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Category Archives: History
Is the Sun Playing a Role in the Earth’s Global Warming?
The sun helps maintain Earth’s climate to be warm enough for us to survive. Even subtle changes in Earth’s orbit around the sun have led to and ended past ice ages. This relationship between Earth’s climate and its orbit around the Sun is well known.
The sun’s activity and appearance goes though cycles, with one solar cycle taking 11 years to complete. The current cycle began at the end of 2019 and will reach peak levels of activity in 2025. During a solar cycle, the amount of solar radiation reaching Earth varies. These changes have a variety of effects on Earth’s atmosphere, including auroras. Continue reading
Does the U.S. have a new weather satellite?
Weather satellites fly around Earth in two basic orbits: a geostationary Earth orbit (abbreviated as GEO) and a low Earth orbit (abbreviated as LEO). LEO satellites’ orbits often travel over the Earth’s polar regions, flying at an altitude of 530 miles. Geostationary satellites orbit Earth as fast as Earth spins and so hover over a single point above Earth at an altitude of about 22,300 miles. To maintain its position, a GEO satellite must be located over the equator. In contrast, polar satellites go around from pole to pole as the Earth rotates beneath the satellite; each orbit is slightly to the west of the previous one.
Satellite observations provide valuable information to meteorologists. The United States usually operates two geostationary satellites called GOES (Geostationary Operational Environment Satellite). One has a good view of the East Coast; the other is focused on the West Coast. They are a basic element of the U.S. weather monitoring and forecasting enterprise. The first GOES satellite, GOES-1, was launched in October 1975. Upgrades to the instruments are made as needed and the U.S. is currently in the fifth generation of GOES satellites. These are the GOES-R series, first launched in 2016. Continue reading
How does our late spring/early summer precipitation stack up historically?
If you think the first half of the summer has been unusually wet, it is not merely your impression — it is a measured fact. Between May 1 and July 15, Madison received 21.85 inches of precipitation, punctuated by the … Continue reading
Was Hurricane Beryl a special storm?
All hurricanes are special, given the extensive damage they can cause when they make landfall. Beryl was considered extra special because it was a record-breaking storm.
Beryl rapidly intensified from a tropical storm to a major hurricane (Category 3 or higher) with wind speeds that increased to 95 mph in less than two days. Category 3 storms have sustained winds between 111 mph and 129 mph. Only six other Atlantic Basin storms have intensified this quickly and those storms all happened after August, the typical time of year with conditions favorable for hurricanes. Continue reading
Why is May 6 such a special day in weather science history?
Immediately after World War II, it became fashionable to imagine technologies that might allow human beings to control the weather. In fact, one goal advanced by influential scientists was actually to explode nuclear bombs in the right locations and in the right quantity so as to alter the weather in favorable ways.
Such an enterprise would require accurate forecasts of the weather thought possible by using the brand new computer technology to make the millions of requisite calculations. Continue reading
Category: History, Meteorology
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