by Robert Fovell, UCLA, and Wen-Wen Tung, Purdue Univ.
Professor Michio Yanai passed away suddenly at his home in Santa Monica on October 13th, at the age of 76.
A seminal figure in tropical meteorology, Professor Yanai grew up in Chigasaki, Japan. He received a D. Sc. in geophysics at the University of Tokyo in 1961 and was an assistant professor at the same university from 1965-1970 before being appointed to a full professorship at UCLA in 1970.
Professor Yanai published a 1964 review paper on the formation of tropical cyclones that served as the most comprehensive reference on the topic for more than a decade. Much of his groundbreaking work continues to guide research even today, including his observations of the mixed Rossby-gravity wave (also known as the Yanai wave), his systematic approach of estimating apparent heat sources (Q1) and moisture sinks (Q2) and associating them with the bulk properties of convective systems, and his diagnostic studies of the Asian monsoon, in particular his pioneering works on the impacts of the Tibetan Plateau on the Asian Monsoon. In 1986, the American Meteorological Society honored him with the Charney Award. In 1993, he received the Fujiwara Award from the Meteorological Society of Japan. His UCLA Tropical Meteorology and Climate Newsletter has been an invaluable resource to the community since its founding in 1996.
This year, Professor Yanai was selected by the AMS to be honored at a special symposium dedicated to his life and career at the 2011 annual meeting in Seattle (Thursday, 27 January). Professor Yanai was thrilled by this selection, which certainly helped maintain his passion and energy as his health declined, and was a very enthusiastic contributor as the symposium program took shape. He was scheduled to deliver the closing remarks at the symposium.
The occasion led Professor Yanai to reminisce not only about his life and career but also about the histories and contributions of his colleagues, especially his fellow meteorologists who emerged from post-war Japan. He also recently embarked on a project to document the evolution of the Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences program at UCLA, which was still called the Department of Meteorology when he joined in 1970. Professor Yanai was in the midst of collecting oral histories of the department from past and present members of the UCLA family when he passed away. The last UCLA Tropical Meteorology and Climate Newsletter was issued on October 8th.
Although we will greatly miss his presence at the Michio Yanai Symposium, we know he will be there in spirit when we gather to honor his accomplishments, his legacy and his memory. No one who is so fondly remembered can ever truly be lost.
Professor Yanai is survived by his wife, Yoko; two sons, Takashi and Satoshi; four grandchildren, and a sibling, Tetsuo Yanai of Japan. The family requests that memorial donations may be made to the Professor Emeritus Michio Yanai Memorial Fund in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at UCLA. E-mail Dawn M. Zelmanowitz ([email protected]) for information. Readers are also encouraged to share their memories of Professor Yanai in the comments to this blog post.
Warren Washington Honored by President Obama
AMS Past President Warren Washington, a leader in the development of climate modeling, was one of the ten winners of the National Medal of Science announced Friday by President Obama at the White House. Since 1959 this has been the highest honor bestowed by the nation to its scientists, and very few in the atmospheric, oceanographic, and related sciences have been among the recipients–including Jacob Bjerknes, Roger Revelle, Susan Solomon, Helmut Landsberg, Henry Stommel, Charles Keeling, Verner Suomi, and Wallace Broecker.
In a statement issued by the National Center for Atmospheric Research, where he has worked since 1963, Washington says:
I am very pleased to receive this honor, which recognizes not only my work but that of my many colleagues whom I’ve had the pleasure of working with for more than 45 years. Akira Kasahara and Jerry Meehl, at NCAR, contributed significantly to the development of computer climate models, and support from NSF and the Department of Energy enabled us to make research advancements that I hope will contribute to mankind’s ability to sustain this planet.
President Obama remarked today:
The extraordinary accomplishments of these scientists, engineers, and inventors are a testament to American industry and ingenuity….Their achievements have redrawn the frontiers of human knowledge while enhancing American prosperity, and it is my tremendous pleasure to honor them for their important contributions.
