Spectacular cloud day yesterday

Probably most people didn’t notice much yesterday, but at times, especially in the mid-afternoon it was spectacular up there due to delicate little patterns within Cirrus and Cirrocumulus clouds.  Some examples below.

1. Cirrostratus undulatus (Cs having waves in it).
2. Cirrocumulus.
3. Cirrocumulus (upper), Altocumulus floccus in distance.
4. Cirrocumulus.


 


5. The after life of those Cc and Ac clouds was Cirrus!
6. Oddity: extremely thin Cirrocumulus with holes.

The Tucson rawinsonde sounding indicated that these initially liquid droplet clouds (Cirrocumulus and Altocumulus) were at 26,000 feet (at the 330 millibar level) above Catalina at -30 C (-22 F) .  So, being that high, its no wonder those delicate Cirrocumulus clouds (Cc) became fuzzy masses of ice.   Long ago it was noticed that nature liked to produce a droplet cloud before it froze to become ice, even at these low temperatures.  Only around -35 to -40 C does ice form directly without going through the water phase, though liquid drops have been reported at -44 C!

To watch some of this transition happen before your very eyes, go to the University of AZ time-lapse and, about 1:02 from the finish (about 15:35 PM if you can read the time on this movie!) before the end of the movie, a really nice patch of Cc appears on the left, but by the time its about to exit the field of view, it has magically transformed into a thin patch of ice cloud.  This little patch of Cc in the movie is likely the same one I shot at 15:32 PM in photo number 4.

Just ahead, our upper air anticyclonic summer regime

And with that big mound of hot air over the Southwest US, the first onset of summer rains are now indicated in the models twelve days from now, around June 25th.   Too far in advance to bother showing, but am very hopeful of an earlier onset of the summer rain season, and we hope, a LONG, juicy one!

In the meantime, we will be in a trough for a few days, but, as tantalizing as that is, the models still see insufficient moisture for rain in AZ when the trough peaks over us this weekend.  However, rain is shown in Sonora near the AZ border this weekend so its not impossible that a few Cumulus might get overly enthusiastic and bust those model predictions of complete dryness this weekend in the mountains.  If rain did unexpectedly develop over the weekend from our little trough, it would probably fall from very high-based Cumulonimbus clouds producing mostly virga.

The End.

More flaming Cirrus; Dark Ages of climate science upon us?

More flaming cirrus this morning, perhaps reminding us of the ascension of the temperature later this morning.  In some photographic razzle dazzle, two photos have BOTH clouds and THE MOON!  The IR sat image loop makes it appear that we may have these kinds of clouds for at least a couple of days.  Below, I also am having a climate issues tantrum due to an unfolding story at Oregon State University.

Later, with more light, Cirrus fibratus.
Cirrus fibratus with hints of floccus elements (more compact, dense areas where Cirrus is forming).
Below some of the interesting patterns seen in yesterday’s Altocumulus/Cirrocumulus clouds.  Most of the Cirrus had long departed by this time.
Cirrocumulus (liquid cloud elements) with moon.
Iridescence caused by the refraction of the sun's light around tiny cloud droplets.
Cirrocumulus at the top of the photo. Elements broaden and thicken some downstream and would be termed Altocumulus where the shading starts. Cirrocumulus clouds can have no shading by definition.
Cirrocumulus with a lenticular-like upstream edge (bottom of photo).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dark Ages of science?

Here are two links below to a disturbing science story that is just unfolding in Oregon:

Watts up with That?

Ice Cap

A senior chemistry instructor was fired without notice APPARENTLY because he did not follow the global warming line. He was a skeptic, posted stuff about his views, and spoke on talk shows in the Oregon area.  The exact details of this firing are not yet known.

Unfortunately the average temperature in the Pacific Northwest has been falling over the past 10-30 years, particularly very lately (see dip at the end of the record), and this has given rise to some skepticism about the effects of global warming since the temperatures are supposed to be INCREASING, not DECREASING. And ESPECIALLY “lately” with all that extra CO2 that’s been pumped into the air in the past 10 years.

Here is a sample temperature plot posted by J. D’Aleo at Ice Cap yesterday.

Now, the ORDINARY person might understand why some skeptics might pop up in view of these data.  What is going on?  But instead of reacting in the ideal way, “Wow, this is interesting data!  I will have some of my grad students look into this for their Masters or Ph. D. dissertations”, it is ignored, it is pretended as though it doesn’t exist, but riles people when it is brought up by those outside their organization/discipline, as has happened here.

