http://goldhilltown.com/category/weather/ http://www.afewatm.com/ Recommendation's IPCC Report - Climate Change The UCAR Home Page Global Change Instruction Program - Modules Lewis Thomas Essay, The Worlds Biggest Membrane Atmospheric Optics Global Hurricane/Tropical Data from Unisys North-Western Hemisphere Water Vapor (Click on "loop12" for lapse-time motion.) NASA Blue Planet Online Meteorology Text Astronomy a Go Go! National Weather Information Most
Recent
Weather Map from Unisys enhanced
Infrared
Image from Unisys Radar
Coded Messages for US and Regions from Unisys Nested
Grid
Model Forecast to 60 Hours from Unisys Medium
Range Forecast to 8 days (Max. T & Probability of
Precipitation) Home Page Links for Weather Information at:
Local Weather Information The
Last 25 Hours Weather Record for Major US Stations 60-Hour
Detailed
Forecast for Major NWS Stations Detailed
7-day Forecast by Zip Code from Unisys Detailed
7-day
Forecast by Zip Code or City from NWS Houston, Texas, Area The Past 25 Hours at IAH The Next 60 Hours at IAH 7-Day Forecast for Houston Rice University Weather Station
Rice
University Flood Alert Site Gold Hill, Colorado, Area 7-Day
Forecast
for Gold Hill Area Weather
Observations
from Elkstreet.com Weather
Observation
from NCAR's Mesa Laboratory in Boulder
7.5-Day Detailed National Forecast The forecasts below are from the National Center for
Atmospheric Research, NCAR, and
are based upon model output from the Global Forecast
System, GFS, produced by the National Centers for
Environmental Prediction, NCEP. Forecasts: 12, 18 & 24 hr Forecasts: 36, 48 & 60 hr Forecasts: 72, 96, 120, 144 & 168 hr Forecasts: 84, 108, 132, 156 & 180 hr |
American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting , Dec. 3 - 7, 2012 Ice Nuclei Production in Volcanic Clouds Poster paper A131-0299; Arthur A Few, Professor Emeritus, Rice Univ. The PDF file below is the poster itself; there are three columns; read down left column then move to next column right. Click PDF file below to download the reduced poster. PDF file: 1.4 Mb American Geophysical Union Chapman Conference on Volcanism and the Atmosphere Selfoss, Iceland, June 10 - June 16, 2012 Lightning and Ice in Volcano Clouds Arthur A Few, Professor Emeritus, Rice University This
poster paper is similar to the poster paper
presented at the 2010 Fall Meeting of the
American Geophysical but has been augmented with
additional information on bubbles and froth in
the magma explosion.
The PDF file is the poster itself; there are three columns; read down left column then move to next column right. Click PDF file below to download the reduced poster. Lightning and Ice in Volcano Clouds This paper
was a seminar presentation to the Space Physics
Group of the Physics and Astronomy Department of
Rice University on March 30, 2012. There are three
parts to this presentation, which can be accessed
singularly or in sequence to get the complete
presentation.
View Third: PDF
file, 909 Kb; PDF file,
786 KbThis paper received support from the Charles L Conly Endowment Fund for Research. The "View First" resulted from a question posed by my Gold Hill neighbor, Ken Fernalld regarding lightning produced by Icelandic volcanoes. My response was first published on my web site Ask Arthur < http://www.afewatm.com/>, but then moved to this location, 8/7/2010. This response provides information and photographs of lightning from volcanoes. Although not known widely, lightning very frequently accompanies volcanic eruptions. There are recorded observations going back at least to AD 79. View
First: PDF
file, 3.6 Mb
The "View Second"
was originally presented as a poster paper "Ice in
Volcano Clouds" at the Fall AGU Meeting, 2010,
AE33B-0282. I have deconstructed the
poster contents to produce the slide show and
augmented the slide show with additional
information.
