KenMankoff

A Radio Interview

I am still learning how to interact with the media and press. It is good to practice on radio where I only have to worry about speaking and not everything else that comes with television.

Last month I was interviewed by the NewlyGreens and it aired on WPSC 88.7 out of Wayne, NJ broadcasting over New Jersey and New York.

You can listen to the interview here.

Iceland’s Root

Iceland's Root

Image appears to be related to Wolfe et al. (1997). Also available in Schubert and Turcotte below the discussion. Image found at LDEO.

GISTEMP.StationData

NASA GISS has recently announced another year of the surface temperature trends. Last year, 2009, tied for the 2nd warmest year on record, and the past decade (January 2000 to December 2009) was the warmest on record.

I took the time this weekend to re-create a Google Earth layer showing these data. This visualization allows you to see a broad geospatial overview, and then select any particular location and see both long-term trends and even the data point for each individual month.

Download (330K)

GISTEMP.StationData

GISTEMP.StationData

Free Online Climate Textbook

The first version of the online textbook, “Introduction to Climate Dynamics and Climate Modelling,” by H. Goosse, P.Y. Barriat, W. Lefebvre, M.F. Loutre, and V. Zunz, and published by the Universite Catholique de Louvain is now available.

http://www.climate.be/textbook

The reader should be able to understand the dominant causes of past climate change and to critically evaluate the projections of climate change over the next centuries or millennia. The book is also intended to give the student the bases to understand how climate models are built and how they could be used to make quantitative estimates of climate variability and climate change, as well as to illustrate how models could be used to understand the most important concepts of climate science.

Climate Lawsuits

According to The Guardian, the scientific basis for climate lawsuits has been established.

It should be interesting to see what type of suits get filed, both legitimate and silly, and the type of payouts involved. Maybe some of the money could even go to those affected, or to solving the problem, rather than the lawyers…

Civil Disobedience

My source at the Clinton Global Initiative spent the morning in a room with Clinton, Gore, Bush Sr., Bono, and a bunch of other interesting people. Apparently Gore called for civil disobedience, specifically by young people, to stop construction of new coal plants. An impressive request from a respected figure, but I’m not sure why he made it a generational issue. I think a disobedient grandmother would be more impressive than a disobedient teenager.

I’ve heeded the Gore call to action (pics) in the past. As I write this I’m debating if I’m willing to chain myself to something and get arrested for this cause. I am aware that any future astronaut applications would be disqualified by this action.

An Historical Climate Model

I just found some old (1973) global climate model (GCM) documentation lying around the office. The document describes the GISS GCM at some stage between the UCLA parent and Model I. Model I evolved into Model II which became the foundation for EdGCM. I have scanned the document and submitted it to the History of Atmospheric GCMs website.

It is a beautiful document describing all aspects of the GCM: Numerics and dynamics, punch cards, grid schemes, physical equations, tables and tables of variables and units, etc. These two images (click for large version) show the punchcard order for the old GCM, and the grid scheme at the poles. I like the pole graphic because it reminds me of last year when I was at the South Pole.

The oldest paper I know of that discusses human induced climate change is from 1896, by Svante Arrhenius, titled On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground (PDF, 4413KB).

@article{Arrhenius:1896b,
        Author = {Svante Arrhenius},
        Journal = {Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science},
        Month = {April},
        Number = {41},
        Pages = {237 -- 276},
        Title = {{On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air
                upon the Temperature of the Ground}},
        Volume = {5},
        Year = {1896}}

@manual{Tsang:1973,
        Author = {L. C. Tsang and R. Karn},
        Month = {October},
        Institution = {Goddard Institute for Space Studies},
        Organization = {Computer Science Corporation},
        Title = {{A documentation of the GISS nine-level
                atmospheric general circulation model},
        Year = {1973}}

Sea Level Rise Maps in Google Earth

To make a sea level rise map in Google Earth, follow these steps. Caveats are a) quality is only as good as the 3D terrain in Google Earth and b) the layer is flat while the earth is curved so it will only work for small areas

1) Open Google Earth. Make sure you have Terrain turned on (bottom left panel) and optionally, turn up the vertical exaggeration (Preferences)

2) Select the Add menu then Polygon

3) On the map window, draw a box around your region of interest. Four clicks works optimally

4) In the Info window, enter a description

5) Select the Altitude tab

6) Enter the desired sea level rise (1-7m)

7) Select Absolute

8) Select OK to close the Info window

Your layer is now complete.