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Meteorologist Paul Huttner’s writes on his Minnesota Public Radio blog, “Updraft” about the launch today of a new cable TV channel for weather, “The Weather Cast.”

From my perspective, this news may come as the equivalent of a nuclear bomb for national cable and satellite weather programming. This is the first time since The Weather Channel’s launch that a viable national alternative has appeared.

The distributor, and apparent instigator, of the new channel is the DISH Network, with 14 million subscribers. In its press release, the network explained it was responding to a proliferation of movies, features and other content on TWC that aren’t about the weather at hand:
“Our customers always tell us that the only thing they want in a weather channel is weather reporting,” said Dave Shull, senior vice president of Programming [for DISH].

But there’s more to the business side of this decision than just trying to cater to viewers: DISH had been negotiating with TWC over fees, with a deadline of midnight Thursday.  The plan was for DISH to dump TWC (channel 214) and substitute the The Weather Cast (initially channel 213) assuming no deal with TWC.
A visit to the DISH web site didn’t yield any further information, but Huttner reports that fellow Minnesota meteorology icon Paul Douglas is producing the network through his company, Weather Nation.
Dare we imagine a day when weather junkies will be able to surf national cable channels the way politicos and news junkies surf Fox, CNN, MSNBC and other outlets?

We … call for an end to McCarthy-like threats of criminal prosecution against our colleagues based on innuendo and guilt by association, the harassment of scientists by politicians seeking distractions to avoid taking action, and the outright lies being spread about them.

The rhetoric from this letter to the 7 May issue of Science magazine may seem unusually overheated, especially considering it is signed by some 255 members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. But the topic is, of course, global warming, and the heat—political and social—has turned up several notches this year, as you know. (Indeed, the firestorm of commentary on the doctored picture of a polar bear on an ice floe that Science chose to accompany the letter is instructive of the tempers spilling out of the climate change discussion of late.) The rhetoric is a sure sign that climate change long ago outgrew the Ivory Tower and now hinges on the court of public opinion, where appearances are as critical as ideas. But that’s well understood; what’s new is that science seems to have moved on to yet another court of opinion where the appearance of fairness trumps all other familiar criteria.
The tipping point for the Science letter was a Civil Investigative Demand (CID) issued in April by the office of Virginia Attorney General Kevin Cuccinelli as part of a fraud investigation of climate change research conducted at the University of Virginia. Specifically, the CID would have the university turn over all documentation, correspondence, work—anything basically—related to five grants stretching back to as much as 11 years ago for climate change research by Michael Mann, a leading climatologist who has since moved on from Charlottesville to Penn State University. The CID gave the university just three months to complete the state’s massive, time-consuming document search.
The outrage from scientists was joined last week by AMS Executive Director Keith Seitter and UCAR President Rick Anthes, whose letter to the UVA president seeks protection of the scientific process, while it is still possible to challenge the CID.

We feel strongly that the actions of the Virginia Attorney General represent an inappropriate use of government authority, and urge you to do everything within your power to uphold the tenets of academic freedom.

The university’s faculty senate, the American Civil Liberties Union, American Association of University Professors, and others had also cautioned that compliance with the CID could compromise academic freedoms. Even one of Mann’s most persistent critics (aimed mostly at his “hockey stick” graph of rising temperatures that has gotten considerable exposure through the IPCC and other citations) has condemned Cuccinelli’s tactic.  On Friday, UVA administrators announced they would use private funds for legal representation in this matter, saying “Research universities must defend the privilege of academic freedom in the creation of new knowledge.”
At the same time, Nature magazine joined the chorus of protest from scientists with an equally strong editorial in their 13 May issue.

Cuccinelli’s actions against Mann hark back to an era when tobacco companies smeared researchers as part of a sophisticated public relations strategy to raise doubts over the science showing that tobacco caused cancer, and delayed the introduction of smoking curbs for decades. Researchers found themselves bogged down in responding to subpoenas and legal challenges, which deterred others from the field. Climate-change deniers have adopted similar strategies with alacrity and, unfortunately, considerable success.

