Wunderground launches new Local Climate Change section
In honor of Earth Day on Sunday, wunderground has launched a new Climate Change Center, which gives people resources to understand how the climate is changing both globally and in their local neighborhoods. I am particularly pleased with our Local Climate Change feature, which allows one to see how temperature and precipitation have changed over the past 100+ years at the nearest station with a long period of measurements. Predictions from climate models on what the next 100 years may bring are overlaid for each station. Data for most U.S. stations goes back to 1895; we have data for a few stations in Europe that extend back to the 1700s. Berlin has the longest period of record in this database, with data back to 1702.
Figure 1. Screenshot of the Local Climate Change page for Washington, DC. Measured temperatures since 1820 are shown in grey. By clicking on the "Show post-1900 trend:" box, we see that the trend since 1900 has been for an increase in temperature of 1.5°C (2.7°F) per century. Moving the thin vertical red line over the image using the mouse shows that the warmest year on record in Washington D.C. was 1991. Predictions for a future with low emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide are shown in yellow; the high emissions prediction is shown in red. Separate tabs are available to examine precipitation and snow.
Skeptical?
Also included in the new Climate Change Center is a section addressing the common skeptical arguments made against climate change. We offer three levels of explanation. The "Basic" level is the default, but one can also see more technical in-depth discussions by clicking on the "See All Explanation Levels" link. The material was developed by physicist John Cook for his excellent skepticalscience.com web site, which is widely referenced in the climate science communication community.
Video 1. I'm featured in this video on extreme weather and climate change done by veteran videographer Peter Sinclair for the Yale forum on Climate Change and the Media this month. I'm also featured in Part 1 of this series. Our new Climate Change Center has a section for climate change videos, which includes a twice-monthly feature from GreenTV detailing the world's notable wild weather events of the past two weeks.
Earth: the Operator's Manual airs Sunday night
Penn State climate scientist Dr. Richard Alley hosts parts II and III of Earth: the Operator's Manual on PBS beginning at 7pm Sunday, April 22--Earth Day. Part I of this excellent series aired in April 2011. The series gives an overview of climate change, but primarily focuses on what we can do to help slow down climate change though smart energy choices. Dr. Alley, a registered Republican, geologist, and former oil company employee, is the Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences at the Pennsylvania State University, and one of the most respected and widely published world experts on climate change. Dr. Alley has testified before Congress on climate change issues, served as lead author of "Chapter 4: Observations: Changes in Snow, Ice and Frozen Ground" for the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and is author of more than 170 peer-reviewed scientific articles on Earth's climate. He is also the author of a book I highly recommend--The Two Mile Time Machine, a superb account of Earth's climate history as deduced from the 2-mile long Greenland ice cores. Dr. Alley is an excellent and engaging speaker, and I highly recommend listening to his 45-minute keynote speech, "The Biggest Control Knob: CO2 in Earth's Climate History", given at the 2010 American Geophysical Union meeting, via this very watchable recording showing his slides as he speaks in one corner of the video. If you want to understand why scientists are so certain of the link between CO2 and Earth's climate, this is a must-see lecture.
Have a great weekend, everyone, and I'll be back Monday with a new post. I'd like to thank Wunderground meteorologist, Angela Fritz for spearheading the creating the new Climate Change Center; it's a product I'll be referring to frequently in the future, and one we'll be updating in the coming months with data on local sea level rise, fire risk, and drought.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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Nowcast as of 9:48 am EDT on April 21, 2012
Widespread showers and isolated thunderstorms continue across the eastern half of South Florida and adjacent Atlantic waters. The most active area is the Atlantic waters east of Miami Dade County. These showers will move northeast near 10 knots and produce occasionally heavy showers...gusty winds to near 25 knots with the heavier showers and occasional lightning strikes.
Flood Watch in effect through Sunday morning...
Can't track hurricanes with no internet..
it dunt tell ma the anser to me inkwiry.
1008.7mb.
Humidity is 69%.
Dew Point is 66^F.
Also, the sun is out right, seeing it peak through the clouds all day. So the conditions are there, let's see if Tampa gets anything this time. Certainly an impressive line in the GOMEX. The thing that I don't like is the prediction of cooler weather, lows going down to the upper 40s. When I want winter, I want it in winter.. not in April after a non-winter. Hope that changes.
me'so glad..
: )
National Weather Service New Orleans la
801 am CDT Sat Apr 21 2012
Synopsis...
Upper low appears to be closing off over the northern Gulf. Lead
vorticity is south of Plaquemines Parish...with an associated cluster
of thunderstorms moving eastward. A second...stronger...vort has
moved off the Upper Texas coast with convection southeast of Lake
Charles. At the surface...there is not a well defined low
center...although one may be trying to develop south of Morgan
City. Very little precipitation is occurring over land in our area
at this time. Temperatures are generally in the 60s across the
area.
Short term...
As the second vorticity center catches up to the surface
low...significant cyclogenesis will occur over the northern Gulf.
This should keep most of the convection either offshore...or
limited to the southern Louisiana coast. Lighter
precipitation...with a few thunderstorms...will be possible over
much of the area...especially this morning and early afternoon.
Unless significant changes are seen in radar returns in the next
30 minutes or so...anticipate chance probability of precipitation over most of the area.
