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| | 1998 Weather in the News |
February 1998 Weather in the News
Now that the record books are closed on 1997, several independent research groups confirm that last year was one of the warmest years this century. All agree that the ocean surface temperature reached its maximum, but there was some disagreement about just where the land temperatures were ranked.
Not suprisingly, the United Nations has declared 1998, The Year of the Ocean. In light of resources, transportation and climatic effects, the ocean will be the topic of various studies and educational programs during the next 11 months.
NOAA reports that more than half of the U.S. population lives within 50 miles of the coastline..which excludes most of Pennsylvania.
One final ocean story, for the past two weeks, an experiment has been conducted in the North Pacific using hurricane-hunter aircraft with a goal of better predicting vicious winter storms along the West Coast.
Since there are very few reliable upper air reporting sites off the Pacific shores, data collected during NORPEX should aid forecasters nationwide with better starting conditions for the computer forecasts. By the way, this is the same aircraft that probed the environment around Super Hurricane Linda back in September and correctly forecast the storms demise.
Now a post script on the Kyoto climate conference. A recent study points to big pollution problems for the western Pacific basin. As China begins to invest in automobiles, the ozone generated by nitrogen oxides in the car exhaust could reach very hazardous levels.
Today, only a few million own cars in China, but in less than 50 years, more than 400 million car owners are expected. This could spread a cloud of pollution into Korea and Japan that is worse that a bad summer day in Los Angeles.
If you are looking for a new vacation spot, consider this. A team of scientists are wintering over atop the Greenland ice sheet.
They are studying ice core samples, snow measurements and how air bubbles get trapped in ice. You would think that there must be a better time to do this study!
Here's a new victim of El Nino.
Data bouys from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirm that the coral reefs around the Galapagos Islands near Ecuador have experienced severe bleaching due to the unprecedented and prolonged warmth of the water. Marine biologsist liken the reefs to rainforests and they are concerned that this disruption may be irreversible on the fragile ecosystem.
On a final note, it appears that El Nino has been affecting all of us in a subtle way. The strong warming in the Pacific causes the tropical easterlies to weaken and this helps speed up the westerlies.
The drag of faster westerlies has actually slowed the spin of the planet. As of late November, the momentum shift has lengthened the day by four-tenths of a millisecond..so a new weather maxim can be spoken...as El Nino grows stronger, the days grow longer.
March 1998 Weather in the News
It's that time once again for those strange stories that may have missed your glance as the weather has been in the news. You may recall that a large meteorite struck Greenland on December 7. There are plans by a Danish team to recover the leftover fragments in late July. It appears that this is the only safe time of the year to venture into the melting zone where icy tunnels a few hundred meters deep are common. Somehow I can think of a hundred different things I'd rather do this summer.
Late March means it's nearly the end of maple syrup season and it has been a bitter time in New England and Quebec where the January icestorm took its toll by downing hundreds of thousand of maple trees.
In Vermont alone, there has been a 10% decrease in producing trees which means a corresponding increase in the price of maple syrup..so the sweetest time of the year has just become a bit more expensive for New Englanders.
It was about this time last year that the Red River of the North was bursting its banks between Fargo and Grand Forks leading to the worst flooding on record for eastern North Dakota. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has just released its spring flood outlook and folks in the Dakota can breath a sigh of relief as only a little flooding is expected there.
The main action is expected to be in the South, especially in Georgia and Alabama and in northern New England where the water content of the snow cover is unusually high. Pennsylvania is at moderate risk due to the expected storm track.
Folks in Caribou, Maine, Erie, Pennsylvania, South Bend, Indiana, Williston, North Dakota and Key West, Florida will all be able to keep either their weather radars or have a forecast office for a few more years.
As the modernization of the National Weather Service moves into its final phase, a few blind spots have been found and fixed for the time being. The Erie office should stay in tact for two more years.
Just when this looked like confirmation of global warming, the study showed that the melting trend has reversed since 1991. Could it all be natural variability?
This week has marked severe weather preparedness by the National Weather Service in Pennsylvania. On Tuesday and Wednesday, tornado and flash flood drills were issued as a new warning format is being tested. These formats will be used starting April 15, which can be a natural disaster for many taxpayers.
