TV Network Tells Kids How Long Their Carbon Footprint Should Allow Them to Live

31 05 2008

This is environmentalism jumping the shark:


Click image above to play the game

I don’t know where to begin, except to say that when we see things like this, we should complain loudly and incessantly. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has crossed a line beyond science, beyond decency, and beyond rational thought.

This is what you get after pressing “start”:

Two 

The screen above says: When you’re done, click on the (skull and crossbones) to find out what age you should die at so you don’t use more than your fair share of Earth’s resources!

Hat tip to CallonJim who writes:

This “kids” games at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Tell’s kids depending on their magical “carbon footprint” how long they should live?

The actual title is “Professor Schpinkee’s Greenhouse Calculator – find out when you should die!”

The thing I find amazing is the average foot print is 24.6 tonnes of CO2, which calculates out to 9.3 years old! Where it tells the child “YOU SHOULD DIE AT THE AGE 9.3!” Guess what age this kids games is marketed to? That’s right, 9 year olds.

What is most disgusting about this is that ABC ignores their own published Code of Practice

In section 2.12 they talk about content for children:

2.12 Content for Children. In providing enjoyable and enriching content for children, the ABC does not wish to conceal the real world from them. It can be important for the media, especially television, to help children understand and deal with situations which may include violence and danger. Special care should be taken to ensure that content which children are likely to watch or access unsupervised should not be harmful or disturbing to them.

I venture that any child who takes this carbon footprint test “unsupervised” without mommy and daddy around, and who may be old enough to read, but not old enough to understand he/she is being brainwashed by an agenda, would be “disturbed” find they should die at age nine, since just clicking through with default choices gives you that age.

Here is where you can contact the ABC and give them an inbox full of your opinion. This kind of propaganda needs to be removed.

http://www.abc.net.au/contact/contactabc.htm

UPDATE: There is a row developing in the Austrailian press over this.

UPDATE2: The New York Post highlights this site on June 1st with the headline “Enviro Mental Institution“


Comments : 139 Comments »

Categories : climate_change, politics, ridiculae

I Think, therefore I drive

31 05 2008

Think City Car

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that a bunch of venture capitalists are now backing Norway’s Think electric-car company. Their plan is to bring the company’s Think City car to the U.S. in 2009 and build it here as well.

I drive a 2002 Ford Think electric car, the open frame model. I’m pretty happy with it, at 3 cents a mile, and I’ve put about 300 miles on it around town since buying it 3 weeks ago. It has gotten a lot of attention in my hometown of Chico, and people are constantly asking me how much it cost and where could they get one? The town is blessed with many alternate back routes, so I don’t have to travel the main congested roads.

The U.S. version is expected to travel 110 miles on a single charge and kind of resembles Smart’s ForTwo. The company expects the car to be priced under $25,000. It’s looking for a site in the U.S. to build U.S.-spec models because it’s cheaper to build an entire line here than it is to ship from Europe, thanks to the weak dollar. Maybe Michigan politicians should be making some calls to Oslo.

The Think City is already in production in Europe, and the company is rushing to produce 10,000 units this year for sale there. One of the people behind the VC funding says they could sell 30,000 to 50,000 Think City cars in the U.S. See Norway’s Think to Produce, Sell Small Electric Cars in U.S. (from WSJ.com)

There is another car that Think has in the pipeline, and it is pretty cool looking, see it below: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 63 Comments »

Categories : Uncategorized

Lieberman-Warner Cap and Trade Bill Headed for Defeat

31 05 2008

Looks like its support is splintering:

Without widespread corporate support, passage of the bill – already a long shot at best – becomes even more unlikely this year. President Bush remains opposed. House Democrats have been slow to act.

From CNN Money.

According to the WSJ even Hillary and McCain are likely to stay away from it. Voting to increase your local energy prices due to a flawed cap and trade carbon tax scheme which will create 5 new government bureaucracies is never a good thing for somebody trying to get elected.

Even with chances of passage dwindling, write your senator to tell them how you feel about it.

 


Comments : 17 Comments »

Categories : climate_change, politics

UAH Satellite data: Globally, 2008 significantly cooler than last year

31 05 2008

One of the great things about our current state of technology is the nearly instant reporting we can get from remote sensing platforms. Thanks to  Dr. Roy Spencer & Dr. Danny Braswell, GHCC at the University of Alabama, Hunsville, we can watch global temperatures of the lower troposphere in near real-time at this page:

http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/

According to UAH: Daily averaged temperatures of the Earth are measured by the AMSU flying on the NOAA-15 satellite. The satellite passes over most points on the Earth twice per day, at about 7:30 am and 7:30 pm local time. The AMSU measures the average temperature of the atmosphere in different layers from the surface up to about 135,000 feet or 41 kilometers. During global warming, the atmosphere near the surface is supposed to warm at least as fast as the surface warms, while the upper layers are supposed to cool much faster than the surface warms.

