How much hazardous waste does the average American household accumulate in one year? Ten pounds? Fifty? Actually, the typical home accumulates up to 100 pounds of household hazardous waste in just one year! Think of paints, pesticides, cleaning supplies, oil, antifreeze and other products that hide away in the basement, garage or shed. These products may contain corrosive, toxic or flammable ingredients. If products are dumped outside or stored in an area where rain or floodwater can reach them, they can be washed into storm drains, rivers and streams, and even well water, putting water quality at risk.

Take a few minutes during spring cleaning to make sure you’re properly storing and disposing of household hazardous wastes.

• Store products in their original containers  with labels to avoid misuse or accidental ingestion.
• Never mix leftovers with other products – this may cause reactions or explosions. Mixing products may also make it so they cannot be recycled.
• If you no longer need a product, take it to a local household hazardous waste collection program. Find one at www.cleanup.org.

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Here’s a partial list of upcoming spotter sessions for Spring 2010. These are free of charge. WGEM is proud to partner with the Red Cross & Adams Co. Emergency Management for the March 15th session.

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Two months ago, NASA’s Timothy Hall and colleagues published a study that described how they had estimated the amount of manmade carbon dioxide absorbed by the ocean since the start of the industrial era.

Oceans absorb about a third of the carbon dioxide that humans release into the atmosphere, so sorting out a long-term record of carbon uptake is of great interest to climate scientists.

To create their record of the ocean’s uptake of carbon, Hall and Samar Khatiwala, the lead author of the study, devised a clever mathematical technique that proved to be a considerable advance. When Hall’s study appeared in the journal Nature, he assumed the creation of this new long-term, continuous record would headline the news.

But journalists gravitated toward something else entirely: a brief mention that the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by the ocean seemed to be experiencing, as the researchers put it, “a small decline in the rate of increase in the last few decades.”

“Seas Grow Less Effective at Absorbing Emissions”, one headline trumpeted. Another article compared the world’s oceans to a fish “stuffed to the gills” with carbon dioxide and another reported a “sudden and dramatic drop in the amount of carbon dioxide being absorbed by the sea.“

Given the caveats included in the original study, all of this caught Hall slightly off guard. I’ll let Hall, who summarized his reactions to the coverage for What On Earth, pick the story up from here:

My coauthors and I had viewed the ability to estimate the history of ocean uptake of anthropogenic carbon as the highlight of the paper. Previously, observationally-based estimates had only provided a few snapshots in time, and we were proud of the cleverness of our techniques.

It seems clever mathematical techniques, however, don’t make good press releases. Interestingly, coverage of the paper has not focused on the fact that we can estimate the uptake history. Instead it has focused on apparent reductions in the rate of uptake over the last 2 decades.

The figure below shows our estimate of ocean uptake since 1775. The first impression is the rapid increase since 1950, coinciding with the rapid rise in carbon emissions to the atmosphere. The oceans have prevented about 1/3 of anthropogenic carbon emissions from accumulating in the atmosphere. A closer reading of the curve reveals a reduction in the uptake’s rate of increase after about 1980, even while emissions continue to increase.

Scientists have long suspected that ocean carbon uptake would eventually be unable to keep pace with rising emissions. Basic aqueous chemistry tells us that, as dissolved carbon in seawater increases, seawater becomes less able to absorb new carbon. Eventually, the absorption saturates. The slowing down of the increase rate may be an early signal of this saturation.

However, recent changes in uptake were not our focus when we performed the study, and more importantly we did not analyze the statistical significance of the slowdown. We plan further analysis on these trend variations. What we can say is that there are physical reasons to suspect a reduction in the ocean’s capacity to keep pace with increasing carbon emissions, and that there are now strong observational hints for recent reductions.

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Mid-winter is the perfect time to put out a birdhouse. Even though there is still snow on the ground in many places and many bird species are still far to the south, it’s not too early. Chickadees, bluebirds, screech owls and woodpeckers are among the bird species that will use a birdhouse built and mounted to their specifications. All of these species stick around for the winter and at this time of year begin scouting out locations to build their nests come spring. If you have a birdhouse out now, these birds are likely to pick your yard as the place to raise their new family once spring arrives.