Those social scientists who study science and how it works will yawn at such “non-idealistic” science behavior.  They have been telling us for decades that we are a bastion of White Male Culture, and that no science worker can really be objective in his or her work, be disinterested, only care about “truth” and not where the chips fall, but will always be intrinsically influenced, biased by that culture, even those female workers.

Of course, we folk who actually practice science get mad about those kinds of allegations, conclusions; I do anyway.  Those of you who follow this page know that I parody that inability to be “disinterested” by only showing those model runs with the most rain in southern Arizona, because that’s what I want to have happen.

But here again, in the case of Oregon State University, those sociologists who study sceince have been proved correct. Dissenting opinion is not really allowed, particularly by an “outsider” to the climate science social-science cult, even when it is based on contrary evidence that clearly needs explaining.

OK, the Oregon State guy that was fired was not a meteorologist/climatologist. Maybe we should muzzle anyone who speaks outside of his/her trained domain, like Linus Pauling the Nobel Laureate in chemistry who then thought he could cure cancer with vitamin C.

Or Alfred Wegner, the METEOROLOGIST who first proposed the theory of continental drift around the turn of the 20th century but was laughed at by the geologists/geographers of his day. He would have had the last laugh, had he still been alive when they finally accepted his tenet.

The OSU “firee” wasn’t a tenured faculty member, either, and so he wasn’t protected by the golden shield of academia, that shield that once attained allows lifetime employment far beyond productive years.  Perhaps when these lesser persons (research staff, instructors) at a university speak out on something that causes us some discomfort, provide a dissenting opinion on something, they SHOULD be fired immediately!

Yes, that’s it! No dissent!

Think how great things would be if there was no dissent on anything in the scientific realm! Whatever the majority thought, that would be the end of the story. No reporters asking difficult questions, kind of like things are now, , no reporting of any digression in opinions; there would only be the official line.

Think how happy we’d be not having to THINK or be disturbed by contrary thoughts!

Of course, not thinking is appealing, but, its not right.

Dissenting opinions/findings, if they are WRONG, have a way of disappearing quietly.  Remember the NPR story back in the 1980s about the Newman Motor, the motor that produced more energy than it consumed?  NPR gave it a lot of credibility back then, but, of course (!),  it was bogus.

That’s OK.   Mr. Newman tried real hard to get something for nothing, and failed.

Remember, too,  “Cold Fusion”, the promise of endless power generation at room temperature, as reported by Stanley Pons and Martin Fleishmann of the University of Utah?  Hey, they gave it a good shot, but that, like the Newman Motor, its gone, too.

Crackpot ideas have a way of disappearing.  Let the dissenters have their say.  IF the earth’s temperature rockets upward in the immediate future, they, like Henry Newman, Pons and Fleishmann, will quickly disappear.  But don’t fire them!

So, to take action as the Oregon State University did, in my mind is shameful, and is the worst kind of anti-science I have seen lately.  Shame on you, Oregon State!

The End

Clouds!

 Something in the sky to look at, Cirrus!  And more!

Some Cirrus, Cirrocumulus, Altocumulus clouds from the tropics have floated over in time for a nice sunrise presentation.  Some of these clouds should be around all day.  From this morning:

Also, let me reprise our June rain frequency chart for Catalina.  “Upon further review”, I have altered some text box wording to reflect a more accurate picture.  In reviewing some Tucson rain days in early June, where I had asserted that they were associated with “cold troughs”, I learned from an review of old weather maps that, while those rains were associated with troughs in the upper levels, they weren’t nearly so cold and strong as I had believed.  And those troughs had tapped the tropics for the rains that fell, and I had not indicated that.  It bugged me that I had got that wrong and so here is the corrected version of that chart.

Also with “only” 35 years of data here in Catalina, the “transition” zone below could be a statistical fluke.  In checking the Tucson 100 year plus record, there has been rain on days in this “transition” period, so its not impossible.  No rain is indicated during this period in the models right now, either, but there is a threat of rain developing.  More on that below.