But as I understand it, the lower troposphere is supposed to be closely coupled to CO2 induced forcings. As we’ve seen from comparison to surface data sets such as HadCRUT, the UAH MSU lower troposphere tracks fairly well with surface temps.

You can learn more about how the Advanced Microwave Sounder Unit on NOAA-15 works and what coverage it has here at my post on it the instrument.

According to the UAH data For 2008, we are averaging about .4 to .5 degrees C cooler than last year. See the graph and click it for a larger one: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 40 Comments »

Categories : Uncategorized

Buckets, Inlets, SST’s and all that – part 2

30 05 2008

Since this blog has main focused on air temperature measurement, and has not done any discussion of manual measurement techniques of Sea Surface Temperature measurements, I thought it would be good to first review some of the instrumentation used.
Sea Surface Temperature Measurement Instruments:

Standard Thermometer

Standard Thermometer

Measures: Temperature in degrees, typically used in the bucket thermometer

Operates: At any depth by cable or line or by hand

Notes: Mercury in original thermometer has been replaced in many standard
thermometers by less toxic materials

Bucket Thermometer Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 14 Comments »

Categories : Uncategorized

Buckets, Inlets, SST’s and all that – part 1

30 05 2008

There has been a lot of discussion lately about the accuracy of measuring Sea Surface Temperatures prompted by a new study from Phil Jones from the University of East Anglia and Director of UEA’s Climatic Research Unit. The measurement issue for sea surface temperatures that Dr. Jones is studying was recently showcased in an article in the UK Independent.

I’m going to present the article here first, and then we’ll talk about how sea surface temperatures have been measured, and what sorts of issues the changes between cloth buckets, metal buckets, and engine inlets actually entails.

At first glance, I see this issue raised by Phil Jones as not being well thought through, and ignoring the measurement environment actuality, instead focusing on the change in bucket types as being “absolute”. I think it has a lot of grey area, and a lot of potential errors that haven’t been considered. I’ll cover those in the next part, but for now please read the article and let me know what you think.

Case against climate change discredited by study

By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Thursday, 29 May 2008

A difference in the way British and American ships measured the temperature of the ocean during the 1940s may explain why the world appeared to undergo a period of sudden cooling immediately after the Second World War.

Scientists believe they can now explain an anomaly in the global temperature record for the twentieth century, which has been used by climate change skeptics to undermine the link between rising temperatures and increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide.

The record for sea-surface temperatures shows a sudden fall after 1945, which appeared to go against the general trend for rising global average temperatures during the past century.

Skeptics have argued it supports the idea that rising temperatures have more to do with increased solar activity – sunspots – than increasing levels of man-made carbon dioxide exacerbating the greenhouse effect. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 38 Comments »

Categories : Uncategorized

NASA Funds Toy Snowmobile Project at Georgia Tech to Monitor Climate Change Affecting Ice Shelves

29 05 2008


The “SnoMote Remote Controlled Weather Station”

At first, I though this must be a joke. But, it is not. They call it “an autonomous robot designed by Georgia Tech to gather scientific data in ice environments.” It started life as the Ski-Doo® RC Snowmobile which is 28″ long, and runs for 30 minutes on a charge.

But in a press release from Georgia Tech on May 27th, seen below, it is clear that this is real, true, fully federally funded NASA science project. You can buy one here from Hammacher Schlemmer for $79.95 Ooops, sold out, looks like Georgia Tech bought them out.

My question is, when one of these gets stuck in a crack or crevasse, or simply runs out of power prematurely, do they just leave it there for the polar bears to play with or do they send the lowliest science intern out on the ice to fetch it back, lest it remain to pollute the sea and/or sea ice with it’s Lead or Nickel Cadmium rechargeable batteries?

UAV’s have already been used in the arctic.

Robots go where scientists fear to tread


SnoMote, an autonomous robot designed by Georgia Tech to gather scientific data in ice environments.
Click here for more information.

ATLANTA ( May 27, 2008 ) — Scientists are diligently working to understand how and why the world’s ice shelves are melting. While most of the data they need (temperatures, wind speed, humidity, radiation) can be obtained by satellite, it isn’t as accurate as good old-fashioned, on-site measurement and static ground-based weather stations don’t allow scientists to collect info from as many locations as they’d like.

And unfortunately, the locations in question are volatile ice sheets, possibly cracking, shifting and filling with water — not exactly a safe environment for scientists.

To help scientists collect the more detailed data they need without risking scientists’ safety, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, working with Pennsylvania State University, have created specially designed robots called SnoMotes to traverse these potentially dangerous ice environments. The SnoMotes work as a team, autonomously collaborating among themselves to cover all the necessary ground to gather assigned scientific measurements. Data gathered by the Snomotes could give scientists a better understanding of the important dynamics that influence the stability of ice sheets.


