Pieces of April

Now

Sunny, very warm. A schizophrenic April which can't seem to make up its mind between being like February or June is spending more time in the summer category today. Temperatures have once again surpassed 80° with low humidity; mid or even upper 80s were common throughout the Washington metro region by mid afternoon. The nearly perfect conditions will go downhill by late tomorrow, with some showers likely for midweek.

CapitalWeather.com chart from NWS data, photo © Kevin Ambrose

Tonight and Tomorrow

Increasing clouds, warm. Tonight will be partly cloudy with summer-like lows near 60° downtown to the upper 50s in the 'burbs. Tomorrow will be mostly sunny with highs in the upper 70s to near 80° and a chance of showers at night.

For the outlook through the rest of the week and into the weekend, scroll on down to Jason's post below.

Tempest in the Tropical Blogosphere

Knowledge of climate change has increased dramatically in recent decades, but there is still much that is not fully understood, particularly the details of the effects on specific locations. One of the important areas of uncertainy involves the relationship between global warming and hurricanes. A paper by Prof. Kerry Emanuel of MIT in 2005 indicated that warming should be associated with an increase in overall storm intensity. (An animated graph of Atlantic sea surface temperature and hurricane power intensity has been updated from the original paper with 2 more years of data.)

A new paper published last week has generated considerable controversy by suggesting that warming will lead to increased wind shear over the Atlantic which could contribute to decreased tropical storm activity. A post last Wednesday by Chris Landsea of NOAA's National Hurricane Center at the Prometheus science policy blog produced some interesting comments, and the subject was discussed at RealClimate as well. A play-by-play description of the festivities, including some of the choicest name-calling, can be found at the bunny hutch of the pseudonymous Prof. Rabett.