Looking troughy enough for a rain threat in a few days

From our Canadian friends, this four panel prog chart for the afternoon of June 16th.  Note “trough” (upper left panel) extruding southward from Montana all the way down to Cabo San Lucas.  The models have had this figured out for many days, but the magnitude of the trough, the strength of the winds around it, and how much cool air it would contain way down here in the SW US,  has been subject to some wild variations.  Now it appears that the trough will be pretty weak, not much cold air in it, BUT, with the amplitude it has (how far south it extends) makes it possible to fetch us some tropical air.  None of the models have much in the way of moist air reaching us YET.  Take a look at the lower left panel for moisture at 700 millibars, or around 7,000 feet above the ground here in Catalina.  That blue shading shows that the moist plume drawn northward will mainly be in eastern NM and west TX, which will be good for them, but not us.  Still these kinds of things are dicey and one of those rare days with rain in mid-June is not out of the question.   What is life without hope?

The End.

 

 

 

Gone but still there

As expected, the odd pattern of just 24 h ago disappeared on the later model runs.

Is it really gone?

Nope.  Might pop back up on a subsequent run.

While our usual June inferno continues for a few more days (here’s the NWS forecast for Catalina), a cool trough of air is destined to come here 6 days from now and linger for a few.  Here’s the totality of evidence for that assertion, this plot valid 8 days from now, Friday afternoon, June 17th.  In case you have forgotten where Arizona is, I have repeated the map below this one with an arrow to help you out.

What do you see in the western US?

A lot of blue lines!  Ones that outline where a cool-cold trough of upper air will be.  Notice where the red lines are, those ones that outline where the southern periphery of the jet stream will be located, those being the outer boundary of the cool air trough.   They’re ALL WAY down in Baja, California!  This VIRTUALLY guarantees an a trough of cool-cold air along the West Coast in 8-10 days!  Along with that, the possibility that tropical air will move up from the south and get into Arizona.

Yesterday, the model believed a hurricane would form and move northward, its remnant dribbling into Cal and AZ.  The model (at 00 Z last night) saw tropical storms forming, but they remain far to the south of even Baja!

Well, that prediction I showed yesterday was SO STRANGE it certainly wasn’t going to happen nine days out into the future.  It was an outlier.

But, what is guaranteed from an inspection of the maps above, is a trough along the West Coast, and with that, comes the possibility of a rain here, not from the cool air part of the trough, that won’t happen, but rather from tropical air being whooshed up around the outer, warm boundary of the jet, marked by those red lines.  Right now, if you’re in the mountains of New Mexico, eastern plains of NM, and west Texas, you are just about guaranteed to get that tropical air and with it, showers and thunderstorms.

A climate note:  it has not rained in Catalina between June 9th and 19th here in Catalina for 35 years; NO measurable rain on those  days yet.  I’ve reprised the June daily rain frequency for our 35 years here:

What should you take from that?

There are likely climatological factors, one’s having to do with the march of the seasons, that work against even the presence of clouds!  Chances are it is what we would call in climate, a “singularity”, something akin to the January thaw in the northeast US.   Here its a June transition season from the time a cold trough can bring us a bit of rain, and the onset of the tropical air regime with its Cumulus and showers, jet streams not involved then.  (I’ve assumed that 35 years is enough to suggest a real feature, not a statistical fluke.)

So, with this big trough foretold to occur during our normal dry spell-transition period, you’d have to go against the chances of precip in a knee-jerk fashion.  We’d most likely end up BETWEEN where there are showers in cold Pacific air inside the trough, and dry regime outward from that zone, to a plume of tropical air just to the east of us over NM and TX.  Doesn’t mean rain can’t happen, but don’t bet on rain during this period through June 19th.

As a final comment, note the dark area in the central Pacific on these maps. That dark area repersents and extrusion of cold air well toward the tropics out there, also an unsual occurrence, and it is vital for us.  Note that even the blue lines, noting the core of the jet, has extruded southward out there.  That extrusion (my favorite word I think), in essence, creates a “bounce” in the latitude of the jet downstream, a southward extrusion along the West Coast.  The dark hole out there indicates that even 8-10 days out, the computer predictions are extremely confident that there will be that extrusion of cold air toward the equator out there, and that, in turn, strengthens the likelyhood of a  unusually strong  “bounce” trough along the West Coast 8-10 days out.

It will be fun watching this develop, since we’ll like get a much cooler day or two about that time.   But, it would be even better if the hurricane shows up again, and is steered thisaway as it was yesterday!

OK, enough, gotta go ride a horse


Dream maps in latest prog series; RAIN foretold for southern Arizona!

Every so often something stupefying comes up in the models, such as the extraordinary upper low predicted for over southern California on June 17th.   Well, that low disappeared on subsequent model runs, but as of the 06 Z (11 PM  AST) run from last night, its back!

