“I think he read on the wrong side of the [thermometer] scale, and so was off by five degrees of Celsius. If you adjust for that, there was no 136-degree Fahrenheit temperature at El Azizia, Libya, in September 1922. Based on some really involved detective work, [a committee of experts] decided that this reading simply is not valid. It’s not the world’s hottest temperature.”
–Randall Cerveny, Arizona State University, one of the co-authors of the BAMS article published on-line today, speaking in this video available on Vimeo.
Uncategorized
A Threat to Antarctic Research
Scientific research in Antarctica is approaching a tipping point of its own, with logistical costs overwhelming the budget, according to a new report written by an independent panel commissioned by the White House. The report recommends fundamental changes to the infrastructure of U.S. scientific facilities in Antarctica; otherwise, according to the report, logistics costs will increase “until they altogether squeeze out funding for science.”
The U.S. Antarctic Program (USAP), which is managed by the National Science Foundation (NSF), supports three year-round stations (McMurdo, Palmer, and Amundsen-Scott South Pole), as well as more than 50 field sites a year that are active during the summer months. The report found numerous infrastructure problems at USAP facilities, including:
a warehouse where some areas are avoided because the forklifts fall through the floor; kitchens with no grease traps; outdoor storage of supplies that can only be found by digging through deep piles of snow; gaps so large under doors that the wind blows snow into the buildings; late 1950s International Geophysical Year-era vehicles; antiquated communications; an almost total absence of modern inventory management systems (including the use of bar codes in many cases); indoor storage inefficiently dispersed in more than 20 buildings at McMurdo Station; some 350,000 pounds (159,000 kilograms) of scrap lumber awaiting return to the U.S. for disposal…
In addition, transportation both to and from Antarctica and on the continent has become increasingly problematic. Despite the recent addition of overland traverse vehicles, delivery of supplies to USAP camps remains costly and inefficient. Meanwhile, the U.S. icebreaker fleet currently consists of just one functioning vessel (and that one doesn’t have the capability to break through thick ice). As a result, the United States has been forced to lease icebreakers from other nations–an expensive and unreliable solution.
“We are convinced that if we don’t do something fairly soon, the science will just disappear,” notes Norm Augustine, former chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin, who led the review panel. “Everything will be hauling people down and back, and doing nothing.”
Almost 90% of the USAP budget is currently spent on transportation, support personnel, and other logistical matters, leaving few resources for actual scientific research. To rectify that situation, the report recommends decreasing the NSF’s budget for Antarctic research by 6% a year for four years and increasing spending on improving the USAP’s infrastructure and logistics by the same amount over the same period. The short-term result will be a hit to the research currently being conducted in Antarctica, but over the long term the proposal should allow such research to continue to take place there. The report also notes additional savings could be achieved by delivering more supplies to the landlocked Amundsen-Scott base at the South Pole by overland traverse instead of cargo flights, and by reducing support personnel at the three USAP bases by 20%. The report also endorses President Obama’s 2013 budget request for the U.S. Coast Guard to begin designing a new icebreaker.
Ultimately, the review panel’s suggestions are about more than just specific numbers and initiatives. They are about a basic change in the way scientific research is conducted in Antarctica. As the report states:
Overcoming these barriers requires a fundamental shift in the manner in which capital projects and major maintenance are planned, budgeted, and funded. Simply working harder doing the same things that have been done in the past will not produce efficiencies of the magnitude needed in the future; not only must change be introduced into how things are done, but what is being done must also be reexamined.
The full report can be found here.
In Case You Didn't Notice, July Was REALLY Hot
This past July was the hottest month on record in U.S. history, according to NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center. The average temperature throughout the contiguous 48 states was 77.6°F, surpassing the previous mark of 77.4°F set in 1936. The first seven months of 2012 were also the hottest on record in the United States, as was the 12-month period of August 2011-July 2012. (Records go back to 1895.)
Interestingly, only one state–Virginia–experienced its hottest July on record, which goes to show how widespread the heat wave was across the country. Thirty-two states had one of their top-10 hottest Julys of all time this year, with seven states recording their second-hottest ever. July temperatures were 3.3°F warmer than the U.S. twentieth-century average for the month, with particularly intense heat in the Plains, the Midwest, and along the Eastern Seaboard.
The five hottest individual months in U.S. history have all been Julys: 2012, 1936, 2006, 2011, and 1934.
