Hope you all had an excellent holiday period and are raring to get back into work/study. As usual we have an excellent list of bloggers ready to provide you with some interesting discussion of Weather and Climate throughout this term.As you can see there are still a few spaces open so please do get in … Continue reading “Spring Term 2011 – List of bloggers”
During September and October the large spring-time depletion of stratospheric ozone, the so-called ozone-hole, occurs over the Southern Hemisphere polar cap. Despite the success of the Montreal Protocol in restricting production and emission of ozone depleting substances, large concentrations remain in the stratosphere and continue to cause major depletion of ozone each spring. A summary … Continue reading “Week 1 – Current and future Ozone holes”
The leaves are starting to turn and my walk to work is getting muddier every day so that must mean that a new term is about to start. For those new to the department, this blog is a complement to our weekly weather and climate discussion (Friday, 12pm, GU01). Each week (and sometimes in between) … Continue reading “Autumn term 2010 – bloggers”
Our final day on Arran and our final occluded fronts from the dominant series of systems influencing our weather look to have passed during mid-morning. Yesterday (Friday 10th) we saw a really nice frontal progression in our weather station measurements as another occluded front passed around 10:30 local time. The transition in air mass was … Continue reading “Arran field course – live blog – Saturday 11th September”
Two more days on Arran with some glorious early autumn sunshine in addition to our typical mix of cloudy and shower weather. A sequence of our 12Z radiosonde soundings from Tuesday to today (incorporated intothe Met Office observation processing suite) shows this fluctuating picture of air masses which we have observed On Tuesday, Arran was … Continue reading “Arran field course – live blog – Thursday 9th September”
Today’s activity for all groups was an instrumented walk up Goat Fell (850m above sea level) the highest point on Arran. We left the field centre with some trepidation, expecting heavy rainfall all day. Rain began for us around 2300 local time last night as the occluded front associated with the complex low to our … Continue reading “Arran field course – live blog – Tuesday 7th September”
This week 12 BSc and MMet students from Reading, along with 5 staff and 36 students and staff from the University of Leeds are here in Lochranza on Arran for a weeklong residential field course. The students will be involved in various activities including a hill walk, radiosonde and ozonesonde launches, boundary layer sampling with … Continue reading “Arran field course – live blog – Monday 6th September”
A summary of July from our atmospheric observatory is included below (courtesy of Mike Stroud): Notable features are the general warmth in all four temperature diagnostics consistent with the UK picture from the Met Office: One notable feature of July was that all 31 days recorded maximum temperatures above 20 degC. This is only the … Continue reading “July summary”
Did anyone else see this article on the Guardian science blog this week? Numerous online dictionaries seem to have an error in the definition of how a siphon works, in particular that a siphon (according to the OED) is: A pipe or tube of glass, metal or other material, bent so that one leg is … Continue reading “The definition of ‘siphon’”
It seems as if a significant ecological disaster is developing in the Gulf of Mexico following the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig last week and subsequent outflow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. I’ll talk about the spill and ways in which the oil is dispersed in WCD. Meanwhile, here … Continue reading “Deepwater horizon oil spill – links”