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You are browsing the archive for Meteorology Archives - Page 4 of 6 - Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal.

9 January 2010

The Great Bottom of The World Rugby Match (Hello from Mac Town Antarctica)

I’ve spent one day and zero nights here at the bottom of the World now. Before bed last night I walked to building 155 to get  midnight rations in the cafeteria. The sun was shining high above the dirt main street that is McMurdo Station. Midnight rats, as they call it, was delicious. The NSF has kindly given me a distinguished visitor pass so I can eat right at midnight …

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15 December 2009

Have You Ever Seen an Ice Ribbon?

Joe Vaughn has. I received an email over the past weekend with a picture and a question. What is this?? What you are looking at is an ice ribbon. They are also sometimes called a frost flower. It’s been about a decade since a viewer sent me a picture of one. I have only seen them myself once. So what are they? Are they natural? Are they really ice? The …

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13 December 2009

Cocktail party facts about weather and climate models.

NASA has released this model of Earth’s weather from 9 days in last August. The model was run at a resolution of 7 km. This is a very high resolution for a global model. You can see a bigger picture of the model run HERE. It’s a stunning example of how well we can reproduce our atmosphere inside a computer! The highest resolution weather model I look at on a …

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2 December 2009

Could That Smoggy Yellow Haze Have Fried Your TV Set??

Lightning kills far more people in an average year than hurricanes and tornadoes. It also fries a lot of electronics too. I speak from experience there. Back in my storm chasing days, I couldn’t hear well for two hours after being very near a big bolt. Ask any storm chaser and they will tell you that lightning scares them far more than a tornado. So what does lightning have to …

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25 November 2009

I'm Heading To The Bottom of The World!

I’ve been keeping a big secret. Way back in August I had a call from a friend  who works at the National Environmental Education Foundation (NEEF) in Washington, DC. She asked if I’d heard that the National Science Foundation was opening up applications for science reporters to visit Antarctica. In case you have never looked into the logistics of going to the South Pole, let me educate you! I have. Oh, have …

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23 November 2009

Kudos to Meteorologist/Professor Scott Mandia

Sometimes it takes someone not in the forest to make the best sense of it. Most of the climate researchers ignore the junk those of us who work in media hear everyday. The widespread dissemination of this pseudo science is why I and several of my friends in meteorology have decided to blog on Climate Science on a frequent basis. Scott Mandia has produced an excellent presentation he takes to …

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11 October 2009

How To Interpret Weather Radar (A short course with no math!)

A SHORT HISTORY FIRST Weather radar is now a common site on any TV weathercast, and radar images are all over the Internet. It wasn’t really meant to be that way though…. Apparently, the first weather radar image of a dangerous storm shown on TV live was back in 1961. A Houston TV station sent a young reporter to Galveston to cover the approach of Hurricane Carla. It was a mean …

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26 August 2009

How Close We Came To an Atmospheric Catastrophe

A few weeks back there was a riveting summary in NATURE, of the science surrounding the Ozone hole. Quirin Schiermeier tells the story of how we averted an environmental catastrophe in the absolute nick of time.  It’s also a great example of how looking at unexpected observations in a logical way, can lead to a better knowledge of how the planet works. First some background. While most people have heard …

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5 July 2009

The Best Used Bookstore in The World? Maybe!

While in Portland, Oregon for a Climate seminar and weather conference last month, I was told that I MUST visit Powell’s books. I’m glad I did. It has to be one of the best bookstores around. My daughter swears that Shakespeare Books in Paris is better, but I have not been in that one. Still, if you are in either city, take this as a hearty recommendation! Powell’s is huge with …

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4 July 2009

A Picture Worth a Million Dollars (and it cost about that much too!)

To me the most fascinating part of synoptic forecasting is Satellite Meteorology. I can still remember working in Tulsa at KJRH TV where we had a GOES Unifax machine. Every 15 minutes a high resolution image would spit out. During the day the resolution was 1 km on a visible image. This was good enough to see jet contrails at times. One afternoon a large contrail was visible across Northeast …

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