Josh Fitzpatrick, meteorologist with WSAZ TV, posts this photo (don't know who took it), with this factoid: "The deepest snow with the #blizzard of 2013 was 40" inches at Trumbull, CT! 7' foot drifts. " Here's another shot.

]]> http://boingboing.net/2013/02/10/knock-knock-whos-there.html/feed 33 http://boingboing.net/2013/02/08/weather-channel-naming-winter.html http://boingboing.net/2013/02/08/weather-channel-naming-winter.html#comments Fri, 08 Feb 2013 17:46:03 +0000 David Pescovitz http://boingboing.net/?p=211836 During the upcoming 2012-13 winter season The Weather Channel will name noteworthy winter storms. Our goal is to better communicate the threat and the timing of the significant impacts that accompany these events. The fact is, a storm with a name is easier to follow, which will mean fewer surprises and more preparation…

This is an ambitious project. However, the benefits will be significant. Naming winter storms will raise the awareness of the public, which will lead to more pro-active efforts to plan ahead, resulting in less impact and inconvenience overall…

Finally, it might even be fun and entertaining and that in itself should breed interest from our viewing public and our digital users. "Why The Weather Channel is Naming Winter Storms" (Thanks, Gil Kaufman!)]]> http://boingboing.net/2013/02/08/weather-channel-naming-winter.html/feed 32 http://boingboing.net/2013/01/08/australian-heatwave-goes-into.html http://boingboing.net/2013/01/08/australian-heatwave-goes-into.html#comments Tue, 08 Jan 2013 16:45:12 +0000 Maggie Koerth-Baker http://boingboing.net/?p=204528 the country's national weather bureau added a new color to official weather forecast maps, reflecting a need to predict temperatures higher than 52 C (125.6 F). Insert your Spinal Tap jokes and terrified flailing here. ]]> http://boingboing.net/2013/01/08/australian-heatwave-goes-into.html/feed 7 http://boingboing.net/2012/11/12/freedom-tower-as-aeolian-harp.html http://boingboing.net/2012/11/12/freedom-tower-as-aeolian-harp.html#comments Mon, 12 Nov 2012 16:30:42 +0000 David Pescovitz http://boingboing.net/?p=193560

Winds from approaching Hurricane Sandy turned 1 WTC (previously known as the Freedom Tower) into an æolian harp. (via Doubtful News)]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/11/12/freedom-tower-as-aeolian-harp.html/feed 13 http://boingboing.net/2012/10/31/what-makes-wind.html http://boingboing.net/2012/10/31/what-makes-wind.html#comments Wed, 31 Oct 2012 19:54:17 +0000 Maggie Koerth-Baker http://boingboing.net/?p=191409

It can be a nice breeze, or a destructive storm, but either way wind is just moving air. And moving air is just moving molecules.

In an explainer for kids that's actually pretty helpful for grown-ups, too, Matt Shipman reminds us that the air around us isn't totally weightless. It weighs something, because molecules all weigh something:

They don't weigh very much (you couldn't put one on your bathroom scale), but their weight adds up, because there are a LOT of molecules in the air that makes up our atmosphere. All of that air is actually pretty heavy, so the air at the bottom of the atmosphere (like the air just above the ground) is getting pressed on by all of the air above it. That pressure pushes the air molecules at the bottom of the atmosphere a lot closer together than the air molecules at the top of the atmosphere.

And, because the air at the top of the atmosphere is pushing down on the air at the bottom of the atmosphere, the air molecules at the bottom REALLY want to spread out. So if there is an area where the air molecules are under high pressure (with a lot of weight pushing down), the air will spread out into areas that are under lower pressure (with less weight pushing down).

Read the full story at Carolina Parent

Last year, I wrote a piece for BoingBoing about destructive storm systems and why it's so difficult to say, in concise sound-bite form, what relationship that destruction has to climate change. In that case, we were talking about tornadoes. But over the last couple of days, lots of people have been having roughly the same conversations about Hurricane Sandy. When the clouds have passed and everybody is done sleeping in airports, people are going to want answers. Was this an unavoidable act of nature? Or was this something caused directly by changes to Earth's climate that have happened because we burn fossil fuels which increase the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?

Again, there's not an easy answer. And, again, part of the problem here is that we're expecting science to operate on the scale of American media news cycles, which doesn't really work. We want to talk about this while the storm is raging or, barring that, at least immediately afterwards. But scientists aren't really going to have anything particularly deep to say about this specific storm for months, if not years. During that time, data will be analyzed and compared, and other events will happen, and that's really the stuff that we need in order to say much of anything other than, "We don't know for certain." In some ways, expecting anything else means forcing scientists to speculate and extrapolate in ways they aren't usually comfortable with and that aren't a terribly great way to understand the big picture.