Ayanna Howard, an associate professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech, with a SnoMote, a robot designed to gather scientific data in ice environments.
Click here for more information.

“In order to say with certainty how climate change affects the world’s ice, scientists need accurate data points to validate their climate models,” said Ayanna Howard, lead on the project and an associate professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech. “Our goal was to create rovers that could gather more accurate data to help scientists create better climate models. It’s definitely science-driven robotics.”

Howard unveiled the SnoMotes at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) in Pasadena on May 23. The SnoMotes will also be part of an exhibit at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry in June. The research was funded by a grant from NASA’s Advanced Information Systems Technology (AIST) Program.

Howard, who previously worked with rovers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is working with Magnus Egerstedt, an associate professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Derrick Lampkin, an assistant professor in the Department of Geography at Penn State who studies ice sheets and how changes in climate contribute to changes in these large ice masses. Lampkin currently takes ice sheet measurements with satellite data and ground-based weather stations, but would prefer to use the more accurate data possible with the simultaneous ground measurements that efficient rovers can provide. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 35 Comments »

Categories : climate_change, fun_stuff, weather_stations

An Inconvenient Truth – The Opera

29 05 2008

Flamer of the Opera

La Scala to stage Gore’s ‘Inconvenient Truth’

MILAN, Italy (AP) — First it was the film and the book. Now the next stop for Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” is opera.

La Scala officials say the Italian composer Giorgio Battistelli has been commissioned to produce an opera on the international multiformat hit for the 2011 season at the Milan opera house. The composer is currently artistic director of the Arena in Verona.

Bring your marshmallows.


Comments : 32 Comments »

Categories : Uncategorized

Surprise – UN Carbon Credits Being Abused

29 05 2008

See related articles from the Guardian: Billions Wasted On UN Climate Programme and Discredited Strategy

“It looks like between one and two thirds of all the total CDM offsets do not represent actual emission cuts.” — David Victor, Stanford University and co-author of a study examining 3000 UN funded offset programs

This article below was reposted from TriplePundit

 

World’s Largest Carbon Market Facilitates Pollution

carbontrading.jpg

An article in the Guardian newspaper reveals that billions worth of ‘clean’ investment on the world’s largest carbon offsets market ends up polluting the environment. The article cites researchers who’ve reviewed the participating companies in the Kyoto Protocol Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). They issued a report which seriously undermines the credibility of the CDM.

The CDM certificates facilitate the funding of clean technology investments by Third World companies that are expanding their operations. Western companies can buy the certificates to offset their own pollution. But it turns out that in reality most of the funds go to coal and oil companies, builders of destructive dams and other enterprises that are not green in the slightest.

The research that revealed the practices is of major importance not least because policymakers are set to review the CDM in the near future as the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. CDM credits are the world’s largest offset market, with annual trading last year totalling around EUR40 billion. Most credits are currently traded on the European Trading System (ETS) by European countries and companies but when the US starts to participate, something that’s more or less a given, trading will rise to over EUR 100 billion within two years easily.

The Stanford scholars opened a can of worms. They say that “Much of the market does not reflect actual reductions in emissions, and that trend is poised to get worse.” They researched more than 3,000 projects that had been applying/granted for up to $10bn of credits for the next four years and said that most of the applications should be rejected. If the scheme operated in any way realistically, we’d see a much smaller market, they say cautioning that there’s hardly enough clean air available for the demand that will build up in the near future. That’s rather an important point to consider ahead of next week’s Warner-Lieberman cap and trade bill which proposes US companies are allowed to buy up to 15% of their needed carbon credits from the (successor to the) CDM.


Comments : 41 Comments »

Categories : Uncategorized

How not to measure temperature, part 63

28 05 2008

One of the strangest things I’ve learned in the past year about the US Historical Climatological Network is the propensity for placement of weather stations at sewage treatment plants.

The reason of course has to do with putting a thermometer at a facility that is staffed 7 days a week. That thermomter must be manually read once a day and the readings transcribed into a logbook. Waste Water Treatment Plants (WWTP’s) fit that requirement (as they have an operator on duty, often 24/7) but they themselves are their own mini islands of waste heat and humidity, especially in winter and overnight. Yet, a significant portion of the US climate data comes from these locations.

Some have grassy areas where a climate monitoring station could be placed, such as the one in Morrison, IL, and you’d think they would place it there, away from the sewage tanks. Unfortunately, no.


Click for a larger image, additional photos available here at surfacestations.org

My sincere thanks to volunteer surveyor Scott Finegan for these photos.