View
Second: PDF
file, 3.5Mb
The
"View Third" has two parts. The first is a
short PDF file of a letter to Physics Today
April 2012 concerning observations of water
spectra in volcano plumes. The second file
was originally an email with JPEG
attachments. I reformatted the content so it
could be presented as a PDF document. It
shows the development of an island from an
underwater volcano and floating volcanic
rocks. It is a fascinating and fortunate set
of photographs. I have not yet found
the original author.
American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting , Dec. 13 - 17, 2010 Arthur A few, Convener and Session Chair for special sessions on "Volcano Lightning" at the Annual Fall Meeting of AGU in San Francisco Ice in Volcanic Clouds - AE33B-0282 Arthur A Few, Professor Emeritus, Rice University The PDF file below is the poster itself; there are three columns; read down left column then move to next column right. Click PDF file below to download the reduced poster. PDF file: 2.1 Mb Global Warming Lecture (Work in progress; audio not yet included.) The slide show was developed using Keynote on a Macintosh then exported to PDF and PPT formats. (20.4 MB) Download as a PDF file. (7.3 MB) Download as a PowerPoint file. (4.9 MB) Tsunami A tsunami is a special
type of gravity wave. Gravity waves can occur in any
fluid in which density decreases with height. In the
atmosphere density decreases with altitude; thus we have
atmospheric gravity waves in the stable layers of the
atmosphere. Oceans have constant density; however, at
the surface (ocean - air interface) the density
decreases by approximately a factor of 1000. This
provides an excellent condition for gravity waves. All
ocean surface waves are gravity waves. The wavelength of
an ocean surface wave is the length between adjacent
wave peaks. When the water depth is greater than the
wavelength the waves are ordinary or deep-water waves;
when the water depth is smaller than the wave length
then they are shallow-water waves, and you can get
tsunamis. The average depth of the oceans is 3.8 km;
thus the wavelength of an ocean tsunami is many km. Over
the open ocean the height of a tsunami will be less than
1 m making them difficult to detect. An important
property of tsunamis is that the deeper the water the
faster they travel. As the tsunami approaches land the
leading part of the wave slows down while the following
part catches up forming a very large and destructive
flooding wave.
The Moon - The Standstills The
Moon's
orbit is inclined ~5.1º to the ecliptic
(the plane containing the Earth's orbit). The
Earth's rotational axis has a angle of
23.5º to the ecliptic. Owing to
gravitational influences the Moon's orbital tilt
axis rotates with respect to the Earth's spin
axis with a period of 18.6 years. When aligned
parallel the two axes add to produce a Moon
declination of 28.6º; this is the major
standstill. 9.3 years later (half of 18.6 years)
the Moon's orbital axis is anti-parallel to the
Earth's spin axis, and the Moon's declination is
18.4º; this is the minor standstill.
Hailstones – Tracing Their Development A short PDF paper on the development of baseball size hailstones. Download the PDF paper. AGU Spring 2006 Poster Paper Conceptual Modeling as Pedagogy Arthur Few1,2, Russanne Low2, Mary Marlino2 1 - Rice University 2 - Digital Library for Earth Science Education, DLESE University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, UCAR Abstract The teaching of
facts is often criticized because many facts tend to
change with time, they can be forgotten,
and because remembering facts does not train the mind
to think or reason. In contrast, explicit instruction
in
the process of model building, whether physical,
mathematical, computer or conceptual, requires
thinking.
It provides students with an extensible framework in
which to integrate concepts and build
new knowledge, setting the stage for course content
mastery as well as lifetime science learning. In conceptual
modeling
students are taught to: (1) ask a question, (2) refine
the question, (3) format the problem, (4)
identify
contributing components, (5) define a system with the
central problem, the components, and the connections
or
relationships among all of the system’s parts by
depicting the system with a diagram, (6) identify
the
information that the system will require to solve the
problem, (7) step through the system toward a
trial solution to the problem, (8) refine the
components and connections as required (add, delete ,
or combine), (9) go back to
7 or reach your solution. In upper level classes the
conceptual system can be migrated
to
a computer model using STELLA
(http://www.iseesystems.com). This will provide a
rigorous test of the
conceptual models students have developed.
