Questions tagged [climatology]
In contrast to the short-term variable weather, climate describes the mean conditions of atmosphere. Thus it is the statistic of weather (mean values, extrema, etc.). Often a 30-year period is considered. When asking questions about climate, use this tag and also include the [atmosphere] tag.
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What kind of temperature unit is "cK"?
An article about ocean temperature history/modeling has this plot:
Where the units are given as cK.
cK does not seem to be a ...
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Why is not snow melting in Ladakh at a rapid pace
I am a novice and thus would like you not to mind too much if the answer to my question seems "obvious" to you.
I heard that in the cold desert of Ladakh, if you keep your face in sunlight and legs ...
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Technical term for percentage of CO2 remaining in the atmosphere
I have a theoretical exercise where I calculated the amount of CO2 that is released to the atmosphere per year (4.6 ppm). We assume that the relative increase of CO2 is 2 ppm, hence the percentage of ...
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How to calculate water vapor budget for a selected region in GRADS or MAT Lab
I need to calculate water vapor budget for a selected region. Can anyone suggest a specific link or code for the above mentioned tools please. I have seen a link for NCL but i am not familiar with ...
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What are good metrics to compare climates?
I'm interested in visualizing climate data across the conterminous U.S. to determine regions that I would be interested in living in. So far, I've pulled in NOAA data, and I've:
averaged the maximum ...
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Interdisciplinary sciences which combine earth sciences with computer science
Are there interdisciplinary sciences which combine earth sciences (like geophysics, climatology, meteorology etc.) and computer science? or something like biotechnology which combine biology with ...
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Plotting moist static energy fluxes
I'm trying to plot Moist static energy fluxes (vectors) and their divergence like the attached Figure. I have monthly means of u, v, temperature, specific humidity and geopotential from(1000-100 hPa) ...
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Is mediterranean climate a type of monsoon climate
Given that monsoon climate has the primary feature of seasonal reversal of wind systems and the same happens in case of Mediterranean climate too, does that mean Mediterranean climate is a special ...
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What percentage of Earth's surface is arid?
Is there available information on how much of Earth surface is arid climate?
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Is Atacama Desert cloudy or cloudless most of the year?
I saw many contradictions everywhere.
For example, my geography textbook says that Atacama Desert is a desert where foggy weather is common, and it persists almost the whole year. Whereas every ...
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Why would geostrophic theory be invoked in the tropics with regards to the MJO?
In this paper reviewing the Madden-Julian Oscillation, frequently geostrophic theory (or approximately geostrophic) is often invoked. However, for geostrophic theory to be invoked, $$Ro=\frac{U}{f_0L}&...
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Subterranean Climate System?
Do subterranean habitat have climate system(s)? Could it be placed in any or all of the known ones: tropical, subtropical, temperate etc. ? Is it unique?
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How to divide timeseries into normal periods in meteorology and climatology?
When analyzing hydrological and climatological timeseries/observations it is a common practice to compare statistics made on normal periods. As WMO calls them: "WMO Climatological Normals".
These ...
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Where can I find climate analogs? [closed]
It is an unusual year where I'm at, I'd like to go and see similar climatological years for the north america, more particularly for average pressure, maybe 500mb or 700mb. How would I do this
Edit:...
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Confusion with precipitation values in CORDEX MPI-ESM rcp data
I want to analyze climate projection data for the different RCPs for a region in north western India, which has an arid climate. I chose MPI-ESM data downscaled with CORDEX. An example filename looks ...
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CMIP5 Historical experiments, what do they mean?
What are the main characteristics of CMIP5 Historical experiments?
e.g.
Initial conditions? Greenhouse gases forcing?
How they differ from RCPs? And how they are similar to Observed reanalysis data?...
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How averaging works in GFS model from NOAA?
We have downloaded grib2 files for GFS model from NOAA and extracted irradiance (Downwards shortwave radiation flux) data. Following is a sample output for cordinates at [52.0,4.0]:
...
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Huge netcdf files handling
Can any one help me to handle huge netcdf files each of 1gb memory in loop and at least 2 files at a time in ncl or linux or python or matlab.
for example era_interim daily pressure level datasets.
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Is the Hadley cell a problem for the air mass?
I was lately studying how air masses are generally formed. I came to know that as the warm air rises up and then cools down as it moves above, after some time, a whole cold mass of air is accrued near ...
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What makes a nuclear winter so extreme and destructive?
This may be a sort of, pertinent to the times, and disturbing question, inspired by the difficulties surrounding North Korea and the situation with it and nuclear weapons.
I've heard of this idea of "...
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Difference between NCEP's 20th Century daily Forecast and Analysis variables
NCEP's Twentieth Century Reanalysis (V2) provides daily variables from 1871/01/01 to 2012/12/31. Monolayer analysis variables are made available in a regular grid and forecast variables in a gaussian ...