But there's also something new, that I kind of didn't really think about when I was writing that post on the tornadoes. The answer to these questions also really depends on the motivations behind why you asked, and what it is that you really want to know.

First off, you should know that this kind of extreme (and extremely weird) storm system happening in fall or winter is a trend that some scientists had already been predicting. Those predictions stem from the steep reduction in quantities of sea ice in the North Atlantic and what we know (and think we know) about how that change affects climate patterns and storm formation as a whole.

Remember the times that we've talked about how climate change can, seemingly paradoxically, lead to heavier snowfall in winter? This is connected to that. Here's how Kate Spinner with The Herald Tribune explained it:

A big bubble of high pressure, with sinking air that moves clockwise, is interrupting the typical steering patterns in the atmosphere. That high pressure creates a blockage, backing up the jet stream so that it bends south, eventually looping north again, instead of flowing toward the east as usual.

The blocking pattern, centered just south of Greenland, will significantly slow the eastward-moving cold front once it reaches the coast. And it will steer Sandy into the U.S. rather than allowing it to turn east.

Blocking events are the force behind a lot of crazy weather anomalies, not just hurricanes. And there's evidence suggesting that, as the ice in the Arctic melts, the frequency and/or intensity of the blocking events may be increasing. The Climate Crocks blog did a nice interview about this a few months ago with Jennifer Francis, who studies marine and coastal sciences at Rutgers.

There's more on this from Francis, and other scientists, at Andy Revkin's DotEarth blog.

Another thing worth taking into account: Weather is a lot more complicated than you think it is. If it rains today — or if it doesn't rain — there are lots of different, interacting factors that influenced that outcome. A good way to think about it is like a plane crash. It is very, very rare for a plane crash to be caused by a single mistake. Instead, when you're reading the final report, you find that lots of things have to go wrong all at the same time. Even then, you still might not get an accident if the mix of mistakes that happen don't interact with each other in such a way as to make them all worse than the sum of their parts.

Plane crashes are complicated. And so is weather. That matters, because it means that Hurricane Sandy could be both a completely natural occurrence and a product of climate change. Simultaneously. Some of the factors that caused this storm might be nature-made. Others might be man-made. And teasing apart which factors were responsible for which aspect of the storm's damage is incredibly hard.

Greg Laden, an anthropologist who does some very good blogging on climate science, had a lot to say on this topic — particularly, the fact that even though we can't say "Hurricane Sandy was caused solely by climate change", we can say that climate change is probably affecting several factors that probably influence the development, growth, and movement of hurricanes.

It is often said that storms are going to happen anyway, but global warming ramps up the probability, which is akin to saying that there is always going to be variation in temperature or some other weather related factor but global warming raises the baseline. That’s true. But the corollary to that is NOT that you can’t link climate change to a given storm. All storms are weather, all weather is the immediate manifestation of climate, climate change is about climate. Before we started talking about global warming, storms were caused by … things. Climate things. Did we ever say, back in the 1950s when a hurricane hit Florida, “Oh, ya, that was some hurricane, but the thing is, you can’t really attribute a given hurricane to the Intertropical Convergence Zone’s relationship to warm Mid Atlantic currents. The former is a weather event and the latter is a climate system.” Why did we not ever say that? Because it would have been irrelevant, even dumb.

The truth is, we experience more Atlantic severe storms because of global warming, though we are still working out the details of which features of which kinds of storms are affected most. Beyond this, it may well also be possible that something I hinted at above is true: We may be experiencing kinds of storms today that were very rare in recent centuries, because of global warming.

Adam Frank at NPR also wrote a good post on this subject. In it, he explains another issue that muddies the waters. When we say that weather is complicated and that a storm is caused by the interaction of lots of different factors, what we are really saying is that weather is a system. Just like climate is a system. Currently, there are some systems that science understands better than others. Hurricanes are, unfortunately, pretty far down on the list.

There is a hierarchy of weather events which scientists feel they understand well enough for establishing climate change links. Global temperature rises and extreme heat rank high on that list, but Hurricanes rank low. As the IPCC special report on extreme events put it "There is low confidence in any observed long-term (i.e., 40 years or more) increases in tropical cyclone activity (i.e., intensity, frequency, duration), after accounting for past changes in observing capabilities."

The reasons for "low confidence" are manifold. Some part of the caution comes from the complexity of the problem, and some part comes from the lack of good data before the satellite era (about 1970). Thus, many climate scientists will not want to go out on a limb for hurricanes. They just don't have the tools to make strong inferences.