The Stevenson Screen housing the thermometer is about 5 feet away from each tank, while the concrete building in the background is some 50 feet away. You’d think that they could have placed the station a little further away. Again, as we’ve seen time and time again, the placement is not often about the best location, it is about convenience for the observer.

The GISS graph of temperature over the station history shows a fairly strong warming trend from about 1980 to the present. The question is, how much of that is from increased throughput of the sewage treatment plant responding to population growth, and how much of it is climate change?


Click for source graph from NASA GISS

According to NCDC’s Multi Metadata System database, this station has been at this location since at least 1948, even though a lat/lon accuracy update makes it appear to have been relocated in 1997, it has in fact been at this location all that time.

A nearby station, 25km away, Clinton, IA, is also in the GISS database and shows less of a trend during the same period:

Separating a climate change signal from the waste heat (and increasing effluent volume of the WWTP due to population growth) may not be a simple matter to disentangle. Since each WWTP has different conditions, coming up with a blanket correction would not be easy. Therefore, since the USA is highly oversampled spatially with weather stations that report daily data which can used for climate, it would be prudent in my opinion, to remove stations like this from the climatic database since the data produced by USHCN stations at WWTP’s may not be truly representative of climate.


Comments : 14 Comments »

Categories : climate_change, weather_stations

Trouble in the UK – A Green Tax Rebellion is Afoot

28 05 2008

The new tipping point: UK motorists rebel against additional taxes by shutting down highways.

UL Petrol and Petrol Tax Increase 1995-2007 

After hundreds of angry drivers shut down highways in England Tuesday in protest against green automobile taxes, and drivers and fishermen in France and Spain paralyzed their ports and roads in a fuel-tax protest, politicians began to signal Europe’s ambitious emission-control policies may soon have to be abandoned. While Europe has led the way in using tax incentives to encourage people to buy low-emission cars and to build carbon-neutral houses in order to meet Kyoto targets, it has become increasingly apparent that inflation-battered voters are no longer willing to go along. Political leaders in Britain and France are seeking the reversal of tax policies designed to make polluting vehicles more expensive, with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and some British ministers calling on their own governments and the European Union to relax ecologically friendly taxes in order to give relief to citizens suffering from fast-rising food and fuel prices.
      –Doug Saunders, Globe and Mail, 28 May 2008

The fuel protests hammer home a clear message. After the 10p tax rebellion, the local elections, and the Crewe by-election, no one can doubt the mood of the country any more. There is insurrection in the air. The British people are ready for change and they don’t believe Labour can deliver it.
      –Nick Clegg, The Daily Telegraph, 28 May 2008

Gordon Brown has been urged to stand firm against calls to abandon green tax rises on fuel as environmentalists warned that scrapping the proposals would risk undermining Britain’s drive towards a low carbon future and send the wrong message about the Government’s commitment to tackling greenhouse gas emissions. Amid fears that the gloomy financial outlook could sap the political will needed to combat climate change, Charlie Kronick, senior climate adviser at Greenpeace, said: “When they are willing to spend millions of pounds shoring up their vote in a by-election they can do this as well. How serious can they be about using the tax system to try to affect environmental outcomes when, if they are under political pressure, it is the first thing that goes?”
     –Ben Russell, The Independent, 28 May 2008

Drivers should not be “hammered” by the Government, Cabinet Minister John Hutton declared yesterday in a clear sign of a road tax climbdown. The Business Secretary spoke out as senior Labour sources admitted planned increases of up to £245 a year that could hit millions of family car drivers were a “mistake”.
     –Bob Roberts, The Mirror, 28 May 2008

Huge rises in road and petrol taxes for millions of motorists could be scrapped after two Cabinet ministers hinted at another U-turn in government policy.
After warnings from MPs that the party was alienating ordinary voters, Jack Straw and John Hutton suggested that the Pre-Budget report in the autumn would contain changes to plans set out by the Chancellor in March. But, in a further sign of government confusion, Downing Street and the Treasury insisted that no plans were being considered to revise the vehicle excise duty changes announced in the Budget.
     –Philip Webster, The Times, 28 May 2008


Comments : 63 Comments »

Categories : politics

What Political Cartoonists Think About Global Warming

28 05 2008

NOTE:

I originally had a Google video posted here, which was a collage of political cartoons published in major US Newspapers about climate change. I made the mistake of not watching it all the way to the end, but watched about 80% of it.  A couple of commenters have pointed out that this video was a trojan horse for injecting opinion about “911 Truth” at the end, which had nothing to do with the original content or title.

