Weather, sea, and ice (past, present, or future — on Earth or elsewhere): discussion

[Michael]

[AvastMH]

Those Mars clouds are so cool. If you didn't know they were from Mars how would you know? the colour of the Mother of Pearl could be Mare's tails at early sunset

[Randi]

Northern Alaska Sea Ice Project Jukebox

This project includes oral history recordings of residents of northern Alaska talking about sea ice conditions, observations over time, and changes that are occurring.

The collection includes archival interviews recorded from 1978 to 1980 as part of a study related to potential offshore oil development, and from 2008-2009 as part of a Geophysics Ph.D. project about sea ice thickness along spring whaling trails offshore of Utqiaġvik (Barrow).

More recent interviews were recorded in: November 2013 with Iñupiaq whalers in Utqiaġvik talking about the previous year's ice conditions and long-term changes they have experienced; February 2016 with more Iñupiaq whalers in Utqiaġvik talking about ice saftey and changing sea ice conditions; and March 2016 with Iñupiaq subsistence hunters in Kotzebue (Qikiqtaġruk) about their ice experiences. Kotzebue was added to the project in 2016 as a comparative location with different ice conditions than around Utqiaġvik. The goal is to offer long-term observations about sea ice in northern Alaska. The Northern Alaska Sea Ice Project Jukebox was completed in 2017. The information in this project reflects the context of the original creation date. Some information may now be out of date.

[Randi]

Ocean Encounters — Virtual series from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

[Randi]

Arctic melt ponds hold climate clues for UAF MOSAiC scientist

[Michael]

[ggordon]

At some point the Coast Guard switched from recording course direction as letters to degrees. Why is wind direction still recorded using letters?

I have a personal weather station at my house. It creates a daily graph with the axis at one end in degrees and the other end with letters. However, the data is saved using letters.

Today letters appear to still be used everywhere for wind direction. Wouldn't it be simpler to use degrees?

[Randi]

Just a wild guess, but maybe using degrees for wind direction gives an unreasonable impression of the precision and makes it hard to compare wind directions over time/space

[Michael]

I don't think so. It was probably habit. Here are the conversions for two wind directions differing by 1/8 point:

$ pb wsw1/4w
250.312
$ pb wsw1/8w
248.906

The difference is 1.406 degrees.

These are the hourly wind directions stored in Environment Canada's database of Hourly weather:

069 Wind Direct. 8 Pts HLY degrees
075 Wind Direct. 16 pts. HLY degrees
156 Wind Direct. 36 pts. HLY degrees


You can see that they don't bother with 360 wind directions.

[Randi]

What does "069 Wind Direct. 8 Pts HLY degrees" actually mean?

[Michael]

Sorry, 69 is the climate element number. The wind directions for element 69 were observed and recorded to eight points. N, NE, E, etc, and the data type is Hourly. (There are also element numbers for Daily and Monthly data.)

The 16 points are N, NNE, NE, ENE, E etc.

I was just trying to point out that Environment Canada saves wind directions with no greater accuracy than 36 points: 10,20,30, 40 degrees etc.

Needless to say, there are lots of elements needed to record the different types of wind data:

Code: Select all

ELEM Title                      DBase       Units     Flags     Notes
021  Day with Wind >= 28 kt     DLY                             14
022  Day with Wind >= 34 kt     DLY                             14
037  Days with Wnd >= 28 kt     MLY         days
038  Days with Wnd >= 34 kt     MLY         days
069  Wind Direction 8 Pts       HLY         degrees   E         11 17
070  Wind Distance per hour     HLY         km/hr     E         17
075  Wind Direct. 16 pts.       HLY         degrees             5 17
076  Wind Speed                 HLY         km/hr     E         17
152  Wind Mileage               DLY         km        E
156  Wind Direct. 36 pts.       HLY         degrees   E         17
162  Wind Mileage               MLY         km        E
185  Upper Level Wind Direc.    UAS         deg                 27 30
186  Upper Level Wind Speed     UAS         m/sec               27 30
189  Upper Level Wind Direc.    UAS         deg                 28 30
190  Upper Level Wind Speed     UAS         m/sec               28 30
209  Wind Character             HLY         code      S         32
271  Wind Speed 2 m Min 15      HLY         0.1 km/hr           33
272  Wind Speed 2 m Min 30      HLY         0.1 km/hr           33
273  Wind Speed 2 m Min 45      HLY         0.1 km/hr           33
274  Wind Speed 2 m Min 60      HLY         0.1 km/hr           33
279  Wind Direct. degrees 2m    HLY         degrees             33
280  Wind Speed 2 m             HLY         0.1 km/hr           33
813  1 p.m. Wind Direct.        DLY         degrees
814  1 p.m. Wind Speed          DLY         km/hr

[Randi]

Vikings may have fled Greenland to escape rising seas

[Randi]

Aliens? We explain the strange beams of light spotted near Toronto

[AvastMH]

Aliens? We explain the strange beams of light spotted near Toronto

I'd like to see some of those! (Watched the video afterwards about spraying some cooking oil on your snow shovel to stop if from accumulating snow on it - very clever )

[Randi]

https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/12/weather/ ... index.html

[Randi]

New observations from ICESat-2 show remarkable Arctic sea ice thinning in just three years

[Michael]

[joke_slayer]

Learnt a new word

0015 brilliant Corposanto

https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorag ... 7_0056.JPG

corposant: an appearance of St Elmo's fire on a mast, rigging, or other structure.

[Randi]

Thanks for posting it!

[Randi]

When It Comes to Lightning, Don’t Pass the Salt
Compared with lightning recorded over the continents, only about one-tenth as many strikes occur at sea.