4 essay question from lectures
Weather vs climate
Week 2 – June 29th
Announcements
Lab #1 is this week
Lecture Outline
Geography in the News – Hurricane Lorenzo, 2019
Basic intro to weather
Basic intro to climate
Weather vs climate
NCEI Explorer primer
Readings With Lecture
Week 2 Readings
Chp. 1-2 in textbook
Lost Cities and Climate Change Kate Marvel (2019)
PDF is on Canvas (Files > Reading Materials > Marvel_2019)
And we’re off! Let’s start with the story of Hurricane Lorenzo, a category 5, from last year…
Hurricane Lorenzo
Reached Cat 5 status Saturday, Oct 5th, 2019
Highest sustained winds were ~165 mph
What made this one unique? Put another way, how many Category 5 hurricanes do you hear hitting the UK?
This storm got massive fast, blew east of the Bermuda High pressure cell which sits in the middle of the Atlantic, and then pushed northeast. Yikes!
Hurricane Lorenzo
This hurricane was the fastest hurricane in recorded history to achieve Cat 5 status (it’s the blue dot among the red dots on the map below)
This hurricane was evidence of exceedingly high sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean – we can expect similar occurrences in the future…
Hurricane Lorenzo
Hurricane Lorenzo ended up decaying rapidly in strength as it moved out of warm tropical ocean waters. It arrived on the other side of the Atlantic as a minor storm.
Weather
Short-term phenomena occurring in a generally localized region
No “weather of the Earth”
Results from the interaction and activity of atmospheric particles and solar energy
Metrics include temperature, precipitation, relative humidity, wind (speed and direction, etc)
Weather
Think of the atmosphere as a fluid
Weather forecasting is modeling and predicting the activity of the atmosphere over time
Stochasticity in the nature of atmosphere molecules (imagine the chaos!)
Short-term predictions as of right now…
Weather
This is a common weather report for Cheney, WA from the National Weather Service.
Climate
Statistical perspective on weather – what weather ”looks” like over time
NOAA and NWS use baseline climatology of 30 years, usually 1950-80.
In some cases easier to predict than weather (exceptions to this…)
Variations in weather metrics can be tracked spatially AND temporally to create climate histories…
Weather vs. Climate
Common misconception with climate change is that if anything cold-weather related happens, climate change is a hoax…
Follow the logic:
Warmer air holds more moisture (think a hot attic in the peak of summer!)
A warmer atmosphere will hold more moisture, which can fall in a storm even if that storm happens in below freezing temps.
Global warming can easily lead to wetter, snowier storms!
NCEI Explorer
May 2020 U.S. Climate Assessment: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/national-climate-202005
May 2020 Global State of the Climate: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/202005
What are some trends you notice? Specifically, do you notice variability across space? Upward trends in global temperature? Changes to precip? How do the US report and global report differ? How might these differences confound positive progress in climate action?
Links to Check Out!
Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson’s media
https://www.ayanaelizabeth.com/
https://www.oceancollectiv.co/
The Keeling Curve – check out the different time scales you can look at!
https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/
Links page for educational resources related to weather and climate
https://l-zone.info/2015/07/top-10-educational-resources-for-learning-about-the-weather-and-climate/
Looking Ahead…
Next week we begin our discussions of paleoclimates, or climates and environments of the distant past.
We’ll return to the NCEI website for more exploration
You’ll learn how trees record climate data over hundreds of years (even millenia!), and how climate scientists use tree rings to reconstruct climates of the distant past.