Thus, given this deception on the part of the author of the video, I have removed it. – Anthony


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Categories : Announcements

Cold Irony: Arctic Sea Ice Traps Climate Tour Icebreaker

27 05 2008


Stuck in the arctic ice that doesn’t exist. (file photo: EcoPhotoExplorers)

Last year as arctic sea ice melted to record levels, panic set in for many. But then, as the sea ice rebounded and froze again quickly in the 2007/2008 winter, making up for that record loss and reaching heights not seen for several years, many exclaimed that even though the ice areal extent had recovered, this new ice was “thin” and would likely melt again quickly. There were also many news stories about how the Northwest Passage was ice free for the first time “ever”. For example, Backpacker Magazine ran a story saying “The ice is so low that the photos clearly show a viable northwest passage sea route along the coasts of  Greenland, Canada, and Alaska.”

Cashing in on the panic that has set in with the help of some climate alarmists, tour operators like Quark Expeditions of Norwalk Connecticut are offering polar expeditions catering to that “see it before it’s gone” travel worry. One of them is in fact a trip though the Northwest Passage on a former Soviet Icebreaker called the Kapitan Khlebnikov which is a massive 24,000 horsepower Polar Class icebreaker capable of carrying 108 passengers in relative luxury through the arctic wilderness. Here is some background on this icebreaker:

Kapitan Khlebnikov – The Kapitan Khlebnikov was built in Finland in 1981 and is one of three vessels of this class. Not simply an ice-reinforced ship, the Kapitan Khlebnikov is a powerful polar class icebreaker, which has sailed to extremely remote corners of the globe with adventurous travelers since 1992. It was the first ship ever to circumnavigate Antarctica with passengers in 1996-97. See more on this vessel at Wikipedia

According to Quark Expeditions, they’ve even fitted this icebreaker with a heated indoor swimming pool, exercise room and sauna, and a theater-style auditorium for “Expedition Team presentations” ( presumably so you can watch Gore’s AIT polar bear tears while in situ ). It is quite a difference from the travel conditions that Robert Peary experienced just 99 years ago when he reached the North Pole.

One of my alert readers, Walt from Canada,  pointed out this story in the Globe and Mail on may 24th in the travel section. It seems the irony of a polar expedition to see such things as record sea ice loss being stopped cold by the very ice that doesn’t exist was not lost on the editors.

From the Globe and Mail article:

I am on the bridge of the massive Russian icebreaker Kapitan Khlebnikov, and the tension is palpable. We have hit ice – thick ice.

The ice master studies the mountains of white packed around the ship while the 24,000-horsepower diesel engines work at full throttle to open a path. The ship rises slowly onto the barrier of ice, crushes it and tosses aside blocks the size of small cars as if they were ice cubes in a glass. It creeps ahead a few metres, then comes to a halt, its bow firmly wedged in the ice. After doing this for two days, the ship can go no farther.

The ice master confers with the captain, who makes a call to the engine room. The engines are shut down. He turns to those of us watching the drama unfold, and we are shocked by his words: “Now, only nature can help this ship.” We are doomed to drift.

What irony. I am a passenger on one of the most powerful icebreakers in the world, travelling through the Northwest Passage – which is supposed to become almost ice-free in a time of global warming, the next shipping route across the top of the world – and here we are, stuck in the ice, engines shut down, bridge deserted. Only time and tide can free us.

What irony indeed.

They eventually had nature on their side, and on the seventh day of being trapped in the ice, winds and tide moved the ice pack enough that they could continue. But, I have to wonder, will the pampered eco-tourists on this trip see the irony that we do?


Comments : 133 Comments »

Categories : climate_change

NASA sends “The Weather Rock” to Mars

27 05 2008

When I made a post discussing the weather station on NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander titled “First Weather Station on the Surface of Mars“, I expressed some concern that there might be something wrong with the meteorological package due to the first photo of the MET mast showing something dangling:

And I jokingly wrote: “Given that this mission was put together on a low budget, using parts previously designed for other spacecraft, it makes me wonder if the weather station we see above isn’t simply this low tech device“.

After further research, I’m forced to conclude that in fact, NASA did send a “weather rock” to Mars as part of the meteorological package!

Yes I know, you still don’t believe me, so here are the technical details. The instrument is called the “Telltale Project” and it was developed by the Mars Simulation Laboratory at the University of Aarhus in Demark.

In their project page about the instrument they write:

The Telltale is a passive wind indicator for the 2007 NASA Phoenix lander developed and constructed at the Mars Simulation Laboratory at the Aarhus University.

The Telltale consists of a gallows that is mounted on the top of the Meteorological Mast of the Lander. The active element of the instrument is an extremely lightweight Kapton tube hanging in Kevlar fibres. Images taken of the instrument will show the deflection of the Telltale due to the wind. A mirror is mounted below the active part to enable better direction information. Full resolution JPG (24 kB)


Click for a larger image.
Part of the Phoenix lander showing the Telltale on top of the Meteorological Mast ©NASA/JPL

So there you have it, what originally looked like a possible malfunction in the first photo of the first weather station on Mars turned out to be an accurate representation of the instrument, an instrument not unlike that of the “weather rock” found as a novelty item all over the world. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction.

