The Answer Is: what is a dress blue weather station?

3 12 2008

You may recall last week I wrote about the NWS Upton, New York Forecast Office that was on the TV quiz show Jeopardy.

While I didn’t have a screen cap of the video when I wrote the original post, I had mentioned that not only was the Stevenson Screen at the Upton WSFO facing the wrong direction (south) but that they had apparently “spruced up” for the Jeopardy TV show by painting the Stevenson Screen and MMTS.

Surfacestations volunteer Don Kostuch pulled these screencaps of the Jeopardy episode from thin air today and emailed them me.

Here is the first shot of the station when the categories were announced:

jeopardy-upton1
Click for larger image

And here is the “dress blue” weather station with one of the “clue crew” gals in front of it. Note the south facing Stevenson Screen: Read the rest of this entry »


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Categories : Uncategorized

Waste heat could warm the earth? Perhaps it has already started.

3 12 2008

Excerpt of an article from the New Scientist, 01 December 2008 by Mark Buchanan (h/t to Richard Hegarty)

EVEN if we turn to clean energy to reduce carbon emissions, the planet might carry on warming anyway due to the heat released into the environment by our ever-increasing consumption of energy.

National Pictures)
This picture, taken with a thermal imaging camera, reveals how much heat is being emitted by City Hall in London (Image: National Pictures)

That’s the contentious possibility raised by Nick Cowern and Chihak Ahn of the School of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering at Newcastle University, UK. They argue that human energy consumption could begin to contribute significantly to global warming a century from now.

Cowern and Ahn considered an emissions scenario proposed by James Hansen of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, and others. Under this scenario, which envisages greenhouse gases being cut significantly through phasing out coal over the next 40 years, Cowern and Ahn calculate that the greenhouse effect will start to diminish by 2050, stabilising the climate.

Read more here

Consider then UHI, and my recent measurement of a temperature transect from Reno, NV

Here is the result of my South to North transect driving Virgina Street overlaid on a Google Earth image oriented to match the timeline of the transect:


Click for larger image

It seems clear that waste heat is already having an effect, because the UHI bubble from Reno has been shown by NOAA to affect the USHCN weather station there, which caused them to move the station once. They even include this in their own training manual. Read the rest of this entry »


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Categories : Science, UHI, weather_stations

Cleveland-area TV meteorologists disagree with prevailing attitude about climate change

3 12 2008

Clearly, I’m not the only TV meteorologist (former) with doubts. Here is a story out of Cleveland that shows how others think about the issues. – Anthony

Cleveland-area TV meteorologists disagree with prevailing attitude about climate change
Posted by Michael Scott/Cleveland Plain Dealer Reporter

December 02, 2008 22:35PM Categories: Environment, Real Time News

They will tell you when the skies might rain or snow in fickle Northeast Ohio, when to bundle up the kids in a cold snap and when to make weekend plans if steady sunshine spans the five-day forecast.  They also will tell you that human-caused global warming is hogwash.  They’re your local TV meteorologists.

Andre Bernier, Courtesy of WJW Fox 8

“This cry that ‘We’re all going to die’ is an overreaction and just not good science,” said Andre Bernier, a meteorologist at WJW Channel 8. “I don’t think I personally know any meteorologists — here in Cleveland or anywhere else I’ve worked — who agree with the hype over human-induced warming.”

The local TV weatherscape is indeed populated with on-air personalities who are pushing hard against the prevailing winds of climate science.  That prevailing thought — supported by the United Nations’ 1,200-member Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Meteorological Society and others — is this: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 84 Comments »

Categories : climate_change, media