But, in that run from yesterday, it wasn’t going to have any tropical air flowing over us; that air was going to end up over New Mexico and Texas.

Things have changed!  Now, no less than a hurricane remnant is foretold to scoot up the Mexican coast and be swept up by this low so that its remnants and all that moist air get into Arizona!  Check these two maps out from IPS Meteostar.  First, the surface weather map.  The hurricane remnant is shown just off the tip of Baja Cal (red arrow).

The green areas are those where the model thinks rain has fallen in the prior 12 h ending at the time of this forecast map, 11 PM AST on June 18th, ten days from now.  As you can see, the moist plume associated with the dying hurricane, and the entire tropical fetch around this low have been moved westward from the prior model runs and are shown to be entering SE California and Arizona.  Fantastic.

Next, is the forecast map that goes with the surface map, the one for the 500 millibar level, around 18,000 feet above sea level.  This level shows the steering of the moisture and that hurricane remnant, and that steering (red arrow)  is going to take hurricane remnant northward into the Colorado River Valley during the 24-48 h after this map.

Will this happen in 10-12 days?

Almost certainly not like this, but it COULD happen like this.  The model outputs have been fluctuating wildly from run to run.   But, the ensemble (spaghetti) plots are making the overall situation of a trough along the West Coast in the time frame of 10-12 days, “pretty solid.”  And having any trough there is a good thing when tropical storms are along the Mexican coast.  They could, along with a good moisture plume, be directed into Arizona.

Hoping there’s some model truth in this exciting display.

The End


 


Dr. Dust Devil, Peter C. Sinclair

With no weather in view for the next week or so, and with June being “dust devil” month in Arizona, it seemed appropriate to reference the work of Dr. Peter C. Sinclair, University of Arizona, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, 1960s.   Read all of his journal articles because I liked dust devils myself….  Don’t we all like to see them, are fascinated by them, when we don’t have a jumping castle about to be tipped over by one?

I know a lot of you out there, too, are fascinated by dust devils and even while driving, take snapshots of dust devils you’re particularly fond of.   The photo below is from a friend who’s particularly fond of dust devils, as an example.

Here’s one of Dr. Sinclair‘s pioneering efforts from 1964.   Also, from a Google image collection, these.  Some are fantastic!

Dr. Sinclair put stuff on his car, the kind of stuff shown in this article above, and drive into dust devils, getting measurements of the temperature, pressure and winds inside them.  He was the first person to do that, to get measurements inside them,  and so was making a real contribution.  He was kind of a hero of mine since I, too, had a fascination with dust devils, though of a more visceral nature; I just jumped into them sans instrumentation when they crossed our San Fernando Valley school yard.  Its a gritty experience.   Hair gets messed up, too, but who cared about girls then?

Here’s a post-dust devil kid shot, entitled, “little Artie’s hair” for some reason.  (I hope it was a post dust-devil shot! I always laugh when I see this photo and hope you do, too.)

 

Note that in the article referenced above, Dr. Sinclair, shown standing next to his equipment, has hair that is perfectly in place.  I don’t think he jumped into them, to really KNOW them, like I did…

Plenty of sun all day, high sun angle, with resulting surface temperatures that could melt lead leads to tremendous instability at the ground and “superadiabatic” lapse rates here in Arizona.  In these situations, the air right at ground level, within inches, might be 120 F, and the air just above, “only” 100 F.


The atmosphere gets rid of that excess heat at the ground via thermals, bubbles of warm air that lift off and is replaced by cooler air overhead.  Our afternoon winds, ones that come up suddenly, then die out, and repeat that sequence over and over again, are evidence of those thermals.  Leads to a very bumpy temperature trace since its warmer, then cooler, warmer, then cooler, etc.

Sometimes, when the bubble lifts off, perhaps suddenly, air swirls in to take its place, and by conserving its angular momentum, develops a tube as the air spins more rapidly as it approaches the the central lift off point.  A more recent explanation is that small volumes of air already have rotation and become tilted upward over hot surfaces, as shown here.

Below, one taken by the arthur on a U of WA research flight over eastern Washington where dust devils are particularly numerous as well.  You might think about spending some time in the desert there, since you could get into quite a dust devil, but it wouldn’t be as hot.  Still have to have those superadiabatic lapse rates at the ground, however.

