Near real-time imagery: Hannah, Ike, and Josephine

4 09 2008

As many of you may know, I produce a variety of weather imagery maps for web and broadcast in SD and HD. Since there is a lot of interest in the path of hurricanes, I thought I’d post a few near-live images, which will update every 30 minutes. Here is TS Hannah:

Click image for full size or animate this image: Click for loop>>>

Here is a wider view:

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And here are the three tropical storms and hurricane with tracks. The image below is not realtime, but I will update manually a couple of times per day: Read the rest of this entry »





“Even doubling or tripling the amount of CO2′ will have ‘little impact’ on temps”

4 09 2008

http://www.health-safety.co.za/images/signs/ww15big.gif

From New Zealand Climate Science

Professor Geoffrey G Duffy
DEng, PhD, BSc, ASTC Dip., FRS NZ, FIChemE, CEng

Dr. Geoffrey G. Duffy, a professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering of the University  of Auckland, NZ. Duffy received the New Zealand Science and Technology Silver Medal, in 2003 from The Royal Society of New Zealand.  And has published 218 journal, peer-reviewed papers and conference papers including 10 patents and 62 technical reports.

Duffy’s full bio is here: http://www.ecm.auckland.ac.nz/staff/ggd

Climate is always changing, and always will.  There are seasons.  There are day-night (diurnal) cycles.  At any one location, heat energy from the sun varies during the day.   Energy from the sun is affected by local conditions and clouds.   Heat absorption depends on whether it impacts water or land … and even then, the type of land (desert, forest, snow covered land), or the layout of the land (continental masses, or islands surrounded by seas).  In some parts of the world temperatures are climbing on average, and in some areas they are dropping.  Warming is not occurring everywhere at once and hence ‘global warming’ is a misnomer.

So what are the key players in ‘Climate Change’?  The major driver is the sun.  Warming depends on the sun.  Cooling is due to the lack of sun’s energy.  Radiant energy enters the earth’s atmosphere.  Air (on a dry basis) consists mainly of nitrogen 78.08% and oxygen 20.94%.  Of the 0.98% remaining, 95% of that (ie 0.934%), or almost all is the inert gas argon.  Carbon dioxide CO2 is a trace.  It is less than 400ppm (parts per million) or 0.04% of all the atmosphere (on a dry basis).  Surprisingly, less than a fifth of that is man-made CO2 (0.008% of the total), and that is only since the beginning of the industrial era and the rapid increase in world population. Read the rest of this entry »