Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal

Thanks to my friend Joe Witte at NBC for the heads up on this picture. It’s a view of the September temperature anomalies worldwide. As my previous post pointed out, September was the second warmest on the instrumental record.

The redder the image, the more it was above normal. The climate models have all predicted the Arctic will warm fastest. The reason for this is the ICE ALBEDO FEEDBACK .

Looks like they got it right doesn’t it. This pattern of high latitude warming has been seen for several decades now.

Notice the stripe of heat across the Arctic. Right in line with climate models. The ice albedo feedback is responsible.

The global temperatures for September are out today from the National Climate Data Center in Ashville NC. The trend of very warm temps. world wide continues. The Summer of 2009 will go down as one of the warmest on the instrument record and on the proxy record going back over a thousand years.

The sea ice trend in the Arctic continues down as well. More on this soon.

With the growing El Nino adding more heat to that being trapped by the record high levels of CO2 (for the past 10,000 years at least!) it is very possible we will set new planetary temperature records in this year or next. This El Nino is not likely to be as strong as the one in 1998, so we may fall just short.

If you are wondering about the Troposphere as a whole, the news is no better. Both the UAH and RSS satellite temperature data is indicating that Sep. was the second warmest on their records as well. The average upward trend on the satellite data is around .15C/decade for the this past summer.

Later,

Dan

This past week has brought some serious flooding to California. This could not come at a worse time with so many hills and mountains denuded of ground cover by the Summer fires. No ground cover means nothing to hold the soaked soil in place, and it will take even less rain than normal to start the famous mud slide season.

Here in my part of the world, it’s almost as bad. Heavy rains have fallen for weeks here in the Southeast corner of North America. You should see the path from my driveway to the front door. The sidewalk of brick is under the mud.

Is it likely to continue?

YES

You can blame it on El Nino. The folks at NOAA who keep up with the temperatures of the Equatorial Pacific have updated forecasters with their latest data and model runs. It looks likely we will see a moderate El Nino this winter. For Geeks- you can get the NOAA powerpoint for forecasters here: enso_evolution-status-from NOAA CPC

El Nino is officially here when the surface water in an area of the Pacific, called the NINO 3.4 region, is warmer than normal by .5C for three months in a row. (see map and graphic above.)

This means more dust in Austrailia and even more drought. California and the Gulf Coast can expect a very wet and stormy Winter. It will likey be very mild across Western Canada.

Something to remember here. Every El Nino is a little different.

So far the rains here in the southeast seem to be a bit further North than is typical for El Nino. There is no way of knowing if that will continue into December, but if you live in the Southeast or California, prepare for a wet winter. Snow lovers in the Canadian Rockies may be in for a disappointing season.

Temperature Anomalies in the Pacific- Courtesy NOAA- Climate Prediction Center.

Numerical weather prediction models are all predicting the El Nino to continue and several are indicating a strong one. Most are indicating a moderate event. (see below)

Forecasts of El Nino this winter from several different model runs. (NOAA)

There are also some climate change aspects to this story. The warm waters produces by El Nino cause the planetary temperature to rise. The El Nino of 1998 was one of the strongest on record and made that year exceptionally warm. La Nina does just the opposite.

The global warming deniers on their junk science web sites (Political propaganda really), draw a line from the warm 1998 year, to the cool La Nina years and then scream global cooling. There is only one word for that.

Ignorance.

The truth of the matter is that the planet continues to warm, and all the real science, shows that the melt in Greenland and the Antarctic is accelerating. I will have more on that in the next post.

This week is Earth Science Week as the title of this post seems to suggest. Monday was also Canadian Thanksgiving Day, but a honey dipped from Tim Horton’s would be a lot better than turkey!

NASA has released 6 videos in support of it. The theme this year is understanding climate. Based on some of the junk I have seen online recently, a lot of people don’t!

For those who teach, getting science based info on climate can be difficult, so here are a couple of items that may help! Two videos from NASA on rising sea level and the carbon cycle. Click on the movie place holders to watch them!

embedded by Embedded Video

embedded by Embedded Video

NOAA also has released a booklet on climate literacy. This would make a great teaching aid or lab for an Environmental Science course.

Mouse on the image to get a high res. PDF of the booklet. Great job NOAA!

There has been a lot of junk science this week on the web and it did not help that the usually very trustworthy BBC even came out with a story that was unusually poor in science fact. The headline was the worst part of it, but the story itself was rather junky. It even went so far as to bring up the silly cosmic rays myths.

Richard Black of the BBC would have done a heck of lot better!

Just so you know. If someone tells you that the globe is not warming or that it stopped warming in 1998, you are being given a load of political bull ####.

The real climate scientists at REAL CLIMATE must be sick and tired of busting this myth over, and over, but they wrote a nice post on it last week.

Even better is an excellent piece produced by NASA/JPL explaining the UP’s and DOWNS of GLOBAL WARMING. Many thanks to my Twitter friend New Science 101 who tipped me on it!

Those who purposefully spread this junk, do not care, and more likely are incapable of understanding the truth.  It’s sad when this kind of junk propaganda confuses those who are trying to learn about science.

