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November

Top Stories

Can We Stop Storms? - With brutal hurricanes on the rise, scientists turn to far-out technologies to fight them off
Popular Science (November Issue) circ. 1,469,181
. . . Another concept involves a squadron of cargo planes airdropping thousands of tons of a water-absorbing powder onto a hurricane to extract moisture from rain clouds. . . . Dyn-O-Mat's founder and CEO, Peter Cordani, has already arranged to lease a specially rigged 747 "supertanker" to conduct trials on actual hurricanes. Meanwhile he has assembled an all-star team of scientists from labs at Florida State University, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, NOAA and elsewhere to begin running computer models that analyze the gel's effect on larger storms.

Hurricane Watchers Hit Their Mark
IEEE Spectrum (November 30, 2005) circ 385,000
. . . [N]ear-term forecasting has improved enormously in recent years, saving countless lives and many millions of dollars. . . . "Katrina's 48-hour forecast was right on geographically, and only a couple of hours off in time," says Bob Gall, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). "It was an excellent forecast." . . . Gall expects advances on all these fronts to continue, moving accurate forecasts out to three and potentially even four days. "Maybe four days is what we really need," he says. "If we had had four days before Katrina, they might have cut the number of people left in town by a factor of two. . . ."

Global warming stalks Yosemite—Retracing the steps of a meticulous early 20th century biologist, researchers find that some of the park’s tiniest residents have moved a startling distance uphill
San Francisco Chronicle (November 27, 2005) circ 510,844
Biologist Joseph Grinnell . . . believed that in the future, scientists would return to some of his more than 700 study sites, and use his findings to chart changes. . . . But even the prescient Joseph Grinnell didn't count on global warming. . . . Scientists warn that even if we could quit adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere tomorrow, the planet would continue to warm up. Researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., call it the "climate change commitment."

NBC11 News: The Bay Area At 6AM
KNTV-TV CH 11 (NBC) San Francisco (November 11, 2005) DMA: 6
06:00 AM - 07:00 AM  
05:00 AM - 06:00 AM
00:18:17 TZ; Stanford: Hackers have hit the computers at Stanford University, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and the University of Illinois. Looking for further computers to take over. 00:18:46.

Edmond [sic] Fitzgerald sinking recreated
UPI (November 10, 2005)
and these other publications
University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists say they've created a simulation of the 1975 Lake Superior storm that sank the ore carrier Edmund Fitzgerald. . . . Robert Aune [NOAA] . . . obtained conventional observations from the National Center[s] for Environmental Prediction and the National Center for Atmospheric Research that uses modern techniques and technology to re-analyze weather data from 1949 through the present.

Volcanoes curb rise in sea levels
The Guardian (Manchester, U.K.) (November 3, 2005) circ. 378,000
The Hindu (Madras, India) (November 4, 2005) circ. 900,000
In a study reported in the journal Nature today, John Church at the Australian government's CSIRO research facility and scientists at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Colorado found that the huge eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991 led to a vast cloud of fine particles that triggered a dramatic cooling of ocean waters, equivalent to losing the amount of energy contained in more than 700m tonnes of oil.

Warming to Cause Harsher Weather, Study Says
Washington Post (October 18, 2005) circ. 1,000,565
Seattle Times (October 18, 2005) circ. 457,010
Counterthink.org (November 4, 2005)
Extreme weather events . . . are likely to become more common . . . according to a new study by Purdue University researchers. . . . [T]hree scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research . . . published a paper suggesting that precipitation around the world is likely to become more intense as global warming continues. One of the authors of that study, Gerald A. Meehl, said the Purdue paper is consistent with his findings. "This is what you'd expect to see," Meehl said. . . . Kevin Trenberth, who heads the Colorado center's climate analysis section, said the two separate findings highlight "the need to examine not just the precipitation amount but also the intensity, frequency, duration and type" of rain or snow that may stem from climate change.

