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If anyone should be able to time a getaway during what's been a bizarrely balmy winter, you'd think it would be America's weather forecasters. So how to explain the conditions confronted this week by members of the American Meteorological Society who packed short sleeves for their annual convention in normally mild San Antonio -- icicles dripping from the rails, sleet falling from the skies, and biting chill in the air? It turns out the winter that wasn't, isn't done with us yet. Ever since December dawned, abnormally high temperatures across most of the nation have had both experts and ordinary...

You can see hurricane satellite movies going back to 1983. It includes infamous hurricanes like Allen, Andrew, Gilbert, Katrina, Rita, and Wilma. Link

There have been repeated claims that this past year's hurricane activity was another sign of human-induced climate change. Everything from the heat wave in Paris to heavy snows in Buffalo has been blamed on people burning gasoline to fuel their cars, and coal and natural gas to heat, cool and electrify their homes. Yet how can a barely discernible, one-degree increase in the recorded global mean temperature since the late 19th century possibly gain public acceptance as the source of recent weather catastrophes? And how can it translate into unlikely claims about future catastrophes?

On December 20, 1974, a cluster of thunderstorm is detected north of Darwin, Australia. Then the next day, the low pressure system develops into a tropical depression. Then the depression develops into a tropical storm and hurricane. The Australian meteorlogy agency predicts that Tracy will miss Darwin and move out and dissipate. However it is not the case. Tracy makes a b-line for Darwin. Many people are evacuated from Darwin and some never returning. Conditions in Darwin worsen on December 24th, which is Christmas Eve. It is overcast and raining hard. Then the hurricane makes landfall on Darwin on Christmas...

East Pacific Hurricane Rosa makes landfall on the west coast of Mexico on October 14, 1994 as a Category 2 hurricane with 100 mph winds. Then it moves over the mountains and weakens. However, its moisture remains and heads towards Texas. A strong cold front over Texas and high pressure system over Canada cause the remnant of Hurricane Rosa to stall over Texas. Rain starts to fall on October 15th. Many areas got 1 to 2 inches of rain. Then it rains again on the 16th. Later that night and well into the early morning hours of the 17th, heavy...

Another surprise from space: Massive dust storms on Mars have meteorologists  scrambling for explanations. Is it solar heating, or electricity, that powers these storms in the near vacuum of the Martian atmosphere? CREDIT: LEFT,Calvin J. Hamilton.                        National Optical Astronomy Observatory/Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy/National Science Foundation;                        RIGHT, NASA/JPL The spacecraft Mariner 9 was the first probe to orbit the planet Mars. As it arrived at the Red Planet in 1971, NASA scientists were shocked by the view—the most horrific dust storm they had ever seen. The entire planet was engulfed in a deep haze, with only...

    Why killer tornado caught meteorology team by surprise By Dave Orrick Daily Herald Staff WriterPosted Thursday, April 22, 2004 No one saw them coming. Shortly before 5 p.m. - only an hour before a legion of as many as 14 tornadoes marched through the southwestern reaches of the suburbs, killing eight - six National Weather Service meteorologists in Romeoville were preparing for a night of scattered thunderstorms. Nothing more. The national Storm Prediction Center's most recent "Convective Outlook," issued at 3 p.m., showed west-central Illinois stood a "slight" risk of tornadoes. Then in Lincoln, the central Illinois office...

Do abrupt climate shifts occur as part of a natural cycle? Despite growing evidence that humans affect climate via urbanization and greenhouse gas emissions, the natural climate cycle may have the final say. Research from Dr. Stefan Rahmstorf at Germany`s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research suggests that the earth`s climate is characterized by an extraordinarily regular cycle of about 1470 years. He found that the five most recent cycles had a standard deviation of only 32 years. Rahmstorf examined ice cores from Greenland. Going back before the 20th century, when weather stations were nonexistent or widely dispersed, ice cores...

HEAT WAVE: AFRICAN TROPICAL MONSOON IS SUFFOCATING EUROPE, SAYS CNR (AGI) - Rome, Italy, Aug. 6 - The unbearable heat wave that is hitting Italy and much of Europe is closely tied to the particular intensity of the African tropical monsoon season. "Heavy storms in sub-Saharan Africa cause a decrease in rains and intense heat in the Mediterranean, and in particular on the northern coasts. In other words, it's as if the desert climate were suddenly shifted towards us," said Giampiero Maracchi, director of the IBIMET-CNR. Since the end of June, the quantity of rain in sub-Saharan Africa has...

Last week's performance by the U.S. government National Weather Service in providing data and warnings about Hurricane Claudette raises important questions about National Weather Service priorities and its ability to fulfill its core mission to provide complete and timely data and protect life and property, according to AccuWeather, Inc, the world's leading commercial weather service. The National Weather Service received and utilized critical observations by government aircraft reconnaissance during an 11-hour period the day before Claudette hit Texas, but did not make these observations available to the commercial weather industry, emergency preparedness agencies or the public. The National Weather Service...

