Tag: NOAA

Fire cloud — up close

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Click to enlarge — NOAA/NASA

❝ On August 8, 2019, a team of atmospheric scientists got an exceedingly rare look at fire clouds as they were forming. NASA’s DC-8 flying laboratory passed directly through a large pyrocumulonimbus that day as it was rising from a fire in eastern Washington. The flight was part of a joint NOAA and NASA field campaign called FIREX-AQ. Scientists are studying the composition and chemistry of smoke to better understand its impact on air quality and climate…

❝ The photograph above, shot from roughly 30,000 feet (9 kilometers), shows the setting Sun shining through thick smoke at 8 p.m. Mountain Time. Particles in the smoke reflect light in ways that make the Sun appear orange…

The flight was the most detailed sampling of a pyrocumulonimbus in history, explained Peterson. A second research aircraft flew over the plume a few hours earlier in the day, and mobile labs on the ground also made detailed measurements.

Amazing photos. Quality and timing should offer useful analysis, learning for future events and their global effect.

The Weather Report gets an upgrade almost 40 years in crafting

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January 2018 “Bomb Cyclone”

❝ Weather forecasters need a ton of knowledge and a fair bit of experience with local weather patterns to do their job well. They also need a good forecast model. These computer models take in measurements from weather stations on the ground, satellites in orbit, and balloons in between and then simulate the physics of weather forward in time a few days.

For the first time in about 40 years, the guts of the US model got swapped out for something new… The upgrade brings us a new “Finite-Volume Cubed-Sphere” (or FV3) dynamical core, which simulates the basic atmospheric physics at the heart of this endeavor, a change that has been in the works for a while.

❝ The new core had its origins in simulating atmospheric chemistry but ended up being adapted into other models. A few years ago, it was selected to replace the old core in the US Global Forecast System model. And for more than a year now, the new version of the model has been running in parallel so its results could be compared to the operational model.

RTFA for the details. I’ve mentioned before – and only my opinion – that every science geek is also a weather geek. One of those at-hand examples that fits into everything from work, errands, necessities and recreation. It’s complex; but, understandable, science that affects everyone.

Dual-polarization weather radar

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Hail falling from supercell — Eric Kurth, NOAA/NWS

❝ For decades, radar has been used by the National Weather Service to gather a wealth of meteorological data to track thunderstorms, hurricanes, blizzards and everything in between…

But an advancement in radar has unveiled even more information than ever before. Enter: Dual-polarization weather radar…This new technology provides 14 new radar products that will support our mission to serve our partners and customers,” the NWS explained.

❝ All of these radar products can be found on sophisticated weather radar apps for smartphones and computers, such as RadarScope and GR2Analyst.

I am going to be trying these asap! Most science junkies are weather junkies. 🙂

State of the Climate – Give yourself a update in climate knowledge

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❝ An international, peer-reviewed publication released each summer, the State of the Climate is the authoritative annual summary of the global climate published as a supplement to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

❝ The report, compiled by NOAA’s Center for Weather and Climate at the National Centers for Environmental Information is based on contributions from scientists from around the world. It provides a detailed update on global climate indicators, notable weather events, and other data collected by environmental monitoring stations and instruments located on land, water, ice, and in space.

❝ This is the twenty-seventh issuance of the annual assessment now known as State of the Climate [large .pdf]. Surface temperature and carbon dioxide concentration, two of the more publicly recognized indicators of global-scale climate change, set new highs during 2016, as did several surface and near-surface indicators and essential climate variables. Notably, the increase in CO2 concentration was the largest in the nearly six-decade observational record.

No jokes about light reading. Reports designed for peer review are heavy on scientific citations. But, I still feel good about the research I went through at the turn of the Millennium with documents published by the Max Planck Institute as they worked their way towards a definitive response to discussions about climate change.

Here’s a chance to keep up with one of the best American-based global sources.