In addition to the historic heat, the U.S. Climate Extremes Index, which NOAA uses to calculate temperature anomalies, severe drought, downpours, tropical storms, and hurricanes, was a record-high 37% in July; the previous maximum occurred last July. And the index for the first seven months of the year was 46%, breaking a 78-year-old record. The average index is 20%.
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The Rainbow Goes Green
Downtown Omaha, Nebraska, may not be a place you’d expect to see many rainbows, since the state is under an official drought emergency this summer. But art has a way of trumping nature at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts. The Rainbow: Certain Principles of Light and Shapes between Forms, an exhibit created by artist Michael Jones McKean, gives residents a glimpse of welcome sights from wetter times. McKean worked with irrigation and rainwater harvesting experts and atmospheric scientists to create the display, in which a dense wall of water shoots up to 100 feet into the air to create a rainbow above the building.
“There are a number of novel aspects of this project,” explains Joseph A. Zehnder, professor and chair of the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at Creighton University, who also served as a technical advisor on rain and wind climatology and on atmospherics optics for the project. “One is that the display is created using harvested rainwater. Local agricultural irrigation and rainwater harvesting companies contributed time and expertise to the project, with the hope of providing a public demonstration of currently available technologies.”
Prior to the opening, a self-contained water harvesting and storage system was built in the Bemis Center. The collected and recaptured storm water is filtered and stored in six above-ground 10,500-gallon water tanks while within the gallery a 60-horsepower pump supplies pressurized water to nine nozzles mounted to the roof. Based on atmospheric conditions, vantage point, available sunlight and the changing angle of the sun in the sky, each rainbow has a singular character and quality.
Zehnder notes that although the basics of rainbows are well understood, there are some complications that arise with providing them on demand. “There are variations in the hue and intensity of the rainbow that are related to the water drop size and density,” he explains. “The drop sizes need to be sufficiently large in order for the internal reflection and refraction of sunlight to occur. Scattering from smaller drops is the wavelength independent Mie scattering so the color separation doesn’t occur.”
McKean began experimenting with manmade rainbows in 2002 and in 2008 started researching the logistics of creating a rainbow over the Bemis Center. In 2010 he started a partial test of the rainbow in Omaha, with the full test last October. “The rainbow is a reminder of a constant universal—something forever, simultaneously contemporary and ancient,” comments McKean. “In the face of our earthbound landscape of shapes and forms, of geologic, evolutionary, archeological timescales, the rainbow is a kind of perfection, our oldest image.”
Even if artists can make their own rainbows, weather still has its say. Because of the dry summer, the Bemis Center is only showing the exhibit on select occasions, with scheduling twenty-four hours in advance. To find out when the rainbow will be on, check here or the Bemis Facebook page. There is also a free mobile app that can be downloaded to Apple and Android phones, which will notify users when the next rainbow will take place and also includes information about the artist and the project.
Illustrating the Weather
The best-selling title in the AMS bookstore is The AMS Weather Book: The Ultimate Guide to America’s Weather, by Jack Williams. Its detailed, full-color illustrations display the unique style that Williams developed during his time at USA Today, the newspaper that perfected the art of the infographic, and those images have proven to be so popular that the AMS has released a CD exclusively featuring them. The Weather, Illustrated: Graphics from The AMS Weather Book (available to order here) features more than 100 of the book’s figures, covering a range of atmospheric phenomena including jet streams, polar air masses,wet and dry microbursts, gravity waves, and Earth’s energy budget. There are also graphics about other aspects of meteorology, such as instrumentation and forecasting. By presenting meteorological concepts with images that are both accessible and stylish, the CD can be a valuable educational tool whether utilized in tandem with the book or on its own.
First Meeting: Atmospheric Biogeoscientists Join Agriculture, Forestry Specialists
The First Conference on Atmospheric Biogeosciences last month in Boston was introduced to broaden the scope of the long-running AMS Conference on Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, now at its 30th meeting. Together, the joint specialty meetings brought in a record number of nearly 200 attendees. According to Ankur Desai, Chair of the AMS Committee on Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, this first joint meeting attracted a whole new audience, with many attendees experiencing their first AMS conference of any kind. Loretta J. Mickley, atmospheric chemist, member of the Board on Atmospheric Biogeosciences, and a conference co-chair, was one of them. “The joint meeting promised to bring together scientists from a range of disciplines,” Mickley comments. “I found the mix of issues enriching.”
