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| | 1997 Weather in the News |
January 1997
For veteran Weather World viewers, we hope you will welcome back this monthly series that we have called The Weather in the News. It is a collection of offbeat and interesting ways that the weather has been in the news lately.
On the research front, astronomers have discovered the equivalent of hills and valleys on the surface of the sun. Using a super sophisticated imager on the SOHO or Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, scientists have been able to map a part of the sun's surface.
If you think that there are more floods lately, then you are probably right. 1996's precipitation data for the U.S. shows that extreme precipitation events have increased by nearly 20% since the turn of the century.
A study done at the National Climatic Data Center shows that only southern California, Arizona and Nevada have escaped this trend....but record rains earlier this month have added even Nevada to this list. Some researchers argue that the threshold of 2" of rain in 24 hours is not that extreme, but proponents say that it is the frequency that is disturbing.
Finally, the first full moon of the year has our neighbors in the polar regions just a bit warmer this time around. An analysis of polar temperatures as measured by satellite show a cycle of warming at each full moon.
Oddly, the middle latitudes show a slight cooling at the same time each month. One skeptic says that it may be a case of moon glint on the satellite sensor. Some others claim that this is just another sign of the tidal effect of the moon. A few observers are simply moonstruck.
February 1997
This is the weather in the news, an opportunity to catch up on some offbeat ways that the weather has been in the news recently.
The first story concerns the weathering of monuments. For sometime the pitting of many national treasures has been blamed on acid rain. A more detailed study has shown that it is not wet deposition, but the deposit of dry elements that is the cause of pock marks on marble monuments.
Speaking of floods, one of the major producers of warm season flooding in the East can be hurricanes and according to Bill Gray of Colorado State University, another active season is expected in 1997.
Based on his analysis of rainfall patterns, winds and surface pressure in the Tropics, the upcoming Atlantic hurricane season should bring an above normal number of storms, specifically seven, three of which should be major hurricanes with winds over 110 miles an hour. In fact, Gray speculates that we may be shifting back to a very active period not unlike the mid 1940's and the 1960's when East Coast landfalls were relatively common.
Finally, Hollywood is on a disaster movie revival. Despite some disappointing reviews of Twister and terrible showings for the movie Turbulence, the big producers are gearing up for on-screen terror, natural style.
Other costly competitors include Dante's Peak, The Flood, Submerged, Cyclone and Firestorm. So even if the atmosphere stays somewhat settled, you can fantasize almost any natural disaster on the screen this summer...All but a Blizzard that is.
March 1997
It's that time again for those offbeat and sometimes
unusual ways that the weather has made the news recently.
To begin, global warming is back on the witness stand as
conflicting data raises more doubts about when and how
much warming will take place. A recent analysis of the
tropical Pacific Ocean shows that a large part of the
eastern Pacific has cooled during this century. Scientists at
the Lamont-Doherty Observatory have scrutinized this data
and developed a regional atmosphere-ocean model of the
tropical Pacific. When the air temperature rose, the eastern
Pacific cooled. Their results are not consistent with the
global simulations which show more uniform warming. It
may simply be that we don't really know enough about how
dynamic our earth's climate really is.
Another indication of the sensitivity of the climate comes from a study being completed at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. Researchers have noted a dramatic reversal in part of the North Atlantic currents. This shift has lead to a cooling of both northern Europe and parts of eastern North America.
The previous pattern had been entrenched since the mid 1970's - the time when global temperatures took a jog upward. Some scientists are anxiously awaiting the global temperature trend for the next couple of years, since they claim that further warming would mean the cause is man-made, not natural. Obviously, if we wait long enough, we'll be sure about something, but right now we don't know what!
Here's a strange twist on a high tech trade war where atmospheric researchers have gotten themselves right into the middle of the fray.
