Since we don’t have any clouds and storms to think about, I thought I would think about the moon for you. Here is a fragmentary view from yesterday morning through some Cirrus:
Have any thoughts yet?
Well, here is a surprise that’s been around for a few years but I just found out about it:
The moon is a piece of the earth!
Yep, “Theia”, another planet whose exact size is unknown, COLLIDED with the earth about 3.5 billion years ago! That, my fiend, is the leading theory for the moon’s origin; this from the November 23rd issue of Science: Science-2012–1006-1
I can’t post more beyond these newsy pages from Science because Science is not yet apart of the Open Access Movement where you can learn things from journal content for free! Imagine! Besides, on the second page there is an advertisement for a vacation in June in Iceland, in case you get too hot here.
But, after that diversion, and thinking of Theia (nice name for a girl, BTW), think of the damage! The shaking!
How are we still in orbit? Where’s the crater? (Must be pretty damn big!)
Why would you think such a crazy thing in the first place? After all, as advised in this Disney-produced proper musical ambience and skit (Extraordinary Claims); EXTRAORDINARY CLAIMS require EXTRAORDINARY PROOF!
Amen.
So where’s the proof?
Its in the isotopes. Amazingly, beyond even Ripley’s Strangely Believe It, much of the isotope composition of the moon is identical with the earth, not like those from meteorites and stuff like that. So, there you have it, though there are some unanswered questions yet. Apparently, it got so hot at the collision interface that everything melted back together, no crater
If it was to happen again, I hope it doesn’t happen during a bowl game (teevee viewing guidance here), since I wouldn’t want to miss the story in case it was played down due to an important upset, as here from an old Seattle Times mention of an asteroid that looked like it might collide with earth. At least this news was on the front page. Gee, if it had happened, maybe we’da got us a new moon to look at!
Pretty upset this early AM to find that the US’s Weather Forecasting and Research-Global Forecast System (WRF-GFS) model run, a model costing millions of dollars BTW, ingested last night’s 5 PM AST global data, BUT then threw up an identical twin that matched the Canadian Enviro Can model output that came out 24 h earlier! It was unbelievable to see this, humiliating really, something akin to a reverse nose job.
Recall that the USA! model had rain here and a big cold trough right over Catalina on the evening of December 9th into Monday morning the 10th. The Canadian model had that SAME trough over Cornhusky Stadium, Lincoln, Nebraska!
The Canadian model was right.
Here’s are the two forecast maps made within 24 h and each for for the SAME DAY AND TIME by our own WRF-GOOFUS model: on the left, the rainful run from the previous day that made me so happy (until I had some “spaghetti” and saw it was likely a bogus output). The panel on the right is the sickening output from last night, both rendered by IPS.
Valid for Monday, December 10th at 5 AM AST. Sweet! From last night, also valid at 5 AM AST, Monday, December 10th. Horrible, unbelievable amount of change between the two. Makes you feel sad for weathermen and weatherwomen that have to deal with these things.
I really wanted Enviro Can to eat some crow with their forecast of MY trough over Nebraska. But no! “Bow down to Canada”, as heard here if you substitute in your mind the word, “Canada” for “Washington.” Hey, its got the lyrics at this site and so it should be pretty easy for you to sing along with it.
BTW, the Canadians (Enviro Can) don’t feel they have to show “spaghetti” plots to reveal how bad their numerical forecasts might be because they are always so right (in the 144 h time frame available from Enviro Can). “Don’t need no spaghetti.”
Can we say the same?
Doesn’t seem like it. We need “spaghetti” so we can see how bad our model forecasts might be. Calling Obama now…. not “happy with crappy”, to quote some overseas manufacturer’s creed, here. OK, our models aren’t exactly “crappy” but they aren’t as good as they should be.
Too, I have to deal with Canadian relatives that will be gloating today, I am sure. Maybe this spectacular example of “model divergence”, as we would call it, Canadian vs. US, is the talk of Canada today, and that’s what makes today’s wrf-goofus output sting so much.