This is not to say progress isn't being made. One thing that does seem clear is that warmer oceans (a la global warming) mean more evaporation, and that likely leads to storms with more and more dangerous rainfall of the kind we saw with Hurricane Irene last year. In addition, a paper published just last month, used records of storm surges going back to 1923 as a measure of hurricane activity. A strong correlation between warm years and strong hurricanes was seen. Thus if you warm the planet, you can expect more dangerous storms.

Basically, we know that the effects of climate change probably has an impact on factors that cause massively destructive storms — even if we don't know exactly how much of an impact; even if we can't really use that information to exactly predict what's going to happen with massive storms in the future; and even if we can't tell you whether Sandy, specifically, was caused by climate change.

So, really, the answer to the question, "What is the relationship between Hurricane Sandy and climate change", depends primarily on why you're asking the question.

If you're just kind of curious and/or looking for something to blame, we don't have great answers on that yet. I'm sorry. Nobody is really going to be able to tell you one way or the other.

But if you're using that question as a proxy to really ask, "Is climate change real and do I have to care about it?", well, good news! We have enough information to answer your question. And the answer is, emphatically, yes.

Read More:
Besides the links I included in the story, I want to point you towards a couple more Hurricane Sandy-related things:
• NOAA's Storm Central has all the maps, satellite images, and projections of Sandy that a concerned citizen (or giant nerd) could want
• The director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness would like you to know that we are seriously, seriously NOT prepared for big disasters
• Atlantic City is totally flooded
• Marketplace Tech Report has a really fascinating piece on the future of weather forecasting
• If you're in Sandy's path and aren't really clear what to do with your pets, read this
• The NASA Satellite video will haunt your nightmares
• Meanwhile, the news that the satellites we rely on for forecasts of hurricanes are aging rapidly (and there aren't great plans to replace them) will create your nightmares
• Use this handy slider to compare Hurricane Irene and Hurricane Sandy

]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/10/29/did-climate-change-cause-hurri.html/feed 36 http://boingboing.net/2012/10/28/eastern-us-hunkers-down-for.html http://boingboing.net/2012/10/28/eastern-us-hunkers-down-for.html#comments Sun, 28 Oct 2012 17:18:45 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=190421

NOAA's GOES-13 satellite captured this image of Hurricane Sandy Oct. 28. The line of clouds from the Gulf of Mexico north are associated with the cold front with which Sandy is merging; the western cloud edge is already over the mid-Atlantic and northeastern US. Credit: NASA GOES Project.

Our readers along the East Coast of the US are in the path of Sandy, a storm expected to cause considerable rainfall, flooding, and high winds, with correspondingly high risk for property, structures, and life in more vulnerable areas. Sandy is now the largest tropical cyclone on record, with a radius of 520 nautical miles. The biggest threat? Too much water.

Turn off the breathless cable news coverage and instead read the reports from Dr. Jeff Masters, co-founder of Weather Underground. Snip:

Massive and dangerous Hurricane Sandy has grown to record size as it barrels northeastwards along the North Carolina coast at 10 mph. At 8 am EDT, Sandy's tropical storm-force winds extended northeastwards 520 miles from the center, and twelve-foot high seas covered a diameter of ocean 1,030 miles across. Since records of storm size began in 1988, no tropical storm or hurricane has been larger (though Hurricane Olga of 2001 had a larger 690 mile radius of tropical storm-force winds when it was a subtropical storm near Bermuda.) Sandy has put an colossal volume of ocean water in motion with its widespread and powerful winds, and the hurricane's massive storm surge is already impacting the coast. A 2' storm surge has been recorded at numerous locations this morning from Virginia to Connecticut, including a 3' surge at Virginia's Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel and Sewells Point at 9 am EDT. Huge, 10 - 15 foot-high battering waves on top of the storm surge have washed over Highway 12 connecting North Carolina's Outer Banks to the mainland at South Nags Head this morning. The highway is now impassable, and has been closed. The coast guard station on Cape Hatteras, NC, recorded sustained winds of 50 mph, gusting to 61 mph, at 5:53 am EDT this morning. In Delaware, the coastal highway Route 1 between Dewey Beach and Bethany Beach has been closed due to high water. Even though Sandy is a minimal Category 1 hurricane, its storm surge is extremely dangerous, and if you are in a low-lying area that is asked to evacuate, I strongly recommend that you leave.

Much more here at Weather Underground, including anticipated rainfall charts.

His colleague Bryan Norcross, Hurricane Specialist at The Weather Channel, says Sandy is "serious as a heart attack."

