Dan’s Wild Wild Weather Journal

I have read some great books on science this year and I want to share them with you. If you saw my Quick Science report on Sunday morning, then these are the books I was talking about.

Two of them are by one author: Kerry A. Emanuel, Ph.D.

Doctor Emanuel is a professor of Atmospheric Science at what is arguably the best engineering school in the world. MIT in Boston. In my opinion he is the world’s greatest expert on hurricanes. His book Divine Wind is the best I have read on the subject. He has done the impossible in writing a book that is loved by scientist and non scientist alike. Buy it..you will not regret it.

Here is a link to the book on Amazon: Divine Wind
His newest book is about climate change and it is here: About Climate Change

Last but not least is another book on climate. The Two Mile Time Machine is not about the future climate but instead it covers the climate of the past… deduced from ice cores in Greenland. It is a much better and more interesting read than you think it is!

I link to Amazon for convenience, but you can order them from any book seller!

I have received two really neat pictures illustrating atmospheric phenomena this week. One is local from Ralph Koepsel of Ider. The other was taken from an aircraft carrier in the Pacific.

The first shot was taken Tuesday afternoon and is a great image of Snow Virga falling from high based clouds over Dekalb County. The snow evaporated long before it reached the ground, but it was clearly visible from below.

The other shot one an award as the science shot of the year. A jet, breaking the sound barrier just above the Pacific ocean. The shock waves produced as the plane flew at supersonic speeds caused the air around it to expand and contract. When it expands, the air suddenly cools, and moisture condenses to form a cloud! The picture was taken by John Gay from the top of an aircraft carrier.

Enjoy!

Virga

Here is a press release from NOAA that you may find interesting. Yet another year of unusually warm weather in the USA and worldwide.

NOAA: 2007 a Top Ten Warm Year for U.S. and Globe

The year 2007 is on pace to become one of the 10 warmest years for the contiguous U.S., since national records began in 1895, according to preliminary data from NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. The year was marked by exceptional drought in the U.S. Southeast and the West, which helped fuel another extremely active wildfire season. The year also brought outbreaks of cold air, and killer heat waves and floods. Meanwhile, the global surface temperature for 2007 is expected to be fifth warmest since records began in 1880. Preliminary data will be updated in early January to reflect the final three weeks of December and is not considered final until a full analysis is complete next spring.

U.S. Temperatures

The preliminary annual average temperature for 2007 across the contiguous United States will likely be near 54.3 degrees F- 1.5 degrees F (0.8 degrees C) above the twentieth century average of 52.8 degrees F. This currently establishes 2007 as the eighth warmest on record. Only February and April were cooler-than-average, while March and August were second warmest in the 113-year record.

The warmer-than-average conditions in 2007 influenced residential energy demand in opposing ways, as measured by the nation’s Residential Energy Demand Temperature Index. Using this index, NOAA scientists determined that the U.S. residential energy demand was about three percent less during the winter and eight percent higher during the summer than what would have occurred under average climate conditions.

Exceptional warmth in late March was followed by a record cold outbreak from the central Plains to the Southeast in early April. The combination of premature growth from the March warmth and the record-breaking freeze behind it caused more than an estimated $1 billion in losses to crops (agricultural and horticultural).

A severe heat wave affected large parts of the central and southeastern U.S. in August, setting more than 2,500 new daily record highs.

Global Temperatures

The global annual temperature − for combined land and ocean surfaces – for 2007 is expected to be near 58.0 F – and would be the fifth warmest since records began in 1880. Some of the largest and most widespread warm anomalies occurred from eastern Europe to central Asia.

Including 2007, seven of the eight warmest years on record have occurred since 2001 and the 10 warmest years have all occurred since 1997. The global average surface temperature has risen between 0.6 degrees C and 0.7 degrees C since the start of the twentieth century, and the rate of increase since 1976 has been approximately three times faster than the century-scale trend.

The greatest warming has taken place in high latitude regions of the Northern Hemisphere. Anomalous warmth in 2007 contributed to the lowest Arctic sea ice extent since satellite records began in 1979, surpassing the previous record low set in 2005 by a remarkable 23 percent. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, this is part of a continuing trend in end-of-summer Arctic sea ice extent reductions of about 10 percent per decade since 1979.

U.S. Precipitation and Drought Highlights

Severe to exceptional drought affected the Southeast and western U.S. More than three-quarters of the Southeast was in drought from mid-summer into December. Increased evaporation from usually warm temperatures, combined with a lack of precipitation, worsened drought conditions. Drought conditions also affected large parts of the Upper Midwest and areas of the Northeast.

