I mentioned in one my latest posts that I’m going to be teaching an introductory weather and climate course this summer. I’ve exhausted the sources available, (why doesn’t the library seem to carry these introductory texts?) and the quality seems to range from “not what I’m looking for” to “might be able to use it” for the material that ”’I”’ think should be covered. Luckily, there’s this novel invention called interlibrary loan. It’s like magic. I click a link on a website, a form gets filled out automatically (which I’m supposed to check to make sure it’s right, but didn’t) and supposedly the book will appear in the library in a few days/weeks/months/sometime. If it works, it’ll be the best thing since Wikipedia. (I’m trying to change the phrase from ’sliced bread’. Although I’m not sure it works in this case, since IL probably existed before WP.)

I found 4 more potential textbooks to use, and 1 that just looked interesting. Can you tell which is which?

• The earth system by Kump, Kasting, and Crane
• Climatology by Rohli and Vega
• Earth’s climate : past and future by Ruddiman
• Climate change : picturing the science by Schmidt and Wolfe
• Understanding Earth by Grotzinger, Jordan, Press, and Siever

I’ve looked at these as possible texts, but they don’t have enough about climate.

• Essentials of Meteorology by Ahrens
• Meteorology Today: An Introduction to Weather, Climate, and the Environment by Ahrens
• Meteorology: The Atmosphere and Science of Weather by Moran, Morgan, and Pauley

This might be better, but I haven’t looked at it in depth yet.

• Understanding Weather and Climate by Aguado and Burt

I’m not quite sure a textbook exists that covers the material I want. Most seem to focus on meteorology. A few focus just on climatology. I’d like one that is about half and half. If I don’t make a decision soon, I’ll have to either use Essentials of Meteorology or have no official textbook. Any suggestions?

Scienceblogs is running their DonorsChoose drive again. I couldn’t make up my mind which one (or more) to donate to. There are a lot of worthy projects. Some teachers are asking for basic things like paper, pencils, hole punchers, and safety glasses. Luckily, Davig Ng at The World’s Fair found 3 very deserving environment related projects.

For every Atmoz reader that donates to one of these projects, I’ll make a donation of the same amount. If you decide to donate, please note it in the comments here. In the event there are no takers, I will split $100 among the 3.

It’s that time of month again. The monthly temperature anomalies are soon to be publicized. I’d usually ignore them, but I’ve had this (simple) script hanging around for about a month now, so I thought I’d use it. With UAH releasing their August temperature datum, and temperatures plunging in 2008 it seemed like a good opportunity to look at what the monthly changes in temperature anomaly mean (or don’t mean).

What this post will attempt to do is show the effects of instrument noise on the global mean temperature anomaly time series. I’m going to assume that anyone reading this has seen at least one of the temperature anomaly time series. Pick your favorite - it doesn’t really matter which one. I chose the GISTemp anomaly from 1880.
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I’ve been grading exams again. Of course that means I’ve been wanting to swallow a bottle of sleeping pills concurrent with a bottle of vodka. I’ve resisted the urge, and with less than 10% left to go, the end is in sight. One thing that seems to be fairly prevalent is the thought that the cardinal directions West and East are synonyms for left and right, respectfully. I’m not sure where exactly that comes from, but for fun, let’s blame cartographers. On every map I’ve ever seen, North is at the top. This means that West is on the left, East is on the right, and South is at the bottom.

But the Earth is a sphere. This is no absolute direction that corresponds to up, down, left, right, forward, or backward. Those directions are dependent upon your particular orientation. At this very moment, I am facing North, so to my left is the West. But if I swivel 180 degrees (or π radians) in my chair, now East is on my left.
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