Image from NOAA, dated 12/04/08 - click for larger image h/t to Fernando
It will be interesting to see what November UAH and RSS satellite data brings forth.
La Niñas occurred in 1904, 1908, 1910, 1916, 1924, 1928, 1938, 1950, 1955, 1964, 1970, 1973, 1975, 1988, 1995, and in 2007. It looks as if that 2007 event is hanging on.
Here are some FAQs on the subject: Read the rest of this entry »
Agence France-Presse
December 04, 2008 04:54am
“Acidity is a new, strange and unwanted development… for a whole range of marine animals,” Mark Simmonds of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society said.
Mr Simmonds, the society’s scientific director, was speaking as the UN Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species (CMS) began three days of debate on a resolution aimed at combatting ocean noise, which is caused primarily by shipping, oil and gas exploration and military sonars.
Perhaps now the problems with disappearing weather stations and slow or non-existent updates of GHCN weather data can be explained. The U.N. appears to be ineffective at managing basic science data gathering. This reflects upon the quality of the data used in GISTEMP and HadCRUT - Anthony
As more than 10,000 delegates and observers gather in Poznan, Poland, to discuss the next phase in the battle against “climate change,” a U.N. agency at the center of that hoopla badly needs to do some in-house weather-proofing.
The Poznan conference, seen as a major step toward a negotiated successor to the Kyoto Accord on greenhouse gases, is taking place until Dec. 12 under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), a subsidiary of the World Meteorological Organization, a global association of scientific weather forecasters.
But the WMO, the $80 million U.N. front-line agency in the climate change struggle, and the source for much of the world’s information in the global atmosphere and water supply, has serious management problems of its own, despite its rapidly expanding global ambitions.
The international agency has been sharply criticized by a U.N. inspection unit in a confidential report obtained by FOX News, for, among other things, haphazard budget practices, deeply flawed organizational procedures, and no effective oversight by the 188 nations that formally make up its membership and dole out its funds.
• Click here to see the Joint Inspection Unit report.
The inspection was carried out by a member of the United Nations Joint Inspection Unit (JIU), a small, independent branch of the U.N. that reports to the General Assembly and is mandated to improve the organization’s efficiency and coordination through its inspection process.
The investigations took place in late 2006 and extended through at least May 2007, and subsequently were presented to the WMO’s ruling bodies and its secretary general, Michel Jarraud, in December 2007. It was forwarded to the U.N. General Assembly only in November 2008. Read the rest of this entry »
You may recall last week I wrote about the NWS Upton, New York Forecast Office that was on the TV quiz show Jeopardy.
While I didn’t have a screen cap of the video when I wrote the original post, I had mentioned that not only was the Stevenson Screen at the Upton WSFO facing the wrong direction (south) but that they had apparently “spruced up” for the Jeopardy TV show by painting the Stevenson Screen and MMTS.
Surfacestations volunteer Don Kostuch pulled these screencaps of the Jeopardy episode from thin air today and emailed them me.
Here is the first shot of the station when the categories were announced:
Click for larger image
And here is the “dress blue” weather station with one of the “clue crew” gals in front of it. Note the south facing Stevenson Screen: Read the rest of this entry »
Excerpt of an article from the New Scientist, 01 December 2008 by Mark Buchanan (h/t to Richard Hegarty)
EVEN if we turn to clean energy to reduce carbon emissions, the planet might carry on warming anyway due to the heat released into the environment by our ever-increasing consumption of energy.
That’s the contentious possibility raised by Nick Cowern and Chihak Ahn of the School of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering at Newcastle University, UK. They argue that human energy consumption could begin to contribute significantly to global warming a century from now.
Cowern and Ahn considered an emissions scenario proposed by James Hansen of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, and others. Under this scenario, which envisages greenhouse gases being cut significantly through phasing out coal over the next 40 years, Cowern and Ahn calculate that the greenhouse effect will start to diminish by 2050, stabilising the climate.
Read more here
Here is the result of my South to North transect driving Virgina Street overlaid on a Google Earth image oriented to match the timeline of the transect:
Click for larger image
It seems clear that waste heat is already having an effect, because the UHI bubble from Reno has been shown by NOAA to affect the USHCN weather station there, which caused them to move the station once. They even include this in their own training manual. Read the rest of this entry »
Clearly, I’m not the only TV meteorologist (former) with doubts. Here is a story out of Cleveland that shows how others think about the issues. - Anthony
December 02, 2008 22:35PM Categories: Environment, Real Time News
They will tell you when the skies might rain or snow in fickle Northeast Ohio, when to bundle up the kids in a cold snap and when to make weekend plans if steady sunshine spans the five-day forecast. They also will tell you that human-caused global warming is hogwash. They’re your local TV meteorologists.
“This cry that ‘We’re all going to die’ is an overreaction and just not good science,” said Andre Bernier, a meteorologist at WJW Channel 8. “I don’t think I personally know any meteorologists — here in Cleveland or anywhere else I’ve worked — who agree with the hype over human-induced warming.”
The local TV weatherscape is indeed populated with on-air personalities who are pushing hard against the prevailing winds of climate science. That prevailing thought — supported by the United Nations’ 1,200-member Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Meteorological Society and others — is this: Read the rest of this entry »
Wind turbines and neighborhoods just don’t mix It seems. Would you want one of these to do this when a wind storm comes your way? Wind power has it’s pluses and minuses, just like any energy solution. But like a coal or nuclear power plant. They really shouldn’t be sited next to/within population areas. - Anthony
From the Peterborough UK Evening Telegraph
Resident Peter Randall, whose son’s house lies a stone’s throw away from the turbine, said: “Somebody is going to get killed. There was huge lumps of ice shooting off and landing everywhere.
