As I was reading though my blogroll, I found this post by a very smart rodent. Eli has dumped one of the NASA freedom of information act (FOIA for those in the acronym game) requests in the memory hole. I’m sure it’s mentioned somewhere, but there should be a contest about which quote(s) will be taken out of context. My contribution:

I should have kept more data, but I was not interested in US data.

(I’ve only got through about 1/4 of it, so maybe they’ll be something “juicier” later.)

In other rabbit news, Eli references my “wiki work”: “Here is a short derivation of the adiabatic lapse rate.”<ref>[1]<ref /> which isn’t so much writing as fixing, as the previous version was _________ (not sure of the right word, “bad” comes to mind but isn’t quite right).

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?

Ever wonder what it’s like to fly through a hurricane? Read a firsthand account over at Flight Level 390.

Red is hot, and blue is cold. Seemingly everyone knows this. Even though blue light has a higher energy, and thus temperature, than red light. Watts has a recent post about Color and Temperature: Perception is everything. He questions, “Is it just me or does there appear to be a warm bias in the color temperature presentation of the majority of providers shown here?”

I have previously posted a couple thoughts on the use of color when presenting figures to the public; for example Using Color Contours to Improve Public Interpretation of the Temperature Record and Using Color to Visualize Decreases in Sea Ice Extent. Color is not just a way to make a boring figure pretty. The color has to add information. For instance, in his Color is Everything post, Watts shows current (at time of posting) national temperature figures from several sources.
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