The ocean will rise along the coast as Sandy makes it's way north, but the biggest coastal problems will come when the center makes landfall. We're unlikely to know exactly where that will be until Monday, but this is critical. The ocean will be pushed toward the coast north of that point and away to the south. The onshore flow of water is exaggerated where bays, inlets, or the shape of the coastline focus the water to make it rise even higher. The most prominent problem spot is New York City, where Long Island and New Jersey make an "L".

Raritan Bay and New York Bay and the south end of Manhattan are especially susceptible to rising water if the center of Sandy comes ashore in New Jersey or south. Much as we saw in Irene, it is potentially a monstrous problem due to the threat to NYC infrastructure and transportation. There are tough decisions ahead for the Mayor and his people.

Right now, the odds favor that southern track. The threat from this situation is serious as a heart attack for anybody near the rising water.

Then there's the wind which is expected to be MUCH higher than Irene at the skyscraper level. The city will also have to be thinking about the threat to people in tall buildings.

NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg has announced emergency shelter plans, and news that subways and MTA buses will shut down ahead of the storm's expected landfall.

As of 9 AM this morning, we have opened 72 shelters around the city. Pets are welcome. Find one near you: bit.ly/SPojeU #Sandy

— Mike Bloomberg (@MikeBloomberg) October 28, 2012

Mayor has issued mandatory evacuation order for all of Zone A. Find your zone and nearest shelter: gis.nyc.gov/oem/he/search.… #Sandy

— NYC Mayor's Office (@NYCMayorsOffice) October 28, 2012

All State Offices will be closed tomorrow due to the impending impact of Hurricane #Sandy and dangerous weather conditions.

— Governor Christie (@GovChristie) October 28, 2012

Our readers in New York City would do well to follow our friend Scott Beale, who has been tweeting and blogging resources and updates.

This is only the 2nd time in NYC’s history that an evacuation has been ordered for Zone A (the first was last year for Irene) #Sandy

— Scott Beale (@ScottBeale) October 28, 2012

New Yorkers currently stocking up on bagels, an important resource to weather the storm. #Sandy

— Scott Beale (@ScottBeale) October 28, 2012

If you are looking for iOS 6 Emergency Alerts, it is only available on @verizonwireless & @sprint, not @att owl.li/ePqxb via @exchgr

— Scott Beale (@ScottBeale) October 28, 2012

ABC (Always Be Charging) until the storm hits. Laptops, phones, tablets, external batteries, your personal squadron of Quadrocopters…

— Scott Beale (@ScottBeale) October 28, 2012

Here's a NASA video of the hurricane approaching, as seen from a NOAA sattelite. And at the Atlantic, Alexis Madrigal explains with four simple graphics why Sandy has meteorologists scared.

Don’t worry, if it’s a legitimate hurricane, you won’t be damaged. Just sit back & relax, because this is something God intended to happen.

— Xeni Jardin (@xeni) October 28, 2012

Below, a photo from NOAA's GOES-13 satellite. Check out how much of the *planet* Sandy covers right now. This storm ain't no joke.

]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/10/28/eastern-us-hunkers-down-for.html/feed 45 http://boingboing.net/2012/10/28/when-your-news-comes-from-nerd.html http://boingboing.net/2012/10/28/when-your-news-comes-from-nerd.html#comments Sun, 28 Oct 2012 13:45:13 +0000 Maggie Koerth-Baker http://boingboing.net/?p=190412 article about hurricane coverage written in August, 2011:

It takes a while watching TWC before you realize that they are such weather nerds that they sometimes tend to see things from the storm's point of view. They talk about the shape of the storm as beautiful, or "great," or "improving," and what they mean is that the storm is thriving. It's along the lines of, "This storm is looking great. Your lawn furniture? Not so much." At first, when they say the storm is getting better, you the viewer assume it means "less fierce." But they actually mean "more efficient, in terms of destruction." This is how you know that they are true nerds, and not just poseurs. CNN anchors would never accidentally say a storm is great because it's so beautifully shaped that it will look great on the radar as it tears a few shingles off the Hot Dog Hut in Atlantic City.

