Dan’s Wild Wild Weather Journal

When James-Paul Dice left for Birmingham, (Don’t get me crying again) he left a vacancy in a class he had been teaching at Calhourn Community College, here in Huntsville. JP talked me into taking it over for him, and I will start teaching Environmental Science on Monday.

JP swears I will love it, and since I do love everything to do with Earth Science, he may very well be right.

For those of you wondering how JP is doing, the answer is GREAT. We both still work for the same company, he is now the Chief Meteorologist at WBRC in Birmingham. A WAY overdue promotion for him. In case you could not tell, JP and I are not just co workers, but good friends. We LOVED working together during severe storms. We could read each others thoughts!

Back to teaching for a second.

I’ve taught some off, and on but never a class for a whole semester. What kind of teacher will I be?

Hopefully a good one!

I suffer fools poorly. Very poorly in fact, so students who did not find the time to read the assigned pages will find little sympathy from me. Where they will find sympathy is in not understanding something. I have always been thick with new concepts and I will do ANYTHING to make sure they understand it.

The average person really does not grasp how much an impact humans are having on our planet. My research for this class has been a real eye opener. We face some real challenges as global citizens in the very near future. The image below is from SCIENCE in July 2007. It shows the human impact on the Earth’s surface.

Science 29 June 2007:
Vol. 316. no. 5833, pp. 1866 - 1869
DOI: 10.1126/science.1140170
Domesticated Nature: Shaping Landscapes and Ecosystems for Human Welfare
Peter Kareiva,1,2* Sean Watts,2 Robert McDonald,3 Tim Boucher1

There are some fabulous instructors out there, and one internationally renowned biologist is just down the block. I count him as a friend and have listened carefully to his advice on how to pass on my love of science to my students.

There is talk of a war on science in this country. It does indeed seem like it, with teachers still having to be careful about teaching evolution in some cities. Trust me when I tell you that this is looked upon with utter amazement, and disbelief in most countries in Europe.

Then there are the ridiculous attacks on Climate Change Science. Most of these by web sites that are mainly politics in a thin disguise of high school physics. Some of those who do weather around the country, and have an AMS seal are guilty of passing on this kind of junk science.

You would think that sometime during their education, they were taught what Peer Review is.

I know one goup of students who are about to get a very indepth lecture on it!

Back in the late 1990’s i put together a web site on weather for kids. It is currently under a redevelopment, but I have put together a new web site on climate. This site is aimed at an older audience. Generally from High School on up.

The reason for this site is my concern that the public still has a limited understanding on the Science of Climate Change and most importantly, many still believe that the Science community is divided on the issue. THEY ARE NOT. Only a small handful of those working in the field disagree with the basic theory. This is out of thousands. Don’t believe me - watch this.

The web is full of ridiculous claims about climate change. Most on political commentary sites. Many of these political opinions are disguised as basic High School Physics.

Meteorology is a broad field, and I am a Synoptic Forecaster, not a Climate Scientist. Like most Meteorologists (make that all!), I frequently get questions about climate change. In the past, I avoided saying anything definitive for 3 reasons.

1. I was not familiar enough with the science.

2. Very political - why tick off viewers.

3. Too busy with other projects to spend the time needed to bring myself up to speed.

In 2005, I changed my mind.

One set of graphics did that overnight.

After that, I spent hours a week reading everything I could get my hands on. I had to brush back up on my Calculus, and then learn some grad level statistics that almost fried my brain. (I will never be a climate scientist- I shall be happy with my Masters in Earth Science!) I thought I had cracked a book written by Holton for the last time, but I was wrong! (A joke for my fellow Meteorology weasels out there).

What I learned was incredibly fascinating, and very concerning.

Mankind is carrying out the greatest experiment in history on our climate. The research in the last decade has confirmed that our climate does NOT react like the dimmer switch over your dining room table. It more closely resembles the behaviour of the street light in front of your house…. and the sun is setting.

The site includes a power point audio visual presentation for teachers to show to classes. It is based completely on PEER REVIEWED science and the result of 150 hours of work. I hope it will be used widely by teachers looking for some reliable information on Climate Change.

It does NOT cover what we do about climate change. That is for all of us living on the blue, and green Earth to figure out.

http://wildwildclimate.com or click image.

