Tag: Spring

Just HOW EARLY is spring arriving in your neighborhood?

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❝ 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.

Frost maps back to 1916 illustrate the history of climate change

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LgLastKillingFrost1916
Click through to the article – interactive maps at the bottom of the article
[Interactive goodies may not work on mobile devices]

❝ Published in a 1936 Atlas of American Agriculture, put together by the United States Department of Agriculture, these 1916 maps of the average dates of first killing frosts in fall and last killing frosts in spring were initially intended to help farmers plan their planting schedules. Now, the maps offer a rough gauge showing how much these dates have shifted over a century.

❝ The preparers of these maps, William Gardner Reed, Charles Franklin Brooks, and F.J. Marschner, compiled data from a then-relatively-new network of Weather Bureau stations and agricultural colleges. The trio notes that of 4,000 such stations, 700 were able to offer data that covered every year between 1895 and 1914. Insets show dates of the first and last killing frosts in the year of 1914.

❝ On a website charting indicators of climate change, the Environmental Protection Agency offers a few graphs showing how the growing season in the continental United States has lengthened between 1895 and 2015, with most of the upswing taking place in the past 30 years. While stipulating that a lengthening growing season could have positive effects on yield for some farmers, the EPA notes that “overall, warming is expected to have negative effects on yields of major crops.” A long season “could limit the types of crops grown, encourage invasive species or weed growth, or increase demand for irrigation.”

Of course, a shift in frost dates affects the life cycles of nonagricultural flora and fauna, as well. Longer summers, writes the EPA, could change “the function and structure” of a region’s ecosystems, encouraging some species to reproduce more vigorously, and inhibiting the success of others.

Certainly a major shift in my neck of the prairie. The maps recommend safety from the last killing frost a month later than anything I’ve experienced in the decades I’ve lived in Santa Fe county.

El Niño ready to set new all-time record

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Tropical Pacific water temperatures are shockingly hot. Last week equatorial Pacific water temperatures averaged 3 degrees Celsius above normal for the first time ever in the key Niño 3.4 region. The previous weekly high Niño 3.4 value of 2.8 degrees was tied last week with Nov. 28, 1997. The Niño 3.4 region, used to measure the strength of an El Niño ranges from 170W to 120W from 5 degrees north to 5 degrees south of the equator. If temperatures continue to rise, or plateau for a few more weeks, this will be the strongest El Niño in history…

The extraordinary surge of heat in the equatorial Pacific continues to push from the dateline towards the Americas. Temperatures anomalies are predicted to peak over the next month by a number of climate models, but the effects of the excess oceanic heat will continue to grow in the atmosphere into the winter months. 2015 is already crushing records as the warmest year on record but 2016 may be even warmer because the peak in atmospheric temperatures is months later than the peak in sea surface temperatures.

Our political hacks – whether the free range sort in state legislatures or the Gold Standard inside the Washington DC Beltway – will continue to evaluate climate change depending upon the single meaningful factor in their analysis — cold, hard cash.

Sprint to reimburse $15.5 million to snooping coppers

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The office of U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag announced Thursday that Sprint Communications has agreed to pay $15.5 million to settle allegations that it overcharged law enforcement agencies for carrying out court-ordered wiretaps and other surveillance activities.

Lawyers from Haag’s office sued Sprint in March, alleging that from 2007 to 2010 the telecommunications giant overcharged law enforcement agencies to the tune of $21 million. They were seeking triple-damage compensation and additional civil penalties under the U.S. False Claims Act.

Telecommunications companies are permitted under federal law to bill agencies for “reasonable” expenses incurred in accomplishing a court ordered wiretap.

Under the Communications Assistance in Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), however, telecom companies are required to cover the finance of upgrading their equipment and facilities to ensure that they’re “capable of enabling the government … to intercept and deliver communications and call-identifying information,” according to the U.S. Attorney.

WTF?

Sprint allegedly defrauded federal law enforcement agencies by billing them for those expenses while recovering the otherwise legitimate costs of carrying out court-ordered wiretaps — which was prohibited by a 2006 ruling from the Federal Communications Commission, according to the U.S. Attorney.

So, bad enough our government uses the War on Terror, the War on Drugs, every other war popular with politicians to snoop on us. They require the communications companies they order to snoop – to upgrade their equipment to do the best possible job of snooping.

Sprint tried to sneak the cost into charges for individual snooping jobs – whether court-ordered or “other surveillance activities”. The Feds bagged ’em for it.

Either way, we’re screwed.

Finally got round to assembling this panorama

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sunrisepanorama
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First morning that felt like spring instead of late winter. About a week ago. Then I promptly forgot about it. Just realized I had some photos on my walking around camera – and went through the hassle of finding freebie software to assemble them into a panorama.

Somewhere along upgrades to computers I seem to have killed whatever it was I used to use for panorama stitching. I should get around to updating my photo editing software anyway, real soon new. Certainly, by the time of real flowers appearing down by the bosque.