By Brody Klapko in Newsletter — 08 May 2023

Well, that weekend went fast

In which we filter some water and order the usual.

Office hours notes

Daniel Swain had office hours today. It focused mostly on El Niño. Some quick notes:

El Niño still looking ~moderately strong
Mainly waiting to see what happens next winter in CA if El Niño is strong
If El Niño is strong, be on the lookout for record high global average temps in 2024
El Niño usually suppresses hurricane season in the Atlantic, but with how warm ocean temps are it could make things interesting (perhaps fewer but more intense storms, we’ll see)
Peak Sierra snowpack melt is still ahead of us (late May and into June)

Didn’t know that was an issue

It turns out there are gaps in the radar coverage for the U.S. The linked article isn’t that recent but it’s still an issue:

You can see the full coverage map on NOAA’s site. It looks like there are at least a few companies trying to fill the gap which is pretty neat (Climavision, WeatherSTEM). This whole problem space was new to me so I thought I’d share.

We’re gonna need a bigger filter

This maybe isn’t exactly weather related, but there’s a company trying to filter CO2 out of the ocean. The ocean absorbs a bunch of CO2 from the atmosphere which obviously reduces the heating effect of the gas, but it also causes ocean acidification.

The idea is that filtering CO2 out of seawater will allow oceans to soak up more of the greenhouse gas, keeping it out of the atmosphere where it would heat up the planet. The world’s oceans have soaked up nearly a third of humans’ greenhouse gas emissions since the industrial revolution. Without that help, climate change would be much worse than it already is — with global warming already fueling more extreme weather disasters and threatening to wipe some coastal communities off the map.

Quoted source

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April sure went fast

We know it’s gone though because the April Climate Report is out for the U.S. As usual, the report is pretty scrollable so I’ll let you check it out on your own.

Weather tech, say hello to travel

The New York Times published an article about weather technology and how it’s being used to reduce things like flight delays and turbulent flights. The technologies involved range from AI and machine learning, to new weather satellites, to hyper local weather stations and doppler radar. I’m guessing it’s out of my price range, but I’d be down to have my own doppler radar at home!

I’ll have the usual

It’s Monday so it seems like a good day to look at the 6-10 outlooks (5/14-5/18).

And now, some video coverage

I’ve made some jokes about the outlook avocado, but check out this video if you want to see how those outlooks are made and what goes into them. The video is a little over 13 minutes but it’s worth a watch (pun intended). You get to see the process and the people behind the scenes, which is pretty cool.