Precipitation should move out of the area this evening as the
surface low will be well east of the area. As our system moves
toward the Florida Peninsula Sunday morning...a northern stream
vorticity will be charging southeast through the Great Lakes. These
systems will phase near the Carolina coast Sunday
night...developing a major surface low there. This will bring a
reinforcement of cooler and drier air to the area for Monday.
The main weather concern over the next 48 hours will be the wind.
As low deepens a healthy pressure gradient will develop. Sustained
winds to the south of Lake Pontchartrain are likely to be in
excess of 20 miles per hour...with gusts to 35 to 40 miles per hour overnight tonight. A
second period of heightened wind speeds will occur Sunday
afternoon and evening as the Carolina phasing GOES on. Will hold
southshore Wind Advisory in place...although it will be
borderline.
Temperatures will be cooler than normal...especially on
Monday...about 5 to 10 degrees below normal. 35
Well, at least for a couple of days, it will be quite cool over interior North Florida in the wake of the intensifying Low Pressure moving up the East Coast. Models are projecting low temperatures on Monday and Tuesday mornings into the low-mid 40s across the Big Bend and Suwannee River basin. A very deep upper level trough will carve out over the Eastern US bringing the cool and dry weather in the first half of next week.
Not that I'm aware of, as we have had a goodly amount o Spring Rains.
Here is the problem. Everything that is important about this potential severe weather event is happening over the broad and open expanse of the Gulf of Mexico.
The main low pressure area is north of where forecast, as Reedzone has correctly stated. That presents a bit of a problem in determining just where the most potent activity will likely take place. The computer models were all clearly forecasting a more southerly position and movement for this storm system.
But the upper level low (ULL) is further south and barreling generally to the ESE at present. This will likely bottom out and then begin heading due east. This will be the mechanism which will really fire up severe storms later today and especially tonight. But because the main low pressure system has been forecast to be south of where it actually is, there may be a wide divergence in the placement and the very nature of this severe weather event from what all of the forecasts are currently suggesting. The best example of this will be the possibility that we could see a lot of development of super cells somewhere over Florida during the next 12-16 hours or so but it would be very hard to determine just where, at this point.
What is ironic about this particular situation is that the HPC might be better equipped to analyze this and possibly get a handle on just how potentially dangerous the circumstance is, but their expertise is in tracking and analyzing tropical systems, NOT springtime cyclonic storms systems such as this one.
If this same storm were located maybe 300 or more miles to the north of where it is, I suspect you would not see the SPC remaining so conservative in their thinking about this storm nor would they be so restrained in their language. But their weakest link is in getting a firm grip on storm systems which are rapidly coming together far out over the Gulf of Mexico as opposed to over the CONUS, where they have far more resources to access, such as surface weather stations and the like.
By the time the SPC finally issues their inevitable tornado watches and the like, a lot of Floridians may be asleep at the wheel. Furthermore, Floridians in general, outside of the weather geek population that is, are just not mentally prepared for the approach of severe weather systems as powerful and dynamic as this one appears to be.
This type of setup begs for further development in meteorological tools and skills to be able to get an adequate handle on the situation, in my opinion.
I had that happen to me. Some program called Win 7 Security Center go on my computer after I torrented some music and seized the whole thing up. Had to get my dad's friend who was a hacker to clean my system out, took forever and mu computer has been slow since. And after that I got like super-high level Norton anti-virus stuff and I have been fine since.
Link
Image:
High altitude winds and September sea ice area and jet stream movement.
Figure. The top image shows a decline in upper-atmosphere winds (solid line) over the last 30 years that mirrors the decline in sea ice over the same time period (dashed line). The bottom image shows the expected change in trajectory of the jet stream (dotted line) compared to the current jet stream trajectory (solid line).
To diss the good folks at the HPC,SPC, NWS,and other is well, at best,
..ridiculous.
I've been posting stuff on facebook today cause I know 90% of the people I come in contact with just think it's going to rain this weekend, and it may just do that. However in the event that we do actually get a severe event most of the people I know wouldn't be prepared for it. Sad but true. Sometimes it takes going through something to not be so complacent about the weather.
"No Mesoscale Discussions in Effect"
Maybe tell those who said we did before my post..
As that was for his, er, "we're gonna need a Tornado watch" soon.
Reading the context of a post kinda helps.
1630 outlook will be out any minute
Already is. They moved the Slight risk farther north.
Northward Low, northward shift in risk.
I lost internet the day Irene became a hurricane last year.
... it was a dark day indeed.
It seemed to need some emphasis. I agree that there is a bit of hand wringing going on.
is that good news for Tampa in terms of severe weather ?
There is indeed.
The Rains just went null here,and really creepy quiet. My concern is the high winds as we have a lot of saturated Soils around and some trees may come down with those high winds.
I don't think we'll see one, because as you said it isn't a bad line... We'll need to wait for the bigger line later to get a watch
If that was in the Midwest, we'd have a few watches out.
Hyping is what some do..it's a personality trait, not a NWS,SPC or others way of doing things.
I don't know about that... this really isn't that big of a deal... Just a squall line with some damaging winds and maybe a brief spin up tornado... Nothing like the typical big events in the midwest
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