Junuary?

Is June getting cooler?
[Via Cliff Mass Weather Blog]

Here is a fascinating graph from UW meteorologist Mark Albright showing the average temperatures for June at Seattle Tacoma Airport from 1957 to now:

Is June getting warmer? The answer: No. In fact there is a slight cooling trend. Mark notes that June 2010 was 7.5F colder than June 2009!–no surprise to any of us– and that this June was the 5th coldest in the past 54 years. Again, no big shocker.

Interestingly, regional simulations of the local implications of global warming for western Washington and Oregon suggest an increase of low clouds here as the continent warms–so June may get WORSE under global warming. Why? A greater onshore pressure difference as the interior warm (and pressure thus falls) and stronger offshore high pressure. We just can’t win. So you can look forward to Junuary stories in the Seattle Times in 50 years….some things never change. But perhaps we will have an income tax then.

Saturday still looks decent. Showers and clouds on July 4th. And then the big heat wave.

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June has always been cold. We get a few nice days inApril. It gets cold and rainy after that. Almost every 4th of July part entails wearing a sweater. It then usually gets very warm and nice for the next 3 months or so.

And it looks like things may not be getting better. I had hoped that global warming would make our climate more like LA but it appears that a more likely scenario is more clouds and actually a little cooler weather as interior heating brings in cooler ocean air.

I guess we can still look forward to having a lot of rain. We may be the only place along the West Coast that may not have to worry about water shortage.

Racing to a new record?

By NASA Goddard Photo and Video

Sea ice extent update 11: the tables are turning
[Via Arctic Sea Ice]

I’ll be regularly writing updates on the current sea ice extent (SIE) as reported by IJIS (a joint effort of the International Arctic Research Center and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and compare it to the sea ice extents in the period 2006-2009. The JAXA graph is favoured by almost everyone, probably because it looks so nice compared to other graphs (like the one by ArcticROOS, the University of Bremen and the Danish Meteorological Institute). All the years have a nice colour of their own which makes it easy to eyeball the differences between trends. Most of the betting on minimum SIE is based on the IJIS data. NSIDC has a nice explanation of what sea ice extent is in their FAQ.

July 3rd 2010

2010 had built up a very decent lead over the other years in the past few weeks, but at the moment it has a hard time defending that lead against 2007′s incessant barrage of century breaks. Yesterday another lowest melt for the date (July 1st) in the period 2006-2010 was reported (second in a row): a meagre 56,093 square km. Today there has been a slight recovery with a reported melt number of 82,969 square km, but that doesn’t really cut it in this phase of the race, does it?

2010 is still leading 2008 and 2009 by a substantial 900K square km, but 2006 and 2007 are about to make the difference less than 400K. On today’s date for instance 2007 had a melt of 201,875 square km, the biggest melt ever reported by IJIS. 2010 has to start producing some century breaks if it wants to get to record-breaking territory. This month is the month to do it.

The current difference between 2010 and the other years is as follows:

• 2006: -435K

• 2007: -403K

• 2008: -921K

• 2009: -897K

And here’s the IJIS graph:

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Go take a look at all the charts. He lines them up very nicely. I’ll wait.

Glad you are back. So far, 2010 has had more rapid sea ice loss in the Arctic than any previous year, even the epic year of 2007. But in 2007, there was a huge loss of ice in July, something that does not seem to be in the forecast for 2010. The rapid loss seen in April, May and June appears to be slowing.

As we approach the yearly low in September, the question will be whether this is another bad year for Arctic Ice or the very worst year for Arctic ice.

And remember, this is only the surface area. It does not mention the total volume. The UW has some idea. Their research indicates that the volume today is substantially lower than at any other time:

In September we may very well have the smallest volume of Arctic sea ice we have ever seen.

Making the 4th a community affair in Seattle

by mr.bmonroe

Earlier this year, the company that has organized Seattle’s big fireworks display on Lake Union for the last 20 years said that is had lost the title sponsor for this year’s event (part of the blowup from Washington Mutual’s failure) and that it would have to cancel it totally. One of the local radio stars, Dave Ross, started an impromptu fundraising attempt on air on a Thursday morning and by Friday there were enough pledges to have the event.

$500,000 in pledges! Both Microsoft and Starbucks said they would each match up to $125,000. Hundreds of people donated money to put on the day-long party that culminates in the fireworks display; something that has been going on for the last 90 years.

There is a website for the event – Family 4th at Lake Union. You can see everyone who donated money to help the community continue to put on its breathtaking event – over 4000 shells. On a lake close to downtown and visible from around town. I have seen people pull over on the nearby Interstate to watch the fireworks. It will be covered live in high definition.

The production company had not considered asking for donations before, not knowing how that would be received. It no longer will try to find a title sponsor for the show. As they say on the website:

The community at large has claimed ownership of the Family 4th, and voiced that they would like to share the responsibility of preserving this important civic event.

Now, instead of spending all their time going for corporate donations, they will continue to open it up to donations like this year. Even donations less that $10 can be arranged. And they now have benefits for larger donors – like parking and your own line to enter the area – that one is given at the $100 level. Give enough and you can be part of the donor hospitality area with its own special viewing section, no-host food/beer/wine and free soft drinks.

Making it a real community affair.

Growing plastics

by adonofrio

Taking the petro out of petrochemicals
[Via Gristmill]

by Todd Woody.

You can buy green jeans, green greens (at the farmer’s market), and green beer. But the reality is that many, if not most, products in our industrial society contain some petroleum-based chemicals.

In fact, up to a quarter of the oil consumed in some regions of the United States—such as on the Gulf Coast—goes into petrochemical production, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. A number of startups, however, are working to develop green chemicals that take the petro out of petrochemicals and eliminate the environmental and safety hazards from manufacturing industrial chemicals.

A couple of years ago I wrote about one of those companies, a San Diego startup called Genomatica, that had developed a green version of a chemical compound called 1,4‐butanediol, or BDO. Your skateboard wheels, sneakers, golf balls, and a host of other products are all made with the chemical, whose manufacture alone is a $3 billion business.

At the time, Genomatica, which was spun out of the University of California, San Diego, in 2000, had only produced batches of BDO in the lab. The startup’s scientists had bioengineered a microorganism that eats water and sugar and spits out BDO. Goodbye hydrocarbons, hello carbohydrates. The microorganisms are designed and tested “in-silico”—in other words, on computers, which also simulate chemical production.

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A much more important aspect of our oil addiction is its use in the petrochemical industry. It is used as the starting point for a large amount of the necessary plastics we need.

Engineering bacteria to produce plastic could get around this. And it could reduce costs a lot. One problem – it uses sugars to feed the bacteria. This could have a similar effect to biodiesel – competition between our food and our plastics. ANd the energy costs for producing the sugar must be included in the energy costs of the plastics.

So we will have to be smart. But getting bugs to produce the chemicals we need may be the only way to manufacture some important things once peak oil hits.