Newsgroups: lter.ced Path: LTERnet!news From: Bruce Hayden Subject: CED 3.5 (MAY 1) Message-ID: <1994May5.183328.13271@lternet.washington.edu> Sender: news@lternet.washington.edu Organization: Long Term Ecological Research Date: Thu, 5 May 1994 18:02:52 GMT ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** *** *** *** *********** *********** ********** *** *** * * * * *** *** * * * * *** *** * * * * *** *** * ********* * * *** *** * * * * *** *** * * * * *** *** * * * * *** *** * * * * *** *** *********** *********** ********** *** *** *** ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** Vol.3 No.5 ::::::::::: May Issue :::::::::::: May 1, 1994 ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** CED METADATA ---- CED is the Climate/Ecosystem Dynamics bulletin board of the LTER network. In CED, you will find exchanges of ideas, information, data,bibliographies,literature discussions, and a place to find experts within the LTER community. We are interested in both climate controls onecosystems and ecosystem controls on climate. As this is an inter-disciplinary activity,we hope to provide things that you might not come across in your work atyour LTER site. CED is a product of the LTER climate committee and contributions to CED for general e-mail release may be sent to either David Greenland of Andrews LTER [Greenlan@oregon.uoregon.edu] or to Bruce Hayden of the Virginia Coast Reserve LTER [bph@envsci.evsc.virginia.edu]. We expect that the scope of CED will evolve and reflect the interests of the contributors and users of this service. CED will be issued as the preparation work gets done (usually monthly). Back-issus of CED may be requested from Daniel Pommert [daniel@lternet.washington.edu] by the file name given in the masthead. Daniel can also add people to the CED mailing list. Feedback on CED from LTER scientists is welcome (non-$$$$ contributions also welcome.) For example, please forward citations of climate & ecosystem publications on your site. We are keeping a LTER wide bibliographyon Climate/Ecosystem Dynamics that we pass on via E-mail. ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** *** *** *** *** *** CC MEETING, AUGMENTATION, STUDENTS *** *** END OF THE MONTH WOES *** *** *** ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** In doing CED all these years now I have learned that the favorite, best choice for a deadline for anything is the first of the month. This month it was the LTER Augmentation proposal, a Sustainable Biosphere Initiative paper and student thesis defense activities. So I am a few days late again. Next month I join a number of LTER types for a trip to Hungary to do the international thing (May 23-29) so I may be tardy again next month. Thanks for your patience. ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** *** *** *** *** *** SEARCHABLE CED! *** *** *** *** *** ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** For those who use Gopher or MOASIC to view CED, you can search all the issues for key words of your choice and find which back issue contains the desired item. Every word in CED is included as a key word so don't search for the following words "the", "and", "a" and other frequent words we all use. Plans are afoot to step into a MOSAIC CED hypertext version to include first class graphics. A MOSAIC-wise student will be on hand to help out on this task this summer. CED will still be sent out by e-mail and will on GOPHER. Before we do this we will do what we can to get you up and running on MOSAIC. ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** *** *** *** *** *** GAS *** *** *** *** *** ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** Paul, Ken, Pieter and Patricia Novelli, Masarie, Tans and Lang respectively bring us news of remarkable changes in atmospheric carbon monoxide (Sci. 263:1587-1590). Northern Hemisphere CO fell by 18% between June 1990 and June 1993. Southern Hemisphere CO fell by 21% over the same years. These numbers are based on 27 stations (71 N to 35 S) around the world and weekly measurement intervals. Here is what happened earlier. From 1950s through the 1980s CO increased an average 1% per year in the NH. There was no trend in the SH. To understand these numbers we need to look at the way the 1% per year (Northern Hemisphere) was determined. The lack of a trend in the Southern Hemisphere CO was based on one station at Cape Point, South Africa. Novelli et al. note that the year (1950-1951) values were based on spectroscopic measurements. They do not say how the 1980s values were determined. So the input from which +1% trend in CO is calculated is only two points! I bet they got a mighty fine