Another AMS Past President, Bob Ryan, wrote on his blog,
Warren has been and continues as one of the world’s leading climate researchers of the 20th and now 21st centuries. His contributions to meteorology, science, public understanding, education and opportunity and service to his science are immense. Warren is one of those people whom we cross paths with personally, professionally or both, whom we know have enriched our lives. Someone you look forward to seeing again . . . and again. That’s a Warren Washington.
Adds Roger Wakimoto, the director of NCAR:
His scientific leadership, innate diplomacy, as well as the mentorship to future generations of scientists have deeply and profoundly impacted our field.
The Meteorology of the Chilean Mine Rescue
by Cliff Mass, Univ. of Washington; reposted from Cliff Mass Weather Blog
Now that all of the miners are safe, it is interesting to think about some of the meteorological aspects of the disaster–and of the misinformation provided by the media.
Some of the media suggested that the miners could get the bends from “rapid decompression”, but this is nonsense!
The level of the mine entrance, where the drilling is taking place, is at roughly 2400 ft above sea level, and the miners were trapped at a level a few hundred ft above sea level. Clearly, the pressure was higher where the miners were–roughly 8 % higher. And it took them about 15 minutes to make the change as they were lifted out. This is nothing to worry about! Virtually all of you experience this change many times each year. An example: drive to Snoqualmie Pass (elevation roughly 3200 ft) from the west. The last fifteen minutes you gain roughly the same elevation in the same amount of time! Or when you take off in a plane, take a long lift ride while skiing, take that gondola ascent on vacation, etc., you experience the same or worse!
Then there was the “steam” coming out of the hole (click on picture to see video):
Why the cloud coming out of the hole? The temperature down in the mine was very warm (90-105 from various reports) and there were sources of moisture down there. The air had sufficient water content that when it hit the cool nighttime air, it was cooled to saturation–thus the fog. It looked to me that temperatures were fairly cold during the evening rescues—40s F perhaps from the jackets people were wearing. A small contribution could also have come from the expansion cooling of the air as it rose.
The region surrounding the mine is very, very dry–in fact one of the driest places on earth…the Atacama Desert (see map). Some locations have never observed rain, and in others they receive perhaps a few hundredths of an inch per year. Why so dry? Sinking air from a subtropical high, the high Andes preventing moisture from moving from the east,
and the coastal mountains preventing moisture movement from the west. Plus an inversion aloft that stops the air from moving over the coastal mountains.
And talking of media issues…which country is wrong in the map at left?
The Storm That Started a Drought?
by Robert V. Sobczak, National Park Service, Big Cypress National Preserve.
Reposted from his blog, The South Florida Watershed Journal.
Do all storms end with drought?
I know you’re thinking. I mean the opposite instead:
That “all droughts end with a flood,” right?
A meteorologist in the snow-bound climes of the Red River Basin introduced me to the latter saying. To what degree it holds any statistical truth I cannot say. My initial gut reaction was that an observational bias was in play, plus some seasonal slight of hand. But no matter how much I tried to deny it, the saying kept sneaking up on me wherever I roamed.
Take Tropical Depression Nicole for example. It threatened to make our already high-water rendition of the Big Cypress Swamp all the more wetter but by the flap of the wings of the butterfly bypassed to the east and then onward north to the Atlantic Coast where it drenched those watersheds instead.
Now here’s the catch:
Those watersheds were at the end of their seasonal drought, better known as the summer recession, transforming currents from trickles into torrents overnight.
So yes, chalk one on the board for that old reliable saying!