NewsNight
CNN -- National (November 1, 2005) aud: 656,000
10:00 PM - 11:00 PM
01:19:43 TZ; Bill Collins , chair, Climate System Model , National Center for Atmospheric Research , one [modeled] day is three trillion arithmetical calculations. V; National Center for Atmospheric Research models. V; CCSM Simulation of Summer Surface Temperatures. I; Collins, All the models say it's warming and we are changing the chemistry of the atmosphere. I; Richard Lindzen, MIT, we don't understand clouds or water vapor. Miles O'Brien reporting. 01:27:59.

Other Stories

We need to wake up to global warming
Oregon Daily Emerald (Eugene) (November 29, 2005)
The National Center for Atmospheric Research recently reported that rising global temperatures may lead to bigger, more frequent storms within the next century, and a separate Purdue study supported those findings.

Strange But True
TheHook.com (December 21, 2005)
Richmond.com (November 29, 2005)
. . . [A] few years ago the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research found what APPEARED to be twin snowflakes, matching hollow hexagonal prisms. They may have looked very similar, says [author Roger] Highfield, but a precise match is so unlikely as to be impossible.

First Investment Bank Joins Growing Ranks of Global Financial Institutions Addressing Urgent Environmental and Social Issues
Commondreams.org (November 22, 2005)
EnvironmentalNewsNetwork.com (November 22, 2005)
Rainforest Action Network today commended Goldman Sachs for being the first global investment bank to adopt a comprehensive environmental policy [that] acknowledges the scientific consensus on climate change. . . . Supporting facts: . . . The number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes worldwide has nearly doubled over the past 35 years. – National Center for Atmospheric Research/Georgia Tech.

Teachers to Use Online Resources in Hurricane Katrina Affected Areas
ITnewsonline.com (India) (November 19, 2005)
Axcessnews.com (November 19, 2005)
The National Science Digital Library and the Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE) Program Center, two of America's leading digital science libraries, will hold free online workshops to familiarize teachers in areas affected by Hurricane Katrina with online educational materials that are freely available through the libraries. . . . . The libraries are managed by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. . . .

Eventually, U.S. must face global warming solutions
News & Advance (Lynchburg, Virginia) (November 18, 2005)
“Here in the U.S., our public discussion of global warming is at least 10 years behind the rest of the world,” said Mark Hertsgaard. . . . [T]he weather extremes are a result, in part, of the global climate change. According to data gathered by researchers at Georgia Tech and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the number of major Category 4 and 5 hurricanes worldwide has nearly doubled over the past 35 years. . . .

Storm Stories
Weather Channel -- National (November 17, 2005)
11:00 PM - 12:00 AM
08:00 PM - 09:00 PM
00:34:34 . . . At the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, meteorologist Doug Wesley and his colleagues are studying a particular curl of air moving toward the Pacific Northwest. The system, with moisture, is on a collision course with a mass of frigid air parked over the Rockies... 00:37:34

Oregon State GIS group gets ready to map your world
OSU Barometer Online (November 17, 2005)
OSU is an academic leader in the GIS field, as it is one of the 16 founders of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, the major academic consortium in the field, that now counts over 70 members.

Platform Computing and IBM Push the Boundaries of Supercomputing Performance
CommsDesign.com (November 17, 2005)
Finextra.com (Novmber 17, 2005)
Yahoo Finance (November 15, 2005)
"As atmospheric research takes a more prominent role on the world stage, it is increasingly important that we take steps to ensure we have adequate computational resources available for geoscience simulation," said Richard Loft, Deputy Director of Research and Development in the Scientific Computing Division at NCAR. "The impending integration of Platform LSF and IBM Blue Gene will allow us to harness the full potential of our HPC environment and facilitate our ability to manage multiple workloads. . . ."

NASA issues grants to Colorado entities
Denver Business Journal (November 16, 2005)
Two Colorado institutions have received grants totaling more than $1.6 million to do research for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in finding traces of water remotely, the agency said Tuesday. The National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder received $516,986. . . .