correlation out of their SPSS with that data. Now with detailed station records in a place since 1988 and weekly measurements, we know a bit more about variations in atmospheric CO. There is a seasonal signal -- late winter/early spring maximum and late summer/early fall minimum and reversed in the Southern Hemisphere. CO levels decrease from north to south. The decline in CO was found all 27 of Novelli stations and over all seasons and on an annual basis, the decline was from -7.8 ppb to -1.5 ppb. The seasonal cycle has a big-time amplitude 45 ppb to 230 ppb so it is not easy to see the trend with the naked eye when feasting on the data. As a climatologist I might whisper to self-respecting climatological colleagues: "Hey, you don't really believe the 1% trend between 1950 and the 1980s do you." Where does CO come from? a) burning fossil fuels, b) biomass burning, c) oxidation of CH4, d) oxidation of non-methane hydrocarbons (NMHC), e) all of the above. Answer: e! Those NMHC are are my favorite biogenic hydrocarbons: terpenes, hemiterpenes, aromatics, waxes etc. It would appear that our biosphere is deeply involved and is a driver in atmospheric chemistry and climate. Each of the four source of CO amounts somewhere between 400 and 1000 Tg (1 Tg = 10^12 g). Where does CO end up? a) reacting with OH to make CO2 and H. b) all of the above. Answer: b! Pollution control efforts to reduce human CO production is given a passing grade with a -0.9 ppb per year 1976 to 1990. This would amount to a -1.7% decline per year due to cleaning the human nest during the years of the not-to-believed 1% increase per year. The authors suggest that Mt. Pinatubo may be involved. First they say that the 1% (2 data point) historical increase is real. So what caused the "sudden" decline? Here is their Mt. Pinatubo metaphysics. Pinatubo decreased O3 in the stratosphere. That let more UV down to the troposphere where there would be more break-up of tropospheric O3 and an increase in OH which would use up and reduce tropospheric CO. The sample size for this explanation is N=1, e.g. one volcano. I am not convinced. Three of the CO data curves they all show pre-date Pinatubo and the decline in tropospheric CO clearly began well before we had to get out of the Philllipines due to the Pinatubo ash making a mess of our military bases. Perhaps we can use CO to predict volcanoes. Novelli also suggest that the "economic contraction" in the former USSR may have reduced CO emissions and contributed to the decline in CO in our atmosphere. However, the declines also predate New Years Day 1992 when the peoples republic fell on hard times and Boris became an in and Gorby became an out. The take home message then is that for the period when our data is adequate, CO has declined rapidly. We don't know if the changes are within natural variations or merit the usual dooms day approach. It is hard when we cut our teeth on the idea that the upward trend in CO is bad to find that the trend is of the opposite sign. Do we call that good. Selling goods to get research funds is not a growth industry. Science magazine reporter Richard Kerr reminds us that beginning in 1991 the greenhouse gases CO2, CH4, and N20 rates of increase sharply slowed or stopped and input of oxygen "jumped." CH4 is the one that has stopped increasing! There are guesses that the Russians have patched the leaks in their gas pipelines now that markets rather than technocrats rule the roost. Kerr called the new CO trends indicate "improved vital signs." Richard values all this as good. N20 (unpublished but leaked) slowed its increase following Pinatubo. It was only a few months ago that people who said that volcanoes and halogen emissions might play a role in O3 and OH chemistry were dubbed "not very green." It is apparently OK to blame volcanoes now. For me this is all a lot of fun. ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** *** *** *** *** *** THE HAIR HOUSE *** *** *** *** *** ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** My wife and I, on road trips, keep our eyes peeled to the signage (my wife's term) come-ons for beauty shops (aka shoppes). The choice of store-front names is sometimes worth remembering. Near the Lynchburg, Virginia airport there is the Hairport. There is no need to wait on a runway when you need a trim if you are in Lynchburg. Gary Larson advanced one increment of his many increments of fame with his "Buck and Cut" establishment that featured an electric bull instead of a barber's chair. My wife went to a "Hair Hut" for a while. Charlottesville's phone book has Chateau Darlene, Che's Beauty Salon (I thought he was killed in Bolivia), Country Cutting on 19 Deer Drive, the Crowning Touch, Grill's Hair Styling (that's a hot place), Hair Graphics, Hair to Please, Imelda's Beauty Salon (perhaps you can get shoes there as well), and Mane Cut. Check your yellow pages for your local salons. So what does all this have to do with climate? Well consider the recent book review in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. (Tornado! 