Dan’s Wild Wild Science Journal

If you live in the Northeastern USA or Western Europe you are living through a very historic winter. Same for those living ,where I write this tonight, in Tulsa Oklahoma. Snow, snow and a lot more snow. Baltimore is buried under at least two feet tonight.

What’s causing it?

The Arctic Oscillation. (AO)

It also goes by other names. Older forecasters like myself prefer the NAO for North Atlantic Oscillation. Younger and brighter meteorologists prefer the Northern Annular Mode. Whatever you call it, the result is the same. This is what you can blame  for all the snow.

My friend Bob Henson at the National Centers for Atmospheric Research is an expert at making something complicated easy. If you don’t  believe me, read his book the Rough Guide to Climate Change. Click the image below to see his explanation.

It won’t get your car dug out, or your power back on sooner, but you will at least know why you are freezing under the covers!

The Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media have a very good piece on the now famous IPCC error on how fast glaciers in the Himalayas are really melting. An interesting (perhaps) sidebar is that I saw this number of 2035 quoted, and assumed it to be a typo. I thought that what was really meant was 2135. I wonder how many others made the same assumption and thought no more about it.

It was a comedy of simple errors that led to this making it into the WG 2 report by the IPCC and  I agree with the more sane comments that this is a good example of scientific method righting mistakes. Does it change the science or the conclusions of the IPCC?

No, of course not.

The glaciers really are melting and just as fast as the correct data indicated. That is the real story and no amount of political commentary is going to change it.

Click the image below to read a detailed analysis of the error. (Note: My apologies for the spell errors in the earlier version of this  post. My spell checker is out to lunch-just like I was in typing class.)

The Atlantic portions of Arctic remain warmer than normal in January. Image from NSIDC NOAA.

It’s been a cold and very snowy winter in the Eastern USA and in Western Europe. Very likely the worst in 30 years. All that snow and cold has resulted in a very common question to every meteorologist I know and that certainly includes me. Same for every person involved in climate change research too.

WHAT HAPPENED TO GLOBAL WARMING??

First of all most people in the climate and weather forecasting field prefer climate change instead of global warming. It’s more accurate. Secondly, if I have learned one thing over the past 30 years as a forecaster, it’s that weather is extremely local to people.

If I forecast a 10% of the area to get rain and it turns out to be a perfect forecast, I guarantee you that every person who got rain thinks I blew the forecast. It doesn’t matter if the next block over is sunny. People only care about the weather where they are.

So when we have cold and snow, people immediately chant what happened to global warming. The answer to this in short is nothing. If the whole planet was getting snow then things would be different. Climate is made up of a lot of weather. Even in a warmer world that is most certainly coming, we will still have blizzards and record lows. Just not nearly as many of them.

One of the multitude of other signs the planet is warming besides thermometers is the number of record highs is steadily increasing compared to the record lows.

The cold air, in the East of America and the West of Europe, has come from the Arctic and it has actually left the Arctic quite warm. Sea ice for January is running way below the long term average. Sea ice in December was too and if you look at December alone, then the decrease is now running at 3.3% per decade.

Below is an exc. video featuring my friend Stu Ostro, Meteorologist at the Weather Channel, along with one of the top climate experts at the Nat. Center for Atmospheric Research, that explains the answer to this months question very well. Not only that, it’s based on science instead of political opinion.

So check out Peter Sinclair’s Global Warming Crock of the Week! (gotta love that name)

That's me in the hydroponics unit at the South Pole. I was asking questions for some Huntsville Students competing in a national science competition.

A little story for you.

I’m on the board of our great science museum, SCI Quest, here in Huntsville. Just before my trip to the South Pole, I found out about a project some students were doing with help from Sci Quest. I was asked if  it might be possible to get some info or pictures of a greenhouse in Antarctica for them.

Lane Patterson operates the vegetable grow unit at Amundsen - Scott Station at the South Pole.

The students are involved in an eCybermission project on hydroponics. This is a free web based science, math,engineering and technology competition for students grade 6-9. When I saw what they were working on, I promised to try and bring back something for them.

So four weeks and 13,000 miles later, I’m walking down to eat dinner at Amundsen Scott Station at the South Pole, and guess what I see?? A hydroponics greenhouse! Dinner was delayed while I grabbed my cameras. Best of all, the operator of the unit Lane Patterson was there!

Lane calls this the vegetable growth unit and it’s not just for science. It provides fresh vegetables to the researchers and support staff wintering over at the South Pole. No planes can reach the Pole during the long polar night, and this is the only supply of fresh vegetables available.

Lane works out of the University of Arizona with the Controlled Environment Agricultural Center. They received a grant from the National Science Foundation to build and operate the unit. Lane is employed by Raytheon Polar Services the NSF civilian contractor to operate the unit.

So, take a look and see how it works , and how Lane grows things from 9,000 miles away in another desert – Arizona.

Oh, and yes, the students at Sci Quest will have this video and more.

Chaz Firestone accompanied Ann Posegate, and I to Antarctica and his report on the Ice core project underway is in NATURE NEWS this week.

Chaz Firestone accompanied Ann Posegate and I to Antarctica.  He is a native of Toronto, and was part of our group the NSF took to Antarctica.

Weather prevented Ann and I from getting to the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet drill site named WAIS Divide. Chaz and Lee Hotz from our group did make it. They were caught there by weather too.

Chaz is former editor of the Brown University newspaper. His first hand account of the ice cores being drilled at WAIS is in NATURE NEWS this week.

These cores are vital to our understanding of climate change. They will give us a detailed account of the past climate, with accuracy never before seen. It may very well be among the most important research projects on Earth.

Indeed, it could answer the question of just how long we have to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Unfortunately, it may also tell us we are already too late to avoid a significant change to Earth’s climate.

Click the Image below to read Chaz’s Article.

click image to read the Nature News Article.