Tip: If cold or snowy weather is keeping you inside and you’re looking for a fun do-it-yourself project, consider building your own birdhouse instead of purchasing one. The Cornell Lab or Ornithology has plans for several different types of birdhouses, along with plans for predator guards to keep animals like raccoons, snakes and cats away from nesting birds. Visit http://www.birds.cornell.edu/nestinginfo/nestboxref/construct.

More helpful birdhouse-building tips are available from National Wildlife Federation: http://www.nwf.org/Get-Outside/Outdoor-Activities/Garden-for-Wildlife/Gardening-Tips/Tipsheets.aspx.

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We’ve been busy in the WX Center – we now Twitter, we Facebook, and our attention tends to divert into other lines of communique.

We haven’t totally forgotten about blogging, it’s that we have to learn the paths of least resistance to deliver timely information. New Media is something everyone should embrace. It’s just the way of the world and not just a passing fad. It will morph into different looks, ways & means. Nonetheless, I’ve always embraced change and it happens. That’s life.

Here I will be posting more long form weather data & writings pertinent to climate change, events, things that interest me and that I’d like to share. Comments are always appreciated!

In the mean time, feel free to follow me on Twitter – Rcain_WGEM, Facebook – if you have the gull, or by the regular cyber means of exchanging electronic mumbo jumbo. Didn’t 3 Dog night write a song about Shambala? I’ll see ya all there. – Rich

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Following the torrential rains the last several days, I did a little digging as to why thunder varies in its sound. You may already know lightning causes thunder. It’s the sound of the surrounding air expanding faster than the speed of sound due to the electrical discharge. There are different types of lightning which I’ll cover later, but it’s the type of discharge that produces the resultant roar of thunder. Here’s some interesting stuff…

Some storms produce cloud to ground (CG) lightning that sounds quite loud. Lightning can produce very loud booming thunder if the return stroke current is large or longer-lasting than usual. Two types of lightning that may produce loud thunder are:

 
• Cloud to ground lightning originating from the top of a thunderstorm. The lightning channel can be very long, much longer than cloud to ground lightning that originates low in the cloud. As a result, there is more charge deposited along the channel and the discharge current will heat up the channel more. 
• Ground to cloud lightning, which sometimes initiates from tall objects such as transmitter towers or skyscrapers. In this case the current is very low (there is no return stroke) but lasts very long, and the channel is heated up more.

In both cases, the thunder may sound like a series of sharp booms similar to sonic booms. Every peal of thunder is associated with one part of the channel, the later peals from parts further away from you (i.e. higher up).

The overall shape and tortuosity of the channel also determines how thunder will sound. If many sound waves from different parts of the channel arrive at your ears in phase with eachother, the sound will be louder than if they arrive out of phase. If a lightning channel is very tortuous, there may be many parts of the channel that emit thunder soundwaves at different phases.

Here’s a clip from Youtube of a lightning strike on the tower of Nashville’s WSIX radio…pretty cool to watch but oh what a headache after.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMpm7oHNivg

Rich

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From NASA…

Splat! There goes another bug on the windshield.

Anyone who’s ever driven down a country lane has seen it happen. A fast moving car, a cloud of multiplying insects, and a big disgusting mess.

The next time that happens to you, instead of feeling grossed out, try thinking of the experience as an astronomy lesson. Your car is Earth. The bugs are tiny flakes of comet dust. The carnage on your windshield … it’s a meteor shower!

Earth, like a speeding car, races around the Sun sweeping up everything in its path. There are no insects in space, but there are plenty of meteoroids, little flakes of dust from comets and asteroids. They hit Earth’s atmosphere and–splat!–they disintegrate as fiery streaks of light called meteors.

This week lots of meteors will appear over Earth’s northern hemisphere when our planet plows through a swarm of dust shed by periodic comet Swift-Tuttle. It’s the annual Perseid meteor shower, which peaks on August 11th and 12th.

Just as bugs tend to accumulate on the front windshield of a car, Perseids accumulate on the front windshield of Earth.

