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
Reader Comments
Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 — Blog Index
I see that, thanks Largo!
North America 00 UTC cras45naP03..
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE TALLAHASSEE FL
524 AM EDT Sat Apr 21 2012
The wild card is the evolution of the large convective complex currently over the NC Gulf of Mexico. Both global and high-res models have hinted that a persistent, focused area of strong
thunderstorms would lead to the development of a convectively induced low (MCV) and PV anomaly. The last several runs of our local WRF model have generated such a MCV and track it onshore
near Taylor and Dixie Counties around 00-02z. This will have to be watched closely as it could focus stronger and more persistent updrafts (and thereby stronger thunderstorms) as well as a corridor of heavier rainfall. Current grids call for a max total QPF around 1.8" in Dixie County, tapered down to about 1.0" along a VLD-TLH-AAF line, and down to 0.1" in the far northwest part of our area. This is pretty close to the latest HPC guidance. It should be noted that mesoscale enhancements and slow-moving thunderstorms could produce some localized corridors of rainfall around 3-4" around the Suwannee River and SE into the Florida peninsula. As deep deformation axis pivots into our area during the afternoon hours ahead of the approaching mid-upper level low center, storm motions should be rather slow with the potential for training echoes. Can`t rule out a severe storm or two, particularly in our far SE zones (Taylor, Dixie, Lafayette).
I am thinking, from the discussion below as to trajectory, that the Tampa area, and North Central Florida, is going to get "tons" of rain later today and someone in the State is going to be flooded due to training effects. I cannot address the issue of sever weather but Florida needs the rain. A nice rainmaker is welcome actually.
Here in SE Fla, we started getting thunderstorms last night and it continued all night and so far all morning.
I gave a quick look at my rain guage this morning and saw we already had over 1.5" in less than 24 hours and the rain has not yet let up here in Broward County.
Will go home at lunch and check again.
We need the rain, all of central and south Fla needs rain that we normally do not get this time of year.
Very nice surprise!
Hi everyone, Happy Saturday to you.
That is more then a foot of snow here in western NY
We only got about .20" last night but the day before yesterday we got 3.20". Currently not raining but I think that will probably change later :)
Yep. Poor trees that have already bloomed.
Yeah, they seem to be coming at the worst time for the trees and power companies this year
Wait until anything above a TS hits Florida.
Here washingtonian. This is from all of us to you!
Viewing: 351 - 401
Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 — Blog Index