The weather ahead…

Man, the models of late have come up with an exceptional trough in the West.  While no rain is expected here, it is quite extraordinary, and is pretty much supported by the ensemble plots (aka, spaghetti plots).  Here is the upper air anomaly plot showing how extraordinary this forecast for the heights of the 500 millibar surface are for June 17th, ten days from now.  This would mean exceptionally cool air over southern California and Nevada, and some cooling here, though not so much is indicated for us at this time since the low stays west of us.  Inside the strongest winds around this low at this level would be the areas having precip, or in Nevada and central California only.

At this time of year, we need a tropical fetch for us to get rain, and that isn’t forecast right now.  But the models are having a hard time with this situation, and it may be that some tropical air can be caught up on the faouter boundary of this low if it moves off to the west.  Such moist air is already foretold to invade over New Mexico and west Texas, lucky guys.

 

The End.

 

 

Trendless summer rains, and a look at what June has to offer

OK, cooling off now after yesterday’s rant (which somehow I just now notice has the wrong published date!), emotions now pretty much drained….
After noting that our cool season rains have oscillated into a drier spell from a very wet one over the past 35 years, it seemed like looking at what has happened to our summer rains would be appropriate today.  So, on to the next chapter of Catalina climo, a look at our summer rain season, and a look specifically at June. 
Have to harden myself, and you, too, for the tough 2 week transitional season that begins right now,  one that occurs between the end of rain chances here from cold troughs in the westerlies, and those rain chances associated with onset of the summer rains, sometimes called our “monsoon” season.  As you will see below, its not until June 20th that the chances of summer showers really shows up at all.
Thus, the next two weeks are the driest, and often the warmest of the year.  Almost no chance of rain (see second graph).  Steel yourself, my friends.

What kind of a trend do we have in our 35 year summer rain records for Catalina?  None, which is great.

This graph is reprised from an earlier climate issues (rant?)  blog.  It includes last year’s June through September rains.

Let’s look at June.  Not much explanation required, so will quit here.


Here’s where the original “dusty coolsnap”, so well timed by the models some two weeks ago, ended up yesterday, mostly off to the north of us. Take a look at these 24 h temperature differences for yesterday afternoon, courtesy of The Weather Channel. Stunning!

The End.

 

Little low goes by at 30,000 feet

While working on a climate issues rant due to an article in the latest issue of Scientific American (May 25th), we had an interesting cloud day yesterday.  I needed a cooling off period anyway, so I thought I would point out some interesting things from yesterday, June 3rd.

Here is yesterday’s cloud movie pointed at the Catalinas, and courtesy of the University of Arizona‘s Atmos Sci Dept.  This is interesting because you will see the Cirrus moving out of the west in the morning, with some Altocumulus, Cirrocumulus underneath, then by afternoon, you will see the Cirrus moving from the east!   Hardly ever see that much change in wind direction at 30-40 kft in such a short time.

Also in the movie you will see a couple of great examples of Cirrus uncinus, tufted Cirrus with trails of snow coming out, actually more like single, tiny ice crystals maybe only a few human hairs in diameter (say 300 microns or so).  What type of crystal?  Of course, toward the bottom of the trails, you always want to guess, “bullet rosettes.”  Toward the top of those clouds they are likely simpler crystals, like short hexagonal columns or tiny hexagonal plates, not that you would care THAT much.

24 h satellite loop of water vapor channel showing itty bitty low that went just to the south of us yesterday.  Look hard in SW Arizona in the beginning and you’ll be able to just make out a little swirl in the wind.

Height of clouds above us?  About 25,000 to 30,000 feet.

Along with that low going overhead, is this strange event:  almost no wind between 25,000 and 30,000 feet, indicating that the exact center passed almost overhead.  It would be like having calm winds on Mt. Everest; just doesn’t happen very often.  Here is the TUS sounding for 5 PM AST yesterday.  And, if, like me, you thought you were looking at the same blob of Cirrus for hours, you just about were!  That due to the winds coming to a virtual halt.  Where the lines (temperature and dewpoint) pinch in together in the sounding below is where the clouds were located, and in the first column to the right of the box are the winds.  Notice what they were at the “400” and ” 200″ levels (millibars, between 23,000 and 40,000 feet above sea level):  “light and variable.”

It was about this time, 1 PM AST, that I began to notice that something was “wrong.”  When I came out of the gym an hour later, this patch of Cirrus, the one I had taken a picture of going in, was still there in pretty much the same spot.  By 4 PM AST, it had drifted ever so slightly to the north, but there it was, still hanging around, as was the case at 5:40 PM and 6:51 PM, shown in the the next two shots.  Even at sunset, those Cirrus clouds were still around.