Next Saturday will mark EMEX '98, the Earth and Mineral Science's Exposition. It is geared for prospective EMS students and the events begin at 9:30 and run until 3:30 in the afternoon.
There will be a host of demonstrations along with dozens of representatives to answer questions about the wide variety of academic programs offered by this college. That's EMEX '98, Saturday, April 4.
April 1998 Weather in the News
A new report from the University of Bayreath in Germany puts a different twist on the role of forests as pollution filters. For decades, it's been understood that trees help remove pollutants from the atmosphere, but these researchers studied how.
They discovered that on deciduous trees, only a fraction of most particles are removed, except for some organic compounds, like dioxins and pesticides. The leaves of trees can remove these pollutants more effectively.
Other pollutants stay are not taken out by the leaves. Actually, rain accounts for about half of the removal of particle contaminants. Another study from UCLA focuses on the role of cosmic rays in producing cloud seeds. Cosmic rays are highly energetic forms of energy that reach the earth not only from our sun, but also other distant stars. Some of these rays smash into air molecules in the lower atmosphere knocking off electrons.
The new ionized molecule actually helps form an aerosol which is key to cloud drop development. So the next time, you drive through a fog, consider its origins as somewhere in the Milky Way!
Of course, El Nino continues to occupy much of the weather news, but this report addresses the important issue of how long ago do climate records indicate an El Nino.
A Washington state geoarcheologist has been studying the landscape of southern Peru. This region is on the edge of the Atacambe Desert, perhaps the driest area in the world. Excavations show the occurrence of heavy rain at irregular intervals during the last one to two millenia. The hypothesis is that these floods occurred during El Nino episodes and this may give us an even better record of this climatic event....even without Dan Rather's nightly updates.
Finally this evening, while the Cold War is over, a meteorologists job is Russia is still not safe. On Monday, April 13, a freakish late season snowstorm buried parts of the Russian capital. Traffic was snarled, power went off and most folks were caught by surprise. That's because the Moscow weather office was forecasting sunshine, instead of snow.
The uproar was loud enough to cause the chief forecaster to lose his job. I guess our Russian counterparts need to remind their superiors that we only try and predict the weather, we don't produce it!
June1998 Weather in the News
First of all, some disturbing news from Brazil about a deadly and yet mysterious connection between episodes of air pollution and miscarriages. A study by physicians in Sao Paulo showed that typically high concentration of air pollutants, specifically nitrogen dioxide, was followed three days later by a jump in miscarriages especially for babies in the first trimester.
Follow-up research has focused on carboxyhemoglobin, which occurs when carbon monoxide replaces oxygen in the blood, and its concentration in the umbilical cord on polluted days. Even Public Health officials in the United States have raised their eyebrows about the findings and wonder about the social costs of air pollution.
For those of you who enjoy fun in the sun and think that sunscreens are the perfect protection from skin cancer, you may want to think again. An epidemiologist at the Sloan-Kettering Center in New York reported that half of her four studies indicated that sunscreens did not protect some people from a certain type of common skin cancer.
These results raised questions about the way the chemicals in the sun lotions protect against UV light. All researchers agreed though that people should continue to use sunscreens, but that more studies are needed to understand what puts some folks at higher risk.
Here's a farewell to El Nino and its connection to the arms race. The above-ground nuclear tests conducted by the U.S. and France in the tropical Pacific atolls during the early 1960's left radioactive Carbon-14 in the ocean water. The ocean circulations gradually brought the element deeper into the Pacific until 1976 when a sudden shift in the ocean circulation brought deeper water to the surface and changed the concentration of the isotope absorbed by the coral reef in the Galapagos Islands.
Marine scientists are now focusing their attention on why the ocean went through such an upheaval in the mid 70's which marked the beginning of numerous strong El Nino episodes.
Next time you are on an airplane and see someone using a laptop computer on board, consider this - according to the General Accounting Office, that passenger is likely to have better weather information on his or her computer than the pilot up front.
