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By developing a network of surface sensors to monitor hurricane intensity over the northern Pacific Ocean, NASA hopes to gain a higher resolution of data on hurricane strength in the area. The network will reportedly incorporate components of the National Lightning Detection Network as lightning is an indicator of the strength of convection, thus the intensity of the entire system:

The sensors are able to monitor lightning strikes from a distance of thousands of miles, allowing scientists to investigate with greater accuracy how lightning produced within a hurricane’s eyewall is tied to the changing strength of that hurricane.

“There are very few observing systems that offer a broad view of a storm over the open ocean where hurricanes tend to build or lose strength,” said study lead author Kirt Squires. “This development is essential to improving the way meteorologists can look at a growing storm to judge just how harsh it will be.”

Researchers are planning on publicizing this new project in American Meteorological Society journal Monthly Weather Review.

In a news story Fake tornado picture embarasses newsrooms, an Australian news agency admits to having publicized a “photoshopped” image of a tornado. A woman sent it to them as a joke thinking there wouldn’t be a chance it’d be aired on TV or online. She was wrong.

Technorati Tags: Extreme Weather, Tornadoes, Weather

LaNina, the cooling of the equatorial Pacific ocean waters, appears to be looming. While meteorologists haven’t yet designated it as such, it appears that La Nina is returning:

“While we can’t officially call it a La Nina yet, we expect that this pattern will continue to develop during the next three months, meeting the NOAA definition for a La Nina event later this year,” said Mike Halpert, acting deputy director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s prediction center. Read the rest »

Record cold this August day in New York City:

The city along with the rest of the tri-state region is feeling the chilly effect of a cold front sweeping through the region, accompanied by cool rain showers.

Tuesday’s high temperature in Central Park was just 59 degrees. The normal high for today is 82 degrees. The normal low is 67.

“This unusual blast of cold air smashed our previous record for the coldest high temperature on August 21, which is 64 degrees, set back in 1999,” CBS 2 meteorologist Jason Cali told wcbstv.com.
Read the rest »

The complicated connection between climate dynamics and hurricane strength and frequency continues to get more complex with each piece of research that is released.The latest research, as published in the journal “Nature”, indicates that even during periods when ocean waters were cooler, hurricanes were more frequent.

While this doesn’t directly dispute the popular belief that hurricane frequency increases with warmer ocean waters, it certainly complicates things:
Read the rest »

The epic Australian drought discussed last month may be about to break, as the El Nino that has caused the drying of the interior has come to an end:

The El Nino weather system has run its course and the worst drought in a century could be coming to an end, the Bureau of Meterology says, as famers in south-eastern Australia rejoice at heavy rain.

Read more.

Read the rest »

In a scathing review of how far off track the Weather Channel has gone from it’s original, well-intentioned mission, its first “Director of Meteorology” laments the loss in a piece he recently published online:

It has taken a turn in recent years to being more and more part time weather and part-time “Discovery Channel”. Now with Forecast Earth, advocacy and hype have replaced down to earth real-time weather coverage and forecasting. You don’t get weather when you need it anymore, just when they choose to give it to you. A few years back, they were embarrassed when an outbreak of tornadoes had people tuning to The Weather Channel and finding a special about growing flower bulbs in Holland.

After chronicling specific instances of the skewing of climate change data to the benefit of the alarmist viewpoint, Joe D’Aleo goes on to summarize many meteorologist’s viewpoint of how the channel has morphed over the last couple of decades:

Most people I know in the business of weather say TWC has become unwatchable. I sadly could not agree more.

Read more.

Technorati Tags: Meteorology, The Weather Channel, Meteorology News

While many articles draw a direct connection between Australia’s ongoing drought and global climate change, the connection is far from solid at this point. But what is clearly understood is that the ongoing and worsening drougt in the interior of Australia is having profound impacts on it’s agriculture, economy, and beyond.

The opening of one article reads like a Hollywood doomsday movie: Read the rest »

These should be great - three dimensional images of the sun’s surface, revealing the structure of solar flares, priminences, and sunspot activity.

As the sun gains more significance in the eyes of researchers examing the possible causes of terrestrial climate change (see more On Solar Variability and Global Warming), these three dimensional imaging techniques stand to provide a wealth of data that could assist researchers in understanding the complex, natural cycles of the sun’s energy output.

A link to the images (if not the images themselves) will be posted to this page as soon as they become available. For more on the plans, check out this article:

NASA scientists said 3-D images of the sun taken by the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory are expanding our understanding of solar physics.

The images, to be released Monday on the Internet, television and at museums, are also expected to help improve space weather forecasting.

The observatory, called STEREO, is part of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Solar Terrestrial Probes program. That 2-year mission involves two nearly identical observatories — one ahead of Earth in its orbit, the other trailing behind — that will trace the flow of energy and matter from the sun to Earth.

The observatories are expected to reveal the 3-D structure of coronal mass ejections — violent eruptions of matter from the sun that can disrupt satellites and power grids — and help scientists understand why they occur.

NASA said STEREO will become a key addition to the fleet of space weather detection satellites by providing more accurate alerts for the arrival time of Earth-directed solar ejections.

Technorati Tags: Astronomy, Solar Variability, Sun, NASA, Space Weather

Here we go again…another forecast for an “exceptionally active” hurricane season. Last spring, similar forecasts were touted following the horrific 2005 hurricane season. But what went largely unreported regarding last year’s hurricane season was how quiet it ended up being and how horribly incorrect those forecasts were. Obviously we have yet to know how accurate this year’s forecasts will be; only time will tell. At least a few big names are going on record as forecasting another busier-than-average season. I would imagine this will grab plenty of headlines over the coming days:

The Atlantic hurricane season will be exceptionally active this year, according to a British forecasting group, raising the possibility that killer storms like Hurricane Katrina could again threaten the United States.

London-based forecaster Tropical Storm Risk on Tuesday said the six-month season, which begins on June 1, was expected to bring 17 tropical storms, of which nine will strengthen into hurricanes with winds of at least 74 miles per hour. Four of those are expected to become more destructive “intense” hurricanes, TSR said.

The long-term average for the Atlantic is for 10 storms to form during the hurricane season and for six of those to reach hurricane strength.

The article goes to cite the inaccuracies in last year’s forecasts:

The United States emerged unscathed from the 2006 season after it spawned a below-average nine storms, of which five became hurricanes. Experts had universally — and erroneously — predicted 2006 would be a busy year for Atlantic storms.

I have a feeling any article mentioning hurricane forecasts will still remind us of the horrors of the 2005 season, as this one has:

None of the hurricanes hit the United States, bringing welcome relief to beleaguered residents of the U.S. Gulf Coast, where Katrina killed 1,500 people, swamped New Orleans and caused about $80 billion in damage the year before.

As of 5:39pm EST 03/21/07, the article cited in the opening of this post yields 13 ‘related articles’ results from a google news search. Let’s see how this count mushrooms over the coming hours and days. I only wish we could somehow see how many (or rather, how few) headlines would have been created had this forecast been for minimal activity this hurricane season. I guess the absence of headlines following last year’s remarkably quiet season was a good indicator.

That said, I am in agreement with the overall opinion of a higher-than-average hurricane season. Sea surface temperatures are one of the best indicators of hurricane season trends and appear favorable for hurricane development this season. It is not the above-average forecasts themselves that I question, rather the play these will get in the mainstream media. After all, the planet has a fever, folks! Read much more about Al Gore’s senate testimony via Noel Sheppard’s Newsbusters posts here and here.

Technorati Tags: Hurricanes, 2007 Hurricane Forecast, Tropical Meteorology, Extreme Weather, Al Gore