You are browsing the archive for July 2015 - Page 2 of 3 - Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal.
16 July 2015
Neil deGrasse Tyson & Stephen Colbert Talk About Pluto
What happens when two of the best science communicators eat a Klondike Bar and talk about Pluto. Watch and see. Oh, and yes I called Colbert a great science communicator, and here is why.
15 July 2015
NASA: June 2015 ties with 1998 as Hottest On Record
As greenhouse gases rise, we get more record hot months, but they are even more likely during an El Nino. Just like 1998, we have a strong one developing now. So far, this year is the warmest ever (Last year is currently the record holder), and 2015 has already seen a the hottest ever March and May, with January and February coming in as second hottest ever. Below is a …
NASA Releases New, and AMAZING Images of Pluto
You can sell your Planetary geology text book as a collector’s item now. It’s being rewritten! The New Horizons probe sent back stunning pictures of 3500 meter high mountains on Pluto today. Young mountains. NASA has a video that shows where on Pluto this image is from. More from NASA: Icy mountains on Pluto and a new, crisp view of its largest moon, Charon, are among the several discoveries announced …
13 July 2015
This is Why You Have Not Seen A Bunch of Images of Pluto This Weekend
July 14, 2015 is going to be an important date in the history book of space exploration. At about 7:50 AM Tuesday, New York time, the New Horizons probe will pass about 12,500 km from Pluto, and the most sophisticated set of instruments ever put in deep space will record high resolution images of the dwarf planet. Images of Pluto will be recorded in visible and infrared light, while other …
12 July 2015
Coastal Oceanography off North-East Greenland
THIS IS A GUEST POST BY OCEANOGRAPHER ANDREAS MUENCHOW AT THE UNIV. OF DELAWARE Greenland is melting, but it is not entirely clear why. Yes, air temperatures continue to increase, but what does it matter, if those temperatures are below freezing most of the time. What if the ocean does most of the melting a few 100 m below the surface rather than the air above? It means that gut feeling …
11 July 2015
Himawari 8 Gets Some Press From the NYT
Japan’s new weather satellite is getting a real workout as Typhoon Chan-Hom threatens Shanghai, and the New York Times published a really nice visual piece today showing some of its imagery. This satellite is capable of detecting light in the 3 visible channels of red,green, and blue and therefore we can see a color image of the Earth every few minutes. Check out the NYT piece HERE. GOES R will …
10 July 2015
Super Typhoon Headed Toward 23 Million People in Shanghai
The latest track from the Joint Typhoon Warning Center shows Super Typhoon Chan-Hom passing very near Shanghai, and landfall will likely be south of the city, putting Shanghai in the path of the highest storm surge. Winds are estimated at 120 knots, and while it will weaken some before landfall, it will still likely produce a major storm surge. This storm looks very healthy on satellite images tonight, and it …
9 July 2015
Best Image Ever of Pluto and Charon
New Horizons will get closer every day from now until July 14.
6 July 2015
Smoke North and Saharan Dust South
Several NASA satellites have sensors that can look at different wavelengths in the visible to infrared to sense things like dust and smoke. The image below is made up of two wavelengths around 500-550 nanometers in the visible light spectrum. Dust and smoke show up very well in this range. The red to the south is dust from the Sahara desert and the red across Canada and and the dark …
“Weather by Icon” Is A Bad Way To Get an Accurate Forecast
Every meteorologist will tell you the same thing. The most often heard comment they hear when they tell someone what they do for a living is something along the lines of “It must be nice to get paid to be wrong most of the time!”. My usual response is that my batting average is far above that of most major league baseball players, and they make a lot more than …
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.