Tag Archives: weather

CA water bureaucrat disses federal weather scientists

How often does one see an outright confrontation between state bureaucrats and federal scientists? In my experience, well — never. But that's what I saw last week at the Chapman Conference on California Drought.  Organized by the American Geophysical Union, at a National Academy of Sciences center at UC Irvine, this conference brought together aContinue reading “CA water bureaucrat disses federal weather scientists”

A look at precipitation anomalies from this month’s data

PRISM, which graphically displays climate data as part of a new "risk management' effort from the USDA, has introduced a new site that allows us amateurs to see what is going on, including (if so chosen) anomalous climate behaviors.  Here's this month's anomalous precipitation, charted: SoCal had a smidge of rain, but so far doesn'tContinue reading “A look at precipitation anomalies from this month’s data”

And now here’s Cassandra with the weather report

A passage from Christopher Durang's funny funny play,  Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, the best play of last year, according to the Tony Awards. In this scene, the character from Greek mythology, Cassandra, who is cursed with the gift of prophesy, but also to be never believed, gives a weather report on localContinue reading “And now here’s Cassandra with the weather report”

These are not your grandfather’s thunderstorms: Masters

For over a decade climatologists have been saying, and I have been reporting, that we will be seeing more extremes in weather. This goes unnoticed in the here and now of daily reporting, but it's true.  Here's a map of yesterday's thunderstorms over Gotham and the East: Jeff Masters commented this morning: The severe stormsContinue reading “These are not your grandfather’s thunderstorms: Masters”

What part of that extreme was due to climate change?

Superb — and available! — story in this month's Nature on how researchers are beginning to parse the contribution of global warming to extreme events. Highly recommended.  It's called "fractional attribution." Here's an easier way to grasp the concept: To put it in English: Inspired by the observation that intense rainfall in the Northern HemisphereContinue reading “What part of that extreme was due to climate change?”

Congress cuts weather satellite funding in disastrous year

The weather in these United States has been truly frightful in the last couple of years, as this graph — provided to Congress with testimony from NOAA administrator Kathryn Sullivan last month — illustrates: [The graph shows the number of events from last year, but this year will be worse, Sullivan said] Yet as theContinue reading “Congress cuts weather satellite funding in disastrous year”

Television and the weather: some good news

Television for decades has been considered a vast wasteland, as public television advocate Newton Minnow famous characterized it in the early l960's, but these days television is, well, cliche defying. It's often surprisingly good.  This is true both for dramatic mini-series such as the much-lauded Glee and Mad Men (which are far more ambitious andContinue reading “Television and the weather: some good news”