(Via Jennifer Ouellette)
]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/10/28/when-your-news-comes-from-nerd.html/feed 13 http://boingboing.net/2012/10/26/storm-chasers-gorgeous-photo.html http://boingboing.net/2012/10/26/storm-chasers-gorgeous-photo.html#comments Fri, 26 Oct 2012 18:58:37 +0000 David Pescovitz http://boingboing.net/?p=190221

Tornado-loving BB pal Jody Radzik just turned me on to Extreme Instability, a collection of one intrepid storm chaser's breathtaking weather photography. The above photo that I've taken it upon myself to title "Act of God" is from a bow echo in Watertown, South Dakota on August 3. The photographer: "I'm driving along, having gained at least a small bit of ground again, when I see this white cross and a roadside chapel next to the road. No way. Slam on the brakes, pull over and jump out of the car and shoot fast fast." Extreme Instability]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/10/26/storm-chasers-gorgeous-photo.html/feed 4 http://boingboing.net/2012/10/03/goodbye-snowmageddon-xix.html http://boingboing.net/2012/10/03/goodbye-snowmageddon-xix.html#comments Wed, 03 Oct 2012 18:18:36 +0000 Maggie Koerth-Baker http://boingboing.net/?p=185195 The Weather Channel has decided to begin naming winter storms the way we already name tropical storms. But while tropical storm nomenclature is an organized and official process, carried out by a branch of the United Nations, winter storms will be named apparently at the whim of The Weather Channel. The result: Not only can we move past calling every blizzard either Snowmageddon or Snowpocalypse, but we also get to hear news anchors discuss the damage caused by Winter Storm Gandolf. (Please note that this is Gandolf, not Gandalf. The former is a character in The Well at the World's End, an 1896 fantasy novel. The latter is probably tied up in intellectual property restrictions.) ]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/10/03/goodbye-snowmageddon-xix.html/feed 20 http://boingboing.net/2012/09/27/commodity-market-prediction-ta.html http://boingboing.net/2012/09/27/commodity-market-prediction-ta.html#comments Thu, 27 Sep 2012 19:59:06 +0000 Maggie Koerth-Baker http://boingboing.net/?p=184043 Key takeaways: There will still be meat, it's just going to be more spendy next year, and also don't trust the British when they offer you "bacon" because they actually mean Canadian bacon, which is different (and inferior). ]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/09/27/commodity-market-prediction-ta.html/feed 54 http://boingboing.net/2012/08/31/building-an-indoor-hurricane-a.html http://boingboing.net/2012/08/31/building-an-indoor-hurricane-a.html#comments Fri, 31 Aug 2012 14:30:08 +0000 Maggie Koerth-Baker http://boingboing.net/?p=178931

This is how Hurricane Isaac looked on Tuesday, as it made landfall on America's Gulf Coast. If you've never been to the Gulf of Mexico, here is a key fact you should know: The water there is warm. While Pacific coastal waters might be in the 50s during August, and the central Atlantic coast is pulling temperatures in the 60s and 70s, the water in the Gulf of Mexico is well into the 80s.

And that makes a difference. We know that water temperature affects hurricane strength. But we don't understand the particulars of how or why at a detail level. To learn more about this (and other factors that make each hurricane an individual), researchers at the University of Miami are building a simulation machine. When it's complete, it will be a key tool in improving forecasts.

Peter Sollogub, Associate Principal at Cambridge Seven, says the hurricane simulator is comprised of three major components:
The first is a 1400-horsepower fan originally suited for things like ventilating mine shafts. To create its 150mph winds, it will draw energy from the campus's emergency generator system, which is typically used during power outages caused by storms.

The second part is a wave generator which pushes salt water using 12 different paddles. Those paddles, timed to move at different paces and rates, can create waves at various sizes, angles and frequency, creating anything from a calm, organized swell to sloppy chaotic seas.

The third aspect of the tank is the tank itself, which is six meters in width by 20 meters in length by two meters high. It's made of three-inch thick clear acrylic so that the conditions inside can be observed from all sides.

Read more about the hurricane simulator at Popular Science

When we lose our access to electricity, there's usually more than one thing that went wrong. But, one of the common things that does go wrong, especially in recent years, is extreme weather. The way the grid was built, and the way we manage it, was set up with predictable weather and climate norms in mind. When those things start to drastically shift—as we've seen over the last 10 years—the grid becomes vulnerable.

And electricity isn't the only infrastructure affected.

On a single day this month here, a US Airways regional jet became stuck in asphalt that had softened in 100-degree temperatures, and a subway train derailed after the heat stretched the track so far that it kinked — inserting a sharp angle into a stretch that was supposed to be straight. In East Texas, heat and drought have had a startling effect on the clay-rich soils under highways, which “just shrink like crazy,” leading to “horrendous cracking,” said Tom Scullion, senior research engineer with the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University. In Northeastern and Midwestern states, he said, unusually high heat is causing highway sections to expand beyond their design limits, press against each other and “pop up,” creating jarring and even hazardous speed bumps.