Case in point is Maryland’s Deer Creek, as measured at Rocks State Park (or just “Rocks” as us Harford Countians call it). Thanks to Nicole it now has a chance to top 40 Empire State Buildings (ESBs) worth of water flow for the year. That would make it an above average year, but not a “chart topper,” a term I reserve for the biggest of big flow years which pass 60 or more ESBs worth of water. That’s happened just four times in the modern era (aka my lifetime), the most recent of which (2003) which was, as predicted by that old reliable saying, preceded by the drought of record in 2002 when less than 20 ESBs worth of water flowed through Maryland’s famed Rocks State Park for the year.
Ha, there it is again! So, cherry picking not withstanding, I guess that means that, yes, all drought do seem to end with floods.
Does the same saying apply to the Florida swamps?
Seasonally it happens each year with our winter dry season. By spring the swamps are nearly 100 percent water free and crunchy, just a single lightning strike away from an uncontrollable blaze. But along with the lighting are the thunder that beckon the wet season’s arrival … and the floods that will soon be to follow.
Which brings me back to Nicole:
Instead of flushing flood waters even higher into the swamp it paradoxically reversed the tables by ushering in a week’s worth of dry air in its wake instead.
Meteorologists are calling it an early start to the dry season.
Or in other words…
Call it the storm that started the drought!
Scientists 4.0
by William Hooke, AMS Policy Program Director. From the AMS project, Living on the Real World
In the competitive world of computer software, smartphones, and other technology and devices, it’s all about version. Internet 1.0? Soooooooooo yesterday. Web 2.0 caused a big stir a few years ago. Web 3.0 already beckons. We’re now working on Windows 7 No, wait! It’s Windows 8! And yesterday’s 3G smartphone network is giving way to 4G. We’re constantly moving on.
Scientists periodically undergo similar upgrades, but with little or no fanfare. Let’s start to correct this….I’m a scientist version 3.0, but if you’re a scientist and reading this, chances are good you’re a scientist version 4.0.
Got your attention? Let’s peel this onion:
Scientist version 1.0 This generation comprises greats such as Empedocles (ca. 490-ca.430 BC), Aristotle (384-322 BC), Hippocrates (ca.460-ca.370BC), Galen (129-217[?]AD), and others. These men didn’t think of themselves as scientists. Instead, they saw themselves as philosophers, as thinkers. And the scientific method, the rules for thinking which we regard as commonplace today – based on evidence, logic, and rigor; developing testable hypotheses, subject to proof or disproof by experiment – were either under construction or lay still ahead. Peer review? Out of the question. It was therefore possible for Empedocles to suggest that all matter was composed of a blend of four basic elements – earth, water, air, and fire. Aristotle could assert that porcupines shoot their quills. Hippocrates could intuit a link between the environment and health even though at a loss to explain just why. Galen might decide (versus, say, determine) that the function of the heart was to heat the body. All of these notions were flawed at best, or failed to survive subsequent scrutiny. However each, even the theories about disease, contained (ahem!) a germ of truth. Each helped burnish the reputation of these men as among the foremost intellectuals of their time. They got us started down the road to the science of today. They will always remain giants.
Remember, as we’ve discussed in previous posts, that the pace of progress and social change was once much slower than it is today. So this state of affairs persisted for maybe 2000 years. Then along came
Scientist version 2.0 Just to make things concrete, suppose we name Galileo (1564-1642) and Newton (1643-1727) two of the first of this new breed. Their contributions? To elevate the idea of controlled experimental tests, quantitative measurement, meticulous observation – and to inject a little mathematics. They may have thought of science as an activity, but still thought of themselves more as natural philosophers. The term scientist probably didn’t come into widespread use until later in this period, the 19th century, say. Science was still seen less in terms of career or profession and more in terms of avocation. As we pointed out in an earlier post, even as recently as Darwin, scientists were either independently wealthy or forced to cobble together funding and resources for their work. These folks succeeded in picking up the pace of innovation quite a bit. Version 2.0 prevailed for a little more than 300 years.
