Climate science
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Those of you who like exciting movies may be planning to see the movie “Twisters”, which is somewhat an extension of the movie “Twister” from quite a few years ago about storm chasers competing to get the best tornado footage. Here is a discussion about the science in the movie from Dr. Marshall Shepherd of…
Posted in: Climate science -
A new study that was recently published in the journal Nature shows that scientists studying sea-level rise have been using methods that underestimate how high the water already is. One result is that hundreds of millions more people worldwide are already living dangerously close to the rising ocean than Western scientists had previously estimated, according…
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Since we are likely to be switching from the weak La Nina we are currently in to neutral and then El Nino by later this summer, Climate.gov thought it was a good idea to remind us all that La Nina and El Nino have different impacts on spring tornadoes and hailstorms as well as on…
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NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center noted that they are updating the index they use to track the rise and fall of El Nino and La Nina to a new index that is less affected by the trend towards rising temperatures than previously-used indices. Here is what they say: “The Climate Prediction Center is making the shift…
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In previous years, I have discussed the use of phenology to study changes in climate that go back before instrumental records were available (because the instruments had not been invented yet). Phenology is the study of when plants exhibit biological markers associated with the change of the seasons, such as the first leaf appearance on…
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You’ve probably all seen detailed image of individual snowflakes on dark backgrounds taken by cameras attached to microscopes. The first person who made these thrilling pictures was Vermont farmer Wilson Bentley, nicknamed “Snowflake Bentley” for the thousands of photographic plates he made of individual snowflakes up in Jericho, VT. In his lifetime, he photographed over…
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In my neighborhood, I have noticed some early daffodils blooming far earlier than we usually expect due to some unusually warm conditions in the last few weeks. Even though colder weather has returned to the region, we can expect more ups and downs in the temperature as the weak La Nina vanishes and is replaced…
Posted in: Climate science -
This year, Christmas is shaping up to be one of the warmest on record across a large part of the United States, although here in the Southeast we may miss setting a new record by a few degrees. Still, I am planning on raking my yard on Christmas Eve in shorts and a T-shirt this…