The frequency of extreme weather is up over the past few years, and people who deal with infrastructure expect that to continue. Leading climate models suggest that weather-sensitive parts of the infrastructure will be seeing many more extreme episodes, along with shifts in weather patterns and rising maximum (and minimum) temperatures.

“We’ve got the ‘storm of the century’ every year now,” said Bill Gausman, a senior vice president and a 38-year veteran at the Potomac Electric Power Company, which took eight days to recover from the June 29 “derecho” storm that raced from the Midwest to the Eastern Seaboard and knocked out power for 4.3 million people in 10 states and the District of Columbia.

This story, by Matthew L. Wald and John Schwartz, will give you a great overview of the risks we're facing—and the high prices we're paying—as "the norm" becomes an old-fashioned concept.

Read the rest of Wald and Schwartz's story in the New York Times

Slate has a nice explainer covering heat wave health problems. The central question: If my body temperature is 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, why am I uncomfortable when it's 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit outdoors?

The answer is both basic and interesting. Sure, 98.6 degrees F is the healthy temperature for a human body, but that's only because we are pretty good at transferring heat away from ourselves. Your metabolism and your muscles generate more heat than that, but you get rid of it using tricks like breathing out hot air and sweating. Basically, your body works like a heat exchanger. It's the same sort of system that keeps your refrigerator cool—take the heat from inside a closed space and dump it into the surrounding environment.

Unfortunately, this system works best when the surrounding environment is cooler than the closed space. Your body is happiest when the air temperature is around 70 degrees F. That's when it's most efficient at getting rid of your excess heat. When the weather gets to warm, it's a lot hard to make the heat exchange. With nowhere else to put the heat, your body temperature starts rising.

Because exercise causes the body to generate so much extra heat, optimal temperatures for intense physical activity are lower than those for daily life. Athletes can raise their core temperatures six degrees just by working out. Add an environment that makes heat dispersal more difficult—not to mention possible dehydration from sweat losses that sometimes exceed six liters (for marathoners) or two liters per hour (team game players)—and performance can take a nosedive.

... For example, researchers in Darwin, Australia, observing a long-distance runner taking a 30-minute jog through the humid air, noted that his body temperature increased from 98.96 degrees to 105.8 degrees. When he’d gone on a similar jaunt under cooler conditions, his temperature had risen by just two degrees. Such a spike spells trouble for maintaining an optimal heart rate: The man’s soared to 200 beats per minute during the last 15 minutes of his run, where, previously, it was a more sustainable 154 beats per minute.

Read the rest of Slate's Explainer on body temperature.

John Nelson—the data visualization designer responsible for that global map of earthquakes I posted last week—has also made a strangely beautiful map showing every tornado to hit the U.S. between 1950 and 2011.

Part of what makes this map interesting is that it shows not only the touchdown location, but also the path of the tornado as it moved. Better yet, Nelson has several other related maps that break the data down in different ways. For instance, if you look at the tornado map broken down by seasonality, you can see a really amazing pattern, where what constitutes "Tornado Alley" appears to move northward over the course of the year. In December, January, and February, the bulk of tornadoes have been centered on south and south-central states like Mississippi, Texas and Kentucky. In peak tornado season—March, April, and May—the southern states are still affected, but the reach of the tornadoes has extended north and west. By June, July, and August, most of the tornado activity is happening in states like Michigan and Minnesota.

Another interesting thing I spotted on these maps: There's a hole in tornado activity centered on West Virginia. All around the state, there's a history of tornadoes. In the Mountain State, though, the number of tornadoes drops off precipitously. I'm really curious what's causing that, or whether it's a flaw in the data.

Compare tornado habits throughout the seasons

Compare tornado numbers by F-scale

Compare tornado history before and after the historically devastating 2011 season.

Watch an animation of tornadoes by year

Here's a weather report for the apocalypse: "On WTVR CBS 6 in Richmond, VA, weatherman Aaron Justus provides the last weather forecast you'll ever need."