Occasionally a paper is published by a renowned expert or a group of experts in a field that summarizes what we know about a particular topic. These papers are usually destined to be referred to many times and cited by other papers for years to come. Dr. Micheal Mann and Dr. Phil Jones wrote one in 2004 that you should read.

While I realize most readers of this journal may not read papers in the Science journals often, I think this one should be an exception. This is a high tech town, and there are a ton of folks here that DO read things like this. Many others  write papers that are an order of magnitude more complex. Teachers as well around the world should add this to their reading list.

Even if you are not included in the above, this is a great paper to read. Nothing would make me happier than to hear from a young student that read this entire paper.

Michael Mann is one of this country’s top climate scientists, and Phil Jones is head of the famous Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in the UK (Hadley Center).

This paper summarizes what we know about the Earth’s climate over the past 1000 years. It also shows how ridiculous some of the claims in online junk science sites really are. You can read more about climate on my new Wild Wild Climate Page.

The paper can be accessed by clicking on the image below.

Admit it.

Sometime in the past you have complained that it always seems to rain on the weekend. In the back of your mind though, you told yourself that it really doesn’t rain more on any one day of the week.

Right???

WRONG! (If your in the Southeast U.S. anyway.)

Seems that a group of scientists decided to test a theory that it should rain more during the latter half of the work week than on the weekend. This makes sense because rain drops form on aerosols. (Aerosols include dust, sea salt, and soot etc. from air pollution.) More air pollution-more rain.

There was a famous paper (well in the geeky science world that I live in) about this affect about 30 years ago. The paper looked at rainfall downwind from St. Louis, and found that rain amounts were noticeably higher in Illinois to the East. Something the farmers there have for some reason decided not to complain too much about!

Along comes the TRMM satellite. The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite was the first time we put a good old fashioned weather radar on a rocket and blasted it into low Earth orbit. There has been a ton of science coming out of this radar. Including a study by NASA using our ARMOR Dual Polarimetric Radar.

Thomas Bell of Nasa Goddard, and several other scientists have written a paper about using the TRMM satellite to track rainfall variations by day of the week. They found that indeed there is a signal. Wednesday and Thursday are wetter than Saturday and Sunday over the Southeast. Not only that. The opposite is true in the Atlantic Ocean, to the east of the S.E. USA.

This makes sense for two reasons. First, the air pollution will get pushed eastward by the prevailing westerlies. So the weekend will have more aerosols in the air over the Atlantic.More aerosols-more weekend rainfall.

Secondly, (A bit more complex) is the atmosphere must maintain hydrostatic balance. In other words if air rises up into thunderstorms over the southeast, it has to sink back down somewhere else to compensate. Therefore, the Western Atlantic should be drier if we are wetter. This phenomenon is very noticeable around hurricanes. You usually see very litte airmass thunderstorm activity outside the circulation of a tropical storm.

So yes, all that junk we spew into the atmosphere not only reduces the visibility, it makes it rain more. (Visibilities in the Great Smokey’s are less than half what they were 50 years ago!) Look on the bright side. The weekend is ever so slightly drier and sunnier!

I found the paper in pdf form on Doctor Bell’s website:

http://climate.gsfc.nasa.gov/publications/fulltext/Bell-etal_JGR_2008.pdf

NASA has a summary here: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2008/midweek_rainfall.html

If Math scares you, use the second link.

Later,

Dan

If you’re reading this blog from North Alabama or Tennessee then you have likely never heard of of Dr. Karl.

He is a household name in Austrailia though, and well known to listeners of the BBC as well.

Karl Kruszelnici is one of the smartest people you will ever likely come across. A Phycisist, Medical Doctor, Biologist, and TV Personality all rolled into one. I listen each week as he answers questions about science on BBC Radio 5 Live. I always learn something new.

Dr. Karl makes Science fun & interesting! (Something I try to do every day on TV here in Huntsville-with limited success, I think!)

You can check out his very popular website here at ABC Austrailia.

Doctor Karl is on Thursday morning at 3am London time. That is 9pm Wednesday night in the U.S. Central Time Zone. You can listen live to Radio 5 on the BBC.

Do what I do though, download the podcast of the Up All Night program on BBC Radio 5. I hear it is one of the most popular podcasts online! Click the small image below to get the podcast. (I hope the BBC legal folks don’t mind my grabbing the pic)