Scientist version 3.0 This pretty much covers every scientist alive today who’s been out of graduate school for at least 5-10 years. The version was launched during and immediately following World War II, per yesterday’s post. Thanks to Vannevar Bush, scientists-version-3.0 have operated under the most unusual social contract ever envisioned, let alone implemented, by the mind of man: “Give us lots of money, and stand back – and someday you’ll be glad you did.”
What’s even more amazing is that scientists-version-3.0 have provided an extraordinary return on this investment. Society got a bargain! This scientist-upgrade provided
Scientists periodically undergo similar upgrades, but with little or no fanfare. Let’s start to correct this….I’m a scientist version 3.0, but if you’re a scientist and reading this, chances are good you’re a scientist version 4.0.
Got your attention? Let’s peel this onion:
Scientist version 1.0 This generation comprises greats such as Empedocles (ca. 490-ca.430 BC), Aristotle (384-322 BC), Hippocrates (ca.460-ca.370BC), Galen (129-217[?]AD), and others. These men didn’t think of themselves as scientists. Instead, they saw themselves as philosophers, as thinkers. And the scientific method, the rules for thinking which we regard as commonplace today – based on evidence, logic, and rigor; developing testable hypotheses, subject to proof or disproof by experiment – were either under construction or lay still ahead. Peer review? Out of the question. It was therefore possible for Empedocles to suggest that all matter was composed of a blend of four basic elements – earth, water, air, and fire. Aristotle could assert that porcupines shoot their quills. Hippocrates could intuit a link between the environment and health even though at a loss to explain just why. Galen might decide (versus, say, determine) that the function of the heart was to heat the body. All of these notions were flawed at best, or failed to survive subsequent scrutiny. However each, even the theories about disease, contained (ahem!) a germ of truth. Each helped burnish the reputation of these men as among the foremost intellectuals of their time. They got us started down the road to the science of today. They will always remain giants.
Remember, as we’ve discussed in previous posts, that the pace of progress and social change was once much slower than it is today. So this state of affairs persisted for maybe 2000 years. Then along came
Scientist version 2.0 Just to make things concrete, suppose we name Galileo (1564-1642) and Newton (1643-1727) two of the first of this new breed. Their contributions? To elevate the idea of controlled experimental tests, quantitative measurement, meticulous observation – and to inject a little mathematics. They may have thought of science as an activity, but still thought of themselves more as natural philosophers. The term scientist probably didn’t come into widespread use until later in this period, the 19th century, say. Science was still seen less in terms of career or profession and more in terms of avocation. As we pointed out in an earlier post, even as recently as Darwin, scientists were either independently wealthy or forced to cobble together funding and resources for their work. These folks succeeded in picking up the pace of innovation quite a bit. Version 2.0 prevailed for a little more than 300 years.
Scientist version 3.0 This pretty much covers every scientist alive today who’s been out of graduate school for at least 5-10 years. The version was launched during and immediately following World War II, per yesterday’s post. Thanks to Vannevar Bush, scientists-version-3.0 have operated under the most unusual social contract ever envisioned, let alone implemented, by the mind of man: “Give us lots of money, and stand back – and someday you’ll be glad you did.”
What’s even more amazing is that scientists-version-3.0 have provided an extraordinary return on this investment. Society got a bargain! This scientist-upgrade provided
Annual Meeting Program Now Online
With the conference program just published on the AMS web site this week, we’ve already learned some important facts about the fast-approaching 91st Annual Meeting in Seattle on 23-27 January 2011.
- There will be 2,309 papers. Not surprisingly the biggest conference is “Climate Variability and Change,” with 266 papers.
- Overall, oral presentations (1,319) outnumber poster presentations (990).
- Authors hail from Spain, Ghana, France, Argentina, Germany, India, Austria, Australia, Turkey, Canada, Brazil, China, Portugal, Cuba, Sweden, Ukraine, Switzerland, Indonesia, Norway, Mexico, Israel, Poland, Korea, Italy, Finland, Russia, Hungary, Russia, and other countries, not to mention obscure locations like Boulder, Asheville, and Silver Spring.