Hot Weather in Richmond this Weekend (Thanks, Fipi Lele!) ]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/07/07/weatherman-predicts-the-end-ti.html/feed 24 http://boingboing.net/2012/07/06/just-how-hot-is-it-in-the-us-r.html http://boingboing.net/2012/07/06/just-how-hot-is-it-in-the-us-r.html#comments Fri, 06 Jul 2012 19:39:47 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=169818

Mark Memmott at NPR's "The Two Way" blog digs in to statistics and maps from the National Climatic Data Center to illustrate exactly how fucking hot it is in hundreds of cities around the US, as a record-setting heatwave continues. I found the data a little confusing, so I 'shooped up a "For Dummies" version for you all, above. But do read the whole post from Mark here. (via Dave Pell's NextDraft)]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/07/06/just-how-hot-is-it-in-the-us-r.html/feed 66 http://boingboing.net/2012/07/03/how-much-of-a-factor-is-climat.html http://boingboing.net/2012/07/03/how-much-of-a-factor-is-climat.html#comments Tue, 03 Jul 2012 23:02:48 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=168967 JPL Climatologist Bill Patzert, on the current wildfire outbreak in the Western United States, and the role of climate change: "What's really changed in recent years is that there are more and more people building and living at the urban/wildland interface, so the human impact is greater every time these great fires erupt (...) Looking to the future, the uncertainties of human-influenced climate change will play a stronger and stronger role, and rewrite our fiery history." More here.]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/07/03/how-much-of-a-factor-is-climat.html/feed 4 http://boingboing.net/2012/06/23/beautiful-watercolor-notes-fro.html http://boingboing.net/2012/06/23/beautiful-watercolor-notes-fro.html#comments Sat, 23 Jun 2012 19:33:14 +0000 Maggie Koerth-Baker http://boingboing.net/?p=167393

I've been live-tweeting today from the Aspen Environmental Forums. But in a session this morning, I noticed that my friend Rachel Weidinger—director for the ocean advocacy group Upwell—had a far niftier way of taking notes and communicating what she was learning. While I opened up my iPad, Rachel opened up a full set of watercolor paints.

What she produced was something more akin to illuminated manuscripts than paintings—collections of short quotes and key ideas, done up in vibrant colors and surrounded by thematic doodles. It's great stuff, and a really interesting way to process and present information.

Rachel was kind enough to let me post her notes here. This page comes from the panel we attended this morning, all about climate change and the long-term impacts those changes are likely to have on regional weather. Check out more of her illuminated notes at Flickr.

-- KK

Eric Sloane's Weather Book
Eric Sloane
2005, 96 pages
$10

 Sample Excerpts:

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Weather predictions are one of those things that we see every day, but don't often think about how they're created. The video explains how the process works in the United States, where the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration collects and compiles the data that's shared with hundreds to TV channels and weather websites.

Video Link

Via Scientific American

Paul Douglas is a Minneapolis/St.Paul meteorologist. Meteorologists don't study the same things as climate scientists—remember, weather and climate are different things—but Douglas is a meteorologist who has taken the time to look at research published by climate scientists and listen to their expertise. Combined with the patterns he's seen in weather, that information has led Douglas to accept that climate change is real, and that it's something we need to be addressing.

Paul Douglas is also a conservative. In a recent guest blog post on Climate Progress, he explains why climate isn't (or, anyway, shouldn't be) a matter of political identity. We'll get back to that, but first I want to call attention to a really great analogy that Douglas uses to explain weather, climate, and the relationship between the two.

You can’t point to any one weather extreme and say “that’s climate change”. But a warmer atmosphere loads the dice, increasing the potential for historic spikes in temperature and more frequent and bizarre weather extremes. You can’t prove that any one of Barry Bond’s 762 home runs was sparked by (alleged) steroid use. But it did increase his “base state,” raising the overall odds of hitting a home run.

Mr. Douglas, I'm going to be stealing that analogy. (Don't worry, I credit!)

A few weeks ago, I linked you to the introduction from my new book, Before the Lights Go Out, where I argue that there are reasons for people to care about energy, even if they don't believe in climate change—and that we need to use those points of overlap to start making energy changes that everyone can agree on, even if we all don't agree on why we're changing.

But there's another, related, idea, which Paul Douglas' essay gets right to the heart of. Just like there's more than one reason to care about energy, there's also more than one way to care about climate. Concern for the environment—and for the impact changes to the environment could have on us—is not a concept that can only be expressed in the terms of lefty environmentalism.

You and I can think about the environment in very different ways. We can have very different identities, and disagree on lots of cultural and political issues. All of those things can be true—and, yet, we can still come to the same, basic conclusions about climate, risk, and what must be done. Here's Douglas' perspective:

I’m a Christian, and I can’t understand how people who profess to love and follow God roll their eyes when the subject of climate change comes up. Actions have consequences. Were we really put here to plunder the Earth, no questions asked? Isn’t that the definition of greed? In the Bible, Luke 16:2 says, “Man has been appointed as a steward for the management of God’s property, and ultimately he will give account for his stewardship.” Future generations will hold us responsible for today’s decisions.

This concept—Creation Care—is something that I've summed up as, "Your heavenly father wants you clean up after yourself." It's not a message that is going to make sense to everybody. But it's an important message, nonetheless, because it has the potential to reach people who might not otherwise see a place for themselves at this table.