BTW, these would not be the same cloud particles up there, since the crystals are always falling out and have to be replaced by newly formed cloud.  Those tufts and compact specs at the top of these clouds (well, that’s where they are if you can’t tell) in these photos represent that process.   In those tufts the concentrations are tremendous, but once formed they gradually spread out, much like a plume of smoke.

 

 

Catalina winter rainfall to end by 2035!

I was working on updating our Catalina October through May historical rainfall data with this past season’s total,  when a friend brought this Scientific American article to my attention. Today’s blog title is inspired by the May 25th, 2012, issue of Scientific American, one in which it was pronounced :

“Climate Armageddon: How the World’s Weather Could Quickly Run Amok [Excerpt]

Climate scientists think a perfect storm of climate “flips” could cause massive upheavals in a matter of years.” 

The full, scary article is here.   Sci Am, in this article, created the “perfect storm” of sensationalism….alluding here to their sub-title.   Worst case climate conjectures are piled to dizzying heights.  It has inspired many commentaries like the one I am going to make below.   Be sure to read the many comments at the end of the Sci Am article.

The key word in the title and sub-title is, “could.”  For credibility, the Sci. Am. also used the phrase, “climate scientists” which technically could mean just two of thousands or all of them. They quote a couple of climate scientists, but few climate scientists believe that the horrendous things conjectured in this article will happen “quickly”,  in a “matter of years”;  that there are “tipping points” that will lead to temperatures here that will melt lead (as in metal)!
———————————–
Now for today’s blog…
I realized as soon as I saw the Sci Am headine that what I was going to write about concerning Catalina’s updated rainfall from this past winter would be pretty lame; not sensational enough.  So I thought I would rework our Catalina rainfall update from this past cool season to better reflect today’s climate reporting modus operandi;  kind of “go with the flow”, grab some headlines, and that MO is reflected in today’s title.
By the way, the majority of the data I am going to show, originate with the folks at Our Garden, a place you should patronize royally for the great local climate records they have kept for us.

What I saw, thinking in the “excitement” vein after the Sci Am article, is that by projecting the trendline (best fit) of our 35 year decline in rainfall we have now just a couple of decades into the future,  is that the trendline would reach the zero rainfall point, the x-axis, before long.  With that intercept at zero comes the unassailable (or is it?) conclusion that it will no longer rain between October 1st and May 31st in Catalina by 2035!

Fantastic!  A show-stopper!   Finally, I will be popular.  But in reporting this I will have to look very sad, upset, but at the same time be glad inside that I have something great that people will want to hear.

Moreover,  these results I am reporting can be expanded beyond Catalina; more excitement!  Catalina is MUCH wetter than surrounding lowland areas in the cool season, about 10 inches vs. 5-6 inches, lower areas that include Tucson, Marana, etc. Therefore, this conclusion can be confidently applied to those lower elevation locations as well, ones that have huge populations:  No more cool season rain by 2035 in Tucson!

But, why stop even there with our local scene?

Why not assert, since no precipitation station “…is an island, entire of itself”,  to paraphrase John Donne, that this trend MAY apply to the entire State of Arizona and adjacent states as well!  Now we’re talkin’ some real excitement, 10s of millions of people getting worked up.

Now for the totality of evidence for my end-of-rainfall claim, this graph1:

 Call a news conference now!

———————————–

OK, “truth-in packaging”: its not going to happen, relax.

Here is a long term, quite soothing record of Arizona rainfall over the years, courtesy of NOAA via Roger Cohen, who was commenting on a NM wildfire story in the New York Times with his graph:

In our own Catalina rainfall graph, I don’t have enough data to draw any real conclusions about trends, and that’s clear from this long term graph going back into the late 1890s.

Of course, it is also known by the climate mavens out there, and is also shown in the long term graph, that “Mr. and Mrs. Our Garden” began taking records during one of the wettest periods in Arizona history and in the Southwest as a matter of fact, over the past 100 and more years!  Take a look at the NOAA graph above and observe those rainfall values in the late 1970s into the early 1990s.  So, if you moved here then, and think the climate was much wetter back then than it is now, you’re right, but it wouldn’t have been our normal climate, either! Get over it, as The Eagles have told us to do; after all, we live in desert where most years are drier than normal.

So, a downward trend after the first ten years or so of the Our Garden rainfall record was inevitable.  You need at least 50 years to establish climate normals and trends, particularly around mountainous regions, according to the World Meteorological Organizations statements on climate records.