In a scathing report, the GAO blasted the Federal Aviation Administration for not getting better weather forecasts to airline pilots. They identified a major part of the problem with controllers and meteorologists at regional air traffic centers being too busy to talk to one another. I suspect that problem is more widespread in the workplace and home than we'd like to admit.
Finally this evening, you can circle November 17, 1998 on your calendar as the day when more than 500 satellites orbiting the earth will be bombarded by the Leonid meteoroid storm.
This will mark the first time since the space age begin that an intense shower of tiny particles will encounter our complex space communication systems. No one knows for sure what the effect will be, but most satellite operators are expecting some interruptions.
July 1998 Weather in the News
It may be just a matter of days now until GOES-9 passes out of active service and becomes part of the flotilla of space junk orbiting the earth. This weather satellite has eyed the eastern Pacific for several years, but GOES-10 is now completely ready to take over as NASA launched the back-up craft over a year ago and has been giving the new weather bird a shakedown for the past few months. Now the switch can be thrown without missing a beat.
If you are one of those people who expect every airplane flight to be a blue-knuckle express, there is some hope that clear air turbulence may become more predictable and perhaps avoidable.
A new on-board radar is being field tested for its skill in detecting regions of turbulence. So far, results are promising, but its outreach is limited and this may only give pilots a few minutes notice of rough going ahead. A ground-based sensor is also being tested which may be even better, but it will likely be 5 years before it could be tried operationally. One of the cost-saving programs in the new National Weather Service has called for fewer radiosonde launches. However, simulations were conducted to see how the computer models would do with half as many upper air reports.
The results were discouraging showing a major degradation in the predictions. An innovative approach has been suggested by atmospheric scientists in Oklahoma, it's called a glidersonde. It is a tiny glider with atmospheric sounders attached which is lofted by a balloon. Using an autopilot and GPS receiver, the glider can be directed back to the launch point after the balloon bursts with the instruments still on board. Each glidersonde could eventually save the government more than $10,000 per site each month!
A new study from Sweden supports findings from Penn State's Richard Alley about the recent history of the West Antarctic ice cap. Ice core samples indicate that it had recently, geologically speaking, rejoined the main ice sheet after having broken away for a time. This raises more speculation on its possible breaking away again. Sounds like the plot to a new Hollywood movie for next summer. The recent heat wave in the South and West have sent newly deregulated electric utilities scrambling to buy extra power to cover the peak demands of their customers.
Tens of millions of dollars are changing hands to keep up with the power needs. Ultimately, these costs will be paid for by the customers, so here's a sure-fire prediction, expect significantly higher electric bills in the months ahead. Finally, I'm sure more than a few of you have wondered whether it was worth mowing the lawn. Well if you are a procrastinator, here's an environmentally sound reason to just say 'no' to lawn-mowing.
An Australian team has measured the emissions from freshly cut grasslands and the outcome is a bit surprising. The release of methanol and ethanol increases by over 100 fold after clipping the lawn. This would make mowed lawns one of the major sources of these pollutants in the world. However, the gases are not released at night. So if you have to mow, do so late...but not in my neighborhood!
September 1998 Weather in the News
(Tough Choices in China)
First, the disastrous floods in China this summer forced government officials to make some very hard choices. In the central county of Jianli, all the flooding resulted from decisions to breach the dikes along the Yangtze and flood the lowlands before the water pressure built up on the main dikes surrounding the provincial capital of Wuhan. This meant that over 100,000 people lost their homes and all their belongings to save the city. Obviously, those sort of decisions would be much harder to make in a democracy.
(Tough Practices in Syracuse) From floods to football, those of you that follow the Orangemen of Syracuse saw them lose to a heartbreaker to Tennessee to start the new season. Well the night after to add insult to injury, a tornado tore through the campus knocking a speaker cluster from the Carrier Dome which tore up the astroturf. So the Syracuse team had to wait until mid-week just to review tapes of their loss and watch the Wolverines, plus they could only practice on half their field as the other half was being repaired. True to form, they were still able to beat Michigan in spite of this adversity.
