Colin Price at Tel Aviv University and colleagues have a paper in GRL looking at lightning storms in East Africa as precursors for the easterly waves that are precursors of Atlantic hurricanes: More than 90% of the tropical storms and hurricanes during these 2 years were preceded by periods of above average thunderstorm activity in …
Continue reading ‘While We’re On the Subject of Hurricanes….’ »
reading: Everett Rogers’ History of Communication Study, suggested by a friend after I bemoaned the fact that, despite being a communications professional, I’m woefully ignorant about communication blogs: Nature’s new Climate Feedback blog looks promising, but I’m curious about something. The comments look suspiciously like a lot of the same people who show up at …
Stuff I wrote elsewhere: Describing current New Mexico drought conditions is a bit of a puzzle. Out in my Albuquerque garden this morning, I was pulling weeds easily out of damp soil, and the plants, with no supplemental water, are going bonkers. Yet I’ve been writing stories about surface water supply problems. What gives?
No Plagues Today Originally uploaded by Malcolm Tredinnick. Malcolm caught this. Click through if you can’t read the fine print.
Big Toe Monitoring Birds Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. Inkstain Staff Ornithologist Big Toe spotted the first hummingbird of spring yesterday (May 1), so I had him go back through the records of first hummingbird sightings at Inkstain World Headquarters. This sighting appears to be substantially later than in 2004 (April 20) and 2005 (April 16). …
On California’s dismal snowpack, from the Chron: The water content of the Sierra Nevada snowpack is at its lowest level in nearly 20 years — less than 40 percent of usual for this time of year, state water officials say. The size of the snowpack — the source for most of the state’s drinking water …
New Mexico and Colorado are about to enter Rio Grande Compact Article VII restrictions. That means Elephant Butte, the big reservoir down south, is too low, and we’re prohibited from upstream storage. The meat: In flirting with Rio Grande Compact restrictions, New Mexico finds itself in what has become a familiar situation, with the state’s …
Farm Group Says Rain Ends SA Drought: The South Australian Farmers Federation senior vice-president says recent rains mean the drought is as good as over and he expects farmers to start seeding as soon as the ground is dry enough. April Rains Fail to End NSW Drought: Despite a wet April in some parts of …
Big Toe Reads Thermometers Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. Staff climatologist Big Toe reading the thermometers today in the Inkstain World Headquarters weather station. His first assignment is to analyze data from the IWH thermometers as relates to the official National Weather Service readings. We are attempting to resolve uncertainties about the “urban heat island effect.” …
Down in the comments, Slinger points to Peter Ford’s Christian Science Monitor story on China’s greenhouse gas reduction noises: With China’s carbon footprint expected to outsize America’s within a year, officials in Beijing appear to be backing away from their view that global warming is a Western problem that developed countries must solve. While still …