I really want to call President Obama on this and tell him about it; I know he would add it to his list of things that need to be fixed in our country. Even if you have only a tinge of jingoism, you HAVE to be upset that the Canadians in their big little country, have a better weather forecasting model than we do! I think I am going to have to lie down for awhile…calm down.
So, what is ahead in our weather?
Of course, we have to look at the Canadian model first to get the most reliable one to see if they have anything for us… (hahahahah, sort of). I always do look at that one first, but I don’t brag about it. The summary of last night’s Enviro Can run, out to 144 h: they got nothin’ for us, just some cooler air over time. Cirrus clouds will be floating by from time to time as they do on most days. Did you know that Cirrus is a precipitating cloud? Yep, little ice crystals are always settling out leaving those pretty trails. Mt. Everest would know this…
Hope you had some good log entries describing the varieties and species of Cirrus… If you did, you’ll be getting closer to getting that Cloud Maven Junior Tee.
7:01 AM. Sunrise Cirrus.5:32 PM. Sunset Cirrus, maybe with a contrail in there, dammitall.
A day of pretty Cirrus and a nice sunset yesterday:
5:35 PM.
Now for some more of that Catalina climo, featuring December
(Most of these data below are due to the folks at Our Garden right here in Catalinaland just off Columbus._
First, the rainfall frequency chart for December. Not much going on. Chances of rain on any day about the same as any other, no trend up or down during the month, except for that one peak. Below this chart, in the monthly averages for the October through September “water year”, you’ll see that the average rainfall has jumped up considerably in December from November. Yay!
But will it rain at all in December 2012?
Let’s check…and also look, just for the HECK of it, whether any trough/storm is headed here in the 11th-13th rain frequency peak shown in the first plot…to see whether the atmosphere “likes” to have a little rain in Catalina in that time frame this year.
Below, the USA WRF-GFS model output, again rendered by IPS MeteoStar, from the global data taken at 5 PM AST valid for Monday, December 10th at 5 AM (close enough):
Astounding! A strong trough with rain IS predicted in about that time frame where the chance of rain in our 35 year record peaks, though a bit early. If this map verified, rain would be ending at about the time of this map, 5 AM AST on the 10th, it would be very, very cold, probably in the upper 30s in that rain. Amazing.
But let’s check with the superior Enviro Can model from the Canadians, our friends to the north, because-its-built-on-the-Euro-model-where-they-have-more money-for-big-computers-and-better-models-than-we-do.
Not even close to the prediction by the USA model!
Unbelievable difference, in fact. In the USA model, the apex of the trough is over us in Catalina and in the superior (or will it be?) Canadian model, its over the “‘Braska” Cornhuskers, Lincoln, NE, maybe ONE THOUSAND miles farther east!
Unbelievable2. This is a phenomenon, BTW, which does happen from time to time, that is called, “model divergence”, to put it mildly.
The NOAA spaghetti factory, which I have annotated for you below:
Outstanding forecast reliability is indicated in the Pacific, off Asia, but who cares?
Sadly, only mediocre reliability indicated here in the Great SW USA, as shown in the wanderings of the blue lines.
But will a trough be close to us?
Pretty much count on that because so many blue lines feint to the south in interior of the western US. I think we’ll surpass the Canadians this time…
There’s still a chance of rain on the 9-10th, but its pretty slim. Having cold air invade us, to varying degrees is pretty much guaranteed even if sans rain because that nearby trough will drag cooler air this way as it goes by.
Its the AMPLITUDE that matters here, and in our USA model, that is not so well known. In fact, the blue lines, with so many of them north of us are telling us that the actual forecast map from last night’s global data is an outlier model run; can’t count on it. It will likely come and go on the future model runs.
This is the best I could do, in examining the several model outputs over the past 24 h. Below is the very wettest forecast panel that popped out for southern Arizona during the past 24 h. The panel below is from yesterday’s 18 Z (11 AM AST) global data and is for the evening of December 15th, about two weeks. Nothing like what is shown in this panel showed up in model outputs afterward, dang. Doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen, but its not a good sign. Still, I thought you should see it.
