You are browsing the archive for November 2017 - Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal.
24 November 2017
The Ten Mile Time Machine
I flew to the middle of the Chesapeake Bay Tuesday to visit Tangier Island. It’s just a 25-minute ride on the WBOC Chopper, and one of the most beautiful rides I’ve ever had in Chopper 16 (Yea, and I get paid to do this!). We made the trip to do a quick story on the new (much needed automated (AWOS3) weather station, and the photos are mine. (I’ve added the video …
20 November 2017
Everyone Fights Confirmation Bias, but Science Teaches You How To Win the Battle.
Read the comments on any news story, and you get a free lesson on confirmation bias. This error in thinking strangles our ability to analyse information and make rational decisions. Doctors see it in patients that refuse vaccines for their children and waste money on homoeopathic sugar water in fancy bottles. Vitamin salesman, astrologers, and naturopaths rely on it for a living. It’s also responsible for the anger (rather than the thanks) …
14 November 2017
Attribution Study Shows Hurricane Harvey Floods Becoming Much More Likely
Check out this paper in PNAS today. When the subject of hurricane experts comes up, there are two names that come into the mind of nearly every meteorologist: Kerry Emanuel and Chris Landsea. There are a lot of others, but these two have published a lot of research that gets sourced frequently. Today Kerry Emanuel has what can be called an attribution study on Hurricane Harvey. These studies look at how …
8 November 2017
Millions Along the Eastern Seaboard Will See Antares Launch Saturday
The Antares rocket will launch from NASA Wallops Island at 7:37 AM Saturday to bring supplies to the International Space Station. The weather will be clear and cold across the entire NE U.S. and the launch should be visible all the way into New England and as far south as South Carolina’s beaches. The low sun angle should light up the vapor trail of the rocket as it climbs into …
3 November 2017
New Climate Report- Humans Are Warming The Planet; There’s No Convincing Evidence for ANY Other Cause
The 4th U.S. Climate Assessment is HERE. A summary is here. Here are some key findings. I want to highlight what I think is the key finding: This assessment concludes, based on extensive evidence, that it is extremely likely that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases, are the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century. For the warming over the last century, there is no …
Twitter is Chem-trail Central
We’ve reached a sad state when this explanation needs to be written at the beginning of a scientific paper: Introduction The story goes like this: tens of thousands of commercial airliners a day are deliberately spraying some kind of mixture of toxic chemicals—either across the United States or possibly globally—in what would amount to one of the largest covert operations ever. The scheme has been going on for years, perhaps …
2 November 2017
Here’s What I Think Is Cool
I came into work and got a real surprise today. Then the news anchors surprised me again (See video below). Big thanks to Matthew Cappucci for writing such a great story and I’m honored to be included in his seven coolest broadcast meteorologists. Perhaps even more so since I have gray hair! Matthew will soon be Harvard’s FIRST meteorology grad by the way, and that’s what I’d call really cool! I actually had …
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.