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Water Challenges for the Future
climate
Climate Change 101 for Corrupt Politicians
Downscaled Climate Data Projections for Puerto Rico Now Available
The Caribbean Landscape Conservation Cooperative (CLCC) has just announced the release of downscaled climate data projections (through 2099) for Puerto Rico. This is a valuable resource, which will allow scientists from many fields to evaluate climate change impacts in their respective fields.
The data have the following characteristics:
Projections of daily maximum and minimum temperature and twenty-four hour cumulative precipitation for over 200 long-term weather stations throughout the region for the period 1960-2099 based on Global Climate Models (GCMs) from the Third Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP3) used for the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (AR4 IPCC).
Projection datasets are available for three greenhouse gas emission scenarios: high (A2), medium (A1B), and low (B1). The global model output for precipitation and temperature were downscaled to local station locations by Hayhoe (2013): 71 stations for precipitation, 29 stations for maximum temperatures (Tmax) and 27 stations for minimum temperatures (Tmin).
Download the downscaled precipitation and temperature data here. (After loading website, click on Geospatial Data.)
How hot does it get inside your car?
Recently I said to someone
“I believe the scientific basis of global warming is very simple: if you put more heat (energy) into something than comes out, the temperature will go up. A commonly shared experience we can all relate to is getting into your car on a 90-degree day only to find that the inside temperature is around 120-degrees, due to the trapped heat.”
I wanted to check my statement about the 120 degree Fahrenheit (48.9 degree C) temperature inside the car to see if it was true. I used a small automated weather station to get the inside and outside air temperatures and an infrared thermometer to measure surface temperatures. Here is what I found (in degrees C):
12:15 PM, Location Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, Sept. 22, 2014, 2001 Honda Accord, Black.
Air temperature outside 31.6 C
Air temperature inside car 49.1 C (My statement was very close!)
Surface temperatures inside car: Dashboard 88.9 C (192 F !!!!), driver seat 50C, front floor 39 C, Radio 51.6 C, steering wheel 53 C, trunk floor 56.9 C.
Pavement outside of car 52.1
Grass area near car 33.9
My office chair 17.7 C. 🙂
FINCA ALZAMORA WEATHER DATA AVAILABLE ONLINE
Today a new weather station was installed in the Finca Alzamora, UPRM campus, Mayaguez Puerto Rico. Data from the weather station are available from two websites: WeatherLink or WeatherUnderground. The WeatherUnderground site allows you to download archived data in a coma delimited text format that can be imported into Excel. Data being collected include: air temperature, dew point temperature, RH, wind speed and direction, solar radiation, UV index, soil moisture tension and soil temperature. A value of the reference evapotranspiration is available on the WeatherLink page. We are still working out a few kinks, but should have it running smoothly within a few days.
The weather station was purchased with funds from the UPRM NOAA CREST Project.
Syria: An example of climate change-induced war
Climate Change Impacts in the United States – final report
Agroclimatology Course to be Taught at UPR – Mayaguez Campus
What Causes Famine?
What Causes Famine? It doesn’t take a Mao or a Stalin.
Good article on the possibility of climate change-induced famine: Click Here We in Puerto Rico should be very concerned about famine in other parts of the world, since 80% of our food is imported.
Years of Living Dangerously Premiere Full Episode
This is the first episode of a series on climate change produced by ShowTime. Excellent!
P.S. PR friends: The evangelical climate scientist, Katherine Hayhoe, interviewed in this episode, provided the global climate data used in a recently published study on seasonal impacts of climate change on ag water resources in Puerto Rico. Click here to download
PRAGWATER 