Too often, both liberals and conservatives approach climate change as something that is tangled up in a lot of lifestyle, political, and cultural choices it has nothing to do with. Those assumptions lead the right to feel like they can't accept the reality of climate change without rejecting every other part of their identities and belief systems. Those same assumptions lead the left to spend way too much time preaching to choir—while being confused about why people outside the congregation aren't responding to their message.

That's why essays like Douglas' are so important. We look at the world in different ways. We come by our values for different reasons. But even though we might take different paths, we can come to some of the same places. Let's respect that. And let's have those conversations. Climate change is about facts, not ideologies. It's about risks that affect everyone. We need to do a better job of discussing climate change in a way that makes this clear. And that means reaching out to people with language and perspectives that they can identify with.

Read Paul Douglas' full post on Climate Progress.

Read more about energy, climate, and what we can do to make the message of climate science more universal in my book, Before the Lights Go Out.

This is what the wind over the United States looked like on March 27th, 5:00 pm Eastern Daylight Time. It's beautiful. And it's even better if you go to the project page, where you can watch real-time wind currents move around the map.

The National Digital Forecast Database is a weather forecasting system that provides open access to weather data collected all over the United States. The National Weather Service has field centers all across the country, that collect information about things like wind speed/direction, precipitation, and barometric pressure. They combine this data with big-picture satellite tracking and algorithms that are based on what we know about how weather patterns work, and that's how you get the kind of daily forecast we rely on to plan our days.

In the process, the National Weather Service generates a lot of data—data that has not, traditionally, been accessible to just anybody. We saw the forecasts, but it wasn't as easy to see the measurements the forecasts were based on. The NDFD changes that. It's a really great example of publicly funded research being made available to the people who help provide the funding.

And when that happens, you get cool projects like this one, where data on wind direction and speed are used to create truly amazing art. The information on current conditions, and predictions for the future, are updated hourly. When you look at the animated version of this map, what you see is the most recent forecast playing out.

Read a previous BoingBoing story about using wind forecasts to improve renewable energy.

Take, for instance, the recent cold snap in Europe that's killed more than 300 people and dropped snow as far south as Libya. As Andrew Freedman explains on Climate Central, this particular bit of weather weirdness is being caused by natural variations in the air currents over the Arctic:

The Arctic Oscillation, or AO, is is a climate index that describes the characteristics of the atmospheric circulation over the Arctic, and a related index describes the circulation over the North Atlantic. Depending on whether it's in a "positive" or "negative" phase, the Arctic Oscillation can bring warmer or cooler than average wintertime conditions to the U.S. and Europe.

Right now the Arctic Oscillation is in a negative phase, which tends to favor colder than average weather in Europe and the U.S. Scientists don't fully understand what causes the Arctic Oscillation to switch from one phase to the other, which limits their ability to forecast these changes ahead of time beyond a week in advance.

But (and, ladies and gentlemen, this is a great big but) scientists have noted that the Arctic Oscillation has been behaving more strangely than usual for the last decade. In fact, Freedman points out that several record-breaking positive and negative oscillations have coincided with extreme weather events you probably took note of: December 2009's Snowpocalypse, February 2010's Snowmageddon, and April 2011's massive outbreak of tornadoes (which, thankfully, doesn't have a cutesy name associated with it).

And this is where the lines between "naturally occurring" and "anthropogenically caused" get blurred. Because this record-breaking decade of Arctic Oscillations has coincided with a record-breaking decade in loss of Arctic sea ice and there's good reason to suspect that the two might be related.

... in recent years there have been studies examining how the global warming-related loss of Arctic sea ice might affect winter weather patterns in the northern hemisphere. Some of this research shows that sea ice loss may favor winters with predominately negative phases of the Arctic Oscillation. One potential result of global warming, referred to as the "Arctic Paradox," is that sea ice loss can help warm the Arctic during the winter, while setting in motion a chain reaction of events that make winters colder than they otherwise would be in Europe and the U.S.

This actually gets even more complicated, because it also appears that AO can affect the amount of sea ice that melts in a given year, which can, in turn, affect what happens with the AO. For more information, check out:
— An explainer from The National Snow and Ice Data Center
— A NASA explainer from a couple of years ago that talks about the relationships between climate change, AO, and cold weather.

Also, just so we're clear, the AO is not the same thing as the climate systems that could drive "abrupt climate change"—a possible scenario that served as the basis for the highly fictional movie "The Day After Tomorrow". You can read more on that at the Weather Underground blog.