Jan

31st 2007

Jim Gray Missing at Sea

Filed Under Current Events, Map Servers, United States | Leave a Comment

Jim Gray

Update (2/2/07):  The Associated Press is reporting that the Coast Guard has called off their four-day search for Jim Gray. 

“Although this search is suspended, if new information arises, it will be investigated,” said Capt. David Swatland, the Coast Guard’s deputy sector commander for the Northern California area.  “It’s one of the most frustrating and unusual cases we’ve had.”

Jim Gray, known most notably in the geoworld for his work creating the Terraserver, is being reported as missing at sea.  On Sunday, Jim Gray left San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge area for the Farrallon Islands, a journey of about 27 miles.  Charles Babcock on InformationWeek reports:

Now the Coast Guard’s helicopter, its C-130 search plane, two 87-foot patrol boats, a 41-foot Coast Guard utility boat and an Alameda County maritime patrol boat are searching 1,750 square miles of ocean for him.

According to his web page, Jim Gray is a researcher and manager of Microsoft Research’s eScience Group.   His areas of interest include “working with the astronomy community to build the world-wide telescope and has been active in building online databases like http://terraService.Net and http://skyserver.sdss.org.”

Updates on the search effort for Jim Gray are being posted on the Oakleaf Blog. 

Source: InformationWeek

 

Jan

28th 2007

Study finds most U.S. college-aged adults illiterate in geography

Filed Under Education, General, United States | Leave a Comment

The National Geographic-Roper Public Affairs Geographic Study recently released found that most young adults (between 18 and 24) were unable to find significant geographic locations on a map and displayed a very limited understanding of the world.  Among the questions asked, the survey found that:

  • Only 37% of young Americans can find Iraq on a map—though U.S. troops have been there since 2003.
  • 6 in 10 young Americans don’t speak a foreign language fluently.
  • 20% of young Americans think Sudan is in Asia. (It’s the largest country in Africa.)
  • 48% of young Americans believe the majority population in India is Muslim. (It’s Hindu—by a landslide.)
  • Half of young Americans can’t find New York on a map.

The survey was conducted face-to-face between December 20, 2005 and January 20, 2006 among a nationwide sample of 510 young adults.  The full survey, methodology and results are available in PDF format from National Geographic’s web site. 

Source: National Geographic

Jan

28th 2007

Google adds maps to its book search

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Seeking to make the literary experience more vivid, Google has added its popular Google Maps capability to Google Books.  Users can now check out the locations mentioned in books by clicking on the locations listed on the search page for a particular book.  As a test, I did a search for “Provence”.  One of the books that came up in the search results was “Provence: From Minstrels to the Machine” by Ford Madox Ford.  In addition to the standard information about the book, there was a new section called “places mentioned in this book” that had a map showing all the locations as well as a chronological listing by page within the book of each location.  Google Books now embedded with Google Maps

Jan

28th 2007

New Amazon deforestation maps

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Deforestation in the Amazon rainforestBrazil’s National Statistics Office (IBGE) has released new maps showing the extent and causes of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest.  Mongabay.com reports that these maps show, for the first time, the extent of deforestation caused by agriculture, logging and infrastructure development. 

Source: Mongabay.com

Jan

24th 2007

Map Reading is a redundant skill

Filed Under Cartography, Mapping | Leave a Comment

All Points Blog has an interesting entry about a survey by Nickelodean on what kids and adults feel are important skills to know in this high-tech world.  Receiving a significant thumbs down were spelling and map reading skills. 

Source: New York Post

Jan

21st 2007

Impact of relocating weather station in Los Angeles

Filed Under Climatology, United States | Leave a Comment

A Tale of Two Sites: Impacts of Relocating L.A.’s Weather Station
January 17, 2007 In the classic 1859 novel, “A Tale of Two Cities,” Charles Dickens spins a moral tale of dramatic contrasts between 18th century London and Paris. To modern-day climatologists, though, the story could serve as a metaphor for weather records in Los Angeles since the National Weather Service relocated the city’s official downtown Civic Center weather station to the University of Southern California in July 1999.

A new comparative study of daily temperature and rainfall records in Los Angeles by NASA and university scientists finds the move — to a location nearly 6 kilometers (almost 4 miles) closer to the coast and 27 meters (90 feet) lower in elevation — has produced weather records reflecting conditions that are cooler, drier and less extreme than those at the previous location.

At the annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society in San Antonio, Texas, climatologist Dr. Bill Patzert of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., said the move has created a clear discontinuity in weather records.