Note, too, that it was consistently DRIER than here during the past 10 years of “drought” in the late 1940s through into the early 1970s, and also at the turn of the century!  Amazing.  Man, those were awful times in AZ!

You can stop reading here since most of the points I wanted to make have been made.
The End1

_________________________________________________________

OK, now to be serious for awhile;  soapbox time, rant time, what-scientists-are-supposed-to-do time, “ideals of science”, etc.  Furrowing brow now…usually people start moving away, etc.

Scientific American is a magazine that tries to be “scientific”, that is, report recent findings in science in an objective manner, and make them understandable for the general public.  Great.

Unfortunately, the temptation for a general audience magazine is always one of trying to get the most readers for each issue (“bang” for the “buck”), and the temptation to phrase article titles in sensational terms to gain readership is always present, as I have done in the title of this blog, trying to expand readership beyond the two I have.   Its understandable.   Even in our best peer-reviewed journals, the hardest ones to get into, Science and Nature, have this temptation to some degree, but mostly avoid it with staid covers and “headlines.”

But going the sensational route has a way of backfiring, like the claims made in the late 1960s into the 1970s about an imminent ice age; that our warm “Interglacial” period between Ice Ages (the Holocene)  was about to end, and “global cooling” was going to wreak havoc with just about everything.

Or, more recently, that snowpacks in the Pacific Northwest were going to disappear soon, in just decades like my claim above about Catalina rainfall.  Those claims were made by scientists who got carried away by using only some of the data, not all of it, beginning with an era of high snowpacks, as I have done with our Catalina rainfall, starting with an era of high rainfall.

Those snowpack claims, too, were ones that were ripe for a hungry media primed for global warming (or earlier, global cooling) disaster stories which, of course, sell newspapers and magazines and appeared in such media giants as Time, and numerous media outlets.  The greater the catastrophic outlooks, the greater the sales.

Snowpacks in the Pacific NW have been increasing since those claims were made, 5-10 years ago.  Nor could researchers find any evidence that the temperatures over the past few decades at mountain top level were increasing, something that had to happen to support claims of earlier melting off of snowpacks and less deep ones.  If real estate has the mantra, location, location, location, science is supposed to have the mantra, caution, caution, caution.

Now it MAY be that EVENTUALLY snowpacks in the Pacific Northwest WILL decline.  But the scientists who made the original sensational claims were incautious.  They should have pointed out that it will be a very gradual process and many things might come to bear on such an overall gradual decrease that might make it appear that nothing is happening for years at a time due to changes in weather regimes, like the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, Arctic Oscillation, etc.. Those of us who know weather know that there are tipping points in which weather regimes go into a new modes, where low centers like to be changes, and those changes can persist for many years.  Why they happen is not known but being investigated.

These kinds of regime tips from one state to another was anticipated by the “Father of Chaos Theory”, E. N. Lorenz, some 40 years ago (e.g., “Climate Change as a Mathematical Problem” when he pointed out the charateristics of atmospheres that are “transitive” (ones that don’t flip-flop into new modes) and “intransitive” ones that do flip-flop into new modes without much “forcing”.   Flip-floping is just an inherent property that an “intransitive” atmosphere has and is likely represented by the oscillations mentioned in the previous paragraph.

Interestingly, looking back at all the climate flip-flops that had occurred over the eons of the earth’s history, Lorenz ventured that “human (climate) forcings” can likely be ignored since they had not caused the remarkable climate changes in the past.

Those of us who know anything about the global warming future projected know that REGIONAL effects of GW are dicey; not well known.  Some places could really warm up, while some places could even cool off due to, for example, stronger summer sea breezes flowing toward warmer continents, something that may already be under way according to some researchers.

Or, the storm track-jet stream positions might shift and bring cooler weather to a relatively small regions while the globe overall warms up.  We know, for example, that troughs aloft (with their cold air) tend to shift inland to the western US as the northern hemisphere warms up in the spring.  As that happens, storms with cold fronts tend to move more from the northwest to the southeast, delaying the onset of higher spring temperatures in the West that otherwise might happen.

These regional effects are just beginning to be explored with higher resolution models that can capture regional effects better.

Now we’re ALL concerned today about where the climate MAY be heading.

We, the people,  are really wrecking things royally with our air pollution and trace gas emissions.  The sky is awful-looking on a regular basis due to smog in huge parts of the world now.  What’s interesting is how accustomed, and non-chalant we have become to the “white sky” so prevalent in the eastern US on humid days.

