Eideard

 
The massive dust storms that swept through central Arizona this month have stirred up not just clouds of sand but a debate over what to call them.

The blinding waves of brown particles, the most recent of which hit Phoenix on Monday, are caused by thunderstorms that emit gusts of wind, roiling the desert landscape. Use of the term “haboob,” which is what such storms have long been called in the Middle East, has rubbed some Arizona residents the wrong way.

“I am insulted that local TV news crews are now calling this kind of storm a haboob,” Don Yonts, a resident of Gilbert, Ariz., wrote to The Arizona Republic after a particularly fierce, mile-high dust storm swept through the state on July 5. “How do they think our soldiers feel coming back to Arizona and hearing some Middle Eastern term..?”

Dust storms are a regular summer phenomenon in Arizona, and the news media typically label them as nothing more than that. But the National Weather Service, in describing this month’s particularly thick storm, used the term haboob, which was widely picked up by the news media.

“Meteorologists in the Southwest have used the term for decades,” said Randy Cerveny, a climatologist at Arizona State University. “The media usually avoid it because they don’t think anyone will understand it.”

Obviously, they’re right.

Not everyone was put out by the use of the term. David Wilson of Goodyear, Ariz., said those who wanted to avoid Arabic terms should steer clear of algebra, zero, pajamas and khaki, as well. “Let’s not become so ‘xenophobic’ that we forget to remember that we are citizens of the world, nor fail to recognize the contributions of all cultures to the richness of our language,” he wrote.

Bigots will go to amazing lengths not only to be offended; but, to enforce their bigotry upon everyone else. Whether you ordered Freedom Fries in the Congressional cafeteria after the French government was bright enough to ignore George W’s call for a crusade in Iraq – or adult enough to carry on acknowledging that we have an American-born president in the face of racists and their nutball cousins’ paranoid prattle – accepted terminology from a craft, science or trade is the preferred and legitimate guide for language.

Leave bigotry to the professionals. We already have sufficient numbers of that Kool Aid Klan.

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

Buried deep inside the GOP House of Representatives plan to trim the 2011 budget is a line item that will take $454 million away from the agency running the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.

Yes, that’s the same Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, one of two operated by a branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, that alerted the nation to a potentially deadly wave headed toward Hawaii and the California coast following the devastating earthquake off northern Japan last week.

House Republicans, who have been looking for ways to shave $61.5 billion from the 2011 federal budget, stress that they don’t want to specifically cut either of the warning centers — a network of ocean buoys and deep-water sensors that alert scientists to changes in ground movement and tide levels and could indicate a tsunami is on the way. They just think the parent agency has some fat to trim. The Republicans are also going after federal funding for climate change research and other environmental projects in their proposed cuts…

“Everyone knows that the government needs to cut spending, but this tsunami serves as an tragic reminder that Representative Dan Lungren and House Republicans made the wrong budget choices that can have real consequences for California families,” said Jesse Ferguson of the DCCC. “Instead of cutting taxpayer subsidies for Big Oil companies, Representative Dan Lundgren voted to slash the weather service that gives us critical early warnings in times of danger, like this one…”

“Nowhere have we indicated that we’re directing NOAA not to emphasize the services it provides for the safety, health and welfare of Americans,” said Eric Cantor. “I’m told that this point was raised by some employees at NOAA, who made it known that they didn’t believe the cuts were needed. Again, we all have to do more with less here…”

How much less is Cantor making do with in his lifestyle? Total staff salary for his office since his first year in office has gone from $621,655 to $1,145,591 for 2010. An 84% increase in 9 years.

“The mission of the National Weather Service is to save lives and save property. But the funding to do that has already been reduced. Cutting the funding even more is going to potentially lead to loss of life,” said Dan Sobien, president of the National Weather Service Employees Organization. “I’m not trying to shock people, it’s just the truth.”

Sobien points to a need to invest in early warning technology that, for instance, can help increase the notice of impending tornados or spend money to revamp an overwhelmed web site that provides early weather alerts or put more weather satellites in the sky.

Republicans and their teabagger flunkies would rather direct increased profits into the pockets of oil companies and investment banks.

Nothing new about the practice. Nothing new about their lies.

The last telephone-based time and weather services in the Unites States are getting the ax, telephone company officials say.

Verizon says its telephone dial-in weather and time services in the Washington, D.C., and Maryland area codes — the last such surviving services in the nation — will end this summer.

Callers to the weather line are hearing a terse announcement: “Effective June 1, 2011, Verizon will no longer offer time-of-day and weather forecast services.”