It is easy to see why Nature considers the Virginia fraud investigation part of a trend. Climate science has gotten more entangled in the legal system since the hacking of emails at East Anglia. In February, three states—Texas, Alabama, and, yes…Virginia—said they would challenge EPA regulation of carbon dioxide as a pollutant. The suit is based on doubts about the validity of anthropogenic climate change fueled by the East Anglia e-mails that were hacked (or stolen or leaked) last fall.
And while the legal system is now a venue for challenging the scientific basis of climate change, scientists in turn are using the same system to respond to attacks on themselves and their work. In March, lawyers for Mann took action to stop internet distribution of a video lampooning one of his emails in the East Anglia servers. Similarly, late last month, Andrew Weaver of the University of British Columbia, one of the lead IPCC authors (and former chief editor of Journal of Climate) filed a libel suit against The National Post of Canada. Dr. Weaver said, “I asked The National Post to do the right thing – to retract a number of recent articles that attributed to me statements I never made, accused me of things I never did, and attacked me for views I never held. To my absolute astonishment, the newspaper refused.”
Already, plenty of words have been spilled on the pitfalls of scientists becoming their own advocates in the policy arena. Now climate change science steps out further, to be evaluated in a system that not so much determines truth as upholds fairness through a competition of advocacy. The rules of the game are even more obscure than before. The ball is officially in someone else’s court, and it is difficult to imagine this is any better for science.

In the wake of the recent eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland and the inconvenience it caused air travelers, this might be a good time to remember another Icelandic volcano and the chain of events it set off, including widespread famine, thousands of deaths, and maybe even the overthrow of a European power.
In June 1783, the Laki volcano in Iceland began an eruption that would continue for eight months, launching huge amounts of poisonous gas into the atmosphere. In Iceland, this had disastrous effects: vast amounts of cropland were destroyed and remained useless for many years, and approximately 80% of the country’s livestock died, setting off a famine that combined with the polluted air to kill approximately 10,000 people–at least one-fifth of Iceland’s population–over two years. This period is known in the country as “The Mist Hardships” because of the hazy mix of hydrogen fluoride and sulfur dioxide that settled over the land.
That haze inexorably made its way to other parts of the Northern Hemisphere. The famed British naturalist Gilbert White noted in his Naturalist’s Journal that, “The peculiar haze or smoky fog that prevailed in this island and even beyond its limits was a most extraordinary appearance, unlike anything known within the memory of man.” Killing more than 20,000 British citizens, the toxic haze is considered to be the worst natural disaster in modern Britain’s history. But it didn’t stop there. As recounted in the book, A Cultural History of Climate, by Wolfgang Behringer,

The emissions caused sulphurous odours, eye irritation, breathing difficulties and headaches as far away as central Europe. In large parts of Europe and the Ottoman empire, there were reports of thick “dry fog” and darkening or unusual colouring of the sun. Members of the Societas Meteorologica Palatina reported that, in the summer of 1783, the dark sky meant that people were able to look at the sun with the naked eye. . . . Acid rain damaged the environment throughout Scandinavia. Vegetation directly suffered even in the Netherlands, where with some delay cold and drought led to harvest failures, outbreaks of fever and diarrhoea, and increased mortality.

The eruption resulted in two years of unusually cold winters in Europe, which in turn led to widespread crop damage and a deadly famine. (Even the United States felt the effects: Benjamin Franklin noted that the winter of 1784 was the coldest in memory.) Indeed, much of Europe in the 1780s was plagued by unusual and extreme weather–and subsequent hardships brought on by this weather–that has been attributed to Laki. In his book, Behringer notes that,

Grain prices rose threefold in the decade beginning in 1784. The cumulative periods of cold during these years led to heavy snowfall and deep frost, widespread failures of vine and bread cereal harvests, flooding and livestock epidemics–precisely the combination of disasters that hits traditional agrarian societies hardest. The severe winter of 1783-4 saw exceptionally heavy snowfall, and there was serious flooding when the thaw came in late February. In the Rhine-Main area, the highwater mark at that time has in many places never been exceeded; it caused devastation in the fields or meadows and outbreaks of livestock disease due to contamination of the land. Many bridges collapsed, and roads and paths became impassable. The winter of 1784-5 was also exceptionally long and cold. In Berne snow lay on the ground for 154 days. . .