The climate system of this planet is extremely complicated and even now it is not known why the earth’s temperature has stopped increasing over the past 10-15 years while there have been huge increases in CO2 and methane, those gases that are mainly responsible for the projected and past global warmings that have occurred.

We, as scientists, should always pause, take a deep breath of “humility”, when something major like this happens, the recent leveling of the earth’s temperature, when we can’t explain it and start to rethink our hypotheses.  No climate model expected this leveling in temperature to happen back when it started.

Here in Catalina we have a “problem” with our climate rainfall data.  Its been drying out for awhile, years, really, in the cooler part of the year  (October through May), and last winter’s precip did nothing to alter this downward trend even though it was wetter than the previous cool season of Oct 2010-May 2011.   That latter one was so dry that there were no spring wildflowers at the end of that awful winter.

Global warming (GW) is the most easily, readily accepted explanation for everything these days, including that big dust devil that went through Catalina a few days ago around 3:30 PM.  In the 1950s, it was “atomic testing” that caused all manner of strange weather inthe popular lexicon, 1960s and 1970s, it was global cooling (with scientists on board), and in the 1980s and 1990s, El Ninos caused EVERYTHING strange, beyond what we know El Ninos really do.

Those were fun times for real meteorologists, familiar with the year to year vagaries of weather, ones that lead to extremes of all kinds.

The End2.

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1Since sarcasm is the refuge of a small mind its been said, I have added some more sarcasm to the legends in this graph as well.  I am exulting in the small mind!  Why pretend to be something you’re not?

 

 

“Los Angeles” Catalina

Got a little homesick yesterday looking at the white sky, the barely visible mountains in the distance, like Twin Peaks, eyes a little teary, not from sadness so much, but from smog and smoke.  Grew up in the San Fernando Valley you know, Reseda.  Lots of smog there at times, though not as much as in Burbank, thank heavens, where it banked up against the San Gabriel Mountains.

Reseda, as you know is quite famous from the Karate Kid movie and was even mentioned by Frank Zappa in his Tinsel Town Rebellion album so I like to tell people that I grew up there, went to Reseda High School, played some sports. Maybe I should add a sports highlight to convince you that I went to such a famous high school, and maybe, too, mention that overpowering, incapacitating crush I had on Rozzi R. when I was 15 years old, since a story like that would titillate your interests more than a sports story, or maybe even stuff about weather.  I think I know the people who read this blog pretty darn well.

Below is that “nostalgic” LA sky we had yesterday, thanks to fires in New Mexico, the second one of the yellowish-orange sun typically associated with smoke particles.  Of course, the “white sky” is common on humid days back East, and in the global warming domain, is our friend.

Yes, that’s right, smog is our “friend”, because, as was likely yesterday, in spite of record heat, the temperature would have even been a tad HIGHER without that smoke layer!

In fact, one of the conundrums in foretelling climate in the coming decades, is how much smoke, our “friend”, will offset the warming due to trace gases like CO2.  Imagine, a world of never-blue-but-always-white skies and no more worries about global warming!

As the cliché goes, “Beam me up, Scotty” if such a world came to pass!  So, lets knock off the fires, all smog, in fact, and untoward gases!

  More clouds, less smog today 

In case you missed it, some sunrise Cirrus today!  Finally a cloud.  Who cares if its at 45,000 feet above the ground!  It shows there can still be humidity in the air.

Probably had some….OK, your guess… on the ice crystal type up there in those Cirrus clouds.

Yes, that’s right, bullet rosettes, would be an excellent guess, crystals with a solid “germ” center from which columns radiate outward like these ones below captured in Cirrus clouds over Barrow, AK, some years ago.

 

 Update on “dusty coolsnap”, foretold many days ago for around June 5th.

 Here, from the NWS Tucson, you will see that “dusty coolsnap”,  foretold by the models many days ago, has been evolving into “breezynotashotsnap”, if you can call that a “snap”, a word that implies more suddeness that what will likely happen.  Still, a trough brushes by to the north, just doesn’t have the amplitude it once did in the models; we’ll see only some moderation in temps.  How can they not “moderate” after record highs, so that was an easy thing for me to say.

Still no rain in mods for hereabouts, but some close calls from afternoon thunderstorms in New Mexico every now and then.

The awful indications is, just beyond a week from now, more record HIGH temperatures lasting for a few days!  Yikes.

The End