The National Climate Data Center has 300,000 images of tropical cyclones (hurricanes) from 30 years of satellite observations. Unfortunately the method for categorizing them has changed over time and from place to place.
Is a cyclone labeled “Category 3” in 1988 the same intensity as a Category 3 today? Maybe not.
The database needs to be standardized but reclassifying this many storms is an impossible task for NCDC staff. How can they solve this problem? Crowdsource it! Once you know the color scheme, anyone can easily recognize patterns and pick similar images.
Pictured above is Hurricane Gilbert from 1988. It has the classic cyclone swirl and an obvious eye in the middle. The intensity is also shown in color. Dark blue clouds are the very tallest, then red, orange, yellow, with pink-gray the lowest. Gilbert is one intense storm!
Now you’re ready to try your own storm. Here’s what you’ll find at CycloneCenter.org:
The very first time you visit: Watch the demo and click on the “?” Help symbols. If you want, you can create a login so you get credit for your storms.
Occasionally the first step presents you with two images and asks you to click on the more intense storm.
For every storm: A single image is presented on the left. Pick its pattern: Eye, Embedded center, Curved band, Shear, Other. Click the “?” Help buttons to get used to the patterns.
Now pick the image that most closely matches your storm.
Repeat for #3 and #4 for five more time-lapse images of the same storm.
Don’t worry if your first attempt seems clumsy. There is no right answer. Everyone can do it. All of us can help.
Read more about the project here or go directly to CycloneCenter.org to try your eye on a hurricane.
(image of Hurricane Gilbert, 1988, from the Cyclone Center)
Aldo Leopold at his Salk County shack, around 1940 (photo courtesy UW Digital Archives)
Imagine listening to birds without the sounds of human machinery in the background. That’s what our world was like when Aldo Leopold was alive.
In 2012, ecologists Stan Temple and Christopher Bocast from the University of Wisconsin-Madison recreated a 1940 soundscape at Aldo Leopold’s shack in Salk County, Wisconsin. The project was amazing because they didn’t have a recording from Leopold’s time. Instead they built it from his field notes.
Every morning Aldo Leopold listened to the birds and wrote detailed notes of the songs he heard, where he heard them, and the light levels when the birds first sang. Using his notes, bird song recordings from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Macauley Library, and newly recorded background sounds from Wisconsin, Temple and Bocast completed the soundscape.
The result is nothing like the place today. The habitat, birds, and insects have changed and now there’s the constant hum of an interstate less than a mile away.
To get “clean” background sounds Temple and Bocast searched for a quiet place in Wisconsin. It was very hard to find because, as Temple points out, “in the lower 48 states, there is no place more than 35 kilometers [21.7 miles] from the nearest road, making it nearly impossible to tune out the hum of human activity, even in places designated as wilderness.”
I’m familiar with the problem. I’m used to noise near my city home but I go to the woods to be quiet and listen to nature. In the last 15 years I’ve noticed an increase in human-generated sounds in the woods. It’s impossible to avoid the sound of cars, trucks, trains, motorcycles, airplanes, chain saws, all-terrain vehicles, boats and jet skis.
I don’t like it. Perhaps I’m not alone.
On Sunday I watched a flock of robins in the trees along the Bridle Trail in Schenley Park, directly above the Parkway East. I tried to locate the birds by sound but could not hear them over the roar of the interstate.
The birds probably couldn’t hear well either. It was more than annoying. It was stressful.
I wonder what they think of ubiquitous human noise.
One of the most amazing things about hummingbirds is that they fly backwards — and they do it a lot!
Every time they feed, which is about once every two minutes, they reverse when they leave the flower. You’ve seen them do it. They raise their heads, seem to stand up straight, and glide backwards.
Dr. Nir Sapir wondered, Does this posture create more drag than forward flight? Is it harder to do than hovering?
So he and his postdoc advisor Robert Dudley used high speed cameras to observe five Anna’s hummingbirds in a wind tunnel at University of California, Berkeley. They changed the position of the nectar source and varied the wind speed from 0 to 3 meters per second (6.7 mph) so the birds had to fly forward, hover, or fly backward while feeding. They also used an ingenious shroud around the feeder to measure the birds’ oxygen consumption and gauge their exertion.
The results were somewhat surprising. For a hummingbird, backward flight is just as efficient as forward and 20% more efficient than hovering. Drag isn’t a problem because hummingbirds fly backward rather slowly. In the wind tunnel they gave up on backward flight when the wind reached 4.5 meter per second (10 mph).
So if you ask a hummingbird about flying backward, it’s easy!
Click here for more information on this study at BBC Science News.
This month the Arctic sea ice melted to its smallest extent since satellite monitoring began. To see the dramatic change in only 33 years, click here and drag your mouse over the map.
We are used to hearing that the ice has melted, but the surprise this year is that no one thought it would happen this fast. Scientists thought the ice was thick and needed real warmth to melt. The models said it would take years to get this bad.