84 Minutes, 94 Lives by J. M. O'Toole, 1993 in paperback by the publisher DATABOOKS). In the book there is the story of the "Hair House". The Hair House Tornado began in Petersham, the current home town of David Foster and a stones throw from the Harvard Forest LTER site, then made its way to Worcester where it crafted the Hair House. This Tornado, in Worcester, is known as the Worcester Tornado (7 June 1953). O'Toole writes, "A house in the path of the tornado was bombarded by stalks of grass and straw carried by the wind. Its velocity drove the stalks and stems into the clapboard siding of the house in such quantity that it would be called the 'hair house'." A mother and her child were lifted and transported 400 feet. And you thought it would be hard to get a gopher turtle into the air to make a turtle-in-a-hailstone. Four riders in an car decided to ride out the storm. Seventy five yards in flight after a Harrier style take-off, and they ended up on a house roof. A bit of hospitalization and they were off to their next great adventure. A Worcester neurosurgeon, called to autopsy duty at the morgue, reported that one tornado victim had lost his "entire intracranial contents." He goes on to note that there there must have been a "tremendous suction to remove the cranial contents." Speaking of sucking sounds try this one on. Nature 125:728-729 (1930) "Whirlwind sucks up carp and pike." The waterspout in question happened on May 15, 1586 at Kestrzan in Bohemia. This whirlwind carried the water of two ponds into the air and with all the carp and pike that they contained. File this one under core area: disturbance and fish dispersal. ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** *** *** *** *** *** TORNADO BUSTER *** *** *** *** *** ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** Local newspapers are always a source of weather and climate fun and amusement. From Enid, OK we have a reports of a proposed Tornado Buster. I will use capital letters to indicate that this is a one of a kind thing, a proper noun. The Tornado Buster is the creation of one Gary C. Smith of somewhere in and Arizona and also Las Vegas. His reason for inventing the Tornado Buster is that "I just don't like tornadoes tearing things up." To avoid falling into the ranks of a famous former VP and having to give up my PI-ship, I checked my Webster. Tornadoes is preferred over Tornados as is volcanoes over volcanos. Tomatoes and Potatoes is it. Do not leave out the e. However, Hobos is preferred over Hoboes and Solos over Soloes but Hoboes and Soloes are OK. For the musically inclined it is altos and bassos, sans the e. If you discover Webster's rule-of-thumb let me know. I am going to gin-up my memory cells and try to keep it straight. My version of Microsoft Word took os or oes for everything but solos. It rejected soloes. Microsoft should never go on the campaign trail. The Tornado Buster is a 150-pound bomb that will be flown into a twister with a remote-control helicopter. He has the helicopter already. He claims that detonation of the bomb inside a tornado will snuff it out. Robert Maddox of the national Severe Storms Laboratory is taking a "total hands off" approach to Mr. Smith's idea. Who said a good beaurocarat was hard to find? Smith worries that tornadoes send "ozone-eating" CFC into the upper atmosphere and that puts us all at risk. So he plans to include a cleansing agent "similar to Clorox 2" in his bomb. Sounds like he will use a peroxide bombshell to do the job. The bomb will also have "incendiary" properties and will cause the tornado to catch fire and burn itself out in a few seconds. Local government officials note that they would "take a long hard look at it before we make any decisions." ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** *** *** *** *** *** TORNADO CLIMATE CHANGE *** *** *** *** *** ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** Between 1873 and 1950 there were 15,234 tornadoes recorded in the lower 48. On a annual sum basis, there was a 4X increase in tornado reports over the 77 years. The U. S. epicenter of tornado frequency moved eastward over the period of record. For the 134 tornadoes which had their direction of rotation recorded, the number of clockwise (anticyclonic) spinning tornadoes has fallen (36% to 8%) in favor of counter-clockwise (cyclonic) rotating systems. By chance alone, the probability of finding these results is only 0.0075. ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** *** *** *** *** *** HEBDOMADALITY IN TORNADOES *** *** *** *** *** ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** There is a strong weekly (hebdomadal) periodicity in tornado reports. The number of tornadoes reported on Saturdays is less than the daily average by 7.1 standard deviations. Not a shabby outlier for your average data set. The chance of this by chance alone is less <10^-9. Hebdomadality is seen in 75% of the years and 77% of the lower 48 states had Saturday tornadoes less common than the mean (p <10^-4) In 19 states, Saturday was the day of tornado minimum in the week (p <1.5 x 10^-5). 12 of the 21 coastal states showed the Saturday minimum and 19 of the 21 were below the average frequency for any old day of the week.! Goings-on in coastal states are different from the interior at the p<0.04 level. The mother-state of our LTER network (Washington) had 24 tornadoes in the period of record. None has ever occurred on Saturday or Sunday (p ~ 2.2 x 10^-4). ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** *** *** *** *** *** WHY HEBDOMADALITY? *** *** *** *** *** ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** Meteorologists have gone through gut-wrenching searches for periodicities in weather data. In most of the 20th century the people who did such work were called "cycle hunters". Name calling is now out of fashion in America else a special interests group will block your driveway. A few weather periodicity searchers still hide in the bushes. At seven days, we do have an often cited quasi-periodicity called the synoptic cycle. The synoptic cycle is about the length of time it takes for weather systems to get from the West coast to the East coast. It is thought of as just the right time for a continental scale process. [An aside: 3500 miles in transit from Network Office to the VCR in 7 days = 500 miles per day = 20.8 miles per hour. Average USofA wind speeds are ~ 10 to 12 mph. So pressure systems move faster than the air they contain! The movement of pressure does not follow the movement of mass.] The best paper on the hebdomadal synoptic cycle is Namias, J. 1966. A weekly periodicity in eastern U. S. precipitation and its relation to hemispheric circulation. Tellus XVII(4):731-744. _________________________________________________ RAINFALL BY DAY (Dec. 1, 1964 to Feb. 15, 1965) averaged for 39 stations from Key West, FL to Harris- burg, PA and Evansville, IN to Cape Hatteras, NC. _________________________________________________ 0 1 2 3 INCHES X X X X X X X X X X X X Sunday X X Monday X X Tuesday X X Wednesday X X X Thursday X X X X X X X X X X X Friday X X X X X X X X X X X X X Saturday _________________________________________________ In winter, in most years, this seven day cycle is evident. My secretary in the 1970s (I go without now.) used to watch this cycle and report to me "It is Tuesday this year." "We are in our 9th week of rain on Tuesday." It doesn't happen on the same day every year and in some years it is not 7 days but as much as 10 days but still like clockwork. If our work-a-day-world calendar was a 10 day one rather than a 7 days, we might also be come aware of years with the longer cycle. My longest, every-seven-days of the same weather type, is 13 weeks. This regularily does come to an end and a new repetitiveness of the weather sets in. In summer, based on my study of storm passages of the east coast the preferred length of the quasi-periodicity (I am not a cycle hunter!) is a hard-to-notice 8 days and not the same day each year. So that is the difference with the hebdomadalness of the tornadoes. In tornadoes it happens on the same day of the week in almost every year! ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** *** *** *** *** *** HUMAN HEBDOMADALNESS *** *** *** *** *** ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** I have looked long and hard and have yet to find a natural, aka non-human, cause of a periodicity that falls on the same day of the week, week after week after week, year after year after year. So, do members of our species, in our inadvertent ways, cause this same-day-of-the-week weekly periodicity in Tornadoes??? [Notice how gender-reference-free I said that.] Who could think such a dumb thing? John D. Isaacs, J. W. Stork, David B. Goldstein and Gerald L. Wick that's who! Who would publish such an outlandish theory? Nature that's who! [Vol. 253:254-255.] The Nature paper was 20.5 column