You are browsing the archive for August 2011 - Page 3 of 4 - Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal.
19 August 2011
Is This Irene In The Making??
GOES image from NOAA/NASA MSFC While Tropical Storm Harvey is approaching Honduras, the most interesting system in the tropics is called Invest97L, and it may be about to become Tropical Storm Irene. There are several numerical weather prediction (NWP) models today that are developing this wave into a strong tropical storm and a few into a hurricane. A word of caution here, the models do this rather frequently and …
Supercell Thunderstorm East of Brussels Kills 4
The red arrow is pointing at the overshooting top on the thunderstorm, indicating a very strong updraft. The BBC says 4 were killed when a stage collapsed at a music festival. Surface weather obs (from just before the storm developed) indicated temps near 27℃ (80℉) and dew-points near 18℃ (64℉). A surface front was moving into Belgium as a strong upper level trough pushed through the UK, and this set the stage …
18 August 2011
Sweden Cancels Lease on McMurdo Icebreaker
McMurdo Base, Antarctica is located where it is, because it is as far south as you can get a ship in for resupply a couple of times per year. Every year the ice breaker breaks up the ice, and a ship with tons of food and science supplies arrives. It carries back all the waste (virtually none is allowed to stay in Antarctica). Going to the restroom at a field …
Waterspout Today In North Carolina
Waterspouts are not tornadoes but have caused damage and injuries in the past. They develop when horizontal rotations from wind shear (and rising and falling air parcels) get twisted into the vertical.
It’s Time For Meteorologists On TV To Stand Up For Science
Guest post by Joe Witte (former meteorologist for NBC and WJLA-TV in Washington, and now with George Mason Univ. and NASA Goddard) This post originally appeared on the WJLA Weather blog, and Joe has kindly given me permission to repost it here: Can we really trust TV weather forecasters for accurate information about the science of climate change? Not really, more and more Americans think. That’s according to the recently released …
17 August 2011
Our Amazing Planet- Top to Bottom-Courtesy the BBC
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HiUMlOz4UQ
16 August 2011
When Did Ignorance Become A Point of View
prop·a·gan·da noun /ˌpräpəˈgandə/ Information, esp. of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view – he was charged with distributing enemy propaganda The dissemination of such information as a political strategy There are plenty of things in climate physics that one can argue about; the climate sensitivity, the negative feed-backs that may slow down Arctic melting and many more, but Joe …
Is it A Cloud or A Shadow
A viewer (Eric Atkins) sent me this pic a few weeks back, and it has stumped quite a few meteorologists including me! At first it looks like the cloud in the foreground is casting a shadow on the cirrocumulus deck above and behind it, but this cannot be so! The sun is behind the cloud and not opposite the view from the camera. I have some fellow meteorologists looking into …
15 August 2011
NOAA- July 7th Warmest on Record Globally;NASA Ranks It 3rd.
The NCDC has the July data out today and it was the 7th warmest on record,while NASA GISS (using slightly different methods) data has July at the 3rd hottest on record. From NCDC (NOAA): The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for July 2011 was the seventh warmest on record, at 16.37°C (61.43°F), which is 0.57°C (1.03°F) above the 20th century average of 15.8°C (60.4°F). The July worldwide …
14 August 2011
My iMac Found The Higgs Bosun! (Well it might)
The folks at the Large Hadron Collider have put together a project that uses idle home computers, to simulate particle collisions, in an effort to learn more about the fundamental particles the make up our world. The initial request for volunteers was overwhelming and saturated their servers, but they will be adding more as soon as they can work it out. If you’re interested go here . This isnt’ 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.