Some historians even trace the French Revolution back to the volcano, as the difficult conditions created by its eruption (e.g., long, cold winters, crop failures, food shortages) bred widespread disillusionment among the country’s peasantry.

In a region already dealing with the potentially devastating effects of the offshore oil drilling disaster, the southern United States has been dealt more blows by recent severe weather. Storms over the weekend brought rain, thunderstorms, tornadoes, and severe flooding to much of the South, killing more than 30 people.

The storms closed down major highways and forced many to evacuate their flooded homes. Tennessee and Kentucky were particularly hard hit over the weekend, with parts of Tennessee receiving well more than a foot of rain (this site documents some of the numbers; NWS rainfall maps can be found here and here); Nashville, TN, (13.53 inches) and Bowling Green, KY, (9.67 inches) were among the cities that set records for two-day rainfall (record-keeping goes back to the late 1800s).
Last week, a series of more than 50 tornadoes struck nine southern states, killing at least 12 people and causing severe damage to dozens of homes. The most powerful twister tore through Yazoo and Holmes counties in Mississippi and was classified by the NWS as an EF4, with maximum winds of 170 miles per hour. That tornado was also record-setting: It was the widest tornado to ever pass through Mississippi, measuring 1.75 miles at its widest point, as well as the fourth-longest to ever hit the state, traveling 149.25 miles on a continuous path. The Jackson, Mississippi NWS forecast office details this tornado and a number of others in an online report on the tornado outbreak.
The more recent of the two storm systems, the one that deluged Tennessee and Kentucky with flooding rain, had at least a tiny silver lining. While it at first whipped southerly winds across the oil spill in the Gulf, pushing the slick quickly toward the Louisiana coast, those winds shifted behind the storm’s cold front, blowing offshore and curtailing the advance of the oil toward Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. A blog post by AMS member Jeff Masters, who is also director of meteorology for the Weather Underground Web site, details the massive flooding and discusses the future movement of the Gulf Coast oil slick.

Springtime sandstorms are common in China, but the spate of widespread blowing dust and sand and yellow skies in March (with five dust storms in 12 days) has many Asians worried that conditions are worsening.
The storms originate when an atmospheric low pressure feature referred to as “the Mongolian Cyclone” kicks up winds that sweep through Mongolia and across the Gobi desert, creating clouds of sand, dust, and dirt that inundate much of China. The Mongolian cyclone has been particularly intense this spring, with recent storms affecting about one-fifth of China’s 1.3 billion people, according to the state-run Xinhua News Service. And the clouds don’t stay within China’s borders; studies have shown that they can travel as far as North America, and the Korean peninsula has been hit particularly hard by this storms this year. The Korean Meteorological Administration (KMA) posted a rare yellow dust warning recently, and soon thereafter it recorded the greatest amount of the dust since it began taking measurements in 2005: 2,684 micrograms per cubic meter in Daegu (a warning is issued when the concentration exceeds 800 micrograms per cubic meter).

A recent BAMS article by Chun et al. chronicles centuries of dustfall observations in Korea and points out that the storms seem to have increased in frequency in recent years. The dust problem has intensified across much of eastern Asia as desertification in China spreads. Agriculture plays a big part, as overgrazing, expansion of farmlands, and destructive irrigation practices exacerbate already dry lands. Urban sprawl, deforestation, and just plain old dry weather also contribute. Adding to the problem are the increasing amounts of industrial pollutants that mix with the sand, dust, and soot in the clouds. The health implications can be severe and can affect people without preexisting conditions.
The Chinese government has attempted to address desertification by planting vegetation in former farmland. While the recent storms suggest that the effectiveness of these initiatives has been mixed, Chinese meteorologists point out that cold weather can explain the recent spate of dust, and that not all sandstorms should be blamed on desertification, and China’s National Satellite Meteorological Center says that the country now has about six fewer sandstorms per year than it did in the years 1971-2000.

In one of the classic understatements of aviation history, Eric Moody turned on the flight intercom of his British Airways 747 and reported to his 248 passengers:

Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them under control. I trust you are not in too much distress.