More the pity if they are students.

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….

Hurricane Carla in September 1961. The eye is visible on the Galveston WSR 57 radar. This was the first hurricane on radar that TV viewers had seen.

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 category 4 storm and heading right toward the city. The reporter showed up at the local weather bureau office and saw an image of the hurricane on the newly installed radar.The Galveston WSR 57 radar had been installed just the year before.

It was a scary picture and he wanted to show it on air. This was unheard of at the time. It had never been done before!

This request required permission from the Weather Bureau headquarters in Washington. It was supposedly given very reluctantly, but it had the desired effect. Most people got out of town before Carla stormed ashore. That young TV news guy from Houston was named Dan Rather by the way. Betcha didn’t know that!

It was not much of a radar by today’s standards. It had no Doppler capability, and was built on World War 2 technology. They were the main weather radar used by the National Weather Service  (Successor to the Weather Bureau), until the last one was decommissioned in 1996.

The replacements are called WSR 88D. This stands for Weather Service Radar 1988 Doppler. It was, however, not up and running in most places until the mid 1990′s.

DOPPLER RADAR

Doppler Radar image of winds showing the Greensburg Kansas EF5 tornado. The blue colour near Greensburg is strong wind blowing toward the radar. The Pink is very strong wind going away from the radar. The tornado wiped out the town of Greensburg.

Doppler Radar has the ability to detect rain drops (and anything else in the beam) moving toward or away from the radar. This is based on the Doppler effect. It’s the same affect that you hear when a train passes by and the tone or frequency of the horn changes. This effect happens with ALL electromagnetic radiation as well. This includes light and radio waves (Which are basically the same thing!).

Astronomers use it to determine how fast stars that are millions of light years away are moving away from us. It’s called the red shift, because the light from objects moving away is shifted toward the red light end of the spectrum.

Is this real rain on the radar? NO! Read on! (NWS Jacksonville WSR88D)

Tornadoes are spotted on Doppler radar when rain drops are rotated around an intense low pressure in a thunderstorm. This intense low is called a meso (small scale) cyclone. These mesocyclones are the parent circulation of a tornado. Only a few mesocyclone produce tornadoes, and for this reason, false alarm rates on tornado warnings remain unacceptably high. Keep in mind the radar can only detect the motion of objects moving toward or away from it. Not side to side.

This same technology is very possibly responsible for your last speeding ticket!

THINGS YOU SHOULD REMEMBER

Radars do not see rain!

They just detect radiation that is reflected back as the narrow beam travels outward. Bugs, dust, hail stones, birds and even clouds reflect the beam as well! Weather radars operate mainly at a wave length between 3 and 10cm. This minimises reflections from objects that are much bigger, or smaller than rain drops. A chunk of ice with a coating of water is a very good reflector at these wavelengths, and many times what you may think is heavy rain is actually hail.

Rain intensity is measured in dbz which is based on the power returned to the radar. 20 dbz is a very light rain. 40 dbz is very heavy. 50 dbz is blinding rain or may be hail. Most online or on TV radars use red and yellow for the higher values. These values are vaild only if the returns on the radar are from rain drops!

Radar Beams Don’t Travel long The Ground!

Radar beams get higher as they go away from the radar dish. This can cause storms to not show up at all! Image from NOAA

The radar beam travels in a basically straight line away from the radar. It is usually pointed at 0.5 to 2 degrees above the horizon. Since the Earth is curved, a radar beam is usually nearly  25 km high when it hits an object 500 km away! This is above all but the most violent thunderstorms. Tornadoes are low level phenomenon.  A radar is unlikely to detect a circulation around one more than 150 km away. Even 100 km is really stretching it.

Radar Beams Sometimes Hit The Ground!

Temperature inversions can cause the radar beam to hit the ground (NOAA image)

On clear, calm nights, a strong temperature inversion may develop. This means the air warms with height. These inversions cause a density difference in the atmosphere that bends the beam to the ground. The radar may look like it is detecting strong storms. It’s just dirt!

Meteorologists call this Anomalous Propagation. Our top news anchor at the station keeps telling me that he had a case of that once, but the doctor gave him a cream that cleared it right up!

The Newest Technology

The TV station I work for was the first in the world to install a Dual Polarimetric Radar. The NWS is upgrading most of their Doppler radars to this technology as well. The reason: The ability to determine the shape of objects in the beam.

Image from our ARMOR radar. Click image for live view.

This has fabulous possibilities. We have even detected debris from a large tornado on our radar. We call it ARMOR for Advanced Radar for Meteorological Operations and Research. The University of Alabama at Huntsville and WHNT developed ARMOR jointly. I use it for forecasting and on air, and they are doing some incredible research science with it.

ONE LAST THING

A line of storms or an area of rain will change as it moves along. Do not assume that a storm 100 km away will be as strong, or even still exist when it reaches you. Remember also that the further away it is, the higher in the storm you are looking. The rainfall pattern may look much different near the ground. Radar is a remote sensing tool. It does great things, but it’s only detecting radio waves. No more, and no less!

Later,

Dan