25 Jun 2017 at 11:36:01
· Filed under Environment, Science
Posted by CapnBob
A large part of the elements that contribute to our summer monsoons here in Sonoran Arizona is the influence of Eastern Pacific Ocean tropical activity. When storms form west of Mexico and move northwestward (as they usually do), they introduce a flow of tropical moist air across the southwest. The counter-clockwise circulation around the storms forces moist air northward in the lee of the storm’s movement.
Currently, Tropical Storm Dora, which is forecast to become a hurricane by tomorrow, is moving west-north westward into the Pacific Ocean. Dora, seen just to the north of the inter-tropical convergence zone (the horizontal string of clouds near the bottom of the image above), is already pumping large amounts of moisture across Honduras, the Yucatan and much of Southern Mexico. As the storm moves away from the land mass, it will probably start pumping some of that moisture northward.
In July of 2015, Tropical Storm Danielle was responsible for a northward flow of tropical moisture that resulted in a severe monsoon over our area that dropped over five inches of rain in less than two hours. The Casandro Dam catch basin filled to capacity, the washes and Hassayampa river were all in flood stage. Hopefully, Dora will drift westward and not be a problem for us.
Today marks the official first day of summer, although the summer weather starts sooner than that in Sonoran Arizona. We have been under the same heat wave as most of the west, except a tad warmer than a lot of places. Our temperature was 117° yesterday with cooler (only 114°) predicted for today. As a bonus, you can bank on the Greenbat Cultists calling that we are all gonna die and mankind is to blame. As DrJim points out, “we learned about this in school - it was called ’seasons.’”
Speaking of solstice, there is an interesting image on today’s APOD: a Solstice Sun Dial that spells out SOLSTICE only on this day.
This nice animation of the August 21st Eclipse across America showed up on Astronomy Picture of the Day today. It is less than a minute in length and is a good graphic illustration of the path of totality.
The embedded video can be set to full screen for enlargement.
After the video finishes, there is another interesting video follow-up that animates the shadow of the moon as it crosses the country. You can see in detail where totality occurs with the shadow video.
The countdown has been underway here for almost five years since we first made our reservations at the RV campground near the centerline of the eclipse in Wyoming. Now, however, we’re down to the last few weeks before the big event. The Javascript countdown timer above shows the remaining time to the start of the eclipse (first lunar encroachment) in Arizona Time.
The date of the eclipse is August 21, 2017. The beginning of the eclipse is dependent on the location of the observer, but in our case is 16:22:20 UTC, The seven hour difference has been adjusted in the timer. Totality follows a bit over an hour later. The interactive eclipse map has moved to the NASA Eclipse pages:
Old NFO posted the image above the other day. I stole it from there.
I found a good item via The Patriot Post that completely debunks the claim that an overwhelming number of scientists agree that Global Climate Change (can’t call it “warming” anymore) is due to anthropogenic activity. The article “Debunking the ‘97% of Climate Scientists Agree’ Claim” contains the following damning passage:
It appears that Cook et al. decided to compare only those scientists who had strong opinions. If that is the case, the first two categories represent scientists who believe man is causing all or most of the warming (986), while those in categories 6 and 7 believe man is causing none or almost none (24). This ratio is about 97%. But the most important result of this study is that almost 8,000 had no opinion or were uncertain. So much for the 97%.
Why were there only 24 papers published by skeptics? We found out in 2009, when 22,000 email exchanges between senior meteorologists in the U.S. and Europe were released. Many of the emails were published by Steven Mosher and Thomas Fuller in “Climategate: The Crutape Letters” (nQuire Services, 2010). We learned the following things from this scandal:
Those promoting man-made global warming:
Controlled the meteorology and climatology journals in the U.S.;
Controlled non-meteorological science publication (Nature, Science, etc.);
Controlled Wikipedia;
Manipulated data;
Demonized skeptics.
Those of us who have studied, albeit casually, have determined the whole climate bugaboo is a hoax. It is only intended to cripple freedom and prosperity in the west and nothing more. There is a special warm place awaiting those who knowingly promote these falsehoods.
The Wikipedia Page for generic Lantana enumerates about 150 species for the genus of these shrubs. I’m not going to begin to venture a guess as to which one is depicted in the image.
We were at the Community Hospital clinic today to see one of the specialists and this nice flowering bush was along the sidewalk leading into the facility. I took this close-up of a couple of florets on the bush. In this image you can see how the more mature flowers in the cluster turn orange and yellow with age:
Lantana’s aromatic flower clusters (called umbels) are a mix of red, orange, yellow, or blue and white florets. Other colors exist as new varieties are being selected. The flowers typically change color as they mature, resulting in inflorescences that are two- or three-colored.
Damsel and I went out to the courtyard last night to observe a fairly close encounter between Jupiter and the Waxing Gibbous Moon. The conjunction was almost directly overhead of us when I took this photo. Jupiter is visible as a small dot in the lower right. Click on the image to enlarge.
We witnessed the Moon and Jupiter the evening before when they were a hand span apart at arms length and Jupiter being to the East. Last night, the pair were separated by only a thumbnail with Jupiter having moved to the west side of the Moon. I took the photo without the aid of a tripod using my Canon EOS REBEL SL1: 1/500 sec, F8, ISO 800, F/L 190mm.
The pair will be up there again tonight with the Moon appearing a bit fuller and further to the east of Jupiter. The weather has been very cooperative for evening visits to the courtyard after dusk with the 106° daytime temperature having diminished to under 90° by 8:30PM.