The 18 Z (11 AM AST) model run doesn’t ingest as much global data as ones at 12 Z and 00 Z, 5 AM AST and 5 PM AST, respectively. That means that the 18 Z run is not as reliable as those other two, is more susceptible to having goofy outputs (outliers) than the other ones. “Less data, more filling”, of rain gauges anyway.
We ARE on the brink of a major change in the flow pattern, that is, where the troughs/jet stream will be positioned. We have been well to the south of the jet stream and all the storms carried with it. That will change in about a week. We will have recurring troughs here in the Southwest after that, meaning less warm days, along with occasional chances of rain. The signal for this to happen is pretty strong in the spaghetti plots.
The question is now how strong will those the persistent troughs be as they sporadically drop by in the weeks ahead. The strong ones for now, like the one shown below that causes rain here, are outliers for the time being. Stay tuned. Gut feeling here is that we’re headed for a wet regime, finally. Its due.
Valid 11 PM AST December 15th. Greens are lighter rains, blues over half an inch. These are rains foretold to fall sometime during the 12 h ending at map time.The 500 mb pattern (about 18,000 feet above sea level) associated with all that rain in the first panel. As you can see by the yellowish and brown colored regions for wind velocity at this level, the strongest winds at this level are well to the south of AZ-Catalina, pretty much a requirement for rain here in the wintertime. This pattern is similar to the many lows that cut off last fall and winter, ones that gave us those good early rains. So, if nothing else, this map is a prototype of what we need for some good rains here in Catalina.
The model outputs from last evening do have a little rain here on the 10th, and NOTHING on the 15th as shown above, so I am not going to show those disappointing outputs. You’ll have to go to IPS MeteoStar to see those renderings.
Today’s clouds
Cirrus moving in today, the remnants of one of those monster rainy fronts that bashed northern and central Cal for the past week or so. Should be a great sunrise display; get camera ready.
From the U of A Wildcats Weather Department, this loop of those approaching Cirrus clouds.
How much rain in the past seven days in northern Cal?
They needed it. The arrow shows where the author would like to have been during those seven days, filing daily reports of stupefying amounts of rain.
I mention these rains because this episode of heavy rains was pretty well indicated in the NOAA spaghetti factory plots back in mid-November. This flooding event is a great example of those occasional situations where a forecast two weeks out can be inferred to be pretty reliable by examining those spaghetti plots. Those likely heavy norcal rains were expeculated on here based on spaghetti in a November 14th blog. I really think that you could’ve done this, too, by now!
With no rain in sight, and only modest temperature fluctuations ahead, some reading material is presented to you today with commentary today, a “soapbox day.”
Cloud photos from yesterday are at the bottom if you want to skip to that and avoid thinking about things because its too early in the morning to get riled up.
I will start with an opinion piece concerning climate change and climate science from Australia. It also mentions a recent event in the climo community concerning a Southern Hemisphere temperature reconstruction and the apparent rejection of what would have been an important paper by the peer-reviewed journal it was submitted to after crucial errors were found by an outsider/reviewer. The author of this opinion article also mentions “climategate” a chapter of science that had a profound effect on this writer. Now there are polemical aspects, not all of which this writer would agree with, still, its worth reading:
The link to this article was circulated to our Atmos Sci Dept by one of my best friends, and really a science hero to me, Mark Albright, the former Washington State climatologist. Mark was a mild-mannered researcher lurking in the background at the U of WA for many years until he got upset over what he (later joined by two allies there) was to show were vastly exaggerated journal-published and media accounts of snowpack losses due to GW in his own backyard, in the Cascade Mountains of Washington and Oregon. Mark felt science had been corrupted by dogma, perhaps the pursuit of funding; he has not been the same since. Believe me, I know what he has been through.