inches long. The firestorm by kibitzers in the Matters Arising section of the April 1, 1976 [260:457-461] issue was 92.5 inches long! One needs only to go to Citation Index to find that John D. Isaacs has a citation record as long as your arm and in the best journals. Now, he may have the good fortune of having a bit of a "halo" effect in getting his tornado paper past the Nature reviewers but pass it did, firestorm there was, and it has been quiet ever since. No citations of Isaac et al. since Vol. 253. Clearly, it was not the observations of changes in tornado climate that provoked the heated response but the cause of it all proposed by Isaacs and friends. I can see Kevin Costner starring in it now. "Build interstates with median strips and tornados will come." "For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind..." Hosea 8:7. In the U. S. during the ramping up of the cold war, Ike started to built the Interstate System to be able to move those tanks around with the greatest of ease. It was a smash hit and the four-lane-with-median-strip highway is now an American standard. And with our choice of driving on the right, the whizzing by of cars in an outbound-inbound, north-south, and east-west, we impart a cyclonic spin to the air! In Isaac's day there were ~2 x 10^6 cars and 6 x 10^5 trucks whizzing by each other 20 meters apart at any average moment and all this is increasing year by year! The cyclonic vorticity (spin) added to the atmosphere in one week, Isaacs said, is larger than the coriolis vorticity of our Earth and 10^5 to 10^6 times as large as the vorticity in a single tornado. Edwin Kessler of the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma attributed the observations about tornados to faulty reporting of tornadoes (the-data-must-be-bad argument) or changes in the radiation budget due to less factory pollution on weekends (the-blame-it-on-pollution argument). Others showed that while vorticity between the traffic streams would be produced, there would be no net vorticity produced at all or almost none. Monash University scientist M. J. Manton suggested that if Isaacs would combine the auto-made vorticity with the convection due to heated road surfaces he could get is vorticity up into the troposphere where it might just might make a contribution to tornadoes. D. K. Lilly of NCAR said you need to consider angular momentum not vorticity but that the angular momentum was the second radial moment of its vorticity but the effect, he said, would still be so small as to be unimportant. Darkow [Atmospheric Science at U. of Missouri] said take a good look at press clippings (the reporting venue for tornadoes). More people, more sightings, more press! and .... Daily and weekly papers often don't publish on Sundays so the reporters don't work on Saturdays and Tornadoes that must of happened don't get reported. ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** *** *** *** *** *** ISSACS REPLIED *** *** *** *** *** ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** Issacs et al. agreed that there would be a zero net vorticity but the torque applied to the solid earth had to be compensated for by a cyclonic torque added to the molecules of the air. They suggest you take a bowl of water and impart to the water using your fingers, hands or sticks opposite linear paths through the water (in a row boat this would be opposite strokes on the oars and the boat rotates). They note that the vorticity in the bowl will be a net zero vorticity with just as much clockwise as counter-clockwise spinning molecules but nonetheless a vortex does form. When all the data from press clippings were removed from the full data set, the weekly periodicity was even stronger not weaker as suggested by Karkow. Issacs also notes that there is no weekly periodicity in thunderstorms but there is in tornadoes. Lets be British. Drive on the left and even things out for a little while. Bring back our endangered anticyclonic tornadoes. To do this, we could change it all at once (everybody switch sides of the road at 12:01 am) and even do it on the anniversary date of the first day that the first LTER site got its money from NSF. Or, we could have the number of drivers who switch sides of the road be proportional to the amount of funding currently coming from NSF to the sites as a collective and complete the process when all the sites are fully augmented. Why in Hertford, Hereford, and Hampshire, hurricane hardly ever happen. All hurricanes rotate cyclonic and our firends the Brits drive on the right, make anticyclonic vorticity and add anticyclonic torque to the air and well, you can take it from there. Later