The recently initiated AMS Board on Atmospheric Biogeosciences, chaired by Elizabeth Pattey, worked to broaden the focus of the Agricultural and Forest Meteorology meeting, by bringing in the atmospheric chemistry and ecology communities. The meeting featured presentations over four days, covering aspects of the dynamic exchanges occurring at the interface between the atmosphere and the Earth’s surface, such as canopy transport and dispersion, the fate of environmental mercury, and methane emissions from managed and unmanaged landscapes. According to Desai, it turned out to be a great fit. “It was clear from the beginning that there is a natural partnership between the two communities. We sat right at the intersection of where micrometeorology met macroecology.”
Ian Strachan, co-chair of conference and member of the AMS Committee on Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, agrees, noting that by infusing a rich tradition of meetings that goes back to the 1950s with joint sessions from the Board brought these communities together in a way that allowed attendees to explore new connections and avenues of research. Pattey, points out how the smaller venue was ideal for these types of interactions. “By integrating members in a more intimate setting, it opens a new area of direction, allowing collaborations and ideas that are important in establishing stronger ties within and between the two groups,” she comments.
Strachan noted how the sessions also provided an opportunity for students to present their work at a major venue, many for the first time. And according to the chairs, the significant number of talks (~40) and posters (~20) presented by graduate students points to atmospheric biogeosciences as a strong emerging field.
With the positive feedback from attendees, the committee and conference chairs are already discussing another joint meeting. “We plan to continue the tradition from here, bringing in scientists from even more disciplines to add to the diversity of research that was presented at this meeting,” concludes Desai.
NOAA Appoints New Director for Hurricane Center
Rick Knabb has been named the new director of NOAA’s National Hurricane Center. He replaces outgoing director Bill Read and begins June 4, days after the official start of the six-month Atlantic hurricane season on June 1.
Well-known as The Weather Channel’s “hurricane expert” for the last two hurricane seasons, Knabb is returning to familiar territory. He was a senior hurricane specialist from 2005 to 2008, and the Center’s science operations officer beginning in 2001.
“I’m ready to reunite with the talented staff at the National Hurricane Center and to work with all of our partners to prepare everyone for the next hurricane,” said Knabb. “Personal preparedness will be critically important, including for my own family and home.”
Born just outside of Chicago, Knabb grew up in Coral Springs, Florida, near Fort Lauderdale, and in Katy, Texas in suburban Houston. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Atmospheric Science from Purdue University and holds a master’s degree and Ph.D. in Meteorology from Florida State University.
Knabb left the Hurricane Center in Miami and became deputy director of the Central Pacific Hurricane Center (CPHC) in Honolulu, Hawaii, for a year before arriving at The Weather Channel. The CPHC oversees tropical cyclone forecasts and warnings from 140° west longitude westward to the International Dateline, including all of the Hawaiian Islands.
A member of the AMS, Knabb also serves on the AMS Board for Operational Government Meteorologists. He has published numerous papers in AMS and other scientific journals and has given presentations on hurricanes and tropical weather at AMS and related conferences. His expertise in communicating has been honed these last two years at The Weather Channel.
“Rick personifies that calm, clear, and trusted voice that the nation has come to rely on,” says NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco. “Rick will also lead our hurricane center team and work closely with federal, state and local emergency management authorities to ensure the public is prepared to weather the storm.”
Cracks in the Ice
Floating ice shelves off the western coast of Antarctica are breaking up at their margins, causing them to disengage from the bay walls where they attach to the coastline and retreat inland. This could cause the fracturing ice to be less capable of preventing grounded upstream ice from sliding into the sea. After studying Landsat satellite data taken of the Amundsen Sea Embayment taken from 1972 to 2011, researchers at the University of Texas examined found extensive changes in the ice shelves over time, including significant fracturing of the margins that bound the shelves. The Embayment is a huge hunk of ice that comprises one-third of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
“As a glacier goes afloat, becoming an ice shelf, its flow is resisted partly by the margins, which are the bay walls or the seams where two glaciers merge,” says Ginny Catania, a professor at the University of Texas and coauthor of the study, which was published in the Journal of Glaciology. “An accelerating glacier can tear away from its margins, creating rifts that negate the margins’ resistance to ice flow and causing additional acceleration.”
The video below shows a repeating cycle of the coastline (red line) moving seaward (to the left) and then turning around and moving inland as large ice masses break off. Simultaneously, the northern shear margin breaks up and retreats, thus creating the possibility of an increase of inland ice flow to the sea.
