You are browsing the archive for December 2012 - Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal.
29 December 2012
Ten Things You Should Know About Weather Forecasts
Among those of us who forecast the weather for a living, one of the most frustrating complaints is a call or email asking why you busted the forecast. Imagine how much more frustrating it is when you actually hit it spot on! Let me start by saying that if a viewer mistakenly believes that I blew the forecast, then a large part of the blame should fall on me! I’ve long heard …
27 December 2012
Images of The Big Christmas Storm
Some images and video of the worst Christmas severe weather outbreak on record. Along with the Christmas Day blizzard that struck Oklahoma and Arkansas. Some of these images were posted by my fellow broadcast mets. on Facebook etc. Worth sharing! The CCTV video from the Walgreen’s store in the path of the Mobile tornado leads off… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mulcOnyqSt8 KETK TV posted this satellite image showing lake effect snow…in NE Texas! and …
21 December 2012
Carl Sagan Passed Away 16 Years Ago Today
Sagan may be gone, but he is now inspiring a whole new generation. His Pale Blue Dot has now been seen by millions who were not even alive when he died 16 years ago today. There are literally thousands of scientists who were inspired by Sagan. After watching COSMOS, his amazing PBS series, I knew I wanted to study science. The fantastic discoveries being made in astrophysics and Astronomy today …
18 December 2012
NOAA Announces Astounding Planetary Heat Record
NASA data shows that November 2012 globally was the second warmest on record, surpassed only by 2010. NOAA keeps a second record and has November 2012 as 5th warmest. NOAA also announced that this past climatological autumn (Sep-Nov) was the second warmest on record and that this is (astonishingly) the 333 month in a row with global temps. above the 20th century average. The USA is on track for the warmest year on record …
11 December 2012
IPCC Climate Forecast from 1990- Amazingly Accurate.
Read the blog post below BEFORE watching the Carl Sagan lecture from last weeks AGU Annual meeting. I missed this year’s but I will be there in 2013. It’s the biggest Earth Science meeting on the planet. There is probably no scientific body that has been ridiculed by those who know nothing about science more than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. So much so that if someone criticizes them you can be …
8 December 2012
Voyager 1 Approaching The Last Exit On The Solar Systems Highway To The Stars
Voyager One was launched the Fall I started the undergraduate Meteorology program at the Univ. of Oklahoma (September 1977), and the fact that it is still working is pretty amazing. As the video above shows, it is reaching the edge of the Sun’s influence and within a few years it will enter interstellar space where it will remain for the eons. Project scientists this week announced that they are now …
6 December 2012
NASA Releases New “Lights at Night” Image In High Resolution.
This image is possible thanks to the VIIRS sensor on the new Suomi satellite. The day night band imagery has already produced some spectacular nighttime shots of clouds and storm systems. You can read more about Suomi here. You can overlay these on Google Earth by getting this KML File. There is a 55 MB Quick Time movie of the Earth at night from NASA here.
4 December 2012
New Science On Sea Level Rise Indicates Greenland And Antarctic Ice Melt Increasing.
Superstorm Sandy was a devastating tragedy, but if something like that could have a silver lining then the new public awareness of sea level rise is perhaps it. Just weeks after Sandy, comes a major paper in Science. The paper is the result of a collaboration by the top experts studying the mass balance of polar glaciers. If you get a chance, pick up a copy of Science and read Richard Kerr’s …
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.