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What are the differences between Climatology, Meteorology and Atmospheric Science?
Please explain the main differences between Climatology, Meteorology and Atmospheric Science.
Thank you
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Correlation and causation
Linear correlation (Pearson's) is vastly applied in meteorology/climatology to assess the relationship between two variables, say precipitation and SST, for example.
However, we know that correlation ...
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Why are deserts mostly located on the western side of continents?
I read somewhere in a book that mostly desert found in the western part of a continent. So my question is that why is it so? I searched on the internet but I didn't get a reasonable answer for that.
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Climatology Career
I am a high school Biology teacher with a crazy passion for climate and environmental changes. I wish I had known this before I started college. I have been out of college for a year and have been ...
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Easterly Jet Stream
If most of jet streams are westerly, that is to say, they blow from west to east, why does the tropical/equatorial jet stream blow from east to west?
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How much area in the world is under SemiArid climate?
I am studying the L.C. King's "Normal Cycle of Erosion".
Apparently, he suggests that Davis was incorrect to have assumed Temperate Humid conditions as "normal conditions" of the world when ...
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Sun Appearing to have Stopped Shining [closed]
What could have caused the Sun to appear to have stopped shining from noon 'till 3 in the afternoon? According to the Bible, at Jesus' crucifixion, darkness covered the land because the sun stopped ...
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Long-term Wind Speed Forecasting: reality or wishful thinking?
I have been studying/working with Wind Energy for a while and, one of my main responsabilities right now is to search for adequate long-term wind speed forecasting models.
However, 2 things strike me ...
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Near Future Precipitation and Temperature estimations?
I was wondering if anyone here is familiar with temperature and precipitation estimation?
I need to estimate P and T from April to July 2016. I am planning to use excel to do the calculation because ...
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Why do winter temperatures account for most of the increase in global temperature?
If you examine the detailed temperature records that form the basis for our understanding of global warming, there are some strange anomalies (at least from a naive point of view where warming affects ...
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Does the regional localisation of global temperature trends suggest contamination by urban development?
Much of the raw data behind the various datasets reporting the average temperature of the world are now available. So it is possible to look for strange patterns in the daily or monthly temperature ...
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Paper result validation and the scientific method in earth science
The context of this question is computational earth science specifically meteorology/climatology but I am sure it applies to all the scientific disciplines where numerical methods are used.
Recently ...
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Why isn't north Quebec a little warmer?
When I saw this map I was surprised to learn that part of Quebec is in the worst winter hardiness zone of North America (including Greenland). Zone 0a, which is defined as "average winters get colder ...
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Climatology of the Indian Summer Monsoon - A modern consensus
Edmund Halley viewed the monsoon as a glorified sea breeze circulation fueled by different heat capacities of land and ocean.
The resulting meridional temperature gradient between warmer air of the ...
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The climatological variance of albedo, soil moisture in weather models
Looking at WRF currently but I am sure this applies to most weather models there is a file (specifically LANDUSE.TBL) that specifies USGS derived albedo, soil ...
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Should total ground heat flux be 0?
In the context of the land surface, the ground absorbs heat from radiation (also some times from precipitation and advection), and releases heat through evapotranspiration, advection and radiation, ...
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Oceanic-atmospheric coupling between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean basins
The two great basins - Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean have their respective oscillations: Indian Ocean Dipole and El Nino Southern oscillation that affect the climate of the regions as well as the ...
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Color of ocean waters and Ekman pumping - what is the connection?
Is there a connection between the colors of oceanic waters near the coast and Ekman pumping? Along the coastal areas of the Bay of Bengal where I live, occasionally during the monsoon, the colors of ...
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Why is q used for specific humidity?
$q$ is the symbol used for specific humidity in many textbooks and papers (at least in meteorology and climatology, I'm not familiar with it in other disciplines). Where does this symbol come from, ...
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Why do some places have rain frequently? [closed]
There are some places on Earth which holds the record of being "The wettest place on Earth". On what factors these places differ from other normal places?
An example of wettest place on Earth is ...
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Who are the 3% in the often cited "97% of climate scientists"?
The media have variously reported that:
Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that climate-warming
trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities.
Based on this ...
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How do climatologists define the "start" of a rainy season in a unimodal monsoonal climate?
For a number of gridcells, all between the 500mm and 800mm rainfall isohyets in sub-Saharan Africa, I've got dekadal rainfall (from FEWS). They are pretty spread out over the continent and there are ...
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Why do more tornadoes happen late in the day?
According to the graph below, which appears to be sourced from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, more tornadoes happen late in the day - why is this?
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How do I explain why the Tibetan plateau is colder than lowlands at similar latitudes?
A common layman explanation for why does it get colder to higher elevations (considering only the troposphere here) qualitatively boils down to The Sun heats the Earth's surface and the Earth's ...