The date was 24 June 1982, and Moody’s 747 was south of Java, en route from Heathrow to Auckland, amidst an ash cloud from Mount Galunggung in Indonesia. At first it looked as if the only hope was to ditch the plane in the ocean. However, the crew was able to glide the plane (let’s all nod now  to engineers who managed to create a jumbo jet that descends only one meter for every 15 flown without power) until successfully restarting three of the four engines, but the damage from the cloud made for a harrowing landing over the mountainous terrain around Jakarta. In 1989, another 747 temporarily lost use of all four engines due to a volcanic plume (from Alaska’s Mt. Redoubt).
Not surprisingly, since the British Airways incident, volcanic plumes—previously studied more closely for their climatic effects—have become a preoccupation of weather forecasters. The world meteorological and aviation communities have collaborated on the International Airways Volcano Watch, whose advisories Thursday led to the cancellation of flights across northern Europe due to the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjalla volcano. It will be hard to overstate the  consequence of this eruption for travelers around the world; it is already being compared to the no-fly days after 9/11.

The UK Met office shows the anticipated spread of the ash cloud.
Readers interested in how meteorologists detect and analyze volcanic plumes (mostly with satellite ) will want to check out the article on IAVW in the February 2007 issue of Weather and Forecasting by Tupper et al. Also in 2007, BAMS published a cover article by Mesikalski et al. previewing some potential improvements in the use of satellite technology for aviation safety, including avoidance of volcanic ash. A quick search of AMS journal articles shows other contributions on weather forecasting and climate topics related to volcano eruptions.
Most commentators meanwhile seem to be heading off the inevitable rampant speculation about the climatic effects of the Iceland eruption. Cliff Mass of the University of Washington discusses the relatively small size of the eruption so far (the length of the eruption being a key unknown factor). However, Jeff Masters in his Wunderground blog  gives an explanation for why high-latitude volcanoes don’t tend to cool the climate as well as tropical volcanoes.
To sum up the Masters’ logic: the atmospheric circulation won’t encourage lofting and spreading of the plume as it would over the tropics, where volcanic gases are pumped high into the stratosphere, causing formation of sulfates in addition to the original volcanic ash(which is heavier and eventually settles out) and then spreading toward midlatitudes.  Various conflicting reports about the height of the Icelandic plume can be found–here’s another meteorologist supporting Masters’ contention that the height of the Iceland plume is so far not enough to be a major climatic factor.

Known as “the father of satellite meteorology,” Verner Suomi was a man of unique vision, with an influence on the field of meteorology that extended far beyond satellite research. One of his lasting legacies is the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC), which he cofounded with Robert Parent in 1965, and now the SSEC’s library has established a Web site devoted to the life and accomplishments of Suomi.

The site includes articles published about Suomi, obituaries and memorials written following his death in 1995, audio of an interview with Suomi conducted for the AMS and UCAR, and video of a discussion of Suomi’s life by some of his closest colleagues that was filmed during the 50th Anniversary of Meteorological Satellites in November 2009.
The panel discussion reveals Suomi as a man equally dedicated to–and skilled at–teaching and researching. CIRA’s Tom Vonder Haar recalled that Suomi’s graduate classes were

more like idea shops, where he would tell us a month before that we were going to do this, then he’d go on a trip and get some new ideas and come in and it would be a totally different agenda. We were working on projects like measuring the energy from the sun with a balloon launch from an aircraft carrier in the Atlantic . . . putting an air horn on a balloon to get the temperature profile with acoustic propagation information. Vern had a lot of ideas. . . I would say he was a dedicated teacher, and I think another example of that was his interest in the students and faculty in other departments here at UW; he worked a lot with electrical engineering–not just the faculty, but with the students–he worked with the physics group, the astronomy group, and soils. . . He was a very collegiate–maybe an eclectic–person. He didn’t have boundaries, he saw no boundaries in education and things of that kind.

On the research side, the University of Wisconsin’s Larry Sromovsky remembered Suomi’s unique method of persuasion while developing a net flux radiometer for NASA’s Pioneer Venus probe mission in 1978.

