Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal

This has certainly turned into a Spring to remember here in the Southeast corner of North America. North Alabama in particular has been hit by storm after storm, with over 11 inches of rain falling in parts of the Huntsville area since May first. I am writing this on the 6th!

Data from ARMOR radar showing EF2 tornado this morning in Madison AL. Blue is wind toward the radar. Yellow is wind away from radar. The radar is at the bottom of the image.

Small tornadoes like EF0 and EF1 (EF means Enhanced Fujita Scale) are very difficult to see on radar, so the warning time is usually short. Nowcasting a severe weather outbreak can be very stressful when these are the type of storms expected. This morning, yet another tornado hit North Alabama. This one was on the ground for nearly 18 km, and did considerable damage with winds of 1oo knots. The width of the path was around 75 Meters.

I know what golf ball size hail means!

The advent of digital cameras, and email has brought a whole new dimension to severe weather nowcasting. Meteorologists who work in TV, and for NOAA, often get emails with valuable information and pictures during severe weather. I have been thinking for awhile about writing about what we find very helpful and what we usually filter out. I have some examples of images too.

A scary looking Shelf Cloud is commonly mistaken for a "funnel". They do bring high winds though.

First of all, what we need.

1. Email reports of any hail and use coin sizes to describe it. Nickel, quarter, looney, two-ney (Canada) and a “Pound coin” (UK).

You get the idea.

DON’T use the words “marble size”. I don’t know how big your marbles are. You may have lost them for all I know! I know I lost mine a long time back!

2. Wind damage that is greater than small limbs down.

3. Significant structural damage, and be specific. This helps us estimate wind speeds.

4. Tornado clearly visible.

5. Well developed shelf cloud, if you are certain of what you are seeing.

What we tend to filter out:
1. Funnel cloud. Meaningless and useless, unless it comes from a trained spotter.

2. Wall cloud. Again, this is useless unless it is from a trained ham spotter. A wall cloud is the parent cloud of a tornado and develops in the rain free part of the storm. It usually exhibits rotation, and will hold it’s shape for longer than 10 minutes. TV programs on the Weather Channel, Weather Network (CANADA), also the Discovery Channel, have caused the public to see wall clouds everywhere when a tornado warning is issued. Only a small percentage of the wall cloud pictures I am sent are really of wall clouds.

Wall Cloud near Florence Al. 2007.

Occasionally, a viewer will send me a pic of one, and ask what it is. I realize that they had no idea they were in danger.

There are some excellent resources on the web that will show you what a wall cloud, and a shelf cloud looks like. I always tell people, that if you see a real wall cloud, it will look EXACTLY like the pictures. IF you would like to know more about spotting severe weather, this slide set from NOAA is a good start. Another good page is here.

When Carl Sagan passed in 1996 the world of Science lost it’s greatest champion. I’ve been reading Richard Dawkin’s The Oxford Book Of Modern Science Writing. He included a snippet from Carl Sagan’s book “The Demon-Haunted World“.

Cosmologist/Astronomer Carl Sagan died in 1996

Sagan writes some profound thoughts, and I quote from it below. You should get and read both books.

From ”The Demon-Haunted World” by Carl Sagan:

We’ve arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements- transportation, communication, and all other industries; agriculture, medicine, education, entertainment, protecting the environment; and even the key democratic institution of voting- profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things, so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for awhile, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.

…For much of our history, we were so fearful of the outside world, with it’s unpredictable dangers, that we gladly embraced anything that promised to soften or explain away the terror. Science is an attempt, largely successful to understand the world, to get a grip on things, to get a hold of ourselves. To steer a safe course. Microbiology, and meteorology now explain what only a few centuries ago was considered sufficient cause to burn women to death.

Avoidable human misery is more often caused by not so much by stupidity, but by ignorance, particularly ignorance about ourselves. I worry that…pseudoscience and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive.

…The candle flame [ of Science] gutters. It’s little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The Demons begin to stir.

_______________________________

I end with another book recommendation.

Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson is an author best known for his book Notes On A Small Island. It’s a must read for any fellow anglophiles out there. Imagine my surprise when he turns around, and writes what perhaps is the best popular Science book of all time. Well, excluding Charles Darwin’s Origins of the Species of course. Did you know that Darwin and Lincoln were born on the exact same day. Feb. 12 1809!

A Short History of Nearly Everything is a must read.