View the poster,
a slide show of the poster, and access the computer
models.This paper provides examples of how modeling is employed as a pedagogic tool at several levels in the curriculum. The examples start with simple conceptional models with simple drawings of the problems for the lower levels; for the more advanced levels the problem is treated in greater detail and a formal system diagram is introduced; at the upper levels, the problem is solved using a computer. AGU Fall 2006 Oral Presentation Modeling in the Classroom: An Evolving Learning Tool Arthur Few1,2, Mary Marlino2, Rusanne Low2 1 - Rice University 2 - Digital Library for Earth Science Education, DLESE University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, UCAR Abstract Among the early
programs (early 1990s) focused on teaching Earth
System Science were the Global Change Instruction
Program (GCIP) funded by NSF through UCAR and the
Earth System Science Education Program (ESSE) funded
by NASA through USRA. These two programs introduced
modeling as a learning tool from the beginning, and
they provided workshops, demonstrations and lectures
for their participating universities. These programs
were aimed at university-level education.
Recently, classroom modeling is experiencing a revival of interest. Drs. John Snow and Arthur Few conducted two workshops on modeling at the ESSE21 meeting in Fairbanks, Alaska, in August 2005. The Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE) at http://www.dlese.org provides web access to STELLA models and tutorials, and UCAR’s Education and Outreach (EO) program holds workshops that include training in modeling. Modeling in the Classroom:An Evolving Learning Tool. The slide presentation is available as a PDF file. Download the STELLA Model of the Global Hydrological Cycle with Global Warming here (.zip). Other Earth system science models can be downloaded from the column to the right. AGU Spring 2007 Poster and Lecture Internet Lectures on Geophysical Modeling Arthur Few, Rice University few@rice.edu http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~few Abstract Advances in
modeling software and presentation software now
provide the instructor with the means to communicate
over the Internet to a global student audience.
Modeling in the broadest sense has always been a
touchstone tool in geophysics ranging from a drawing
of stratigraphy to a numerical climate model. At the
undergraduate level even simple models provide insight
in the behavior of geophysical systems. By coupling
illustrated lectures with hands-on computer models
that can be downloaded as a package from the Internet,
the instructor can broadly support classroom
instruction.
Internet
Lectures
on Geophysical Modeling, Poster (PDF)The software, (isee Player) for viewing and manipulating working STELLA models is a free download from isee systems http://www.iseesystems.com. Both Keynote (Macintosh) and PowerPoint (Windows) support adding an audio track to slides, so the instructor can discuss the content and interpretation of slide information. When the lecture on a geophysical process is coupled with a working model the student then gets a hands-on opportunity to explore the responses of the geophysical system as modeled. Examples of STELLA models and coupled lecture and model are available at http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~few. The following files have an audio track for each slide. Lecture in Keynote for Macintosh (zip) Lecture in QuickTime (zip) Lecture in PowerPoint (zip) |
STELLA Models You
will
need STELLA software to modify these
models. You may view them and run them
with isee
Player.
These files were compressed using Stuffit (.zip); they may be downloaded and opened with Stuffit Expander available free from http://www.stuffit.com. STELLA Tutorial
The STELLA file below is a short tutorial on STELLA system
components, objects, and tools. I use this as an
introductional lecture on STELLA Modeling.STELLA
Intro (.zip).
Energy Balance Models for the Earth These
are the instructions for building a series of three
energy balance models for the Earth.
Earth Energy Balance Model Part 1 (.zip). (This is essentially the Earth Effective Temperature used in the AGU Spring 2006 Poster.) Earth Energy Balance Model Part 2 (.zip). (This is essentially the Greenhouse Earth used in the AGU Spring 2006 Poster.) Earth Energy Balance Model Part 3 (.zip). (In this model we explore the Greenhouse Model when we double the atmospheric carbon dioxide.) Early Faint Sun Model (zip). Starting with the Energy Balance Model Part 1 above we add the ice-albedo feedback, which alters the albedo as the temperature changes. This model demonstrates very interesting behavior. See also the AGU Spring 2007 paper to the left. |