“No one wants to leave the house because they are frightened and worried about the ice falling.
It is heartening to see a “back to basics” approach like this being taken on a college campus. Not only did they reopen the USHCN station that had been closed, they also decided to forgoe the MMTS equipment and do it with a traditional Stevenson Screen and max-min thermometers. Kudos to Eastern Illinois University- Anthony
Important Historical Climate Station returns to EIUs Campus
by Cameron Douglas Craig
EIU WeatherCenter
October 22, 2008
The first Charleston observation began on January 1, 1880 collecting precipitation and temperature data for the U.S. Weather Bureau. In the 1960s, the daily task was given to the department. In the mid 70s, Dr. Dalis Price, professor emeritus, continued the observations at his home. Today, the station has returned to the EIU Campus to continue collecting important climate data for NWS and NOAA.
History of the Cooperative Observation Network
Formally enacted in 1890 under the Organic Act, the Cooperative Observation Program is a network of volunteer weather observers who record daily maximum and minimum temperatures, snowfall, and precipitation totals throughout the United States to help measure long-term climate variations and provide important data in determining forecasts. Many stations were in operation before 1890 but the importance of a network was declared by Congress. The earliest known record of observations came from John Campanius Holm between 1644-45 without the aid of weather instruments. Data were also recorded by George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson whose daily observations continued unbroken between 1776 and 1816. Today, the COOP continues to provide important climate data and is considered the most definitive source of temperature and precipitation data. (NWS COOP)
EIUs Role in the COOP
Every day of the year Geology/Geography students record temperature and precipitation data at 8am and 6pm. The data are provided to NWS for inclusion in the long-term climate archive for the Charleston area. Although EIUWC has four digital stations that record many different meteorological variables in real-time, it is the analog station that is vital to determine U.S. climate trends and what is considered to be climatologically normal.
Charleston Station is Historical
The EIU station is an historical station because the same data and observation times have been continuous since January 1, 1880. Of the over 100 COOP stations in central Illinois there are only 14 stations that hold the position of being historical. Historical stations observe precipitation totals at 8am and temperature data at 6pm. Other COOP stations have only one observation time. EIUWC will continue observing the weather in the same manner as those before us.
Data and the Archive
Each day and at the end of the month the data are sent to NWS. After checking for quality, the preliminary data are sent to the National Climate Data Center (under NOAA) to check the data for accuracy. After about a two month period, the data are officiated and placed in the NCDC online archive. You can retrieve the data from NCDC by visiting www.ncdc.noaa.gov.
More Information about the COOP
Visit NWS Lincoln’s COOP page at www.crh.noaa.gov/ilx/coop/coop.php.
Photographs
Kalamazoo State Hospital
In an effort to add to the surfacestation.org survey coverage, I’ve been looking at a number of stations from the aerial vantage points available in Google Earth and Microsoft Live Maps. I particularly look for the stations that have Stevenson Screens, as those are the most visible and easy to spot from these online resources.
I was disappointed to learn though that the USHCN station at Kalamazoo State Hospital (a state psychiatric hospital) has been closed. It was probably due to recent construction of new wards as seen here:
Click for a live interactive aerial view
While I was scouring online image databases looking for a surviving photo that would show the placement of the Stevenson Screen, I stumbled across this photo on Flickr taken from afar and this strange comment about it: Read the rest of this entry »
by John Goetz
In what seems to be a script straight from a Monty Python classic, the good folks of Santa Coloma de Gramenet in Spain seem to have found a rather novel use for the dead: as a tool in the fight against global warming.
From the TimesOnline
November 28, 2008
by Graham Keeley in Barcelona
Solar panels are installed in cemetery
Solar panel in Santa Coloma
A graveyard in Spain has become an unlikely front in the fight against global warming, with hundreds of black panels placed on top of mausoleums providing year-round power for homes.
The 462 panels produce 124,374 kilowatts of electricity, enough to supply 60 homes for a year in Santa Coloma de Gramenet, near Barcelona. The exorbitant price of land in the densely populated satellite city inspired a solar energy company to propose using one of the last remaining available plots of land - the cemetery.
Conste-Live Energy and the local council spent three years persuading relatives of those interred and near-by residents that the unusual proposal would benefit the living without demeaning the dead. “The best tribute we can pay to our ancestors is to generate clean energy for new generations,” Esteve Serret, a company director, said.
The panels cost €720,000 (£612,500) to install and each year will keep about 62 tonnes of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, Mr Serret said.
“This is not much, but it will do something to help combat global warming,” said Bartomeu Muñoz, the Mayor of Santa Coloma. The glinting blue-grey panels are fixed on top of mausoleums, which in Spain hold five layers of coffins.
The panels, which face south to soak up maximum sunshine, were turned on last week after three years of planning. Santa Coloma is so densely populated that all 124,000 inhabitants live within a 4sq km area. Putting solar panels on coffins was a tough sell, said Antoni Fogué, a city councillor. “Let’s say we heard things like, ‘They’re crazy. Who do they think they are? What a lack of respect’,” he said.
Sea Ice
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