A retired distinguished professor at the U of WA Atmospheric Sciences Department circulated a counter articleto the one that Mark circulated, also worth reading for the “other side.” It appears below, along with that professor’s note about the article Mark circulated. I felt this note by the professor should be included, too:
In the headline of this second article, the word “denier” is used in its title as a pejorative, mass label for those who question some of the global warming publicity stunts (assigning particular storms like Sandy to GW) down to results published in peer-reviewed journals, such as reports of exaggerated snowpack losses. Not good, and that headline tells you where that article is headed: criticism is not to be tolerated. But it also shows that the majority of science being published on climate change supports the finding that a warmer earth is ahead. But there is a reason for that; its being pushed by the monumental amounts of money being poured into that climate research domain.
There are many of us out there that do believe that funding is pushing the research on global warming in one direction in this job-poor era we’re now in, just as it did, and still does, in the cloud seeding domain: no one ever got a job saying cloud seeding doesn’t work. In my own career–yes, Mr. Cloud Maven person had a professional research one, and one spiced with controversy1 over several decades–the opinion article from Australia rings true in many aspects about how science works and what influences a preponderance of “conclusions” that get published in journals.
In the climate funding domain, don’t look for more funds if you conclude a million dollar study by indicating that you didn’t find any sign of warming over the past 30 years, as is the actual case in the Pacific Northwest. NO ONE is going to touch that hot potato and serve a finding like that up to a climate journal. Its not gonna fly. It makes explaining global warming difficult. And as Homer Simpson advises, “If something’s hard to do, its not worth doing.”
But at the same time, a counter finding to global warming presents to those of us who try to be truly ideal, disinterested scientists, a fabulous opportunity to look into something that is not immediately explicable. As scientists, we should live for opportunities like this!
But will it happen, will some brave soul at the University of Washington or elsewhere delve into this counter trend and try to explain why its happened in a journal article? Its hoped so.
But those of us, still on the GW bandwagon, if grudgingly so due to the actions of some of our peers, know that regional effects of GW are dicey. Some areas will warm up more than others; cooling is possible if the jet stream ridges and troughs like to hang out in different positions than they do today. And of course, if we smog up the planet too much, all bets on warming up much are off since clouds act to cool the planet, and pollution makes clouds last longer, especially over the oceans where pollution can interfere with drizzle production, which helps dissolve shallow clouds, and pollution causes more sunlight to be reflected back into space. The cloud effects are being more carefully, precisely evaluated in our better computer models.
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It is ironic, too, that the second article, the one passed along by the professor, ends with the mention of plate tectonics “as the ruling paradigm of science” as it is.
But, some word about how that paradigm came about; it was a “long and winding road.”
Alfred Wegener, a meteorologist, first proposed the theory of continental drift/plate tectonics around the turn of the century. A nice account of this science chapter about origin of the theory of plate tectonics is found in the book, Betrayers of the Truth, by then NYT science writers, Nicholas Wade and William J. Broad.
Because Alfred Wegener was a meteorologist, however, and NOT a geographer, namely was an outsider to the official science community studying the continents and how they got that way, his ideas were laughed at, not taken seriously for more than 40 years! Only in the 1960s was the idea of plate tectonics accepted.
I mention this tectonic chapter of science because there is a similar chapter that reappears constantly now in the climate debates. Several of the strongest critics of GW results, critics that have delved deeply behind the scenes into published findings of climate change in a scientific manner, much as this writer did concerning cloud seeding experiments in the 1970s-1990s, are criticized for being “outside of the group”, just Alfred Wegner was in his day rather than those “in the group” considering and acting on whether the findings of outsiders are valid.
Fortunately, this is beginning to change because, guess what? Outsiders have found some pretty important stuff that HAD to be addressed in spite of the desires of some idealogues out there pretending to be objective, disinterested scientists. Science as a whole, still works.
A cloud note: Alfred Wegner is also known for proposing the idea that ice crystals in the presence of supercoooled water (a common event in the atmosphere) grow and fallout, leading to precipitation at the ground, known as the Wegner-Bergeron-Findeisen mechanism. Every 101 meteorology textbook points this out.