Reference Paulsen, D.E., Li, H.-C. and Ku, T.-L. 2003. Climate variability in central China over the last 1270 years revealed by high-resolution stalagmite records. Quaternary Science Reviews 22: 691-701. What was done In the words of the authors, "high-resolution records of ð13C and ð18O in stalagmite SF-1 from Buddha Cave [33°40'N, 109°05'E] are used to infer changes in climate in central China for the last 1270 years in terms of warmer, colder, wetter and drier conditions." What was learned Among the climatic episodes evident in the authors' data were "those corresponding to the Medieval Warm Period, Little Ice Age and...

June 09, 2003Disease DustupDust clouds may carry infectious organisms across oceans By Otto Pohl> Image: ORBITAL IMAGING CORPORATION Photo Researchers, Inc. SANDSTORM blows particulates out from the Sahara Desert in Africa (landmass at right) over the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean. The storm occurred in February 2001. On February 11, 2001, an enormous cloud of dust whipped out of the Sahara Desert and moved north across the Atlantic, reaching the U.K. two days later. A few days afterward, counties across the island began reporting simultaneous outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease, a viral sickness of livestock (sometimes confused with mad cow...

Oklahoma weather humor! This was sent by the wife of the head meteorologist of the Nat'l Weather Bureau, based in Norman, OK---Considering the past couple of weeks here, we all need a little touch of humor. A Little Taste of Oklahoma Living For those of you who aren't familiar with tornadoes and are hearing news coverage of this, I put together a short glossary to help you understand. Fujita Scale: Scale used to measure wind speeds of a tornado and their severity. F1: Laughable little string of wind unless it comes through your house, then enough to make your insurance...

Bulgarian president calls investigation into lightning-hit home The Bulgarian president has personally asked experts to investigate why a house has been struck by lightning nine separate times and always at the same hour of the day. President Georgi Parvanov said that the house in the southern Bulgarian village of Truncha needed to be looked at after the latest lightning strike this week. The owners of the house, the Cholakov family, have had two lightning conductors installed but the strikes have continued, local daily Monitor reported. Zekir Cholakov said the strikes always come at the same time of the day -...

Middle Ages were warmer than today, say scientists By Robert Matthews, Science Correspondent (Filed: 06/04/2003) Claims that man-made pollution is causing "unprecedented" global warming have been seriously undermined by new research which shows that the Earth was warmer during the Middle Ages. From the outset of the global warming debate in the late 1980s, environmentalists have said that temperatures are rising higher and faster than ever before, leading some scientists to conclude that greenhouse gases from cars and power stations are causing these "record-breaking" global temperatures. Last year, scientists working for the UK Climate Impacts Programme said that global temperatures...

Last Updated: Thursday, 27 March, 2003, 12:02 GMT Is the Earth preparing to flip? By Dr David Whitehouse BBC News Online science editor Finding the shifting magnetic pole It is not just the plot for a far-fetched science-fiction disaster movie. Something unexplained really is happening to the Earth's magnetic field. In recent years, the field has been behaving in ways not previously seen in the admittedly short time it has been monitored. Some researchers think it may presage a geomagnetic reversal when the north and south magnetic poles flip. Such speculation takes place as the science-fiction movie The Core goes...

LINK Source: American Association For The Advancement Of Science Date: 2003-02-17 Computer Models Forecast Sharp Increase In Temperature If Heat-trapping Emissions Continue To Rise DENVER, CO –- Powerful computer models predict that winter temperatures in the polar regions of the world could rise as much as 10 degrees centigrade in the next hundred years, if no efforts are made to control production of carbon dioxide, methane and other gasses. “With projections to the year 2100, we can show what will happen if we continue with business as usual—if we don’t do anything to curb emissions of greenhouse gasses,” said Warren...

DENVER, Colo. --- How will global warming affect life on Earth? Uncertainties about future climate change and the impact of human activity make it difficult to predict exactly what lies ahead. But the past offers clues, say scientists who are studying a period of warming that occurred about 55 million years ago.In a joint project of the University of Michigan, the University of New Hampshire and the Smithsonian Institution, researchers have been analyzing fossils from the badlands of Wyoming found in a distinctive layer of bright red sedimentary rock that was deposited at the boundary between the Paleocene and Eocene...

A LOOK AT THE ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGES AND "GLOBAL WARMING" Written April 9, 2002 By Joe D'Aleo Chief WSI/INTELLICAST Meteorologist In the story "Is This Warm Winter a Sure Sign of Global Warming?" we looked at a number of factors that cause changes in global mean temperatures on both the short and long term. We showed that although most of the attention in recent years has been on the greenhouse gases as the primary driver of the global temperature trends, it may still be a relative "bit player" in the climate ride we, like it or not, all find ourselves on....

They are the stuff of legend and maritime myth: giant waves, taller than tower-blocks, that rise out of calm seas and destroy everything in their paths. For years scientists and marine experts have dismissed such stories as superstition. Walls of water do not rise out of the blue, they said. But now research has revealed that 'killer waves' do exist and regularly devastate ships around the world. They defy all scientific understanding and no craft is capable of withstanding their impact. 'Rogue waves in the past have been ignored and regarded as rare events,' said Jim Gunson, the Met Office's...