Sandia to Move to 50 Teraflops as Part of Red Storm Contract
MarketWire.com (November 14, 2005)
Challenging problems already running in production mode at large scale on Sandia's Red Storm supercomputer include: . . . Atmospheric Climate. Sandia ran the Sandia-NCAR Spectral Element Atmospheric Model (SEAM), coupled with the Community Atmospheric Model (CAM), on 10,000 processors of Red Storm for 36 hours to simulate 20 days. . . .

IBM Continues Global Supercomputing Lead—Delivers More Than a Petaflop of Computing Power
MarketWire.com (November 14, 2005)
IBM and its partners are exploring a growing list of high performance computing (HPC) applications including . . . climate modeling for eServer Blue Gene. . . . NCAR [and other] research institutions make up a growing ecosystem of early collaborators dedicated to harnessing Blue Gene's power to advance research.

Author: Global warming is the greatest threat
News & Advance (Lynchburg, Virginia) (November 13, 2005)
The single greatest problem facing mankind in 5,000 years of civilization is not terrorism, but global warming. . . . According to data gathered by researchers at Georgia Tech and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the number of major Category 4 and 5 hurricanes worldwide has nearly doubled over the past 35 years, even though the total number of hurricanes has dropped since the 1990s.

Disappearing plane still a mystery years later
Michigan Technological University Online Lode (November 9, 2005)
Oct. 23, 1968 was a bright and sunny fall day when the Queen Air 80 left Madison, Wis. She was a Beechcraft model that belonged to the National Center for Atmospheric Research running a rather routine mission. . . .

Sanitary district receives recognition
The Daily Review (Hayward, California) (November 7, 2005)
The Union Sanitary District has received a "special achievement" award from the Environmental Systems Research Institute for outstanding work in geographic information system (GIS) mapping. . . . Other award recipients include . . . the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado.

Model foresees carbonated planet
LAmonitor.com (Los Alamos, New Mexico) (November 3, 2005)
Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory predicted a significant increase in average air temperature over the long term. . . . A new study uses a series of interlinked computer models, including . . . an ocean-atmosphere model from National Center for Atmospheric Research. . . .

Native American Family Technology Journey Seeks to Preserve Heritage Through Innovation and Encourage Internet Access Today
SocialFunds.com (November 3, 2005)
CSRwire.com (November 3, 2005)
The 2005 Native American Family Technology Journey (The Journey), launching on November 1, will offer Native People across the United States a chance to explore what technology and innovation can mean for their families as they embrace the full potential of the Internet. . . . An “Evening of Technology” will be hosted by the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, National Center for Atmospheric Research. . . .

Era of the Mega-Hurricanes
HoweStreet.com (November 2, 2005)
Is there really an era of super-strength hurricanes afoot? In all likeliness, yes. . . . In a study by Georgia Tech and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, [Peter] Webster and his colleagues report a vast global increase in the number of colossal typhoons, cyclones and hurricanes since 1975.

Real-World Data Contradict Hurricane Alarmism
Heartland.org (November 1, 2005)
A month ago, the University of Colorado's Roger Pielke Jr. posted a paper that was accepted in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society concluding there is little if any sign of global warming in hurricane patterns. In a pre-emptive strike, Kevin Trenberth, from the federally funded National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, told the local newspaper, "I think he [Pielke] should withdraw his article. This is a shameful article."

Katrina Exposes Media's Global Warming Bias
Heartland.org (November 1, 2005)
No sooner had Hurricane Katrina moved inland to spawn tornadoes, flooding, misery, and tragedy than global warming alarmists and some in the media began spawning junk science. . . . "There's a clear signature of global warming in [Katrina]. While it's not the dominant factor, in some things it becomes the straw that breaks the camel's back," said Kevin Trenberth of the nonprofit National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) to the [Washington] Post on August 30. The Post didn't say what the alleged "clear signature" was, nor did it mention that NCAR is institutionally committed to global warming alarmism.