Area's Drought Continues

Moderate precipitation deficit persists into 2008

Chart by Capital Weather Gang. Click on image to enlarge.





While enough to get you wet without rain gear, today's semi-springlike showers have done little to dampen the impact of a prolonged dry spell in the Washington metro area. Rainfall amounts of around a tenth of an inch or less have barely equalled the long-term daily average, although more rain is possible tonight. With only two days left in the month, there have been only six days, counting today, with measurable precipitation (0.01" or more). That is less than two-thirds the average of 9.8 rainy/snowy days in the average January in the base period of 1971-2000. Total precipitation for the month is less than 50 percent of the "normal" (long-term average).

The regional 30-day precipitation percentage of average from the National Weather Service (NWS) Precipitation Analysis shows a lot of sub-average yellows and oranges, with the near to above-average grays and greens mostly limited to parts of the Northern Neck of Virginia and southern Maryland. The intensity of the dryness increases generally northward and westward of the Beltway, with Montgomery, Fairfax, and Loudoun Counties faring the worst within the near 'burbosphere.

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Free/Low-Cost Classes

Skywarn; climate course; astronomy for non-scientists

If you're interested in learning something about meteorology and also performing a public service, the National Weather Service (NWS) has several Skywarn classes scheduled in the metro region. Skywarn is a program through which trained members of the public can become spotters for weather events such as severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, hail and flooding, and report their observations to the local NWS. The classes, which are free, consist of one three-hour introductory session. Several optional advanced sessions are also offered separately.

The next scheduled Basics I class (prerequisite for all other classes) inside the Beltway is Feb. 9 at the University of Maryland in College Park, sponsored by the meteorology graduate student organization. You can register for the class online and also view the slides and videos from a previous presentation. Other upcoming classes in the Washington/Baltimore region are scheduled for Leesburg and Towson. For graduates of Basic I training, Basics II, Flooding, and Tropical classes are also available.

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NOAA's NWS Near Naming New NHC Noggin?

The Orlando Sentinel reported today: "National Weather Service veteran Bill Read likely to be next hurricane chief." This promises to be the final chapter in one of the more unusual bureaucratic dramas in recent history. If named as the permanent director of the National Hurricane Center near Miami, Read would replace Bill Proenza, who took over the position at the beginning of last year, replacing the retiring Max Mayfield, but was ousted when havoc broke out at the center during the 2007 hurricane season.

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551.5: Book Nook

551.5 is the Dewey Decimal System classification for meteorology.

In his post last weekend, Ground Truth, Andrew points out that seeing is believing: Because climate change "exists beyond our field of vision it's hard to be completely convinced of its existence, and therefore of the necessity of addressing it." Andrew Revkin expressed similar thoughts in his Dot Earth blog last month.

A new climate change book, published last year in the U.K., was released in the U.S. yesterday by National Geographic. It aims to address precisely that problem. Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet, by Mark Lynas, takes the dry data and analyses of climate science and puts them into human terms by describing the specific effects of each degree of warming predicted in the current range of scenarios documented in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, from 1°C to 6°C:

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Climate Corner: Myth-tery Science Theater 2008

One of the major myths of the climate change saga comes in for some major debunking at a session Wednesday of the 20th Conference on Climate Variability and Change, which is meeting in conjunction with the 88th Annual Meeting of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) this week in New Orleans. It didn't make the top-10 list of a major global warming skeptic, but a favorite theme of climate science fiction, both literary and political, is that the same people who predicted an ice age in the 1970s are now the ones promoting the global warming story. This argument is even favored by some meteorologists.

The cooling myth turns out to be wrong on multiple levels. First of all, even if the premise were true, it would be perfectly consistent with the scientific method:

• Make an hypothesis: The earth is cooling.
• Collect and analyze data: It's not.
• Refine the hypothesis: The earth is warming.
• Repeat until done.

Stephen H. Schneider, a veteran climate scientist (also the apparent coiner of the term "mediarology"), was interviewed last year on this subject on The Weather Channel's Forecast Earth series. I'm quoting from memory, so this hasn't been subjected to the usual rigorous fact-checking of the Googling monkeys here in the Climate Corner, but the gist of what he said was, "We were wrong. We thought there could be a cooling, but we did some more analysis and found out that was not the case. That's how science works."

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The "sheet hits the fan"

There have been several interesting developments over the last few weeks in the evolving (intelligently designing?) climate change story. As we reported on CapitalWeather.com last month (reposted here), NOAA's National Climatic Data Center's preliminary report on the climate of 2007 indicated that last year was the fifth warmest on record worldwide. This was confirmed in the final report, issued yesterday.

Meanwhile, an article in Saturday's carbon-based WaPo, "Last Year Among Hottest On Record, Say Scientists", reported that NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies had found that the year was the second warmest on record.

Gavin Schmidt, one of the climatologists involved in the NASA study, appeared on this morning's Diane Rehm show on WAMU, 88.5 FM, along with several other guests to discuss the policy implications of the science. Schmidt is also one of the primary contributors to the RealClimate blog. Streaming audio of the program is available on the show's web site, and a podcast can be downloaded from iTunes.

Locally, the warm last third of December pushed the yearly average to within about one hundredth of a degree of undisputed ownership of 12th place in the rankings of warmest years.

On Monday, the WaPo front page featured an article, "Escalating Ice Loss Found in Antarctica". This was based on the report, "Recent Antarctic ice mass loss from radar interferometry and regional climate modelling", published online on Sunday by the scientific journal Nature Geoscience. The gist of the latest finding is that the West Antarctic ice sheet is shrinking at a faster than expected rate.

The original paper itself is available only by subscription, but a summary was published online by the related Nature News. Former government energy official Joe Romm comments on the subject in a post, "The Antarctic ice sheet hits the fan", on his Climate Progress blog.

Winter 2.0, The Sequel

Clear commute; wintry mix likely tomorrow

Precisely one year ago today, CapitalWeather.com's PM Update noted that the pattern had shifted exactly halfway through meteorological winter from a mild regime to a more wintry one, and a similar shift is happening this year. With yesterday's return to within one degree of the daily average temperature, the stage is set for a wintry mix of precipitation as a developing low pressure area emerges from the Gulf of Mexico and moves northeastward up the Atlantic coast.

The key to the forecast is the fact that there is cold air in place and a good moisture supply, but the mechanism to hold the cold is not there, and as the wind moves to a southeasterly direction, much of the precipitation is likely to change to rain.

Tonight: After this afternoon's temperatures mainly in the low 40s, some high clouds will be accompanied by upper 30s to near 40 this evening. Clouds will increase overnight as lows reach 30-32 in the city and the mid to upper 20s in the 'burbosphere.

Tomorrow: Unless you sleep as late as we do here at CommuteCast Central, your morning commute should be cold, but dry. Precipitation in the form of snow or sleet will develop from southwest to northeast across the region from late morning into early afternoon. Temperatures in the low 30s will drop a couple of degrees to freezing or below when precipitation begins, but will gradually warm a little toward evening, and precipitation in the immediate metro area will change to freezing rain or plain rain. An inch or two of snow is possible before the change, especially north and west of the Beltway. As usual in this type of situation, the changeover will be most rapid east of I-95.

See Dan's post for the rest of the forecast, including a look ahead to the weekend.