Later,

Dan

Click the book for a link to Amazon

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What were you doing on Christmas Eve 1968?

If you are younger than 40 you weren’t even alive. I hit 50 next month, and I remember it well. Not just because I was 9 years old and Christmas morning was a few hours away. Apollo 8 was circling the Moon, and I was  (and still am) a Space nut. Human beings on that Christmas Eve were for the first time in human history, looking at the Earth from another World. We take it for granted now, but in 1968, this was an almost unbelievable event. My Grandfather never did really believe it.

The Crew of Apollo 8: Borman, Anders and Lovell

The Crew of Apollo 8: Borman, Anders and Lovell

When Apollo 8 went around the edge of the Moon, all contact was lost with Earth.  NASA had a nervous half hour plus waiting for the Spacecraft to re-emerge. Hopefully the Astronauts would have successfully fired their engine, and slowed down enough to fall into Lunar Orbit. Finally, through the static the voice of Frank Borman said, “OK Houston, you can tell the world, we have arrived.”

Those words were spoken just after the astronauts saw something incredible. Earth rise. The Bright Blue Earth rose above the gray Moon as they rounded the back side. Bill Anders grabbed a camera and took a quick snap. It has become one of the most famous photos ever taken. Probably, it is THE most famous photograph ever made.

It also changed the World.

Earthrise from Apollo 8. 24 Dec. 1968 By Bill Anders

From the Dawn of human history through the 1960′s the human mindset was “us against nature”. A popular song in the 70′s was titled “You and me against the World”. This was how Humans thought of our relationship with the planet. Over the last 4,000 years, humans had learned to shelter ourselves, and develop agriculture. We  built cities, and in the 1800′s America tamed the continent. The idea that we could significantly harm the planet was not really considered. Nature was the enemy to be battled against. Humans were tiny. The world was huge. It  could care less about us.

In reality however, it was no longer true in 1968, and it’s much more a falsehood now.

You could argue that we can’t harm the planet, and you would be right. It’s probably more correct to say that humans are harming themselves, and the other life on the planet. The Earth will adjust. New life will evolve suited to the changed Earth. This itself is nothing new. 99.9% of the species that have ever lived on Earth are now extinct. The Biologists tell us that the more successful a species is, the sooner it goes extinct. Go figure that. We humans have been around for less than 5 million years. Dinosaurs lasted well over 100 million years. The Trilobytes lasted even longer before they died suddenly in the great Permian extinction.

Bill Anders photo changed the human mindset. For the first time in Human history, we humans saw just how insignificant a home we have in the vast Universe. A small island of colourful life in lonely cosmos. The foundations had been layed before Anders took that photo. Rachel Carson had written “SILENT SPRING”. It was perhaps the first environmental best seller. A popular public service announcement on TV against littering and pollution, featured an Indian who cried at the site of a littered landscape. It was a powerful 60 second spot.

Rachel Carson wrote the first environmental best seller. wiki.

Just 16 months after Bill Anders pressed the shutter release on Apollo 8, the planet celebrated the first EarthDay.

Scientists in the late 1960′s warned that if we did not change our ways, that by the end of the century, the majority of our rivers would be seriously polluted, and that Ocean fishing stocks would crash. Others warned that millions would suffer health affects from air pollution. Still other scientists warned Congress that there was growing evidence that we were risking our stable climate by continuing to burn fossil fuel at an increasing rate. President Lyndon Johnson was first warned of this in 1965!

Asian Brown Cloud from NASA/NOAA

So here we are 40 years later, and most every one of those predictions have come true, and much more. Nearly every major river on this planet is heavily polluted. The air pollution is so bad in Asia that a giant brown cloud blocks the sunlight, over the planet from India to China. The Asian brown cloud has reduced sunlight by more than 10%, in huge swaths of the planet. Invasive species are costing governments, and citizens billions each year. With the Arctic ice melting at an alarming rate, it seems that humans have, at last, gotten the message. Is it too late?

A series of papers in the journal NATURE last week, have shown that we may have less than 40 years to make DRASTIC cuts in greenhouse gases. That’s  IF we want to hold the warming of our planet to 2C. This will still be a major change to our Climate, but almost no serious Climate Scientist thinks we can hold it below 2C now.

We humans learn slowly it seems. Still, we should all be glad that the crew of Apollo 8 thought to grab a photo of the Earth rise on Christmas Eve 1968.

Later,

Dan