Studies of local TV news have been telling us this story for years: weather is what drives people to the media. Now, Nielsen Co. is saying the same thing about smart phone applications use. Weather app downloads rank near the top for all platforms.
Here’s a chart from their study, announced today at the AppNation conference in San Francisco, as reported by SDTimes.
The US Global Change Research Program published its “US National Climate Assessment Objectives, Proposed Topics, and Next Steps” (also available here in html) in the 7 September 2010 issue of the Federal Register. The program requests public comments on this document, which describes the objectives of the National Climate Assessment (NCA) process, provides an outline of the next NCA synthesis report (scheduled for publication in June 2013), and describes the next steps in planning for and implementing the NCA process. Public comments on this document will be evaluated and, if appropriate, used to inform the NCA structure and process. Updates on the NCA structure and process will be posted on the NCA web siteas they are available. Comments will also be provided to the Federal Advisory Committee for the NCA, the “National Climate Assessment Development and Advisory Committee,” when it is constituted this fall. All comments will be collated and posted on the NCA Web site. Please submit comments here no later than 11:59 PM EST, October 8, 2010.
Lawrence, Kansas, has been an epicenter of serious weather in the past–dating back at least to a killer tornado in 1913 and with numerous others documented there or nearby since. Right now, however, Lawrence has got to be the epicenter of the weather-art world. First an ongoing exhibit through October 4 at the Lawrence Percolator gallery entitled “Clouds Are Easy to Love” features works on the walls–and ceiling–inspired by things meteorological. Channel 6 Meteorologist Jennifer Schack gave a talk at the gallery about the science of clouds.
Meanwhile, a “flash” exhibit in a vacant downtown retail space lasting less than a month, through the end of this week, is featuring some cerebral and sensory explorations of themes that ought to sound familiar: “explores the material attributes of the passage of light and its blockage (through opacity and diffusion)…”
Called “TRANS*parent TRANS*lucent,” the show at 739 Massachusetts St. in Lawrence features a drawing/painting on suspended mylar called “Meteorology,” by Linnea Spransy. Writes reviewer Ryan LaFerney, "Meteorology," by Linnea Spransy.
[Spransy’s] work is about working within boundaries. She creates predetermined systems, underlying grids that her drawings and paintings are formed from. These grids serve as boundaries to be utilized and traversed. From these grids, which are determined by the artist, Spransy draws one single continuous line that blossoms into a labyrinth of molecular-looking abstractions. For Spransy, these limits generate surprise and even freedom. Meteorology is no different. The only difference is the physicality of the piece. It is experiential, like all of her "Maelstrom," by Linnea Spransy.
work, but warrants a visceral response and physical interaction. Suspended from the ceiling, Meteorology, outstretched in transparent layers, reaches out to engulf the viewer. It is an inviting work that calls one to investigate the whirlwind of orderly detail from both sides ….The viewing experience is rendered not as one of solitude but as one best experienced in good company. Spransy ends up giving value both to the creative act and to community.
Sounds a lot like some atmospheric scientists we know. A sampling of Spransy’s meteorologically oriented works, from her web site confirms the connection.
"Weak Potential Energy," by Linnea Spransy "The Spectra of Light Emitted," by Linnea Spransy "The Quantized Values of Angular Momentum," by Linnea Spransy.
Mountains are already hard to miss, often hard to avoid, but in meteorology their prominence is only growing right now, according to John Horel and David Whiteman, chairs of last week’s AMS Conference on Mountain Meteorolog. Whiteman pointed in particular to new opportunities for modelers and observationalists to work together, bringing in new people to the field:
We’ve found over time that the models have improved at a faster rate than the observational equipment has improved, so what we tend to find is that there are people who are able to make their models work on smaller length scales but they find that they don’t have the observations to really evaluate how well the models are working. That’s been good for our community because we’ve also now been able to have a number of programs that combine these high performance models with an observational program….For the first time we can start to look at the very small features.
For more of Whiteman and Horel’s discussion with The Front Page, check out these video interviews (with apologies to John for the brilliant Sierra light in Squaw Valley!) from the AMS YouTube Channel, Ametsoc:
And for a more “down in the trenches” view of mountain meteorology (come to think of it, a rather nice view from the resort patio, between sessions), here’s another interview, with Thomas Chubb, Neil Lareau, and Temple Lee, recently uploaded to Ametsoc on YouTube:
Despite the general good fortune that the storm stayed out at sea, there are plenty of grumblings about the cost of Hurricane Earl and more specifically the cost of preparing for it:
Last week’s storm was forecast to be the strongest to hit Long Island’s East End in nearly twenty years. And to handle possible outages, the Long Island Power Authority brought in 1,600 workers from out of state, at an estimated cost of $30 million. LIPA’s budget — already reeling from combating four major storms earlier this year — is now even further in the red.
(Fortunately, LIPA wisely understands the risks that Earl posed:
However, because the storm was supposed to hit such a wide area, LIPA says if it had to do it all over again, it still would’ve brought in those extra workers.)
Airlines canceled dozens of flights into New England, and Amtrak suspended train service between New York and Boston….Massachusetts officials estimated that Cape Cod lost about 10 percent of its expected Labor Day weekend business, but were hopeful that last-minute vacationers would make up for it. Gov. Deval Patrick walked around Chatham on Saturday morning, proclaiming, “The sun is out and the Cape is open for business.”
So, as a palliative while people continue to grouse about paying the costs of meteorological uncertainties, read Mike Smith’s post about the savings this time when 450 miles of coastal warnings were issued compared to the much broader-brush (1,500 coastline miles warned) for Hurricane Floyd in 1999.
