Whether the weather is the T.O.E.

[labelwench]

The following, just one of the many ways that changing weather patterns will impact our health with potential loss of life. The natural systems of the planet may well be the solution to an increasing population. LW

Additionally, with climate change comes an increase in ground-level ozone—nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds, when reacting with sunlight, cause an increase in ground-level ozone. This compound that is especially damaging to lung tissue, causes an increase in chronic lung diseases.

Potentially dire portents. May burst some bubbles.....

http://www.thenewecologist.com/2010/...lobal-warming/

[racecar]

Dear Labelwench ~ This weeks theme in a word a day relates to the weather. Maybe you are familiar...but

nimbus

PRONUNCIATION:
(NIM-buhs) plural: nimbi or nimbuses

MEANING:
noun:
1. A rain cloud.
2. A halo or aura around the head of a person depicted in a piece of art.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin nimbus (cloud). Ultimately from the Indo-European root nebh- (cloud) that is also the source of nebula, nephometer (a device used in measuring the amount of cloud cover), and Sanskrit nabh (sky).

USAGE:
"The works take their cue from the perspective view one might see out an airplane window but become a curious exercise in painterly flatness, the white nimbuses butting up along the faint horizon."
Eric Banks; Georgia O'Keeffe: Abstraction; The Washington Post; Feb 20, 2010.

"He saw that at once; he took that also as the meed due his oil wells and his Yale nimbus, since three years at New Haven, leading no classes and winning no football games, had done nothing to dispossess him of the belief that he was the natural prey of all mothers of daughters."
William Faulkner; Collected Stories of William Faulkner; Vintage Books; 1995.

In Germany, the term nimbus is used to refer to an aura of authority, integrity, or secret knowledge which surrounds a person or institution. More often than not it implies that the nimbus prevents us from judging objectively and that the assumed qualities are not really present. This nicely reflects both meanings of nimbus in the sense that halos can cloud our judgement.

Here's another descendant of the Indo-European root nebh-. There is an instrument called a nephelometer and an associated area of scientific study called nephelometry. The broad area is the quantitative determination of particle density in a solution (cloudiness of the solution) and the nephelometer does the trick.

aeolian or eolian

PRONUNCIATION:
(ee-O-lee-uhn)

MEANING:
adjective: Relating to or caused by the wind.

ETYMOLOGY:
After Aeolus, god of the winds in Greek mythology. As keeper of the winds, he gave a bag containing winds to help with Odysseus's sailing.

USAGE:
"It would not be surprising if a few features -- even very large ones -- were sculpted by aeolian processes into the pyramidal forms we see."
Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan; The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark; Random House; 1995.

The word "aeolian" is used often in a musical context. A major builder of pipe organs of the 20th century in the US was Aeolian-Skinner. Pipe organs are basically powered by wind. The Aeolian Harp is also powered by wind and is not meant to be played by a person. And Aeolian is one of the modes used in music. The modes all bear Greek names such as Phrygian and Lydian. The Aeolian mode is what would be called today A-minor, all played on white notes on the piano.

Walter M. Patterson, III
Professor Emeritus of Mathematics
Lander University, Greenwood, SC

The aeolion harp was used by the British romantic poets as a metaphor for the mind swept by the external world (or ideas) by an external cause, in some usages the ultimate cause was God. Coleridge used the image in several poems (poetic utterances = music of harp) including "The Aeolian Harp". Coleridge, at least, found a philosophical basis for this in the works of both Berkeley and Hartley. These were also the names given to his first two children.

The way I see it, weather is a state of mind. How gray one feels inside has little to do with clouds or what the thermometer reads."

This reminds me of Melville:
"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off -- then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can."
[Moby Dick, page 1]


pluvial

PRONUNCIATION:
(PLOO-vee-uhl)

MEANING:
adjective: Of or relating to rain, especially much rain.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin pluvia (rain), from pluere (to rain). Ultimately from the Indo-European root pleu- (to flow), that is also the source of flow, float, flit, fly, flutter, pulmonary, and pneumonia.

USAGE:
"The inclement weather was expected to continue throughout the week, and meteorologists predict that the next few days will remain pluvial."
Inclement Weather Sweeps Israel; The Jerusalem Post (Israel); Jan 18, 2010.


"The prodigious preponderance of pluvial precipitation prevented Pavic's parade." lol
The plucky plebe played across pluvial planes.

[greenbug]

It’s intriguing to think that weather could be the toe. As it is the world we experience at some level or another. Much of what we have come to know about our world we have learned threw and invented off of nature. When we have a question as to how to do something we look back at nature and it already has a solution for us, most of the time we need to look at it with greater detail.

On the recent comment…

Ozone is only stable at cretin tempters. Ground level ozone doesn’t last long at all. It is heavier then Oxygen and Nitrogen and so falls from the upper atmosphere once ultraviolet rays from the sun produce it. As it falls it warms up and disperses into O2 and Oxygen. It has a half-life of about thirty mins. So in order to have a ozone layer it must be made regularly and at a constant rate replenished. Most contaminants increase the weight and produce acids that fall faster.

It is true that if we reduce the amount of oxygen we will heat up the earth. Similarly if we had never intervened plants producing high amounts of oxygen would have cooled the earth to the point of killing them selves off animals would reduce oxygen and then global warming would have set in. Yet that’s how our system has work for thousands of years, going back and forth.

