- Global Warnings -
A study of local weather usually requires observations of some of the following: temperature, humidity, rainfall, wind, present weather, clouds, visibility and pressure.
Most of these observations are made at Weather Stations.
Weather stations use sophisticated equipment and trained staff to make observations. Weather stations also can tell us how fast the wind is moving and how much rain falls during a storm.
Observations need to be taken regularly, often for many months, if the results are to be of any use. This requires dedication by those involved as they will be required to take careful, regular readings.
Weather Stations can be set up almost anywhere on land, but can often be found at local airports, due to constant staffing and the fact that pilots are dependent on data provided by these stations to guarantee a safe flight.
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Weather
Station
or to find a Weather Station near you.
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Almost everyone likes balloons, including scientists! Weather balloons are used as a scientific instrument and are released to float high up into the atmosphere. They carry special instruments that send all kinds of information about weather back to people on the ground.
Twice a day, every day of the year, weather balloons are released simultaneously from almost 900 locations worldwide. This includes 92 released by the National Weather Service in the United States.
The balloon flights last for around 2 hours, can drift as far as 125 miles away, and rise up to over 20 miles in the atmosphere.
Weather stations keep wide records of their weather balloon information, permitting scientists to study weather patterns over many decades.
Weather balloons are the primary source of data above the ground. They provide valuable input for computer forecast models, local data for meteorologists to make forecasts and predict storms. Computer forecast models which use weather balloon data are used by all forecasters worldwide, from National Weather Service meteorologists to your local TV weatherman. Without this information, accurate forecasts beyond a few hours would be almost impossible.
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A buoy is an object that floats on water, and is often used to warn boats away from dangerous places in the ocean or on a river. But some buoys have special instruments on them.
These buoys can tell us about the conditions of both the ocean and the atmosphere, they are the weather stations of the sea.
They are deployed to measure and transmit barometric pressure, wind direction, speed, air and sea temperature, wave energy and height. Even the direction of wave is measured on many Ocean Buoys.
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Humans send satellites into space to circle the Earth and send back information to scientists on the ground. Some of the information they send back helps with navigation, measures changes in vegetation, movements in the earth's surface and observations of the atmosphere and weather.
Satellites have been successful in the creation of an imaging network on a truly global scale. Information is now available for inhospitable land areas and the oceans, where weather data were previously largely unavailable.
Those that observe the atmosphere are known as weather satellites and the information they provide is used by weather forecasters, as well as others with an interest in the weather.
The advent of weather satellites has also provided a continuous, automatic feed of data, with a coverage and resolution not possible by any other means. Therefore, we can now look down and record what is happening, and the information from satellites helps in the prediction of changes in the weather.
There are two types of satellite providing weather data; Geostationary & Polar-Orbiting
Geostationary - these are positioned at a height of 22,230 miles above the equator, and hang over the same spot on the Earth's surface all the time. These satellites provide pictures every 15 minutes.
Polar-Orbiting - these pass over the Earth from pole to pole. The NOAA satellites, operated by the USA, orbit at a height of 515 miles and take 1 hour and 42 minutes to complete each orbit. During this time, the Earth has turned by about 25 degrees, so the satellite views a different part of the surface each time it passes. The images provided by these satellites give more detailed information about the cloud structure in the atmosphere due to the fact that the orbit is much lower than that of the geostationary satellites.
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Click on the Satellite above to explore NASA's Global Weather Satellite Images |
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To find out more about climate change, Climatologist turn to ice for clues. Not just any ice, they look to the ice from glaciers that have been around for a very long time.
Obtaining ice cores from different parts of the world helps explain the diverse parts of the Earth's complex climate system. Ice cores are an excellent archive and have proved to be invaluable records of climate, volcanism and human influences on the atmosphere.
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Scientist examine pieces of ice core samples looking for air bubbles that were trapped in the ice hundreds or even thousands of years ago. The air bubbles help them discover what the climate used to be like on Earth. The evidence they uncover is creating a historical record of regional temperatures and greenhouse gas concentrations dating back 160,000 years.
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Science Bulletin: Expedition for an Ice Core
Click on the Climatologist above to learn more about
Xpedition Team Member Dr.Keith Mountain's search for Ice Cores
Once or twice a year Keith Mountain, Xpedition Team Member and chair of the Department of Geography and Geosciences at the University of Louisville, travels to a high glacier in mountainous areas of Bolivia, Peru, China, Antarctica or Tanzania where he will spend months hunting for a disappearing treasure: ice.
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Click on the Ice above to Learn more about the secrets of ice Core Samples |
Click on the Mountain above to learn about the Ice on Kilimanjaro |
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Year to year changes in the weather create the patterns of different ring size. Trees respond to temperature, rainfall and other environmental conditions by altering growth.
Some trees might respond to changes in overall rainfall, others to the amount of rain during the late summer, and others to the seasonal temperatures that limit the length of the growing season. Human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels etch their signatures in wood as well.
....................................Click on Orbie to learn more about Tree Rings
The advantage of using trees to study climate is that they are living records of past climate and weather. Those records are available in parts of the world where there are few weather stations and where consistent and accurate records of weather rarely go back more than 100 years.
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Sediment is the earth and rock that has built up in layers over time. Scientists are learning a great deal about past climate from studying these layers. Sediment layering provides information about where glaciers have been in the past. Ocean sediments provide a map of how ocean currents have flowed in the past. And fossilized pollen found in sediment layers tells us about where different plants have grown in the past.
Probing the sediments from many lakes and ponds uncovers clues to past changes of climate. By studying the kinds of pollen and other materials in the layers of sediment, scientists can determine how plant communities shifted in response to climate changes and how lakes levels rose and fell with time.
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