(Trying Times for Researchers on Global Warming) The debate on global warming has a new focus, satellite measurements of atmospheric temperatures. Greenhouse warming advocates have been miffed by the apparent very slow cooling noted by the satellite sensor from 1979 thru 1995. However, a physicist discovered an error in measurements since the weather bird falls about 1 kilometer per year and this effects the way the data is acquired. The adjusted data wipes out the cooling trend and simply shows no shift..so we're back at square one with satellite and global warming.
(Testing New Tires in Tracking Tornadoes) Earlier this month, storm chasers from Pennsylvania and surrounding states gathered in Meadville for the first ever North Coast Storm Chasers Picnic and Convergence. More than a hundred weather afficiandos and their friends met for an afternoon of trading weather war stories and tips on tracking storms. The group even honored the scientist who designed the tornado damage scale, Theodore Fujita, by calling the event Ted Fujita Day.
(Testimony of Cooperative Observer) Just yesterday, another weather watcher was honored at the National Weather Service Office in State College. Ron Yurchak of Tamaqua was given the 1998 Holm Award for his faithful and accurate weather reports as a cooperative observer in the city of Tamaqua for the past three decades. It is the dedication of people like him that continues to make the U.S. weather services the best in the world.
(Plans for Millenium Eve - Tracking Toys) Finally this evening, if you are wondering what to do for fun and excitement on the eve of the new century, how about a trip to a western Washington beach on December 31,1999. For beachcombers, there will be a landfall of trickets. This past January, a cargo ship approaching Japan lost its luggage of 100,000 toy cars and one million balloons. This flotsam has been modeled for its trajectory by oceanographers who expect it to arrive along the Northwest Coast just about New Years 2000. And if it doesn't, then their forecast was all wet!
December 1998 Weather in the News
While the final numbers on November are not yet in, it appears that this past month will likely be one of the warmest 11th months for the nation. This will keep 1998 on track as the warmest year on record, though October did not quite make it to the number one position. In fact, it appeared that the string of consecutive warmest months globally would end at nine. However, when researchers added in Canada's data, it raised the readings to record levels. Who know's what our northern neighbor's numbers will do with November's global departures.
Eventually, winter weather will overtake the nation and when it does, forecasters in the Plains will have a new rating system to categorize the impact of wintry storms. A predictor from Cheyenne has developed this method to alert the public to the problems associated with wintry precipitation. They range from minor inconvenience to significant inconvenience to life-threatening. Now if this sounds somewhat familiar, it's because Weather World viewers were introduced to an even better scheme by John Cahir in the 1970's when he termed snowstorms as nuisance, plowable or crippling. I think we'll stick with the superior Cahir ratings. Damage surveyors have had to search more than 200 years of history to find a more deadly Atlantic storm than Hurricane Mitch. With a death toll of over 11,000 and damage estimated at 5 billion dollars, Mitch has become the worst hurricane since 1780 to effect the Americas. The storm in 1780 devastated the eastern Caribbean taking twice as many lives. Speaking of hurricanes, here is an oddity about Hurricane Bonnie, which hit the North Carolina coast in August within a few miles of where Fran hit in 1996. Fran plowed into the shoreline, while Bonnie (with similar strength) stalled at the coast for three consecutive high tides. Yet, in spite of Bonnie's thrashing, it actually did less damage to the beaches and property than Fran - though they followed nearly identical tracks to landfall. The USGS is continuing to study these results.
You may have heard about the iceberg the size of Delaware that broke off the Ronne Ice Shelf in Antarctica last month. The ice chunk measures 92 miles long and 30 miles wide and is floating around the Weddell Sea. This is the first major break in 50 years and leaves the edge of the ice shelf at where it was in 1947. Glaciologists feel that this event is quite natural and not related to global climate change.
In a reversal from ice to fire, the National Center for Atmospheric Research will fly a C-130 aircraft around wildfires during the next year attempting to gather better data about the wind environment associated with these blazes. The goal is to better predict the local winds once a fire gets out of control. The aircraft will be equipped with several new instruments, including the Thermacam which is an infra-red sensor that will measure temperatures up to 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit.
Finally, atmospheric researchers are getting their jollies from the prospects of new supercomputers. These powerful computing machines will do 32 tera-flops, that is 32 trillion floating point operations per second. With such computational power, some scientists say that we can now almost place the earth in a box....simulationally speaking.