The National Center for Atmospheric Research in selecting its next generation of supercomputers initially gave the thumbs down to the American manufacturer Cray and the green light to NEC of Japan. This led to Cray's crying wolf about U.S. research dollars being spent abroad and precipitated a lawsuit. While this haggling was going on, NCAR quietly made a deal with Hewlett Packard and expects delivery of its next supercomputer this spring. I wonder what deal they could get me on a new car.
Finally, this week has marked severe weather awareness week for Pennsylvania. The National Weather Service has been testing communication lines and conducting drills across the state all week. At the end of next week, Penn State's College of Earth and Mineral Science will hold an Open House called EMEX. All are welcome to visit on Saturday, April 5 from 10 am until 5pm. There will be a host of exhibits throughout the college, including tours of the weather station. Hope you can stop by.
April 1997
It's time once again for those unusual ways that the weather has been in the news. The high drama of the flooding in the northern Plains continues as the eastern Dakotas experience the equivalent of a Hurricane Agnes type of flood. The crests have reached 500 year levels as the Red River of the North pushes its record volume of water toward Canada.
There is a personal side to this awesome event. Weather World's former executive producer, Kathleen Pavelko, moved to Fargo last summer to head up Prairie Public Television.
After suffering through a winter harsher than the worst of Pennsylvanian's weather, for the past three weeks, she has been sandbagging, watching and pumping water. Just this weekend, as the nearby Red River crested, she narrowly escaped losing all to the flood waters as a 40 foot high wall of sandbags held the peak volume. Our hopes and prayers go out to her and other North Dakotans who have not faired so well during this very difficult time....many in this state can empathize with their losses.
As if to emphasize the magnitude of this flood, a report from Queen's University in Ontario shows that drought was much more common in the Plains just a milenium ago. By studying lake bottom sediments and tree rings, the data points to several periods of over a hundred years each when drought was common.
Even researchers in California confirm the frequency and duration of such western droughts. Oddly, global warming scenarios forecast increasing drought in the middle of the continents. The current pattern clearly defies that prediction.
For those of you in search of UFO's, hang onto your hats because this next story points to such an occurrence just last week - visible from the U.S. geostationary weather satellite.
Last Wednesday morning, surfers on the internet glomed onto this visible picture just off the Coast of California. The dark spot is purported to be the UFO. The news spread like wildfire with even rumors of NORAD going on full alert. Sorry to disappoint the ET's out there, but this appears to be only a pixel error, probably caused by the overnight shutdown of GOES-9.
Finally, a one in a kind account. It seems that a want-to-be pilot in California tried to use weather balloons to become airborne. Larry Waters of Los Angeles purchased several dozen weather balloons and a few tanks of helium. He strapped the partly inflated balloons to his lawn chair with the intent of going for a brief lift. After packing a few sandwiches and a six pack of beer, Larry took his pellet gun to deflate the balloons and cut loose his chair.
Instead of floating to 30 feet, he skyrocketed to 16,000 feet where he drifted around for over 12 hours. Larry, in fact, drifted right into the approach lanes for Los Angeles International Airport. A commercial pilot spotted a man in a lawn chair with a gun at 16,000 feet.
Larry then wandered out toward the Pacific as the sun began to set. His balloons slowly lost their helium and he eventually came down among some power lines. Larry realized, after he was arrested for endangering the air space over the airport, that weather balloons can give you quite a lift.
May 1997
May 1997 Weather in the News It's time for those offbeat stories that may have missed your glance as the weather has been in the news.
The cryosphere leads off the stories as scientists continue to discover how little we know about the ice caps of the planet. A recent study of Greenland which tried to assess whether the ice mass is shrinking or expanding came back inconclusive.
A new space radar sensor showed that the northern glaciers of this island are melting quicker from beneath than from calving into icebergs. However, a study of the southwest glaciers indicates slow growth. The ice budget of the earth is still one of the mysterious in the global climate puzzle.
Speaking of ice and puzzles....142 Eskimos were in quite a quandry about two weeks ago when they were whale hunting on an ice floe near Barrow, Alaska. A recent warm spell caused the floe to separate from the shore sending them out into the Arctic Ocean.