The last photo below is a demonstration of that effect; those sunset supercooled Altocumulus shedding a few ice crystals that grew within them.
Yesterday’s clouds
7:33 AM Cirrus fibratus radiatus. Sometimes perspective makes banding look like its converging or radiating. I estimated that this was not the case here.4:31 PM Parhelia-Sundog-Mock Sun in an ice cloud with hexagonal plate llike crystals, ones that fall face down and cause the light to be refracted and separated. Here’s is a link explaining this phenomenon.5:24 PM. A classic Arizona sunset due to the under lighting of Altocumulus perlucidus. Some very fine virga from these clouds can also be seen. When the virga is this fine, the concentrations, as you would imagine are very low and the crystals falling out are especially beautiful because they have not collided with other crystals and broken into pieces as happens in heavy virga shafts.
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1Some examples of the controversy the writer has been involved with:
“We don’t hate you but we don’t love you, either.”
This quote from a leading US cloud seeding scientist to the writer at an American Meteorological Society conference on cloud seeding and statistics after his cloud seeding experiments had been reanalyzed by the writer.
“I want you to leave my office and don’t come back. Just do your own thing.”
This quote from THE leading cloud seeding scientist of the day when I went to his country to see for myself the clouds he was describing in peer-reviewed journal articles, descriptions that I had doubts about. His descriptions were later shown to be far from reality.
And, from an outside observer, and well-known cloud researcher at the National Center for Atmos. Research in Boulder, a comment to the writer when he visited the University of Washington:
“I think the (cloud seeding) community sees you as a ‘gadfly’.”
From the Oxford Concise Dictionary, “gadfly”:
“A cattle-biting fly; an irritating, harassing person.”
7:09 AM. Altocumulus, trending toward perlucidus. Height? Aout 13,000 feet above the ground, from reading the TUS sounding. Temperature? -10 C (14 F). No ice trails visible.12:13 PM. Nice, high-based small Cumulus (or Altocumulus castellanus) with snow virga moved over the SE part of the sky in the early afternoon. Bases were around 11, 000 feet above the ground at -5 C (23 F). Sprinkles (very light rain showers-its not drizzle) reached the ground in a few isolated areas.2:02 PM. A somewhat rare example of Cirrocumulus and Altocumulus probably at the same level in proximation with one another. Cirrocumulus (Cc) is defined by a very fine granulation and no shading. The fine granulation gives the impression here that its much higher than it really is. Altocumulus clouds are defined as having much larger elements, shading allowed. Well, even if the Cc was at a slightly higher level, this is a good example of the difference between the two. Tell your friends.5:10 PM. Mind drifted toward road runners for some reason…. This is Cirrus uncinus with long trails of ice crystals streaming back from the little cloudlet that originally formed, like an hour or two prior to the photo. The trails survive because its a bit moist up there below where the cloudlet formed.
The weather ahead
A huge buckle in the jet stream is forecast to form right off the West Coast in about a week, and its a pretty spectacular interruption in the pattern of a jet stream whizzing by far to the north of us that we have had now for sometime. Below is an example of ‘now” in the jet stream winds, and below that, a forecast panel (from IPS Meteostar) showing this striking change a week from now. There’s a big (“high amplitude”) trough in the eastern Pacific, a high amplitude ridge (hump in the jet stream toward the Pole) in the West and another big trough in the East.
Patterns like this are usually associated with extremes in temperatures; warmth in the West; cold in the East. It is certain when this pattern materializes in about a week, some high temperature records will fall somewhere in the West and some low temperature records will fall in the East. In the West, warm air is drawn far northward, aided by low pressure centers spinning around in the eastern Pacific, while in the East, cold air zooms down with high pressure centers from northern Canada.
Why bother talking about a forecast a week in advance?