. . . One of the more remarkable things that he did was when we had a review, we had the sensor design pretty much set to go and there was this final design review that would allow us to go forward and actually build the flight instruments. And the NASA team came to Space Science and they looked at all our results and at one point in the discussion they expressed a great deal of skepticism about the strength of what looked like this delicate little sensor . . . surviving this 200-G deceleration. And Suomi–he was great for bold strokes, I must say, and simple bold statements. And he grabbed the sensor head and stood up and flung it against the wall as hard as he could and the sensor was picked up off the floor and it looked perfectly fine. And he said, “Now do you think it will survive?”

Opening a successful business is all about location, they say. And so it is with wind energy.
Though the United Kingdom, with 250 wind farms, has vigorously embraced wind generation of electricity, a new study paints a discouraging picture of the overall productivity because of siting problems.
The study, released by the energy regulator Ofgem, found that at least 20 wind farms in the U.K. are operating at less than 20% of their capacity, with some even dipping below 10%. This is well below a typical  farm, which generates around 30% of its maximum potential energy. According to the study, the least productive farm (Blyth Harbour in Northumberland) operates at just 7.9% of its maximum capacity; the Chelker reservoir in North Yorkshire isn’t much better, at only 8.7% of capacity.
Critics claim that government subsidies are leading developers to choose less-than-ideal locations (with at least 14 m.p.h. average wind), leading to the disappointing productivity.
“Too many developments are underperforming,” says Michael Jefferson, a professor at London Metropolitan Business School and environmental consultant. “The subsidies make it viable for developers to put turbines on sites they would not touch if the money was not available.”
British electricity consumers help subsidize the country’s renewable energy policy through the “Renewables Obligation” plan, which requires the country’s energy companies to establish renewable sources. The UK energy plan calls for 20% of all its electricity to come from renewable sources by 2020 (that figure was downgraded to 10-15% by the country’s energy minister); currently, the country gets about 4% of its energy from such sources.
Meanwhile a new article by Willett Kempton and colleagues in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences affirms the message that location, determined by meteorological and climatological analysis, is the key to producing energy effectively from wind power. However, the authors radically rethink the typical meteorological considerations for wind farm locations:

Whereas today’s developers prospect for the windiest single site, we would advocate a broader analysis—to optimize grid power output by coordinated meteorological and load analysis of an entire region.

The authors (from the University of Delaware and SUNY-Stony Brook) used wind data from 11 meteorological stations, representing 2,500 km of the U.S. Eastern Seaboard, to show that a network of  turbines could be configured to overcome the typical intermittency that bedevils wind generated electricity.
The trick to making steady electrical power at high output is meteorological: use wide spacing of turbines to take advantage of the typical synoptic circulation of extratropical systems moving up the coast and then connect with high capacity transmission lines. The net result smooths out operations even during very low wind situations.  The authors suggest that further meteorological pattern analysis could refine the siting of turbines beyond the even spacing explored in the article
The implications for design also include rethinking the scale on which power generation is governed and coordinated, however, requiring a new Independent Service Operator to manage offshore generation and transmissions.
Alas, for the United Kingdom, the article is a bit more sanguine about the possibilities for such synoptic wind farm optimization:

[T]he lack of benefit seen by aggregating stations in the United Kingdom may be due in part to the roughly north–south orientation of the island, thus experiencing
their east–west passage of frontal systems nearly simultaneously.

