You are browsing the archive for June 2015 - Page 2 of 2 - Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal.
15 June 2015
Flood Threat Growing for Texas
There is growing concern that a tropical cyclone may be forming in the Gulf tonight, and it will likely impact the Texas coast by late Monday. This system will probably not have time to reach hurricane strength but it does not matter since the threat is heavy flooding rains. While it will probably cross the coast well SW of Houston the heavy rains may affect the entire Texas coast, and …
12 June 2015
Two Future Atmospheric Scientists
If you ask almost anyone involved in atmospheric science, they’ll tell you that they were a born weather geek, and that is why when we meet a young person who lives and breathes weather, we do all we can to encourage them. The advice is always the same, take all the math and science you can in high school, to prepare for some tough college courses, and in the …
10 June 2015
The U.S. Is About To Almost Catch Up to Japan and Europe With GOES-R Satellite
I spent the day in a short course on weather satellites here in Raleigh,NC today. The course is part of the 43rd AMS Conference on Broadcast Meteorology, and I was invited to present a talk about some experimental products I evaluated at the NOAA Hazardous Weather Test-Bed last June. We spent the day looking at exactly what the GOES-R will be able to see, and what each of the visible …
7 June 2015
The Greatest Geek Experiment Ever
Will toilets in different hemispheres drain in opposite directions? This has long been a great trivia question and the usual answer is that the radius of rotation is too small to detect any difference. This basically true, because the rotation you see mainly depends on how the toilet is constructed. However, if you control for everything, can you detect the coriolis force in the way a child’s kiddie pool drains?? …
6 June 2015
Amazing Greenland
I’ve been lucky enough to visit Greenland twice, and it is truly a place of amazing beauty. A friend who lives just a couple of blocks away from me here on the Eastern Shore of Maryland just got back from the 2015 operation Ice Bridge mission where the video below is from. Ice Bridge is filling in data on the changes in the ice sheets to cover the loss of …
4 June 2015
Slow Down, What Slow Down?
Update 9 PM June 14: NASA Climate expert Gavin Schmidt has a more technical explanation of the Karl paper today on Real Climate. I’ve chatted before with Tom Karl about how difficult it is to measure the planet’s temperature. Karl,who is the head of the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (Formerly known as the Nat. Climate Data Center) is probably one of the top five experts on this anywhere, …
An Online Course Every High School Science Student Should Take
John Cook at the University of Queensland (along with others) has produced a very good course about climate change and its denial. He also covers the consensus among scientists, and why the claims by the deniers are so laughably wrong. I keep up with the research, and have read a lot about the psychology behind why people will refuse to accept the obvious, but I still learned quite a few things I did …
3 June 2015
This Will Make You Sit Down and Think For A While
I spotted this video thanks to Joe Hanson at It’s OK To Be Smart. He said after watching it that he needed to sit down and think for a while. I love reading about relativity, but i agree with Joe! To get you to watch the 10 minute video, a question: You have identical watches, one you wind up and is running the other is not. Do they have the …
1 June 2015
Something to Show your Neighbor Who Thinks Climate Change is a Hoax
One of the most common claims (by those who got their education about atmospheric physics staring at a computer screen in the basement) is that the increase in Antarctic Sea ice proves the planet is not warming. This myth is surprisingly widespread and persistent, and frequently gets mentioned on national news outlets that cater to people with a particular world view. Peter Sinclair, and the folks at the Yale Forum …
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.