Fortunately, they had radios and hand-held positioning systems, but it still took over 7 hours with two helicopters in dense fog to rescue them all.
A new weather satellite, GOES-10 was launched on April 25 and reached orbit on May 3. It will be mid-July before a complete shakedown of the new satellite is complete. This weather bird will keep an eye on Pacific storms and will replace the aging GOES-WEST.
Age seems to make no difference to this rough and tumble glider pilot. Karl Striedieck of nearby Stormstown has turned 60 and is still setting new world records.
His April 18 flight from the Port Matilda glidersport to Selma, Albama - a distance of 802 miles- established a new record that was set by a New Zealander a decade ago. Striedieck owns 12 national records and 9 international records and continues to love the challenge of flying without a motor.
Finally, what price do you place on the world's ecosystem? How about 33 trillion dollars, at least that is the value estimated from a composite of over 100 studies on the earth's ecology. The dollar amount actually varied between 16 and 54 trillion, but the mean was close to $33 trillion.
Perhaps the next economic exercise could estimate the value of weather systems....but I suspect that answer is blowing in the wind.
July 1997
July 1997 Weather in the News It's time once again for those offbeat ways that the weather has been in the news lately. Mid-summer means another round of blockbuster movies and the recent premiere of Con Air almost did not make it to the theaters on time because of bad weather. The movie's director Simon West scheduled five weeks of shooting last summer in the desert Southwest as readings neared 120 degrees on many afternoons.
An action scene near Las Vegas was filmed during a freakish cold snap this past November when nightime wind chills fell well below zero. Apparently for actors Nicolas Cage, John Cusack and John Malkovich, the movie was as much of a test of physical endurance as it was for their acting and stunt skills.
Back to some solid science, a study just released by researchers in the U.S., UK, Russia and Australia indicates that the range between daytime highs and nighttime lows is getting smaller.
This report comes from a data base that is 17% larger than previous studies. While a few parts of the continents show little change, almost all regions have experienced an increase in minimum temperatures. The most pronounced narrowing in the temperature range has been in the northern hemisphere during the winter season.
Meanwhile, the momentum for another El Nino continues to grow. Measurements of water temperature show warming in the equatorial Pacific as the trade winds continue to slacken over the South Pacific.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology points to a shift in tropical thunderstorms away from Indonesia and toward French Polynesia. However, two of the best computer simulations of the ocean and atmosphere over the Pacific only predict a very weak El Nino at best. So the verdict is still out on this climatic event. One of the places most effected by El Nino is the West Coast of South America, where a team of inventors have been testing the next generation of martian rovers.
The group from Carnegie-Mellon University have been giving marching orders from Pittsburgh to a four-wheel drive semi-autonomous rover called Nomad in the Atacama Desert of Chile.
The landscape of the Chilean desert closely resembles Mars and just in case the Nomad doesn't make the grade, there are back-up plans to send it to Antarctica to retrieve meteorites.
Finally, a pro-active plan by the government of the Bahamas to prevent scaring tourists away during the upcoming hurricane season. The ministry of tourism held its first ever weather conference on Nassua last week.
They invited over 50 meteorologists and media specialists to learn about the breadth of the island nation. They hope to educate the forecasters so that they don't unnecessarily bring panic by their predicions.
Unfortunately, no one from the Weather Communications Group was asked to attend, so we're predicting at least one hurricane in the Bahamas this year!
October Weather in the News
The excitement over the Mars pathfinder has calmed down, but the discoveries are really just beginning. An examination of the rocks in the path of the sojourner, the little rover released by the probe, suggest that fierce winds have buffeted the red planet. This was the theory several decades ago, but when the Viking crafts visited Mars in 1976, it revealed a surface that was filled with craters, not sculptured by gales. The close-up view afforded by the Pathfinder reveals gouges in the rocks, like it was scoured or sandblasted by tiny pebbles.
