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27 August 2010
Northwest Passage Opens (4th consecutive year)
Meteorologist Jeff Masters has a lot more about it, but the NW Passage is now mainly free of ice and is navigable. You can see a cool 30 day animation of the melt here. It looks like the NE Passage from Europe to Alaska is almost free as well. Masters says this is the 4th consecutive year that the passage has opened. It’s also the 4th time in recorded history. …
26 August 2010
A Good Website To Bookmark
NASA’s top climate scientist James Hansen has put together a new website. It basically updates the graphics in his book “Storms of My Grandchildren“. Definitely worth checking out for the graphics which are from papers published in the peer reviewed literature. If you have not read the book, I highly recommend it. It’s even available for iPad and Kindle (Which makes me happy since I pretty much read everything on …
10 August 2010
Tropical Storm Forming Off of Florida? (Update: Tropical Depression 5 Now)
There are strong signs that the area of disturbed weather in the Gulf is beginning to get organized today. Pressures are dropping and there seems to be a circulation already present. I suspect the the folks at the NHC in Miami will begin advisories on it later today. If it makes it to tropical storm strength it will be named Danielle. While it is a bit early to talk about …
6 August 2010
La Nina is Brewing – It May Be A Strong One
One of the reasons for the forecasts of a an active hurricane season is the predictions that La Nina would develop this summer. Remember that La Nina is an ocean circulation phase that brings unusually cold water to the surface of the Tropical Pacific. Well, it has started and most of the ocean atmosphere models are predicting a moderate to strong event. This has more impact than just the number …
15 July 2010
NOAA: First 6 Months of 2010- Hottest On Record.
NOAA/NCDC released a whole slew of rather grim climate news today. It’s important to remember that besides the sun and increasing greenhouse gases there is a lot of built in variability in the climate system. It’s only been in the last couple of decades that the greenhouse warming has risen out of the noise created by weather. That said, even with El Nino gone and the sun coming out of …
20 June 2010
Declining Penguins in a Sick, Oily, and Plastic Ocean
A couple of TED talks That should leave you angry. It does me. First is the slurry of plastic we now have in our oceans. One thing you can do is to NEVER use plastic at the grocery store. Next are one of my favourite subjects. Penguins. They truly are the warning sign of what we are doing to our oceans. Nearly every species on the planet is in sharp …
19 June 2010
Oil Slick from Space- New View
Click the image below to see in high res. It sure seems to be getting bigger… Dan Update: The pic below was Orange Beach last weekend. Image from Karen Parden. Click the image above for full resolution.
9 June 2010
New Images From Space Show a LOT of Oil
The images from the NASA Terra and Aqua satellites have at times shown the oil slick in the Gulf very dramatically. Today’s is one of the best I have seen. The sun angle was just right. You can also see a smoke plume at the very bottom. This is where they are burning the oil off the top of the ocean. (That seems very strange to have to write.) How …
6 June 2010
The Most Polluted City On Earth and The Pacific Garbage Dump
A link on the CNN website lead me to a couple of must see videos. Both are by vbs.tv. The first is on the most polluted city on Earth. Linfen, China. You may not know it but about 1% of all air pollution in the United States is estimated to originate in China. It takes a lot of coal to make the electricity to run the factories that make all …
5 June 2010
BP: No Subsurface Oil Plumes In Gulf- Wrong
There’s been a lot of talk about plumes of oil beneath the surface in the Gulf of Mexico. I haven’t said anything here or on air about it because I wasn’t sure who was right. BP says there are not. Several sources in the media say they’ve been told there are. The evidence now seems pretty conclusive that there are indeed subsurface plumes of oil. Here is the evidence. Exhibit …
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.