“The move from downtown Los Angeles to USC in 1999 has caused a major hiccup in our local climate history,” said Patzert. “Suddenly, Los Angeles became dryer and cooler, and we were denied a record rain year in 2004-2005. The magnitude of change reflected in our study strongly suggests this relocation will bias long-term climatic studies.”

This is hardly the first move of the downtown Los Angeles weather station, but it is by far the largest, and the first to move the station away from the built-up city center. The station was moved from the roof of a two-story parking structure at the Department of Water and Power building near city center at an elevation of almost 90 meters (270 feet), to a park-like environment on the USC campus with tall shade trees and grass at an elevation of almost 60 meters (180 feet).

The National Weather Service moved the station as part of a nationwide effort to locate all official weather stations on ground-level sites in natural settings. The Department of Water and Power site remained operational, however, allowing the direct comparisons used by Patzert and his colleagues.

The study found that between August 1999 and June 2006, maximum temperatures averaged 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) higher at the Department of Water and Power site, while the average temperatures at the new site were about a half-degree Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer. Minimum temperatures were about the same at both sites. The greatest differences in maximum temperatures occurred in late summer and early fall, with the smallest differences seen in late winter and spring. The Department of Water and Power site was cooler than USC in the spring and summer and warmer in the fall and winter. The authors attribute these seasonal differences to two factors: distance from the ocean and land use.

“In southern California, the cool ocean current keeps the coast cooler in summer and milder in winter than inland areas,” said co-author Dr. Steve LaDochy, a climatologist at California State University, Los Angeles. “For example, the Department of Water and Power site averages 1.7 degrees Celsius (three degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than Los Angeles International Airport at the coast, just 20 kilometers (12 miles) away.”

Because of the abundance of trees and grass, the USC station tends to be cooler during the day than the urbanized Department of Water and Power site. At night, the trees can block outgoing radiation, and the moisture in the lawns tends to absorb more heat than the drier, open Department of Water and Power site.

The USC site averaged about 25.4 millimeters (about one inch) less rainfall than the higher and more inland Department of Water and Power location. Again, elevation and distance from the coast are driving factors in the differences. In the Los Angeles basin, rainfall increases with elevation and with distance from the coast. The Department of Water and Power site averages 375 millimeters (14.77 inches) of rain a year, while Los Angeles International Airport averages just 305 millimeters (12.01 inches). Rainfall comes primarily from Pacific winter storms moving inland from a westerly direction. As these storm fronts are lifted by the coastal mountains, rain and snow tend to increase with increasing elevation on the coastal side of the mountains.

The weather station relocation kept Los Angeles from setting a new rainfall record in the 2004-5 water year (from July 1 to June 30). The USC site recorded 946.2 millimeters (37.25 inches), second only to 1883-4, which had 969.8 millimeters (38.18 inches). That same season, the Department of Water and Power site recorded 973.3 millimeters (38.32 inches). Conversely, in 2001-02, the USC station recorded the driest year ever–about 112 millimeters (4.42 inches), a record that would not have occurred without the move.

LaDochy cited the record heat wave of June and July 2006 as an example of how the move has made temperature records less extreme. At the USC station, the all-time record for the highest minimum temperature (overnight low) was set on June 4, with 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit). However, that same week, the Department of Water and Power station recorded highest overnight lows three days in a row. Similarly, for the month of July, USC station temperatures broke or tied seven all-time records, while the Department of Water and Power site broke nine.

Since the Department of Water and Power station is still operational, Patzert and his co-authors suggest its records be reinstated as the official Los Angeles downtown station, with the USC station becoming part of the National Weather Service’s Cooperative Observer Program. That program has sites all over the United States, maintained by volunteers or contractors.

Other study authors include JPL’s Dr. Josh Willis and Teni Mardirosian, Glendale Community College, Glendale, Calif.

Jan

21st 2007

Winter Weather Across the United States

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A powerful winter storm swept across the United States on January 15 and January 16, 2007, leaving much of the country under snow and ice. The storm moved from northern Texas, across the Midwest, and into the Northeast. By January 16, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image, the clouds cleared enough to reveal a path of snow across the Midwest. The Intermountain West was also buried in a blanket of white snow, but the Southeast and the East were still covered by a broad band of clouds. More winter weather swamped the Midwest in the days that followed. By January 19, icy roads and other weather-related incidents had claimed 70 lives, reported CNN.

This image of the United States was stitched together from three satellite overpasses. Faint diagonal lines across the image reveal the boundary between each image. The large image provided above has a resolution of one kilometer per pixel.

United States Winter Weater

NASA image courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC.

Source: EO Newsroom

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