The marks are all aligned with the prevailing wind, indicating its probable origin. It seems that winds may have blown at well over 100 kilometers per hour...perhaps even in the recent past.
Speaking of excessive winds, hurricane Linda recently in the eastern Pacific had estimated winds at nearly 200 miles an hour. There was enormous concern that Linda would strike southern California, especially since one run of a longer range computer model showed that possibility. However, the use of a new dropwindsonde helped to allay those fears and enabled forecasters to predict Linda's westward turn and slow demise. A dropwindsonde is like a weather balloon, except it is released from an aircraft and descends rather than rises. More than a hundred of these instruments have been released by hurricane hunters into Hurricanes Erika, Guillermo and Linda last month.
Their internal global positioning system makes their data much more valuable than before and can immediately be incorporated into sophisticated hurricane prediction models.
Apparently weather catastrophes don't have to be all bad. At least that is what some on Wall Street are betting on. A new high yield, big risk catastrophe bond has become available to high rollers.
Purchasers of these securities are betting against a catastrophe along the East Coast and will receive a handsome 8 to 11 % return on their bonds if they are correct.
A hurricane catastrophe is designated as a strike by a storm that produces at least 1 billion dollars of damage. If a hurricane causes less than this amount of damage, the investor gets their principal back along with the chunk of interest. If a storm causes between 1 and 1.5 billion in damages, the investor loses their interest and a portion of their principal. A hurricane that inflicts more than 1.5 billion dollars of damage will send the investor away penniless. The risk period on this year's bonds extended until June 15, 1998. There has been more interest than expected, almost exclusively from the largest investment firms that can afford to lose a few million of your retirement dollars on this gamble.
I wonder if soon they'll be offering El Nino Certificates of Deposit say with a 10% return on this 3 month winter security..that is, if nothing out of the ordinary happens!
December Weather in the News
The conference on global climate change ended last week in Kyoto and the fall-out of the agreement and the controversy it has caused continue to filter through the nation. Behind closed doors, policy makers were presented with mounds of supportive data for the cause of climate change. Perhaps the most fascinating concern came from the World Health Organization which reported that increased emissions of green house gases will contribute to an increase of 700,000 avoidable deaths annually between now and the year 2020. The greatest hazards will be among children and the elderly in developing nations. Some claimed the savings in health care industry that will result from cutting particulate emissions will outweigh the cost of reducing these pollutants. That will likely be a hard pill for some to swallow in Washington.
The world-wide attention on climate change has brought to light the fissures of disagreement among atmospheric scientists. Jerry Mahlman, the director of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab in Princeton which runs some of the most sophisticated simulations of climate change reported in Science that there is a 90% chance increasing carbon dioxide will lead to a 1.5 to 4.5 degree Celsius increase in the earth's temperature during the next century. Meanwhile, John Eddy of the National Center for Atmospheric Research has noted the direct relationship between the earth's mean temperature and sunspot activity during the past few centuries and according to the current phase, we are set to enter a slow cooling period. So which think-tank is correct? We probably will not know that answer in our lifetime.
As the northern hemisphere begins it descent into winter, Antarctica has just ended one of its coldest seasons. The return of sunshine over the South Pole also triggers the reactions that produce the hole in the ozone layer over the polar region. The earliest measurements indicate concentrations of ozone as low as past years, but a marked increase in the altitude up to 20.5 kilometers. Researchers suggest that this upward extension is due to the slow mixing of pollutants from lower in the atmosphere and may be traced to activity more than 5 years ago.
Finally, it's that time of the year that we mark important birth dates and in Hawaii, the Mauna Loa Observatory just celebrated its 40th anniversary. The facility located on the Big Island began as small meteorological station, but within a year, in 1958, carbon dioxide measurements began and its data is now the world's benchmark for all global climate modeling. By the way, there was a long list of dignitaries who traveled to Hawaii for this celebration.
