Climate science
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You’ve probably heard about the “urban heat island”, which is a pocket of warm temperatures created by pavement and buildings in the center of cities. It’s not surprising that Atlanta and other large cities have well-documented “heat islands” that make the cities warmer than surrounding areas. A bit more surprising is that even moderate sized…
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EarthSky published a news article this week on the recent new record in monthly average carbon dioxide level recently reached. For the first time since modern records were kept, the global monthly average carbon dioxide level was over 400 parts per million. Compared to both modern measurements and derived values from ice core data, this…
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The recovery of the “Ozone Hole” in the stratosphere high above the Earth’s surface has been one of the great success stories of the past twenty years. When it was discovered that some refrigerants like chlorofluorocarbons were rising up in the atmosphere to the level of our protective ozone layer (not the ozone near the…
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If you are a history buff, you will enjoy reading about the first official weather forecast, made by Admiral Robert FitzRoy, a well-known mariner who also happened to be the captain of the HMS Beagle, Charles Darwin’s ship of discovery. The key to FitzRoy’s ability to forecast was the development of the telegraph, which allowed…
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If you have looked at the Keeling curve for carbon dioxide concentration that I have shown in past blog postings, you may be wondering why there is a yearly cycle in the concentration of carbon dioxide. The graph below shows the last two years of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, as measured on Mauna Loa…
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The “Spring Predictability Barrier” is well known to climatologists as the difficulty we have in predicting whether an El Nino will occur in the coming months in springtime compared to other times of the year. This is due to the seasonality of El Nino, which is usually strongest around Christmas (hence the name “El Nino”,…
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On Facebook last week a friend posted a picture of the Earth’s atmosphere, taken at sunrise from the International Space Station. In the photo, the atmosphere is shown as a thin blue line separating the sphere of the planet from the blackness of space. The image reminded me of how thin the atmosphere is compared…
Posted in: Climate science