Occasional musings on meteorology and other bits of Earth science
During Innovative learning Week (ILW) we repeated last year’s little field trip up Arthur’s seat, and again carried out Blaise Pascal’s experiment. The weather was a not unremittingly dull like last year. Rather, it was brisk and showery. We got this nice view of an enthusiastic raincloud: Unfortunately, by the time we reached the summitContinue reading ILW part 2: Arthur’s seat again
Following on my recent paper about Sulphur dioxide from volcanoes, another one has just come out. This time, I am a lot further down the author list and wrote about 3% of the paper, rather than 99%. In fact, my only contribution was this figure, comparing our SO2 data from MLS with the new dataContinue reading Another SO2 paper!
It is innovative lounging laundry learning week (ILW) again: a brief respite from lectures and a chance to do some other educational activities for both lecturers and students. I have been on two outings this week; I am blogging the second one first as the first one has some data to show that I haveContinue reading ILW part 1: Eskdalemuir
Hooray! My paper on SO2 as measured by MLS has now appeared in its final version. It took its time: I have spent a while over the last few weeks sorting out final details, reading proofs, correcting typos and so forth. And I have had to accept the IUPAC spelling of “Sulfur”, despite the factContinue reading Sulfur dioxide paper finalised
There have been a few news items about satellite launches and the like recently. This weekend it was SPACEX’s successful delivery to the ISS and its un-successful attempt to land part of the rocket on a floating platform. At the end of January the news will be about the (hopefully successful) attempt to launch theContinue reading Rocket Science: it should impress you.
One of the things we go through for final-year students studying the Physics of the Climate system is the geometry that allows you to calculate how much sunlight you get at a given latitude on a given day of the year. The result looks like this. Up here at 56°N we get less than 5Continue reading Come back, Sun!
It is only just into December and the Meeja are already muttering that 2014 is on track to be the warmest year on record, both for the UK, and for the whole world. So it is probably time to report on whether my hi-tech whole-year climate-integrating device is in agreement. The answer seems to beContinue reading Warmest year? Grapevine says yes.
I am teaching a few lectures of one of our introductory meteorology courses this semester. I have just finished three lectures and a tutorial exercise on fronts (interesting) and airmasses (dull, but you need them to understand fronts). The Met Office have recently made a new sort of current weather plot available which shows upContinue reading Fronts and Lidar
These two monsters are what is left of last spring’s purple sprouting broccoli crop. I have failed to get anything in the picture that provides a scale, but they are (my) chest height: so about 1.3m tall. Having been planted in 2013, the other plants did the usual thing earlier this year, producing a cropContinue reading A land of giants?
I spotted this nice example of a 22° halo on Sunday morning (5 Oct). I was driving along the A1 at the time, so I screeched to a halt at the first place I could park and grabbed a photograph. Not a very good photograph, unfortunately: it is taken with my mobile phone which doesn’t haveContinue reading 22° halo: storm coming soon.