Guest post by Sergey Matrosov, Valery Melnikov, Alexander Ryzhkov, and David Atlas
Vladimir Danilovich Stepanenko, one of the leading Russian scientists in the fields of radar meteorology and cloud physics died 17 March 2010 in St. Petersburg, Russia. He was born in October 1922 in a small Ukrainian village. After graduating from a high school in 1939 he decided to dedicate his career to meteorology and entered the Moscow Hydrometeorological Institute. After World War II broke out, Vladimir was transferred to the Army Hydrometeorological Institute from which he graduated with honors in 1944. A decorated World War II veteran, he served as a meteorologist in the Soviet Black and Azov Sea Navy in 1944 during the military campaign in the Crimean peninsula.
After WWII, Vladimir moved to Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), and worked at the Leningrad Hydrometeorological Institute where he earned his Ph.D. degree. From 1950 to 1973, he was teaching at the Hydrometeorological Department of the Army Corps of Engineers Academy in Leningrad. He became a professor in 1967. During this time, Stepanenko became one of the leading Soviet scientists in radar meteorology and published his book Radar in Meteorology, which soon became the main fundamental textbook in the USSR in this discipline of science. 
In 1974, Stepanenko retired from his teaching position, and joined the Main Geophysical Observatory (MGO) as a deputy director of science. At this position, he continued his research work and advised many Ph.D. students. Stepanenko’s contributions to various areas of meteorology and cloud physics are significant. He was particularly interested in applied research. Some of his scientific studies include pioneering research in severe weather phenomena, aircraft icing, weather modification, lidar and microwave remote sensing of clouds and precipitation, and observations of air pollution. For his work in these areas, Stepanenko was awarded a USSR state prize in 1986.  He led the meteorological support activities for the Soviet Space Shuttle Program. He continually worked on improving instruments and methods for observations of clouds and precipitation, which resulted in 14 patents in addition to more than 270 scientific publications and 11 books. Although he was heavily engaged in the latter activities, Vladimir loved tennis and often came out first in his age group.
Stepanenko was also active in international scientific collaboration. For many years, he chaired the Center for Radar Meteorology, which coordinated operational weather radar observations in the former USSR and several countries of Eastern Europe. He served as a coleader of several international research projects including the Soviet–American Microwave Experiment (SAMEX), which was conducted over the North Pacific in 1978.  In the midst of the Cold War, joint experiments like this contributed to a better understanding between Soviet and Western scientists. On his trips to the United States he made a point to visit with his American friends. His friendship with David Atlas blossomed over the years through exchanges of scientific papers and annual greetings.
Besides being a brilliant scientist, Stepanenko was a great teacher. He was an adviser to more than 20 Ph.D. students. Many of his former students are now working in various Russian scientific institutions and also in other countries including the United States. He also was a man of fairness and good heart. We are privileged to have worked with him during important periods of our scientific careers.

The AMS recently presented outgoing Journal of Climate Chief Editor Andrew Weaver with a plaque to thank him for his volunteer service to the Society. This is the beginning of a new tradition to honor every chief editor when they step down from their position, and it is appropriate that Weaver is the first to be recognized in this way, as during his term (2005-2009) the Journal of Climate grew significantly and earned consistently high ratings for its impact in the field of climatology. 
“It just so happens that our recognition of chief editors ending their tenure begins with one of the most successful of all the CE’s,” notes AMS Director of Publications Ken Heideman. “Andrew built on the foundation that others established before him and took it to a new level.”
As Heideman describes it, Weaver’s predecessors as Journal of Climate chief editor–NOAA’s Alan Hecht (1988), the University of Oklahoma’s Peter Lamb (1989-1995), and Colorado State University’s David Randall (1996-2004)–helped to establish the fledgling journal as a leader in climate research. By the time Randall handed the reins to Weaver, it was, according to Heideman, a “hot journal.  And then Andrew helped make it one of the hottest journals.”
During Weaver’s tenure, the Journal of Climate page count increased by almost 25%–from 5,400 to 7,000. More importantly, its ISI impact factor reached #1 in the category of meteorology and atmospheric sciences and was never lower than #4. The Journal of Climate has the most submissions and the most published papers of any AMS journal, as well as the most editors and editorial assistants. Weaver’s work sets a high standard for other chief editors.
“It’s amazing how much time Andrew put into the job,” says Heideman. “He routinely handled 100 papers a year by himself, and sometimes more. That was far above what we at AMS expected.”
For his part, Weaver found his time working with AMS “incredibly rewarding” and was especially pleased that he was able to keep up with what was happening in the field of climatology during a such a fertile period. His philosophy for the journal was simple and effective: do a good job in the editorial process, and the authors will come back.
“I’m most proud that the journal’s growth happened in the most tumultuous time in terms of climate politics, and we had no issues with that whatsoever,” he remembers. “Everything we did was just about the peer-reviewed science.”
As an organization led by its members, AMS relies on the volunteer spirit of people like Weaver not only to edit its journals but also to run nearly 100 boards, committees, and commissions.