- The conference search engine shows that all is right with Seattle: “cloud” (553) is more than three times as likely as clear (174) and so is precipitation (595); northwest (87) more likely than southeast (60). Meteorology (592) still reigns over climatology (149), and weather (1734) is a higher frequency phenomenon than climate (1428) and models (also 1428) are more common now than observations (1001). (But, 483 people named Norman?…Could that be? Really?)
- The Bernhard Haurwitz Lecture, “Scale Interactions and the Generation of Low-Frequency Variability in the Atmosphere,” will be given by Dennis L. Hartmann, University of Washington, Seattle.
- James A. Smith, Princeton University, will present The Robert E. Horton Lecture, “What Robert Horton Did Not Know about Floods.”
- At the Presidential Town Hall Meeting on Thursday, Ralph Cicerone, head of the National Academy of Sciences, will recommend what the scientific community in general and the AMS community in particular can do to increase credibility with the public in the wake of the “Climategate” e-mails.
The Presidential Town Hall is one of many sessions on the overarching theme of the meeting, “Communicating Weather and Climate.” Communications-related themed Joint Sessions related are also planned, allowing attendees from diverse specialties to address questions shared as scientists and professionals. A few of the many titles: “Communicating with Each Other: The Challenges and Rewards of Expanding Atmospheric Science’s Professional Partners,” “Communicating with Technology,” and “Risk Communication of Weather and Climate Information.”
Science for Everyone at the USA Expo
The first USA Science & Engineering Festival kicks off this weekend in Washington DC. Running for two weeks, the festival wraps up with a two-day expo on 23-24 October, with 1,500 booths planned in the downtown area, numerous local festival events, as well as satellite events across the country. From Hawaii to New York, scientists plan to visit local schools, hold special events, and open their doors to the general public.
As part of expo, AMS will take part in the massive event on the National Mall, helping out with a double booth space run by the DC Weather Coalition, an educational partnership of government, scientific societies, enterprise, and institutions. The booth features an exhibit called “Become an Amateur Weather Forecaster,” in which visitors can experience firsthand what it takes to be a weather forecaster (Booth Numbers 1010, 1012, Section MA-C). “Using this approach to examine the wonders and mystery of weather, water, and climate certainly adds intrigue and excitement to the many hands-on exhibits sponsored by DC WeatherFest Coalition partners,” comments Elizabeth Mills, a Coalition representative and associate director of the AMS Education Program.
A WeatherBug weather station is planned to demonstrate the numerous ways to access the daily weather. Meteorologists from local television stations WJLA and TBD, including Joe Witte, and members of the AMS Education Department will be available for questions and to assist with the WeatherBug display and twice-daily Weather Jeopardy games at the booths.
Mills notes that this variety allows visitors to experience related topics from different perspectives. “Visitors in one area of our exhibits can be interviewed on camera, in another explore a weather station, and in others learn about the latest in weather research,” and in other exhibits, “they can see, first-hand, the instrumentation used in the ocean and understand the way climate is changing, or watch their kids being entertained by the WeatherBug mascot.”
To find exhibits that meet specific interests, the festival site is organized by age range, subject area, keyword, or organization name. A tracking system for various age groups also makes it easy to find events with a common theme. The exhibits will be open from 10:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on the weekend of the festival.
Moove Over, Dr. Fujita!
Thanks to Paul Douglas and D.J. Kayser for a report on Josh Wurman’s presentation at St. Cloud State University about the Doppler on Wheels project (based at the Center for Severe Storm Research in Boulder, Colorado).