A spokeswoman for Verizon said the end of call-in services, with a history going back to the days of rotary dial telephones in the 1930s, has been coming for a long time.

“In Virginia, we discontinued the time and weather in late 2006; in Pennsylvania in late 2008,” Sandra Arnette told The Baltimore Sun. “People just have so many alternatives — radio, TV, online, wireless phones, PDAs.”

Many people still call Verizon for time and weather information, she said, but conceded it has become an “anachronism.”

Wonder how many high school graduates can spell “anachronism”?

Over a thousand South Korean civilians braved sub-zero temperatures around the country to take part in boot camps run by a special commando unit, hoping to get into shape and improve their self-discipline.

The boot camps, which run for three days and have been held since 2003, are aimed at “educating” civilians about national security in a country that shares a heavily-armed border with North Korea…

About 250 people, including some high school students, took part in the boot camp at Bucheon, just west of Seoul, one of six run around the country.

Instead of staying warm at home during their winter break, participants wearing camouflage dragged parachutes, underwent training in a tear-gas filled hut and took part in “flying fox” exercises from a wooden tower. The cold was unforgiving, with temperatures hitting 14ºF in Seoul and surrounding areas…

South Korea has a mandatory conscription policy for men, who have to complete 24 months of military service between graduating from high school and turning 30.

The boot camps have been running since 2003 and 18,000 people have taken part. The oldest was a 49-year-old housewife, army officials said…

“After the training, we expect them to live life with hope and challenge themselves, rather than feeling abandoned and frustrated, while thinking about the camp slogan: ‘Make the impossible possible’”…said Lieutenant Colonel Kim Jong-tak.

Some participants said the training had in fact changed their outlook on life.

“Once I get out of here, I will be good to my mother. I will be good to my mother and father and willingly help them,” said 15-year-old Woo Seung-yeon.

Otherwise they may send you back, eh?

Last month was the warmest June on record worldwide, according to a report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Warmer-than-average conditions were present across nearly all continents, including much of the United States, according to the organization’s State of the Climate report…

Although global sea surface temperatures ranked the fourth-warmest on record, the combination of land and sea anomalies pushed June 2010 past June 2005, previously the warmest June on record, the report said. June was also the fourth consecutive month in a row of record warmth worldwide…

June also marked a record low in Arctic sea ice — the 19th June in a row the sea ice has been below average.

“This is important, because sea ice reflects incoming solar radiation back to space,” said CNN Meteorologist Taylor Ward. “Without the normal extent of sea ice in the Arctic, we can expect more radiation to be absorbed into the ocean, leading to more melting. It’s what we call a ‘positive feedback.’” The amount of sea ice in the Arctic has been steadily declining since 1990.

Warmer-than-average temperatures in the equatorial Pacific, also known as El Nino, have been contributing to the warmth. La Nina conditions — cooler-than-average temperatures in the same region — are beginning to set in, which could prevent more monthly records from being set. However, La Nina combined with record-setting warm Atlantic sea surface temperatures is expected to fuel an active Atlantic hurricane season.

The announcement of June’s record-setting warmth comes during a period of extreme heat in the United States and Europe. Excessive heat warnings have been topping weather headlines in the United States for more than two weeks now, and Europe has been shattering temperature records as well, with a heat wave through the first half of July. Eastern Europe has seen the most significant temperatures, although much of the continent has experienced above-average heat.

Just in case you didn’t notice.

Click on the image for a version NSFW

Fresh snowfall is forecast to hit parts of Britain today, with up to 5cm predicted in northern Scotland and in northern and western Wales, bringing warnings of icy roads.

5cm of snow. That’s about 2 fracking inches! That qualifies as snow flurries.

Lighter snow showers are expected in Merseyside, Shropshire and Derbyshire.

Temperatures dropped well below freezing overnight with a low of -7C recorded in Benson, Oxfordshire…

There were five separate crashes on Bonemill Lane in Sunderland yesterday morning and police were forced to close the road for an hour and a half. And an icy road surface led to a three-vehicle collision at a roundabout near Crowther Road in the city. Nobody was injured in any of the incidents, police said.

Is this the weather forecast from the UK – or Mexico?

“Temperatures will return towards the seasonal average of 4C to 6C, but it will remain quite chilly in Scotland with the potential for snow over the hills.”

It’s always chilly in Scotland except when it’s fracking freezing. But, my kin in the Outer Isles don’t panic over a snowstorm unless it produces serious accumulation.

