Wunderground launches new Local Climate Change section
In honor of Earth Day on Sunday, wunderground has launched a new Climate Change Center, which gives people resources to understand how the climate is changing both globally and in their local neighborhoods. I am particularly pleased with our Local Climate Change feature, which allows one to see how temperature and precipitation have changed over the past 100+ years at the nearest station with a long period of measurements. Predictions from climate models on what the next 100 years may bring are overlaid for each station. Data for most U.S. stations goes back to 1895; we have data for a few stations in Europe that extend back to the 1700s. Berlin has the longest period of record in this database, with data back to 1702.
Figure 1. Screenshot of the Local Climate Change page for Washington, DC. Measured temperatures since 1820 are shown in grey. By clicking on the "Show post-1900 trend:" box, we see that the trend since 1900 has been for an increase in temperature of 1.5°C (2.7°F) per century. Moving the thin vertical red line over the image using the mouse shows that the warmest year on record in Washington D.C. was 1991. Predictions for a future with low emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide are shown in yellow; the high emissions prediction is shown in red. Separate tabs are available to examine precipitation and snow.
Skeptical?
Also included in the new Climate Change Center is a section addressing the common skeptical arguments made against climate change. We offer three levels of explanation. The "Basic" level is the default, but one can also see more technical in-depth discussions by clicking on the "See All Explanation Levels" link. The material was developed by physicist John Cook for his excellent skepticalscience.com web site, which is widely referenced in the climate science communication community.
Video 1. I'm featured in this video on extreme weather and climate change done by veteran videographer Peter Sinclair for the Yale forum on Climate Change and the Media this month. I'm also featured in Part 1 of this series. Our new Climate Change Center has a section for climate change videos, which includes a twice-monthly feature from GreenTV detailing the world's notable wild weather events of the past two weeks.
Earth: the Operator's Manual airs Sunday night
Penn State climate scientist Dr. Richard Alley hosts parts II and III of Earth: the Operator's Manual on PBS beginning at 7pm Sunday, April 22--Earth Day. Part I of this excellent series aired in April 2011. The series gives an overview of climate change, but primarily focuses on what we can do to help slow down climate change though smart energy choices. Dr. Alley, a registered Republican, geologist, and former oil company employee, is the Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences at the Pennsylvania State University, and one of the most respected and widely published world experts on climate change. Dr. Alley has testified before Congress on climate change issues, served as lead author of "Chapter 4: Observations: Changes in Snow, Ice and Frozen Ground" for the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and is author of more than 170 peer-reviewed scientific articles on Earth's climate. He is also the author of a book I highly recommend--The Two Mile Time Machine, a superb account of Earth's climate history as deduced from the 2-mile long Greenland ice cores. Dr. Alley is an excellent and engaging speaker, and I highly recommend listening to his 45-minute keynote speech, "The Biggest Control Knob: CO2 in Earth's Climate History", given at the 2010 American Geophysical Union meeting, via this very watchable recording showing his slides as he speaks in one corner of the video. If you want to understand why scientists are so certain of the link between CO2 and Earth's climate, this is a must-see lecture.
Have a great weekend, everyone, and I'll be back Monday with a new post. I'd like to thank Wunderground meteorologist, Angela Fritz for spearheading the creating the new Climate Change Center; it's a product I'll be referring to frequently in the future, and one we'll be updating in the coming months with data on local sea level rise, fire risk, and drought.
Jeff Masters
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Last year, on Jan. 4th(Post 11,) another song by this same artist, who has sadly now passed, would be used to forecast another kind of spring; what would later be called the "Arab spring," and the fall of a modern day Pharaoh in Egypt.
Post 765. OracleDeAtlantis 7:01 AM GMT on April 05, 2012
He is either in school, or crying into his cereal that his hype didn't pan out (like usual).
Snowfall Totals
5,100 miles away.
This summer will bring some interesting finds on the beach in the Pacific NW.
It was a cool windy morning but I am glad we got much needed rain.
I actually had snow mixed in with the rain around 9:15 this morning, just outside of Fairfax.
April 23, 2012 SST Anomaly
A picture of Electra and Tornado
It was a evening like any other evening. Tornado had just gotten up after a full day of rest and daytime heating. After eating a bowl of instant Instability and Moisture and swallowing a glass of cool refreshing Dry Air, Tornado got ready for the night.
He mosied on down to a popular (and noisy) little night spot called "The Ground". The usual suspects were there. Over at the bar was Hail Core, giving everyone the cold shoulder. In the corner was Torrential Downpour, always crying into his drink. Cumula Nimbus, always the large matronly and rowdy barkeep, was serving her drinks to the patrons. And of course, Wall Cloud and Straightline Winds were tangling it up on the dance floor.
"Hey Tornado! What'll ya have?" Cumula Nimbus hollered over the noise.
"Give me a Flying Farmyard and a Twisted Trailer." Tornado said cheerily as he made his way over the bar. Cumula nodded and started making the drinks while he idly started munching on Earth and Tree mix Cumula kept on the bar.
As Cumula served the drinks, she said "Hey, that new girl over there has been eyeing you."
Tornado turned and saw a sultry lightning bolt gazing at him. She had curves all over, and he could feel the static from across the room. She had a wild and chaotic air about her, which he found intoxicating.
"I here she can fork like nobody's business too," Cumula said with a knowing wink.
"I think I'll go talk to her," Tornado said to a smiling Cumula, and strutted on over.
"I couldn't help but notice you looking at me. What's your name?" Tornado asked.
"Electra. Electra Cution." She said, idly nibbling on a radio tower antenna, "Why don't you take me for a spin big guy!".
It was magic. Soon after, they got married. And, not surprisingly, it wasn't long before Electra and Tornado gave birth to a batch of bouncing baby Ball Lightnings. They were happy, but as often happens, it wasn't long before hard times fell.
The Cold Front, the trusted and reliable company that employed everyone in the area, was pulling up stakes. Rumor had it that there was a lot of high pressure forcing Cold Front to outsource overseas. The Jet-Stream that once roared with life was becoming an empty road. It was getting harder and harder to find a place where a guy like Tornado could put his feet down and do some honest work. Even "The Ground" was becoming vacant, with only Cumula and Downpour being regulars there.
Tornado fell into depression and started drinking. First it was just occasional, a pond here, a lake there. Then it became frequent. He became just a shadow of what he formerly was. He drank so much that he got the nickname "Waterspout".
Electra, too, suffered. After she lost her job, she had let herself go. Her once sleek form now curving and arcing way more than it used to. She barely ever leaves the house now, addicted to Storm Chaser videos showing Wedge Tornadoes.
Of course, once they had both lost their jobs they couldn't care for their children, so Storm Services put them up for adoption. The kids are doing well, though they are scattered across the Midwest (one apparently went on to study abroad in England last year).
Eventually both Tornado and Electra dissipated, along with Cumula and everyone else who used to frequent "The Ground". Without the Cold Front, it really was only a matter of time before the whole place vanished into blue skies.
And that, my friends, is why I never get good thunderstorms in my area.
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