In other news, I’m told that inside the MET package box, NASA has included several of these, monitored by a tiny camera, to assist in weather forecasting of seasons on Mars. ;-)

UPDATE: The first day’s weather report from Phoenix Lander on Mars is now available, see below:


Comments : 44 Comments »

Categories : Science, Technology, weather

First Weather Station on the Surface of Mars

26 05 2008

Of course we’ve all heard and seen the fantastic news of NASA’s Phoenix lander making a successful three point landing on the red planet. The primary goal of the Mars Phoenix Mission is to detect life or the traces of it. However a secondary goal is to measure the weather at the surface continuously over a long period of time.

Today in a group of raw images returned from the lander is the first photo of the weather station mast after deployment. I’m pleased to present it here:

On further inspection though I note that there appears to be something dangling from the top portion of the sensor apparatus, see the arrow:

I don’t know if this is normal or if something has come loose and what we see is something dangling on the end of a wire. Given that this mission was put together on a low budget, using parts previously designed for other spacecraft, it makes me wonder if the weather station we see above isn’t simply this low tech device.

Here is a pictorial view of the lander and the position of the MET mast:


Click for a larger sized image

Here is a description of the MET station from Wikipedia:

The Meteorological Station (MET) will record the daily weather during the course of the Phoenix mission. It is equipped with a wind indicator and pressure and temperature sensors to do so. It is also equipped with lidar (laser imaging detection and ranging), which will be used to find the amount of dust particles in the air. It was designed in Canada and supported by the Canadian Space Agency and a team headed by York University The Geological Survey of Canada will oversee the science operations of the station, which was built by Canadarm maker MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. of Richmond, B.C.

The lidar laser is a passive Q-switched Nd:YAG laser with the dual wavelengths of 1064 nm and 532 nm. It operates at 100 Hz with a pulse width of 10 ns. The lidar is vertically pointing. The scattered light is received by two detectors and operates in both analog and photon counting modes.

All types of backscattering (for example Rayleigh scattering) are the basic effect used for the lidar. With the delay between the pulse and the light reflected by the particles in the atmosphere the distance is calculated. Additional information can be obtained from backscattered light. The polarization makes it possible to discriminate between ice and dust. The line width is an indicator for the Brownian motion of the particles and therefore an indicator for the temperature.

The lidar will get information about the three-dimensional structure of the planetary boundary layer by investigating the dissipation of dust, ice, fog and clouds in the local atmosphere. The wind velocity and temperatures will be monitored over time and show the evolution of the atmosphere over time. Dust and ice contribution in the atmosphere and the formation of dust devils are in the science focus of the instrument.

Judging from experience in installing many weather stations myself, I’d venture a guess to say that the greatest effect on the long-term reliability of the MET station will be the dust. Very fine dust can penetrate and clog even the most carefully designed systems.

I assume there will be public weather data available at some point, and if so I’ll make it available here.


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Categories : Uncategorized

The parking lot effect: temperature measurement bias of locations

26 05 2008

NOTE: David Smith is doing experiments with the portable USB digital thermometers that are available here. This sort of experimentation is easy and inexpensive to do, and makes a great topic for a student science fair project. The results are easy to download from the USB thermometer into a PC for analysis. -Anthony

Seven Days in May

A guest post by David Smith

This is an update on recent field tests with remote thermometers (see the ”Fun with Thermometers” post for  background).

My goal is to quantify, to an extent, the effects of microsite problems (pavement, buildings, trees, etc) on temperature.

In the current test one sensor (”A”) is currently in an abandoned baseball field at least two hundred feet from any paving, tree, structure, etc other than a chain-link fence:

This reasonably approximates a good-quality site, isolated from human microclimate effects.

The other sensor (”B”) has a split personality. On one side is a poorly-drained field while on the other side is an older asphalt parking lot:

When the wind blows from the north this second sensor tends to reflect the characteristics of the soggy field, while a southerly wind brings air from the parking lot.

An aerial view of the two sites (”A” and “B”) is here:

 

For this update I selected seven days in May in which the skies were mostly clear throughout the day and night. This should maximize any radiative effects on temperature. (Unfortunately, the site is warm, quite humid and windy this time of year, limiting the magnitude of any radiational microsite effects. But, despite this diminished magnitude there are still useful observations to be made.)

Below is a plot of the average temperature of “B” on five clear-sky days when the breeze was from the parking lot and the average of two clear-sky days when the breeze was from the soggy field. I’ve subtracted the temperature of the nearby baseball field (”A”) from these two averages so that the lines show how much warmer or cooler “B” is than “A”. I’ve also slightly smoothed the data.