Dr. Wurman explained that since the DOW project started about 15 years ago, the vehicles have seen between 160-170 tornadoes, about 15-20 of them with the VORTEX 2 project which was aimed at better understanding tornado formation and to hopefully push the lead time out for tornadic storms. Part of Dr. Wurman’s research is also to study the lower level winds of a tornado in hopes to come up with an even better Fujita Scale (yes, different from the current Enhanced Fujita Scale) and hopefully be able to better warn areas that would be impacted by tornadoes, especially since there is currently little ability to forecast the intensity, duration, and size of tornadoes, unlike we can with hurricanes.
Even with that kind of experience it doesn’t look like Wurman’s udder tornado scale will be putting Fujita’s version to pasture any time soon.
NWS sez 'Hi' to Fort Worth on Facebook
The National Weather Service is on Facebook (so is AMS, actually). But you knew that already. What’s new is that now the NWS is trying out Facebook as a local-level communications tool. The Fort Worth, Texas, office has a new page to raise weather awareness locally. If weather turns ugly, it might become an important additional channel between meteorologists and the public.
Writes one commenter, “About time you guys got on here.” But actually, social media and government weather services have had a somewhat tempestuous relationship so far, even with the undeniable popularity of the national NWS fan page.
At least one NWS employee already had tested the waters on his own: in an April 30 severe weather outbreak one local forecaster in Arkansas was posting weather updates on a private Twitter account, minutes before the same information made it to TV screens. In response the Weather Service reiterated its policy against employees using unofficial communication channels for official business, effectively prohibiting social media for local weather communications.
More recently, the head of forecasting at Taiwan’s Central Weather Bureau, Ming-Dean Chen, used his personal Facebook page to distribute typhoon information hours in advance of the official notices from his own office. He expounded on possibilities that weren’t discussed in the official forecasts. Chen ended up apologizing to superiors, but pointed out that he was merely repeating information that had already been posted on the Japan Meteorological Agency web site anyway.
Renegade incidents seem less likely now that NWS is cautiously dipping an official toe in Facebook waters for local purposes. They could start a tidal wave, however, if they don’t proceed judiciously. Digital Meteorologist blog points out that a strong social media presence by local NWS offices might rapidly erode the long-held niche broadcast meteorologists have enjoyed by combining local weather knowledge with direct access to the public.
Sure, the US government is slow, but what happens when it finally catches up? #NWS could be a pretty powerful hashtag….Poke the bear if you want. Just make sure you are ready to run when he wakes up.
No One of Us Can Solve the Whole Problem
by William Hooke, AMS Policy Program Director, from the AMS Project, Living on the Real World
“Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise!”
This Biblical proverb warns against laziness, and exhorts each of us to higher levels of diligence and industry. A good idea! However, there’s more here. The ant also demonstrates the power of effective policy. Before turning to the ant, a brief segue…
Have you ever watched a flock of birds? (Or, equivalently, a school of fish?) Scientists are getting clever about why birds (and fish) exhibit such behavior. The motives are apparently social and include protecting against predators, staying warm in winter, and sorting out dominance. But how do they do it, given that they’re under the control of birdbrains? We don’t know for sure, but here you will find a video of “boids”: what flocking would look like if birds operated on the basis of three rules:
- matching speed and direction with nearby birds
- maintaining a minimum separation, to avoid in-flight collisions, and
- always flying toward the center of the flock
The rules seem pretty simple, don’t they? Reading them, it’s pretty easy to imagine that birds are able to operate, and cooperate, on this basis. And sure enough, the video looks pretty realistic, doesn’t it? In essence, flocking birds seem to have a policy, a framework for making decisions. By the way – and this is important to tuck away for later – this kind of behavior is called “emergent.” If you study a few birds in the laboratory, you would never know about this ability. It’s only when birds are present in large numbers, and free to behave as they want, that this behavior emerges. If you’ve got the time (six minutes), check out this YouTube video: starlings on Otmoor to see flocking in its fullest grandeur:
But back to the ants. Though birdbrains are the subject of ridicule, birds are mental giants compared with insects. And ants exhibit their own emergent behavior, don’t they? Again, study