Apparently not. Apparently the ice is so thin that a strong wind can break it into slush that melts quickly.
And there was a strong wind.
The NASA animation above shows arctic wind circulation from August 1 to September 13. The long red arrows are the fastest winds.
Play the video and you’ll see a storm blow off the coast of Alaska on August 5 and swirl into a cyclone that broke up the ice and opened a large extent of the ocean.
This dramatic melting creates a gigantic feedback loop in which the lack of ice causes temperatures to rise and that causes more ice to melt.
A churning cyclone. A feedback loop. The situation is changing rapidly and brings to mind this verse:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…”
— from The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats
(video from NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio)
There are plenty of birding opportunities in the month of October. Here are a few that came across my desk in the last week.
Hawk Watch:
October is a great time to watch hawks, falcons and eagles on their southward journey. Click on the embedded links for details:
The Allegheny Front Hawk Watch, southeast of Central City, counts the most golden eagles of any hawk watch in PA (279 last year!). Golden eagles pass through from late October into December. Experienced watchers will tell you this site sees the most hawks when there’s an east wind, but beware! A due east wind can bring thick fog.
Three Rivers Birding Club holds outings almost every week. Summarized below are the outings through October. Click here for September details and here for October’s information.
Saturday, September 29 – Harrison Hills Park – leader: Jim Valimont, 8:15 AM
Saturday, October 6 – Presque Isle – leader: Shawn Collins, 9:00 AM
Sunday, October 7 – Frick Park – leaders: Jack and Sue Solomon, 7:30am
Saturday, October 13 – Pymatuning Area – leader: Bob VanNewkirk, 9:00 AM
Sunday October 28 – Moraine State Park – annual Three Rivers Birding Club picnic and bird walk, 8:00 AM.
The Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania holds outings at their three locations: Beechwood Farms Nature Center, Todd Sanctuary and Succop in Butler, Pennsylvania. I’ve summarized the birding activities below but be sure to follow this link to the calendar and sign up online:
Friday, September 28 – Discovery Morning Walk at Todd Sanctuary
Wednesday, October 3, 9:00am – RADical Days Senior Hike at Beechwood
Wednesdays in October 10 through 31, 9:00am – Discovery Morning Walk at Beechwood
Thursdays in October 11 through 25, 9:00am – Discovery Morning Walk at Succop, Butler, PA
Pleasant Hills Arboretum Fall Bird Walks:
Bob Mulvihill will lead a series of bird walks at Pleasant Hills Arboretum on Saturdays: September 29, October 13, and October 20. Meet at the Arboretum parking lot on West Bruceton Road at 8:00am. Walks will last one to two hours. Bring binoculars if you have them. All ages and skill levels are welcome.
Grab your binoculars. See some birds. 🙂
(photo from Wikimedia Commons. Click on the image to see the original)
Yes, and it’s also the name of these very rare roll clouds that stretch as much as 1000 km. That’s 620 miles, the distance from Pittsburgh to Dallas, Texas!
I’ve never seen a morning glory cloud but the literature says they are low and tubular and appear to be rolling on their horizontal axis. They travel up to 60 kilometers per hour (37 mph) over a landscape that has no wind at ground level — until they arrive.
Morning glories bring wind with them and such great updrafts on the leading edge that glider pilots flock to the only place on earth where these clouds reliably occur: northern Australia’s Gulf of Carpentaria from August to November. Some have ridden these clouds for 500 km (310 mi).
Morning glory clouds can form (rarely) in response to severe thunderstorms but in Queensland they’re caused by sea breezes that flow onshore overnight at the Cape York Peninsula. The moist air comes from both east and west, meets in the middle over the peninsula, and rises into a stack of cold, turbulent air. Before dawn the stack is blown westward over the Gulf and causes ripples in the sky, each one carrying a long roll cloud.
Right now it’s spring in Australia and prime season for this rare phenomenon. In Burketown, Queensland the glider pilots awake before dawn, hoping for glory.
(photo by Mick Petroff via Wikimedia Commons. Click on the image to see the original)
Did you know that bumblebees purposely vibrate flowers to release their pollen?
Bumblebees collect both nectar and pollen to feed their young. For the most part they travel from flower to flower and quickly gather what they need, but when a good food source is uncooperative they may resort to force.
When the flower entrance is nearly sealed, as in closed gentians, the bumblebee forces her way in.
Closed Gentian (photo by Dianne Machesney)
When the flower’s anthers won’t release pollen, the bumblebee shakes them. She does this by grabbing hold of the flower and vibrating her flight muscles — that’s what makes her buzz — so the technique is called buzz pollination.
A small percentage of plants must be shaken to release pollen but others benefit from it including shooting stars (Dodecatheon) and the Solanum genus: tomatoes, potatoes and eggplant.
Thus, bumblebees are often hired to pollinate greenhouse tomatoes.
