October’s significant chill – take your pick on descriptors

5 11 2009

October, a time for great pumpkins, but not higher US temperatures this time around.

http://www.coyoteblog.com/photos/uncategorized/pumpkin1.jpg

Image: Warren Meyers Coyote Blog

In our last climatic episode from NCDC we had: NOAA: September Temperature Above-Average for the U.S.

The average September temperature of 66.4 degrees F was 1.0 degree F above the 20th Century average.

This month’s NOAA climate press release hasn’t been issued yet, but it will be interesting to see what they say about it.

In the meantime, using the NCDC database, you can come to your own conclusion about what October 2009 was like and if it matches what the upcoming October climate press release will say.

Have a look at this: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 172 Comments »

Categories : climate data, records, weather

Semi-truck Boat Tail Improves Fuel Efficiency 7.5%

5 11 2009

I’m always for energy saving ideas when they payback the effort. Here’s one that would be an advantage for our long haul American Interstate trucking companies. This semi has both side wings and a boat tail to decrease wind drag.

It is pretty simple really:

‘Boat tail’ decreases fuel consumption for trucks by 7.5 percent

From a Delft Technical University press release

A boat tail, a tapering protrusion mounted on the rear of a truck, leads to fuel savings of 7.5 percent. This is due to dramatically-improved aerodynamics, as shown by road tests conducted by the PART (Platform for Aerodynamic Road Transport) public-private partnership platform.

xhtmlc Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 134 Comments »

Categories : Technology, energy

HadCRUT for September out – finally – but has data holes

5 11 2009

Lucia beat me to a post on this, so I’ll give her the honor here. Interesting thing though, the delay of Hadley may have provided a better data presentation. – Anthony

Guest Post by Lucia from The Blackboard

Guess what? The much anticipated Hadley monthly surface temperature anomalies are now available. I always use the NH+SH simple average.

Guess what else? According to this metric, the global surface temperature anomaly September 2009 cooled relative to August 2009 dropping from0.548C to 0.457C. In contrast, GISSTemp, NOAA/NCDC, UAH and RSS all reported distinctly warmer anomalies in September relative to August. This divergence is a pit surprising– though I’d have to plough through numbers to see if this sort of mismatch is unprecedented in the record.

One of the interesting happenings this month was Hadley’s decision to delay processing because they considered the some data they received to be obviously wrong. We don’t have details on precisely what was wrong about it, but I noticed large blanked out areas on their map:

Figure 1: Missing temperatures in Africa.
Figure 1: Missing temperatures in Africa. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 105 Comments »

Categories : climate data, weather_stations