Like tornados and trailer parks, USHCN temperature sensors and barbecues seem to have mutual attraction.
This is the official NOAA USHCN climate station of record in Fairbury Nebraska.
Click for a larger image
Photo taken by surfacestations.org volunteer Eric Gamberg
Here is the station temperature plot from GISS. Care to guess when the station was located here?
Click for source image
If you’re working for the Weather Channel, look out for the falling ax. Kristi Swartz at the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports:
Weather Channel lays off staff
The Weather Channel, which NBC Universal bought in September, has laid off some of its staff. It is unclear how many people were cut or whether they are receiving a severance package.
NBC Universal and Weather Channel officials would not comment beyond a statement.
“The economic realities of recent months have created challenges for everyone in our business. In addition, when NBC Universal purchased the Weather Channel earlier this year, we expected that there would be cost synergies as part of company reorganization. While it is always difficult to lose valued employees, we are doing our best to minimize the impact, and remain committed to providing the highest quality content that our viewers have come to expect from the Weather Channel.”
h/t to TVSpy
I don’t know about you but I’m relieved that the weather won’t be “static”. – Anthony
Contact: Carmeyia Gillis FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
301-763-8000, ext 7163 Nov. 20, 2008
NOAA’s U.S. Winter Outlook Calls for Variability
In announcing the 2008-2009 U.S. Winter Outlook for meteorological winter from December through February, forecasters at the NOAA Climate Prediction Center are calling for warmer-than-normal temperatures for much of the central part of the nation, and a continuation of drier-than-normal conditions across the Southeast.
With the absence of La Niña and El Niño in the equatorial Pacific Ocean this season (climate patterns that give forecasters clues about potential weather events months in advance), predicting weather patterns on seasonal timescales becomes increasingly challenging. Instead, other climate patterns over the Arctic and North Atlantic regions may play a significant role in influencing U.S. winter weather.
“These patterns are only predictable a week or two in advance and could persist for weeks at a time,” said Michael Halpert, deputy director, Climate Prediction Center. “Therefore, we expect variability, or substantial changes in temperature and precipitation across much of the country.”
Regional Outlooks Read the rest of this entry »
Here’s a look at what black carbon does to radiation flux according to GISS, so it appears they are aware, but maybe not using the right numbers
This is for Asia, I’d really like to see Russia. Also see below the “read more” for an interesting experiment that Mike Smith of WeatherData Inc. did last year to show the effect of carbon on snow. It is a simple experiment that you can do at home. I wonder how much of that soot from Asia finds it’s way to snow at high latitudes?
And here is the article that has been making the rounds this week, h/t to Leif Svalgaard
Click for larger image Grant Stone, QCCCE
(PhysOrg.com) — A detailed analysis of black carbon — the residue of burned organic matter — in computer climate models suggests that those models may be overestimating global warming predictions.
A new Cornell study, published online in Nature Geosciences, quantified the amount of black carbon in Australian soils and found that there was far more than expected, said Johannes Lehmann, the paper’s lead author and a Cornell professor of biogeochemistry. The survey was the largest of black carbon ever published.
As a result of global warming, soils are expected to release more carbon dioxide, the major greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere, which, in turn, creates more warming. Climate models try to incorporate these increases of carbon dioxide from soils as the planet warms, but results vary greatly when realistic estimates of black carbon in soils are included in the predictions, the study found.
Soils include many forms of carbon, including organic carbon from leaf litter and vegetation and black carbon from the burning of organic matter. It takes a few years for organic carbon to decompose, as microbes eat it and convert it to carbon dioxide. But black carbon can take 1,000-2,000 years, on average, to convert to carbon dioxide.
By entering realistic estimates of stocks of black carbon in soil from two Australian savannas into a computer model that calculates carbon dioxide release from soil, the researchers found that carbon dioxide emissions from soils were reduced by about 20 percent over 100 years, as compared with simulations that did not take black carbon’s long shelf life into account.
The findings are significant because soils are by far the world’s largest source of carbon dioxide, producing 10 times more carbon dioxide each year than all the carbon dioxide emissions from human activities combined. Small changes in how carbon emissions from soils are estimated, therefore, can have a large impact. Read the rest of this entry »
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