27
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What do weather forecasters mean when they say "50% chance of rain"?
In the US, meteorologists forecast the probability of ANY amount of precipitation falling. The minimum amount of that we deem acceptable to meet this criteria is .01". So, we are forecasting the ...
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14
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Sea Level Rise due to Climate Change
The first part of the association is that increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will cause rising temperatures on earth. Here is some information on why that is so, if you are ...
- 3,294
10
votes
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Temperature as a function of luminosity and greenhouse gas concentrations
You need a radiative transfer model and global climate model to do it with greenhouse gases. you can derive the temperature without greenhouse gases as discussed below:
The absorption is highly ...
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9
votes
Has the number of natural disasters per year increased significantly in the years since human-caused climate change started?
We have no evidence to suggest that the rate or magnitude of earthquakes has, in general, increased: while earthquakes are having a greater effect on humans, this is entirely - as best we can tell - ...
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8
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What are good metrics to compare climates?
The Köppen climate classification is a classic metric to classify climates:
Source: Wikimedia Commons
It classifies climates based on the number of months with temperature below and/or above certain ...
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7
votes
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What kind of data is best shown in a rose diagram?
Rose diagrams, also called polar bar plots, are useful for showing azimuthal (directional) data. Any dataset consisting of lots of measurements of direction or orientation could be visualized this way....
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7
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Statistical weather prediction
You need a model. You could try to use Bayes theorem to build a model based upon conditional probabilities. See this reference from NOAA about weather forecasting: Probability Forecasting - Primer .
...
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6
votes
Sea Level Rise due to Climate Change
It's a harder direct relation to show that it appears. On the surface, warmer = less ice, file under "duh", but while it probably is that simple, showing a causal relation is a more difficult.
The ...
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6
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How are wind speeds typically distributed?
Yes, the most commonly used distribution for wind speed is the Weibull - at least when it comes to predicting wind speeds at prospective wind farm locations.
Yes, the parameters vary.
See, for ...
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What do weather forecasters mean when they say "50% chance of rain"?
To build on Drew's excellent answer, I would note the following:
Weather forecasts of the future are built on historical frequencies. A "forecast" of a X percent chance of rain (however defined), ...
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5
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Historical atmospheric partial pressure & Henry's law constant
The source you mentioned tries to explain why CO2 lags by about 1000 years in historical records.
Henry's law tells you something about the equilibrium between the CO2 level in the surface layer and ...
- 529
5
votes
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Break in human nitrogen input in 1990s
First, don't take that graph too literally, it is just a cartoon version and isn't quantitatively correct.
The USSR heavily subsidized fertilizer until 1988. When they ended the subsidy, ...
- 5,892
5
votes
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Correlation and causation
Convergent cross mapping (CCM) is a recently developed tool to answer the question you've asked. It's based on tools developed in nonlinear time series analysis and dynamical systems theory. It allows ...
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5
votes
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How to determine constant $C$ in $p(x) = Cx^{-D}$?
There are two solutions using the least square method for calculating $C$ and $D$. Both methods yield different results for your constants. There is no correct method.
Method of least Squares
We ...
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5
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Probability ( weather tomorrow = weather today)?
As mentioned, the term you are looking for is persistence. Generally its strength varies wildly depending on what variable you are looking at, the location, and by whether you also further select ...
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5
votes
Spatial Continuity in python
Your last question was easy to answer, this one is more difficult. You could look at correlation and dependence, but you'd be better off looking at variography. That's the easier part of this question ...
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4
votes
Correlation and causation
I can give some examples from atmospheric science:
Wind and temperature in the vertical direction: as you increase in height, the temperature decreases due to the conservation of geopotential energy. ...
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3
votes
How to determine constant $C$ in $p(x) = Cx^{-D}$?
C is purely empirical for any given situation. BEWARE of such equations! Using coefficients to six significant figures gives the illusion of high precision when, in fact, the whole approach is ...
- 14.1k
3
votes
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Prevailing Winds: Is the speed relevant?
Part of the complication goes to two separate definitions for the word:
prevailing:
To be frequent (Miriam-Webster)
The most frequent, the most occurring wind direction in your example, even if ...
- 7,660
3
votes
Sea Level Rise due to Climate Change
The argument and science behind this idea is well summarized on the Union of Concerned Scientist web page on global warming as it causes sea levels to rise. There is a link to a white paper which ...
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3
votes
What is the technical term for spatially aggregated measures?
Count data.
Quantitative data that varies discretely and arbitrarily along some scale can be called count data.
Nick Chrisman (1995; Beyond Stevens: A revised approach to measurement for geographic ...
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3
votes
How do climatologists define the "start" of a rainy season in a unimodal monsoonal climate?
I find the following method very straightforward and elegant. So maybe I can convince you to consider it.
For the South American (SA) monsoon, Silva et al. (2007) and Carvalho et al. (2012) proposed ...
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3
votes
Correlation and causation
As an alternative to Convergent Cross Mapping (CCM), the recent Tigramite is a fast python library for causal discovery that promises to ...
... outperforms current approaches in detection power ...
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3
votes
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How to know to which PC (Principal Component) a sample belongs in EOF/PCA
I recommend you read Monahan et al. (1990) for a thorough explanation of Empirical Orthogonal Functions. I suggest you pay attention to the way the principal components are extracted. Ultimately, ...
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3
votes
Probability ( weather tomorrow = weather today)?
Pearson publish a data set for A-level students (high school) that includes weather data from various locations. While the data set is (deliberately) flawed [one task for students is to identify flaws ...
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3
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What are the technical solutions to measure $\ce{CO2}$ emissions?
In addition to satellite measurements of carbon dioxide, there are numerous ground based stations that also measure carbon dioxide: Italy, Hawaii, Australia, just to name a few.
If you want to catch ...
- 20.3k
3
votes
How much does COVID-19 affect weather forecasts?
Welcome to Earth Science SE!
Given that the crisis is still ongoing, I doubt we know the full extent of the impact (forecasting the weather is hard enough, forecasting the impact of a pandemic is ...
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2
votes
Has the number of natural disasters per year increased significantly in the years since human-caused climate change started?
Hurricanes are tropical cyclones (TC) and these storms form in the ocean over warm waters when the sea surface temperature (SST) is above 27C or 28C. The higher the SST the greater the probability ...
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2
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Current temperature increase VS decrease during the little ice age
To be sure about why it appears to be centered around -0.2°C, you'd have to go to the original source of the graph. However, as an educated guess, I would imagine that they are showing the anomaly ...
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2
votes
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What statistical methods are best for analyzing long-term rainfall data?
It depends on your data, if the rainfall data is in a grid with temporal and spatial dimension, you can use a NetCDF format to analyse the data via R, matlab, IDL or Python. NetCDF is Network Common ...
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