Because it has a lot of “credibility” in our ensemble (spaghetti) plots. Here is last night’s “ensembles of spaghetti” plot produced by NOAA for one week in advance. Look below at these “ensemble members” the different blue lines, ones that are loaded with slight errors at the beginning of the model run, to see how strong the forecast a week ahead is.
Those bunched blue lines in the eastern Pacific (see arrow) inspired this whole spiel about the coming change because its a nice example of when the plots show something reliable in the way of a longer term forecast, and in this case, a forecast that also shows a big change in the weather patterns over thousands and thousands of miles, from eastern Pacific to the western Atlantic.
If you’re looking around this whole plot, you’ll see the lines are also very bunched in the extreme western Pacific and westward across Asia. Those blue lines are always bunched over there because there is little variance in the flow in that region; its locked into a pattern by the geography, unlike in the central and eastern Pacific and into the US where the jet stream is MUCH more variable. A simile: imagine a fire hose turned on at the hydrant, the part of the hose at the hydrant stays in place while the end of the hose flops wildly around. Its something like that; western Pacific to eastern Pacific.
Our weather?
Well, after all that gibberish, not much change will occur here; its everywhere but here! Seems we’re doomed to another dry seven to 10 days ahead with occasional periods of high clouds and great sunsets as weak disturbances from the sub-tropics pass by, ones that can only produce Cirrus clouds.
Kind a bored looking at the same model runs for 10-15 days ahead now, ones that close out November with no rain even nearby for Catalina. Doesn’t seem to be even ANY HOPE for rain here, that is, some bizarre model outlier forecast with rain, as we saw a few days ago. But then, I had not had any coffee yet…
Thought I would drink some coffee to see if I’ve missed anything in these latest computer model images. I’d kind of forgotten what Consumer Reports Health Letter had warned about when you’re bored and trying to do stuff. Talked about the effects of caffeine on boredom. I reprise a portion of that CR note here, in case you, too, are looking at repetitious model outputs with no rain in them. Note the part in in this note below about “repetitious images” and “infrequent changes in patterns on a screen”; yep, that’s what we’re dealing with here in these model runs now.
OK, finished second cup, caffeinated coffee, BTW, now going back to look at those model forecast maps to see if I missed anything, subtle or otherwise…. You, too, can look at the 5 PM AST model loop here (from IPS Meteostar), but drink some coffee first.
Prepare to be “re-bored” as I have just been.
Not even the NOAA NCEP’s “ensembles of spaghetti” offer hope; no “outlier” model forecasts with Catalina rain in them anymore (for now, anyway). Bunched blue lines, demarcating jet stream, stay to the north.
But, paraphrasing Scarlet O’Hara, “6 h from now, there is another model run…”
Yesterday’s clouds
Had some great Cirrus spissatus and other varieties/species of Cirrus overspread the sky yesterday, eventually thickening into Altostratus translucidus (sun’s position still visible). Here are a couple of shots, including a sunsetter where you can see just that bit of virga hanging down.
1:19 PM. Cirrus clouds began overspreading sky from the southwest (direction that photo was taken toward).2:16 PM. Cirrus spissatus (the only Cirrus cloud that can have shading) encroaches from the southwest.4:29 PM. The Cirrus clouds have thickened in places, usually downward, to large patches of Altostratus translucidus (thin enough so that the sun’s position is still visible). Its also possible here that the Altostratus clouds were below a higher layer of Cirrostratus.5:26 PM. Under lit Altostratus clouds with likely a separate higher layer of Cirrostratus.
Today’s clouds?
Your call: ________________________________________________________________
Here’s is the latest model run from our USA WRF-GFS (aka, “goofus”, as the Europeans might call it, looking down their noses at our inferior weather predicting model compared with their “ECMWF” model as described (here) in the November 9th issue of Science.
It was an upsetting read, BTW. Seems the Euros use bigger, faster computers than we do, ones that they were able to afford by charging a lot of money to see the results. Very bad.