All seven days were breezy, which mixes air and limits its time over the surfaces, so the effects are probably muted compared to days with less-breezy conditions:

 

This shows several things. One, when the wind is from the parking lot (red line), the temperature at “B” sensor is warmer than that of the baseball field, night and day. Shortly after sunrise the difference diminishes, presumably due to the higher heat capacity and thus slower warming of the asphalt vs the baseball field. As the sunny day progresses the heat content and temperature of the asphalt rises, reaching a relative peak at “B” in the late afternoon. As the sun sets and evening progresses the temperature of “B” remains elevated but to a smaller extent.

This “parking lot effect” should be noticeably greater this summer, when average windspeed and air mixing diminishes.

 The effects when the wind is from the soggy field (blue line) are perhaps even more interesting. The temperature of “B” tends to be depressed vs the baseball field during daylight hours, presumably due to evaporative cooling of the soggy field. The effect is reversed a bit in the late afternoon, possibly when the dry baseball field is radiatively cooling faster than the soggy field.

The soggy field appears to be due to changes in drainage following a yearlong construction project nearby. This change in drainage and probably ground cover was subtle in nature and may have stretched over some time, something which may or may not be detected by a discontinuity algorithm. In this instance it was cooling but my conjecture is that most drainage changes are towards drying, and warming, not wetting and cooling.

These seven days in May are affirmations that it is a bad idea to have sensors in the vicinity of human-induced microsite changes. Changing drainage, repaving the parking lot, aging of the parking lot, changes in parking patterns, etc can all have an effect. The size of the effects in a given year may depend on rainfall, wind anomalies, etc, making it difficult to detect a discontinuity. 

More to come. 


Comments : 45 Comments »

Categories : Science, weather_stations

Biofuels, BBQ’s, and Texas

25 05 2008

Corn: it’s-not-what’s-for-dinner. Signs of the times I guess. I saw an odd story yesterday from Armarillo TV station KDFA titled:

Barbeque Costs Heating Up

Memorial Day cookouts could cost you more this weekend as food prices continue to rise.  According to economist, food inflation is the highest it’s been in two decades. Forcing shoppers to dig deeper in their pockets for their holiday bashes.  

Complete story here

Then I saw this article this morning in the WSJ:

A Texas Timeout on Biofuels
Wall Street Journal May 24, 2008; Page A10

The state of Texas is now in official opposition to the federal ethanol mandate. Governor Rick Perry has petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency for a one-year reprieve, and the reason is simple and increasingly familiar: Washington’s ethanol obsession is hurting the state.

We all know that corn farmers everywhere love ethanol. Don’t tell that to Texas cattle ranchers. Because of the mandate to add this biofuel to gasoline, ranchers are being forced into bidding wars with ethanol plants for the grains they feed their cattle. They don’t appreciate being hammered on price because of a subsidy to corn growers. Thus, Governor Perry’s petition.

Complete story here

Don’t mess with Texas. Perhaps they’ll be the ones that will put this biofuels nonsense back in the closet until the market can figure out how to meet ethanol demand without compromising the food supply.


Comments : 52 Comments »

Categories : Uncategorized

Weather Picture Of The Day – relaunched as a blog

24 05 2008


Weather Picture Of The Day is a Website that I started back in the year 2000 as a way to provide interesting weather content for the public. Digital Photography was becoming of age and many people had cameras and could capture great snapshots.

Unfortunately, it became a victim of its own success. It took huge amounts of bandwidth to keep running, plus it required quite a bit of daily support. All this impacted my main business, www.weathershop.com negatively even though it did generate some sales due to the meager advertising we placed on it for weather stations and weather gadgets. So, rather than continue to let it impact our business bandwidth and support requirements, I opted to shut it down in 2004 until a better solution could be found.

Enter WordPress and the blog engine. This website, www.wattsupwiththat.com has become a great success and has no impact on my business bandwidth. So I’ve decided to try Weather Picture Of The Day on wordpress.com to see how it goes.

I know there is an interest, I know that digital cameras abound, so give us your best shot and let us share it with the world! See the Submit Photo page.

I’ll be making additions to the website as we go along, and may have some contests and prizes coming in the future. We also hope to add more to our free screen saver and to offer specialized RSS and photo feeds to allow inclusion of free WPOTD content into other weather websites.

In the meantime, help spread the word, tell a friend!

- Anthony


Comments : 9 Comments »

Categories : Announcements, Science, weather

San Francisco approves greenhouse emissions tax on business

22 05 2008

From the “pay and your sins shall be forgiven” department…

FROM KTVU-TV in Oakland:

Officials Approve Controversial Greenhouse Gas Tax

SAN FRANCISCO — Air pollution regulators in the San Francisco Bay area voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to approve new rules that impose fees on businesses for emitting greenhouse gasses. 