Hurricane season officially started — Republicans, Trump, still have no one in charge at FEMA or NOAA

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❝ This year marks the 25th anniversary of Hurricane Andrew, the last Category 5 storm to hit Florida

The 2017 hurricane season started last Thursday without anyone in charge at the two federal agencies most involved in dealing with hurricanes…

❝ Five months after Donald J. Trump was sworn in as president, no one has taken the reins at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is in charge of preparing for and then dealing with the aftermath of a hurricane. The last FEMA boss was a Florida man, W. Craig Fugate, who departed in January after seven years on the job. Fugate previously served as the head of the Florida Division of Emergency Management. Trump finally nominated someone at the end of April, but he has yet to be confirmed.

Trump meanwhile has made no move to appoint a new boss at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the agency in charge of the National Hurricane Center and the National Weather Service, which provide hurricane forecasts and hurricane warnings in advance of a storm.

❝ Incidentally, NOAA Is predicting an above-average hurricane season this year. Trump’s proposed budget has targeted both agencies for cuts.

Trump’s obeisance to Neo-Cons who couldn’t win an election on their own is notorious. Policies he wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot pole while campaigning are rolled out daily. Cutting services protecting as many lives as the National Hurricane Center was predictable for experienced cynics. True Believers are still clustered in prayer circles hoping for deliverance even while the anti-science brigade continues to undercut human needs.

Reality of falling oxygen levels in Earth’s oceans is worse than expected

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❝ A new analysis of decades of data on oceans across the globe has revealed that the amount of dissolved oxygen contained in the water – an important measure of ocean health – has been declining for more than 20 years.

Researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology looked at a historic dataset of ocean information stretching back more than 50 years and searched for long term trends and patterns. They found that oxygen levels started dropping in the 1980s as ocean temperatures began to climb…

❝ The study, which was published April in Geophysical Research Letters, was sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The team included researchers from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the University of Washington-Seattle, and Hokkaido University in Japan.

Falling oxygen levels in water have the potential to impact the habitat of marine organisms worldwide and in recent years led to more frequent “hypoxic events” that killed or displaced populations of fish, crabs and many other organisms.

❝ Researchers have for years anticipated that rising water temperatures would affect the amount of oxygen in the oceans, since warmer water is capable of holding less dissolved gas than colder water. But the data showed that ocean oxygen was falling more rapidly than the corresponding rise in water temperature.

“The trend of oxygen falling is about two to three times faster than what we predicted from the decrease of solubility associated with the ocean warming,” associate professor Taka Ito said. “This is most likely due to the changes in ocean circulation and mixing associated with the heating of the near-surface waters and melting of polar ice.”

RTFA to see where and when this leads. Unless you’re one of those Trumpkins who sucks up fake news like sugary drinks through a fat plastic straw.

Scientists are by definition and practice a cautious and conservative lot. I’m never surprised when bad news exceeds their predictions. Or, for that matter,when the cowards in Congress and the White House ignore even conservative advice.

Latest NASA Night Lights Maps

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NASA scientists are releasing new global maps of Earth at night, providing the clearest yet composite view of the patterns of human settlement across our planet.

Satellite images of Earth at night — often referred to as “night lights” — have been a gee-whiz curiosity for the public and a tool for fundamental research for nearly 25 years. They have provided a broad, beautiful picture, showing how humans have shaped the planet and lit up the darkness. Produced every decade or so, such maps have spawned hundreds of pop-culture uses and dozens of economic, social science and environmental research projects…

In the years since the 2011 launch of the NASA-NOAA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite, Román and colleagues have been analyzing night lights data and developing new software and algorithms to make night lights imagery clearer, more accurate and readily available. They are now on the verge of providing daily, high-definition views of Earth at night, and are targeting the release of such data to the science community later this year.

Wow. Worth looking forward to.

Just HOW EARLY is spring arriving in your neighborhood?

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Click to enlarge

❝ How do you know when spring has begun? Is it the appearance of the first tiny leaves on the trees, or the first crocus plants peeping through the snow? The Spring Leaf Index is a measure of these early season events in plants, based on recent temperature conditions. This model allows us to track the progression of spring onset across the country. The map shows locations that have reached the requirements for the Spring Leaf Index model (based on NOAA National Centers for Environmental Prediction Real-Time Mesoscale Analysis temperature products).

Click through to the article and a dynamic model of this map.