone.  The surge forecasts show about what would be expected with a category one storm. Watching some of the cable news channels last night I saw computer images showing severe flooding through out Manhattan, and this is just not going to be the case with a …

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Irene Pounding The Mid Atlantic Coast

The image on the right is from NOAA/AOML and shows a very large wind field around Irene. The latest NWP models continue to show a track near New York and Boston, but while Irene is a minimal hurricane the large wind field will cause significant flooding. So far, Irene is turning into a very wet storm with 8″ rainfall reports coming in from NC. Wind shear is affecting Irene and …

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26 August 2011

Irene’s Core Heads for The Big Apple; Hurricane Warning for New York

  Irene is now a cat two storm and the wind shear has weakened it just a bit today. The wind field is very large though and flood models are indicating that it will produce significant flooding, perhaps as high as a category two storm in some places. Winds may gust to hurricane force in NYC, but sustained winds will likely be at tropical storm strength as it passes, and …

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Nearby Supernova Rocks Astronomical World

The image above shows a Type Ia Supernova and it is very nearby at only 21 million light years (That’s nearby to astronomers you know ;)). It’s hard to express just how big this news is, because no other supernova has been seen this early after the star exploded, and telescopes around the world are now taking spectra of the light from it. Here’s one example of how big it …

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