In case you want the meat of that Science article: “From the BEGINNING (this writer’s emphasis) ECMWF has been the world champ in medium range forecasting. Today ECMWF forecasts remain useful into the next week, out to 8.5 days. That leaves the rest of the forecasting world, inculding the U. S. National Weather Service with its less powerful computer, in the dust by a day or more.”
What have our guys (includes women) been doing all these years? (Just kidding, maybe.)
OK, onward with what we have to work with…..
This WRF-GFS run is just from last nights 11 PM global data crunch, the VERY latest as of this writing. I picked it out from earlier runs to show because this run latest has a lot of rain in Arizona. Namely, it was a subjective call to display a few snapshots from it. Displaying the results of this run has nothing to do with scientific objectivity. Enjoy; it might not be real rain that falls to the ground, only real in the model’s calculations. Still, its great to see and think about.
Instead of showing the full size of these model outputs as I normally would do, I thought I would size them in proportion to their credibility based on the Science article. We can’t see the better ECMWF-British model results unless we pay a lot of money, so this will have to do. Unless you click on these below, you’ll have to use a microscope…
Valid for November 29th, 11 PM AST, only 264 hours away!Valid for 11 AM AST, November 30th, 12 h laterValid for 11 PM AST, November 30th–off and on rains now for TWENTY-FOUR hours!Valid for 11 AM AST, December 1st. Still raining around here.Valid for 11 PM AST, December 1st. Rain still falling in the 12 h ending at this time.
So, once again, our late November-early December storm has returned to the model fold. Its been coming and going. For example, the 5 PM AST global model run had NO RAIN in AZ, so I didn’t want to show those results.
But just ahead….this
In the nearer future….. Seems the Environment Canada computer model, built around the SUPERIOR ECMWF model, has rain here in about 48 h from now resulting from a tiny, weak low that ejects from the deep tropics right over us. Cool, though the air itself would be warmer and more moist than we usually see at this time of year in a rain situation (higher dewpoints). Must regard this as a serious rain threat now. Here’s a snapshot of that rain day from Enviro Can (see lower right panel for 12 h rain totals and areas covered–would fallen overnight tomorrow night into Wednesday morning. The whole better than the US model runs is here.
Yesterday’s clouds
Another fabulous early winter day in Arizona. Out of state license plates picking up in number. Can’t blame ’em. Here’s a sample of yesterday’s skies and another great sunset:
2:06 PM. Cumulus humilis and fractus (shred clouds).5:23 PM. Small Cumulus and distant Cirrus add highlights to an Arizona sunset.5:25 PM, looking south.
Well, when there’s no rain in the model predictions for 15 days, you have to get excited about something….
Like a solar flare, there has been another massive ejection of high clouds from the equatorial region and its heading toward Catalina, AZ. Here, from the Washington Huskies Weather Department1, is a 24 h loop of the event. Hope our cell phones still work. Here’s the latest still image:
Satellite image for 3:30 AM AST supplemented with various interesting annotations, some of which are correct.
What are the ramifications of ejected Cirrus coming all the way from the Equator to Catalina? Pretty skies, sunsets and sunrises, which is quite important to us humans. Also, when it starts arriving today, we’ll have milder nighttime temperatures. Yes, even Cirrus clouds cut down the outgoing longwave radiation leaving the earth’s surface at night, and of course, moderates the incoming visible (shortwave) radiation (sometimes called “sunlight”). We don’t want to dumb this down too much.
After 9-11, when all the aircraft stopped flying for a week some guys at a small university, one so small I don’t think it even had a football team, found that the daytime and nightime temperatures were affected by the lack of contrails. Daytime temperatures were a spec higher and nighttime temperatures a tiny bit lower, suggesting that even CONTRAILS have an effect on the weather and climate. It was an important finding. Of course, without a football team I am clueless, as are you are, concerning what university those findings came from.
You know what gets a lot of us scientists about that contrail study after 9-11, is that something simple and important was done that I (we) could have done had only we thought of it. We’re kind of bitter about it. Might have got a raise, too, got the name out there. Citation index fluffed up some. We’re dealing with a lot of loss here. Heck, you probably could have done this, too, it was that easy.