Water conservation measures and drought disasters, or states of emergency, were declared by governors in at least five southeastern states, along with California, Oregon, Maryland, Connecticut, and Delaware at some point during the year.

A series of storms brought flooding, millions of dollars in damages and loss of life from Texas to Kansas and Missouri in June and July. Making matters worse were the remnants of Tropical Storm Erin, which produced heavy rainfall in the same region in August.

Drought and unusual warmth contributed to another extremely active wildfire season. Approximately nine million acres burned through early December, most of it in the contiguous U.S., according to preliminary estimates by the National Interagency Fire Center.

There were 15 named storms in the Atlantic Basin (Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico) in 2007, four more than the long-term average. Six storms developed into hurricanes, including Hurricanes Dean and Felix, two category 5 storms that struck Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and Nicaragua, respectively (the first two recorded category 5 landfalls in the Atlantic Basin in the same year). No major hurricanes made landfall in the U.S., but three tropical depressions, one tropical storm and one Category 1 Hurricane made landfall along the Southeast and Gulf coasts.

La Niña conditions developed during the latter half of 2007, and by the end of November, sea surface temperatures near the equator of the eastern Pacific were more than 3.6 degrees F (2 degrees C) below average. This La Niña event is likely to continue into early 2008, according to NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center.

Links to data, graphics and analysis, in addition to further national and global data are available online at: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2007/ann/ann07.html

NOAA is dedicated to enhancing economic security and national safety through the prediction and research of weather and climate-related events and information service delivery for transportation, and by providing environmental stewardship of our nation’s coastal and marine resources. Through the emerging Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), NOAA is working with its federal partners, more than 70 countries and the European Commission to develop a global monitoring network that is as integrated as the planet it observes, predicts and protects.

On the Web:

NOAA: http://www.noaa.gov

NOAA’s Satellite and Information Service: http://www.nesdis.noaa.gov

NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov

I talked a lot about the disappearing Arctic ice pack in the North of 60 special. When we put it together, there was talk of the summer ice disappearing by the middle part of this century! This is well ahead of even the most aggressive climate models a few years ago.

This week at the American Geophysical Union meeting in California there was a stunning presentation about the ice. Professor Wieslaw Maslowski of the Naval Post Graduate School informed the meeting that the climate models were underestimating the heat being brought into the Arctic from ocean currents. He showed new projections that estimated the ice may disappear in less than 10 years!

Is he right? Dr. Mark Serraze of the Snow and Ice Data Center is an expert on the ice and he thinks these new projections are a bit fast, according to an interview with the BBC. Still, he also thinks that models forecast may not be off by much. The climate models have severely underestimated the rate of loss, and this new paper may have hit on the reason why. The ramifications may be that we do not have the time we thought we had to fix our greenhouse gas problem before we make serious changes to our climate. NASA Scientist Dr. Robert Hansen (One of the smartest climate scientists on the planet) says we could be at the tipping point. Not a point of no return, but a point at which we are going to suffer some dramatic changes. Changes that will occur no matter what we do in the future.

Later,

Dan

If you look at satellite images on TV or online then you are most likely looking at images from GOES 12. On the West Coast another GOES provides coverage of storms from Hawaii to as far East as Oklahoma.

Just before the 10 PM weathercast last night, I noticed that my satellite imagery was not updating. I suspected there was a hardware failure, or our down link dish was misaligned. Turned out that the problem was not on my end. It was much higher!

NESDIS is the National Environmental Satellite Information service. The manage the U.S. weather satellites. It seems that after a routine station keeping maneuver yesterday around 17 GMT, the Goes 12 quit working properly. GOES 12 has only been in Service for 4.5 years and should have lasted a long while longer.

NESDIS engineers are working to restore the data so hope is not lost. If the past is any indication though, it is likely a very expensive piece of orbital junk 22,5000 miles above the equator. It is WAY, WAY too high for the shuttle to reach it.

The good news is that there is a replacement already in orbit. Goes M is in storage, and NESDIS is moving ahead with planes to bring it online so the problem will likely be fixed soon. When GOES M is activated, it will be given the name GOES 13.

In the meantime, the old GOES satellite that was providing images of South America has been commanded to take images of North America.

Our data provider has quickly remapped the data onto the sectors I usually show on air. So people watching the evening weathercast tonight, likely had no idea anything was different. (Except that I told those watching about it!)

I am not sure that the world outside of Meteorology really understands just how vital these satellites are. They do so much more than just snap images of clouds! One Satellite Meteorologist once said that if all that weather satellites could do were track hurricanes they would be worth 10 times there cost!

Believe me, they do much more than that!

Update from NESDIS

The best online imagery is here by the way:

http://www.ghcc.msfc.nasa.gov/GOES/

Later,
Dan