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How To Forecast The Weather

September 3rd 2010 02:47

Forecasting Weather Without Gadgets

There are many fancy products for sale these days which will help you to forecast the weather. From the traditional thermometers, barometers, hydrometers and wind vanes to modern electrical weather stations or google sidebar gadgets they all provide valuable information.

Did you know that accurate weather predictions can be made simply by observing nature?
Watching the clouds, observing the wind, keeping an eye rainbows and animal behaviour will tell you what mother nature has planned next.

The info-graphic below will explain. Click the image to open a larger version in a new window.

*Infographic source.

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Posted By: Ian - Category: weather

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Understanding Ancient Climates

August 13th 2010 03:12

Since about 1850 accurate records of the temperature and climate on planet earth have been kept, with coverage improving over time.

Before this time various proxies must be used to estimate climate conditions. These include tree rings, coral growth, ice cores, ocean and lake sediments, cave deposits, fossils, borehole temperatures, and glacier length records.

Proxies are of course less accurate than direct measurements, but they still tell an interesting and important tale about the history of our planet.

To illustrate, Discover Magazine put together this intriguing article about the keys science can use to decipher ancient climates. Read the full article here.

Clam Shells

A study this March of clamshells taken from Iceland found that the levels of oxygen isotopes in the shell layers varied depending on the temperature of the water in which they formed. By slicing tiny layers for analysis, the team found that it could determine temperature variation down to weeks, not just years.

Tree Rings

You learn in grade school that each ring in a tree represents a year. But there's more information hidden away in these concentric rings. The thickness of a ring shows how much the tree grew during that year. If scientists know what temperature and moisture level make the tree happy, they can use the thickness to gauge what the climate was like that year.

Ice Cores

In the 1960s, scientists began extracting ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica. These frozen columns can compress hundreds of thousands of years into their vertical reach.

Like the clamshells, ice cores tell scientists about the temperature record through their chemical composition, particularly the oxygen isotopes--ice with less heavy oxygen (made heavy by additional neutrons) indicates cooler temperatures. But ice cores can do so much more. The thickness of layers reveals how much snow accumulated in a year. If there's a large different in snow for the same year between one ice core and another, that can indicate which way the wind was blowing. And tiny air bubbles trapped in the ice can allow scientists to see what gases were present in the ancient atmosphere.

Pollen

Pollen may seem like ephemeral dust when it's aloft on the breeze, but those grains can have surprising staying power in the environment. After plants spread theirs far and wide it can be preserved in lakebeds or fossilized in soil. When scientists take a sediment core, they sometimes find that pollen from different species dominates in different eras. And since plants thrive best under particular temperatures and conditions, researchers can use the pollen mix to determine the climate of an era.

Sediment Cores

Sediment cores, like ice cores, are vertical columns taken from the ground to extract paleoclimate data.

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Posted By: Ian - Category: weather

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Cloud Photography

July 19th 2010 02:23

Clouds are an amazing thing. Without them life giving water could not be dispensed over our lands. Clouds are little drops of water or frozen crystals suspended in the atmosphere above the surface of the Earth.
No two clouds formed are ever the same, this diversity and beauty has led to many photographers taking shots of different cloud formations when the opportunity arises.
SmashingCenter put together a fabulous post displaying some rare and unusual photos of clouds. View the full article here.

Rolling Clouds by ~RianuWally

Clouds in the Valley by ~CndAngelJessibean

Caverns in the Clouds by ~EllaYuki

Head in the clouds by ~DimensionSeven

Sea of clouds by ~Dopaps

102

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Posted By: Ian - Category: weather

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Time Lapse Snow Fall

March 3rd 2010 02:58

What does 12 inches of snow look like in 5 seconds??

*Image Source

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Posted By: Ian - Category: weather

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Slow Motion Lightning

February 26th 2010 01:51

Lightning is an atmospheric discharge of electricity accompanied by thunder, which typically occurs during thunderstorms, and sometimes during volcanic eruptions or dust storms. In the atmospheric electrical discharge, a leader of a bolt of lightning can travel at speeds of 60,000 m/s (130,000 mph), and can reach temperatures approaching 30,000 °C (54,000 °F), hot enough to fuse silica sand into glass channels known as fulgurites which are normally hollow and can extend some distance into the ground. There are some 16 million lightning storms in the world every year.

Sourced from imgbit.com, below is a slow motion gif of a lightning strike.

*This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article for Lightning.

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Posted By: Ian - Category: weather

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How the UK is Coping With This Exceptionally Cold Winter

January 27th 2010 02:01

This striking image taken by Nasa's Terra satellite on 7 January 2010 shows the UK deep in the clutches of a cold snap.

[ Click here to read more ]

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Posted By: Ian - Category: weather

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Coloured Snow

December 30th 2009 01:57

Everybody knows that snow is pure white, and most of the time this holds true. However due to a variety of environmental and light conditions, sometimes snow can take on other colours. As you will see snow can be literally be a frozen rainbow!
These images and information was sourced from the WebEcoist. Read more here.

[ Click here to read more ]

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Posted By: Ian - Category: weather

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Petrified Lightning

November 25th 2009 01:51

Fulgurites (from the Latin fulgur meaning thunderbolt) are natural hollow glass tubes formed in sand or soil by lightning strikes

[ Click here to read more ]

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Posted By: Ian - Category: weather

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Lenticular Clouds

January 14th 2009 06:01

Lenticular clouds are stationary lens-shaped clouds that form at high altitudes, normally aligned at right-angles to the wind direction.

[ Click here to read more ]

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Posted By: Ian - Category: weather

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Beautiful Frost

January 2nd 2009 10:55

Frost is formed when surfaces are chilled below the dew point of the surrounding air. There are many different kinds of frost such as radiation frost on plants or window frost. It is also capable of causing massive environmental and economic damage. However, in the right circumstances frost can form into beautiful and abstract pieces of art as seen in these images. Thanks to Environmental Graffiti for these.

[ Click here to read more ]

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Posted By: Ian - Category: weather

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Rain Photography

December 22nd 2008 11:16

When the weather turns bad some photographers may be put off taking shots as they won't obtain the stunning lighting effects they are after.
However, to the resourceful photographer rain presents an opportunity to grab some dramatic or even romantic scenes.
Here are some examples of excellent photographs taken in the rain. They came from SmashingMagazine and you can obtain extra information and find many more beautiful photos here
[ Click here to read more ]

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Posted By: Ian - Category: weather

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Images of Winter

December 12th 2008 01:58

Winter is the season over the months of June, July and August in the Southern Hemisphere and December, January and February in the Northern Hemisphere. Winter has short days, cold temperatures and especially in the higher latitudes or altitudes, snow and ice.
The colour which defines winter is definitely white.
Here are some shots detailing the beautiful scenes which can be found during this time of year

[ Click here to read more ]

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Posted By: Ian - Category: weather

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Incredible Light Phenomena

August 6th 2008 02:25

Thanks to Environmental Graffiti, here are some of the most incredible, interesting and rare light phenomena or events that you may or may not be lucky enough to see in your life time.