The study of contrails is a pretty big topic these days, though the effects are deemed small for the present. Here’s a short article for you. Here’s an unrelated one, one about smog’s effects on clouds, but one you should read, anyway. Might be true. Reading the second one is like doing an extra pushup. Its good for you. And me since one of the authors of the second article (Danny Rosenfeld) criticized me (and Pete Hobbs) royally in print in the late 90s only because we said his work was invalid. Show’s I’m magnanimous, following the ideals of science meaning that as scientists we have no personal feelings about our detractors.
Yeah right. Check the climate blogs and those ones who refuse to allow other scientists to even comment on their work! Its a hideous situation out there now, far from the ideals of science where one WELCOMES criticism. But, I diverge….getting worked up when I should be concentrating on clouds.
BTW, that little blob of clouds north of the ice cloud mass coming at us, is due to a little disturbance that will hit the coast of Cal in a few days. With it, the clouds here will get pretty thick, probably as will happen later today or tomorrow with the ice clouds, causing the optical depth to exceed 4.00000000000 (4).
What does an optical depth of four mean?
That means that the sun’s position is not discernable. (Also, can’t be a Cirrus cloud, BTW, but rather Altostratus if its an all ice cloud). Optical depth is usually something used by the smog folks. A really clean sky has an optical depth of 0.05 or even less. Smog laden skies, such is the coastal areas of southern California, or back East on humid days in the summer, have optical depths of 0.2-0.5 at times, horizontal visibility might only be a mile or three; the leaves are gray and the sky is brown, as the song says. Aren’t we happy we don’t have that kind of smog?
Looking way out, just now, I saw this in the ensemble of spaghetti, thought you should see it, too.
While no weather beyond warm breezes and high clouds is portended here, where would you really like to be in the West in two weeks or so for some really heavy rains? Can you tell? What’s a place I mention too many times when comes to Cal rains? Yes, the King Range around Shelter Cove, between Frisco and Eureka. This plot gives high confidence to major flooding in northern California in the 10-15 day window. Why? Because so many of the blue lines (564 dm height contours) dip down toward the tropics in the eastern Pacific in support of the actual forecast from last night (represented by the yellow lines). Remember that the blue lines result from small errors put into the model runs at the beginning to see how robust a forecast is. The wilder the spread of the lines, the less reliable a forecast is. The more they group together, the more robust, more reliable a forecast is. They look fairly bunched up in the eastern Pacific, and this is the reason for having this plot here today. I suspect we’ll be reading about heavy rains in Cal during that 10-15 day window. It will be fun to see if we can make such a call so far in advance!
The End.
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1Nobody knows your university by its scientific accomplishments, but only by its athletic accomplishments. Its been written up. I certainly wouldn’t. If online universities could have football teams, it might be the end of “brick and mortar” universities.
More of those high clouds, and we hope with some Altocumulus, will be dropping by from the deep tropics over the next week or so.
Camera alert: Sunsets and sunrises will be spectacular at times over this period and with more than one layer, there is more than one dominant color.
The saddest headline ever read re the coming winter? From the Climate Prediction Center here:
“El Nino watch discontinued”
They’d been talkin’ up an El Nino this winter and spring for months! And, as you know, El Nino occurrences tend to cause wetter winters here. Doesn’t mean we still can’t have some good storms, but the odds are lower.
Yesterday’s clouds
3:38 PM: Pretty Cirrus/Cirrostratus from near the Equator.4:37 PM. Cirrostratus thickening toward the horizon more than due to perspective. Where the shading begins, it is too thick be Cirrostratus (Cs), and is then classified as Altostratus (As) even though both are ice clouds. Typically As, from ground radar measurements, is more than 2 km (6,600 feet) thick. When flying up through As, the upper portion is exactly like thin CIrrostratus and haloes usually occur before exiting the top. Been there. The bottom ice crystals? Bullet rosettes. Top, little itty bitty prisms, plates and stubby solid columns.