The Bay Area Air Quality Management District’s board of directors voted 15-1 to charge companies 4.4 cents per ton of carbon dioxide they emit, an agency spokeswoman said. 

Experts say the fees, which cover nine counties in the Bay Area, are the first of their kind in the country. The new rules are set to take effect July 1. 

The modest fee probably won’t be enough to force companies to reduce their emissions, but backers say it sets an important precedent in combating climate change and could serve as a model for regional air districts nationwide. 

“It doesn’t solve global warming, but it gets us thinking in the right terms,” said Daniel Kammen, a renewable energy expert at the University of California, Berkeley. “It’s not enough of a cost to change behavior, but it tells us where things are headed. You have to think not just in financial terms, but in carbon terms.” 

But many Bay Area businesses oppose the rules, saying they could interfere with the state’s campaign to fight global warming under a landmark law signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006.

Read the complete story here

Comments : 96 Comments »

Categories : climate_change, politics

NOAA Predicts a Below-Normal Eastern Pacific Hurricane Season

22 05 2008

While the forecast for the Atlantic Hurricane season is active and for 12-16 named storms, the Pacific forecast is just in time to coincide with recent pronouncements of no link between global warming and hurricane frequency, this just in:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – May 22, 2008

*** NEWS FROM NOAA ***
NATIONAL OCEANIC & ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION
U. S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
WASHINGTON, DC

Contact: Carmeyia Gillis 301-763-8000, ext. 7163

NOAA Predicts a Below-Normal Eastern Pacific Hurricane Season

       NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center today
announced that projected climate conditions point
to a below-normal hurricane season in the eastern Pacific this year.
       “Living in a coastal state means having a
plan for each and every hurricane season. Review
or complete emergency plans now – before a storm
threatens,” said retired Navy Vice Adm. Conrad C.
Lautenbacher, Ph.D., under secretary of commerce
for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator.
“Planning and preparation is the key to storm survival and recovery.”

       The Climate Prediction Center outlook
calls for a 70 percent probability of a below
normal season, a 25 percent probability of a near
normal season, and a 5 percent probably of an above normal season.

       Allowing for forecast uncertainties,
seasonal hurricane forecasters estimate a 60 to
70 percent chance of 11 to 16 named storms,
including five to eight hurricanes and one to
three major hurricanes (category 3, 4, or 5 on
the Saffir-Simpson scale).
       An average eastern Pacific hurricane
season produces 15 to 16 named storms, with nine
becoming hurricanes and four to five becoming major hurricanes.

       Among the factors influencing this year’s
eastern Pacific outlook are the multi decadal
signal – the atmospheric conditions that have
decreased hurricane activity over the eastern
Pacific Ocean since 1995 – and the expected
lingering effects of La Niña.
       “La Nin?a conditions have weakened since
February and may become neutral by summer’s end,”
said Gerry Bell, Ph.D., lead seasonal hurricane
forecaster at the center. “We typically see less
hurricane activity in the eastern Pacific when La Nin?a is active or neutral.”
       “The outlook is a general guide to the
overall seasonal hurricane activity,”
Lautenbacher said. “It does not predict whether,
where or when any of these storms may hit land.
That is the job of the National Hurricane Center after a storm forms.”

       Bill Read, director of NOAA’s National
Hurricane Center, said, “Our forecasters are
ready to track any tropical cyclone, from a
depression to a hurricane, which forms in the
eastern Pacific. We urge coastal residents to
have a hurricane plan in place before the season
begins and NHC will continue to provide the best possible forecast.”

         Eastern Pacific tropical storms most
often track westward over open waters, sometimes
reaching Hawaii and beyond. However, some
occasionally head toward the northeast, and may
bring rainfall to the arid southwestern United
States during the summer months. Also, during any
given season, one or two tropical storms can
affect western Mexico or Central America.
Residents, businesses, and government agencies of
coastal and near-coastal regions should always
prepare prior to each and every hurricane season
regardless of the seasonal hurricane outlook.

       The eastern Pacific hurricane season runs
from May 15 through November 30, with peak
activity from July through September.
       The National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, an agency of the U.S. Commerce
Department, is dedicated to enhancing economic
security and national safety through the
prediction and research of weather and
climate-related events and information service
delivery for transportation, and by providing
environmental stewardship of our nation’s coastal
and marine resources. Through the emerging Global
Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), NOAA
is working with its federal partners, more than
70 countries and the European Commission to
develop a global monitoring network that is as
integrated as the planet it observes, predicts and protects.

On the Web:
NOAA Eastern Pacific Hurricane Season Outlook:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/Epac_hurr/Epac_hurricane.html
NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center: http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/
NOAA’s National Hurricane Center: http://www.hurricanes.gov/

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Comments : 13 Comments »

Categories : weather

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