In all the lack of oxygen means higher tempters and causes complications for us, who need it to live.. It may eventually reduce populations on the earth but not completely destroy humans. If any thing we will have just triggered yet another cycle that perhaps unless we learn from it will go back and forth.

[labelwench]

I don't believe that it is just my personal subjective opinion that weather events are increasingly becoming the topic of news forecasts, or that the effects are widespread, with extreme weather occurring in areas that our recent memory and records would not lead us to the expecting of same.

The 'record of the rocks' does clearly show, that the landscape of this planet is ever changing the face that it presents, at any given time.

Some interesting reading on recent weather around the globe: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/extreme-weather

[austintorn@aol.com]

This is the hottest year ever—since they began keeping records in the late 1800's.


Deep Summer



(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sh8U7u1_S_4)


Winter Waltz



(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUne6cNkok8)

[labelwench]

The weather is a system of interrelationships over which we have but minimal control, as in seeding clouds to precipitate rainfall, removing ourselves from the path of tornadoes and hurricanes, and otherwise building weather resistant shelter from these elements of nature.

About sprites and elves

Sprites are electric discharges shaped in the form of a carrot or vertical column that form in the mesosphere (at a height of between 50 and 85 km). They often appear with a luminous "halo."

Elves are rings that expand and propagate themselves horizontally at the speed of light across the base of the ionosphere (85-700 km). There is also a third group, jets, which are bluish lightning bolts that can electrically connect the top of the clouds with the base of the ionosphere.

ScienceDaily (July 26, 2010) — A team of Spanish researchers has made a high-speed recording of elves and sprites in storms, fleeting and luminous electric phenomena produced in the upper layers of the atmosphere.

More on the recent observations at this link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0610093511.htm

[labelwench]

The weather is creeping into the news more often these days, I notice, and for all of our knowledge and technology, in the end we remain 'weather watchers' and the course of our lives is ever determined by nature.

Canada's prairie provinces, often referred to as 'the breadbasket of the world' has seen several years of mediocre crops and the losses this year may amount to $3 billion dollars, and the potential is for prices of such commodities as flour based products and canola oil to rise by early in the new year.

A late seeding, due to a wet spring, saw fewer acres seeded, and that late started crop has been further delayed by a wet summer and early frost. Quality overall is down and only a low percentage of the crop has made it from field to bin, so the numbers could well get worse. There is already concern for getting in next season's crops with the fields so moist and the crops still in them.

http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-p...699/story.html

On the eastern coast, the damages wrought by Igor have prompted Prime Minister Stephen Harper to send in military aid.

Igor forced evacuations of flooded coastal towns in Canada's island Newfoundland province and reportedly swept one man out to sea, before being downgraded to a tropical storm and moving offshore.

Parts of the province were on high alert for most of Tuesday as the hurricane approached from the Atlantic Ocean, unleashing fierce winds and torrential rains than dumped 240 millimeters (9.5 inches) on the region.

An elderly man was washed out to sea, according to public broadcaster CBC, after falling into a brook leading to the Atlantic Ocean when a roadway crumbled beneath his feet.

Search and rescue efforts were hampered by widespread flooding and washed out roads.

On Friday, more than 80 coastal communities remained isolated and were running low on essential supplies with access severely hampered by damaged roads and bridges, authorities said.

"The extent of damage to our road infrastructure is simply colossal," said Newfoundland's Transportation Minister Tom Hedderson. "It's hard to describe the scope of the devastation."

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/newfoundlan...aftermath.html

Here in the Yukon, the autumn harvest moon was not to be seen. We have instead been graced with two days of freezing rain and snow, and the roads have been taking their toll. Driving, even in a 4 wheel drive with excellent tires is hazardous and I am not looking forward to this night. Before I may even leave the yard, the truck needs to be reclaimed from the elements and warmed up to rid itself of the frozen pebble that underlies several inches of precipitation in it's fourth form, neither quite solid nor liquid, but some of each.

Oh, joy........and this supposedly still the season of harvest. I was out pulling in the remainder of the carrot harvest earlier this afternoon between systems, as this weather is forecast to continue for a while yet, which matches up with the old lore that the weather you get on the full moon will likely set the tone for the week to come.

Ah well. It does send the tourists south in a hurry and helps to keep the population density down.

And truly, I can't think of anywhere else that I'd rather live, despite my typically Canadian rant about the unchangeable, though ever changing, elemental state that we broadly term 'The Weather'.

[austintorn@aol.com]

Slipping Back Into the Shadows

[labelwench]

".....too many highs and too many lows,
Too many storms and tornadoes....."

[labelwench]

Hold on tight, because the U.S. Government is using HAARP, the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program in Alaska. Some charge that this secret government project can modify the weather, creating hurricanes and typhoons; that it can create earthquakes and superheat the atmosphere; or even that it can destroy aircraft anywhere in the world; and control the minds of its victims. What do we say on Skeptoid when we hear stories that sound far fetched or implausible? Be skeptical.

The HAARP Project in Alaska has attracted considerable comment and controversy in the years since it's construction, and has been central in a number of conspiracy theories.

An article that takes a look at the origin of several of these concerns.

http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4122