New Warnings, New Words
National Weather Service offices in Missouri and Kansas recently initiated an experiment testing new tornado warnings that combine more specific information with more descriptive language than have been used in the past to describe the potential effects of storms. The experiment is called “Impact Based Warning,” and is meant to bluntly tell residents in the path of tornadoes what could result if they don’t seek shelter. By using phrases such as “complete destruction” and “unsurvivable if shelter not sought below ground,” the NWS is hoping to “better convey the threat and elevate the warning over a more typical warning,” according to Dan Hawblitzel of the Pleasant Hill, Missouri NWS office.
The new alerts got their first big test last weekend when more than 100 twisters were reported in Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Iowa. While the NWS’s Storm Prediction Center issued a warning of possible life-threatening storms in several midwestern states days before they touched down, in Kansas the words used in the new alerts were particularly trenchant: “You could be killed if not underground or in a tornado shelter. Many well-built homes and businesses will be completely swept from their foundations.” And the warnings seem to have worked. Despite the large number of storms, only six people were killed—all in an overnight tornado that hit Woodward, Oklahoma. In Wichita, Kansas, a twister tore through a mobile-home park during nighttime hours, but there were no fatalities.
The Impact Based Warning experiment was developed by the NWS in consultation with social scientists. Along with the new vernacular, it includes some key additions to regular tornado warnings, including information that identifies the hazard (hail, winds, tornado, etc.), indicates whether the hazard has been spotted by radar or by people on the ground, and describes potential effects of the hazard (loss of life, damage to trees or buildings, etc.). The warnings can be used not only for tornadoes, but also to signify life- or property-threatening thunderstorms. The experiment is scheduled to run through the end of November, at which point it will be evaluated and considered for more widespread use.
The initiative comes 
just one year after tornadoes killed more than 500 people in the United States—the deadliest season in almost 60 years. The 2011 year in tornadoes is examined in the new AMS book, Deadly Season: Analysis of the 2011 Tornado Outbreaks, by Kevin M. Simmons and Daniel Sutter. The book is a follow-up to the authors’ Economic and Societal Impacts of Tornadoes, published by AMS in 2011. The new title looks at possible factors contributing to the outcomes of 2011 tornado outbreaks, including assessments of Doppler radar, storm warning systems. and early recovery efforts. Both books can be purchased here.
A National Network of Networks: The Discussion Continues
by James Stalker, CEO, RESPR, Inc., and Chair, R&D/Testbeds Working Group for the AMS Ad Hoc Committee on a Nationwide Network of Networks
The National Research Council (NRC) report, titled “Observing the Weather and Climate From the Ground Up: A Nationwide Network of Networks (2009),” provided the vision and inspiration for building a team of volunteers from across all three sectors (government, academia, and private) that investigated the
suggestions recommended in the report. This team, comprising six (6) working groups (Organization and Business Models, Architecture, Measurements and Infrastructure, Metadata Policy, R&D and Testbeds, and Human Dimension), spent more than two years considering how to refine the recommendations and tackle the challenges identified in the original NRC report. They also identified other challenges in shaping this type of Nationwide Network of Networks (NNoN), which will be of critical importance to our country’s weather-ready future.
This volunteer team has published additional recommendations compiled into a draft report available at the American Meteorological Society website. Several drafts of this team’s report had been made available to the larger weather and climate enterprise community for comments over many months. The most recent and final version of the report reflects the community input. The readers of this blog are encouraged to read this final report and provide their comments to the Committee Chair and/or any of the Working Group Chairs of the Ad Hoc Committee on Network of Networks.
These volunteer efforts, to date, have certainly tried to solidify the interest of the various stakeholders in a network of this magnitude and of national importance but a lot more work remains to be undertaken. Unfortunately, many challenges remain unresolved. For example, wide-spread support hasn’t been secured for the idea of a central authority for an organizing body of the NNoN. Despite the best efforts by the volunteer team, an appealing organization and business model for such a central body has not been settled on going forward. Other challenges include establishing how to:
- make this organizing body an autonomous body that is not unduly influenced by any one sector,
- make this body a financially sustainable entity in the long run,
- reach all the major stakeholders and get them to support this idea and contribute to its success.
With respect to the third challenge listed above, many of the sought-after stakeholders may not be actively engaged in the weather and climate enterprise community activities and so finding effective ways to reach them becomes an even bigger challenge.
On a positive note, however, the NNoN efforts are going to be discussed again and support will be sought at the AMS Washington Forum in April 2012 and also at the Summer Community Meeting in August 2012 in Norman, Oklahoma. These two venues should prove quite useful for any interested Weather and Climate Enterprise participant and other stakeholders in the overarching effort to build a national asset that the current and many future generations will help nurture and benefit from.