Instead of warning the entire East Coast as we had to during Floyd, the science of meteorology correctly identified that only the two areas (outer banks and far east Massachusetts) were at risk and warned accordingly. The forecast change in Earl’s direction of movement and rate of weakening were both remarkably good considering this forecast was two days out.
Taking NOAA’s calculations for evacuation costs per mile of coastline, and a reduction of 1,050 miles of warnings in similar situations, and do the math:
OK, now take those 1,050 miles and multiply them by a conservative figure of $700,000 in savings for each mile that correctly was not warned = $735 million dollars! ….And, when you figure in the value-added private sector hurricane forecasts issued by companies like WeatherData and its parent company AccuWeather, the savings grow further, perhaps approaching a billion dollars in total when the correct landfall forecast for Canada is factored in.
Clearly this depends on whether people actually evacuated based on the warnings, but the progress is clear, nonetheless, as are the positive benefits of recent improvements in track forecasts.
Astronomy has its Galaxy Zoo, in which citizen scientists across the internet–and hence the world–help professionals comb through millions of astronomical images in search of key celestial objects. Now the climate community may move toward creating what might end up being their own equivalent “Zoo” drawing on the vast resources of internet users to crunch temperature data.
At least that’s one of the possible outcomes of this week’s workshop in Exeter on developing global land surface temperature databases, which has been attracting considerably more media attention than most WMO workshops. Attendees include Google executives and Galaxy Zoo organizers who might help climatologists figure out a grassroots method to help digitize old ships logs and other climate data recovery efforts that require intensive processing.
On its YouTube channel, the UK Met Office, host of the workshop, posted the introduction from Peter Thorne, chair of the organizing committee:
Thanks to George Taylor (Applied Climate LLC) for pointing out excellent photos of snow rollers taken in 2009 by Tim Tevebaugh in Lewiston, Idaho, Here’s just one of several that can be found at the NWS-Spokane website:
. Taylor’s blog provides a good description of the phenomenon.
When it comes to playing fantasy sports, every advantage counts. For fantasy baseball player Andy Rice– an avid storm chaser and a software product manager for Weather Central, a weather services company (and AMS corporate member) based in Madison, Wisconsin–familiarity with weather data allows him to create statistical analyses of player performance in various weather conditions. For example, as he explains in this interview, major league hitters perform better in hot conditions than in cold, with a league-wide 2009 batting average of .271 when temperatures were in the 80s and .274 when they were in the 90s, compared with just .250 when temps were in the 30s.
He also noted that rainouts–the nuisance of players, fans, and fantasy participants alike–are not nearly as common as they seem to be, although rain delays occur more frequently, which can be valuable information for fantasy players setting their daily lineups:
There are usually somewhere between 25-45 games postponed due to weather out of 2,700 games played per year. That’s 1-2%, so it’s kind of funny when I see people getting so concerned about it in the chat room. Rain Delays are a different story and happen more frequently. Their impact is mainly on the starting pitcher, since they tend to get pulled after a lengthy delay.
Similar to forecasting the weather, putting together a fantasy team largely depends on determining probabilities based on an evaluation of conditions–and also having realistic expectations:
In these daily leagues you know that not all of your players are going to have an amazing day, but if your pitcher wins and you get 3 or 4 hitters that have a good day, you have a really good chance of winning. So you need to give yourself a team of batters with an increased probability of having a big day and hope a few hit. If I have two players that I view equally, and one has a chance of steady rain for a few hours during the game, the probability of having a good day goes down and I’ll probably pick the guy playing in the dome.
Welcome back to school, kids. It’s the first day that your teacher has set up this newfangled “interactive whiteboard” in your classroom. She isn’t sure what you and your fellow first graders are going to make of internet connectivity and videos and powerpoints.
But as a budding meteorologist, you know what to do:
So yes, Doppler radar and a brief weathercast for your 6-year-old classmates. Here’s how teacher Stephannie Waller tells it:
I have a student meteorologist for the week & this bright student saw that what was on the promethean board was what he saw every morning on our computer when he checked the weather, so he asked, “Can I check the weather on that?” Seeing that it was a very teachable moment & that he could teach every other student how to be a meteorologist I said yes. So he clicked it on & then I asked him to click on the Doppler Radar (it was raining this morning & they would actually have something to watch) & then asked him to enlarge it & from there he went to town, like a natural.
While there’s plenty of disagreement amongst educators and parents about the value of smart boards, there should be no disagreement that this kid has a good start on an application for his AMS certification.
In the early 1900’s, my grandfather faced a challenge at work. Though only a teenager, he was foreman in a foundry making cast-iron bathtubs in Chattanooga, Tennessee. His company was struggling. A large number of the bathtubs they produced were defective – so badly flawed they had to scrap them. They were losing money. What to do?
My grandfather was a baseball fan.[1] He solved the problem the way a baseball fan would. He got a big blackboard. He hung it on the foundry wall. He wrote every workman’s name on it. Next to each name he started keeping a tally: how many passable bathtubs had that worker produced that week? And what was his batting average? Of all the workers, who was the best that week? The Top Tubber? The MVP?
The workers reconnected with their competitive side. Almost overnight, the foundry’s output shot up. Defects went down. No one had to be threatened with loss of a job. No one had to be offered any more pay. Morale improved. All that was needed? A scorecard.[2]
Maybe we can scale this up. If we want to reduce disaster losses, why shouldn’t we start by
Right now, however, Lawrence has got to be the epicenter of the weather-art world. First an ongoing exhibit through October 4 at the Lawrence Percolator gallery entitled “Clouds Are Easy to Love” features works on the walls–and ceiling–inspired by things meteorological. Channel 6 Meteorologist Jennifer Schack gave a talk at the gallery about the science of clouds.