Earth has a windshield? It’s the atmosphere, which protects us from solar wind and comet dust much as a car’s windshield protects passengers from wind, rain and bugs. Earth’s front windshield is the early morning sky. Earth circles the Sun dawn-side first, scooping up whatever lies on that side of the planet. That’s why it’s usually best to look for Perseids just before dawn.

A good time to see Perseids this year is before dawn on Wednesday morning, August 12th, when Earth’s front windshield is overhead.

Side windows, the ones to the left and right of passengers in cars, are good, too. Zooming down a bug-infested lane, side windows don’t intercept many insects, but the ones they do gather are worth examining. Bugs that strike side windows do so at a shallow angle, leaving long and colorful streaks.

This also happens to meteors. When the constellation Perseus (the source of the Perseids) hangs low near the horizon, meteors streaming from Perseus will skim the the top of Earth’s atmosphere, much like a bug skimming the side window of an automobile. Astronomers call these meteors “Earthgrazers.” They tend to be long and colorful.

Look for Perseid Earthgrazers on Tuesday night, Aug. 11th, between 9:00 and 11:00 p.m.
This year, evening Earthgrazers on August 11th could be the best part of the show, because the Moon and its interfering glare will be below the horizon in early evening. Dark skies = good meteor watching. Later, when Earth’s “front windshield” rises, the Moon will rise with it, reducing the number of Perseids you’ll be able to see before sunrise on August 12th.

Earthgrazers don’t come in large numbers. The special geometry required to produce them keeps counts low, but even one or two is enough. A breathtaking Earthgrazer is the sort of meteor you’re likely to remember for years.

Best of all, there’s no gooey residue.  

Dr. Tony Phillips
Science@NASA

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(From NASA Scientist)… For the sixth year in a row, a message about the Red Planet is popping up in email boxes around the world. It instructs readers to go outside after dark on August 27th and behold the sky. “Mars will look as large as the full moon,” it says. “No one alive today will ever see this again.”

Don’t believe it.

Here’s what will really happen if you go outside after dark on August 27th. Nothing. Mars won’t be there. On that date, the red planet will be nearly 250 million km away from Earth and completely absent from the evening sky.
The Mars Hoax got its start in 2003 when Earth and Mars really did have a close encounter. On Aug. 27th of that year, Mars was only 56 million km away, a 60,000-year record for martian close approaches to Earth. Someone sent an email alerting friends to the event. The message contained some misunderstandings and omissions—but what email doesn’t? A piece of advanced technology called the “forward button” did the rest.
Tolerant readers may say that the Mars Hoax is not really a hoax, because it is not an intentional trick. The composer probably believed everything he or she wrote in the message. If that’s true, a better name might be the “Mars Misunderstanding” or maybe the “Confusing-Email-About-Mars-You-Should-Delete-and-Not-Forward-to-Anyone-Except-Your-In-Laws.”

Another aspect of the Mars Hoax: It says Mars will look as large as the full Moon if you magnify it 75x using a backyard telescope. The italicized text is usually omitted from verbal and written summaries of the Hoax. (For example, see the beginning of this story.) Does this fine print make the Mars Hoax true? After all, if you magnify the tiny disk of Mars 75x, it does subtend an angle about the same as the Moon.
No. Even with magnification, Mars does not look the same as a full Moon.
This has more to do with the mysterious inner workings of the human brain than cold, hard physics. Looking at Mars magnified 75x through a slender black tube (the eyepiece of a telescope) and looking at the full Moon shining unfettered in the open sky are two very different experiences.

A good reference is the Moon Illusion. Moons on the horizon look huge; Moons directly overhead look smaller. In both cases, it is the same Moon, but the human mind perceives the size of the Moon differently depending on its surroundings.
Likewise, your perception of Mars is affected by the planet’s surroundings. Locate the planet at the end of a little dark tunnel, and it is going to look tiny regardless of magnification.

Bummer!

To see Mars as big as a full Moon, you’ll need a rocketship, and that may take some time. Meanwhile, beware the Mars Hoax.

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