C’mon, folks. Whatever happened to those brave barechested bruisers I see on the telly cheering on Newcastle? Did the whole nation get relegated?

A new analysis of global surface temperatures by NASA scientists finds the past year was tied for the second warmest since 1880. In the Southern Hemisphere, 2009 was the warmest year on record.

Although 2008 was the coolest year of the decade because of a strong La Nina that cooled the tropical Pacific Ocean, 2009 saw a return to a near-record global temperatures as the La Nina diminished, according to the new analysis by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. The past year was a small fraction of a degree cooler than 2005, the warmest on record, putting 2009 in a virtual tie with a cluster of other years –1998, 2002, 2003, 2006, and 2007 — for the second warmest on record.

“There’s always interest in the annual temperature numbers and a given year’s ranking, but the ranking often misses the point,” said James Hansen, GISS director. “There’s substantial year-to-year variability of global temperature caused by the tropical El Nino-La Nina cycle. When we average temperature over five or ten years to minimize that variability, we find global warming is continuing unabated.”

January 2000 to December 2009 was the warmest decade on record. Looking back to 1880, when modern scientific instrumentation became available to monitor temperatures precisely, a clear warming trend is present, although there was a leveling off between the 1940s and 1970s…

“The contiguous 48 states cover only 1.5 percent of the world area, so the United States’ temperature does not affect the global temperature much,” Hansen said.

Not meaningful to the egregious barflies serving as climate experts for Republicans, though.

GISS uses publicly available data from three sources to conduct its temperature analysis. The sources are weather data from more than a thousand meteorological stations around the world, satellite observations of sea surface temperatures, and Antarctic research station measurements.

Global warming hasn’t stopped. Even if it snowed, this morning, on your commute to work. It is, after all, Winter in the northern hemisphere.

After waiting years for the sun to illuminate Saturn’s north pole again, cameras aboard NASA’s Cassini spacecraft have captured the most detailed images yet of the intriguing hexagon shape crowning the planet.

The new images of the hexagon, whose shape is the path of a jet stream flowing around the north pole, reveal concentric circles, curlicues, walls and streamers not seen in previous images.

The last visible-light images of the entire hexagon were captured by NASA’s Voyager spacecraft nearly 30 years ago, the last time spring began on Saturn. After the sunlight faded, darkness shrouded the north pole for 15 years. Much to the delight and bafflement of Cassini scientists, the location and shape of the hexagon in the latest images match up with what they saw in the Voyager pictures.

“The longevity of the hexagon makes this something special, given that weather on Earth lasts on the order of weeks,” said Kunio Sayanagi, a Cassini imaging team associate at the California Institute of Technology. “It’s a mystery on par with the strange weather conditions that give rise to the long-lived Great Red Spot of Jupiter…”

“Now that we can see undulations and circular features instead of blobs in the hexagon, we can start trying to solve some of the unanswered questions about one of the most bizarre things we’ve ever seen in the solar system,” Baines said. “Solving these unanswered questions about the hexagon will help us answer basic questions about weather that we’re still asking about our own planet.”

Questions, of course, that will be answered by scientists committed to knowledge, research – rather than paid Exxon flacks and their acolytes.

The first decade of this century is “by far” the warmest since instrumental records began, say the UK Met Office and World Meteorological Organization.

Their analyses also show that 2009 will almost certainly be the fifth warmest in the 160-year record.

Burgeoning El Nino conditions, adding to man-made greenhouse warming, have pushed 2009 into the “top 10″ years…

World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and Met Office scientists have been giving details of the new analysis at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen…

“We’ve seen above average temperatures in most continents, and only in North America were there conditions that were cooler than average,” said WMO secretary-general Michel Jarraud…

Mr Jarraud emphasised that the final analysis would not be complete until early next year; but the UN agency always issues a summary during the annual climate negotiations in order that delegates have the latest information.

The WMO uses three temperature sets – one from the UK Met Office and the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU), and two from the US, maintained by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the space agency NASA.

There’s always someone present who cares most about pop-science and junk-science reporting.

Asked whether the controversy surrounding e-mails hacked from CRU could have any bearing on the results, Mr Jarraud replied that all three datasets showed the same result.

Vicky Pope from the UK Met Office made the same point: “The datasets are all independent, and they all show warming,” she said.

RTFA for a bit more detail. If you care to press further, well – Google is your friend. Or whichever search engine you actually use. The information provided by peer-reviewed scientists ain’t going to change regardless of your ideology.