Friday, February 17, 2006
Winter Springs Back
Steve Scolnik @ 4:50 PM
The Washington official temperature peaked out today above 60° for the third time this month (at 10am!). Temperatures are dropping behind a strong cold front, but they are still well above the long term average, in the low 50s at mid afternoon. The core of an Arctic high pressure area was centered in the northern Rockies today, and the cold air reached all the way to the Pacific Northwest, where Seattle was just barely over freezing at noon local time. As the air mass works its way eastward, we will see below-average temperatures in this area over the weekend, but the cold air will be moderated somewhat by the time it reaches us. The ground it will be traveling over is sparsely snow-covered, and the Great Lakes are not frozen.
CapitalWeather.com chart from NWS data, photo © Kevin Ambrose
Tonight and Tomorrow
For tonight, lows will be in the low 30s in the city to the upper 20s in the 'burbs with diminishing winds and increasing clouds. Clouds in the morning tomorrow will decrease in the afternoon with highs only in the upper 30s. There is a 20% chance of some light snow or flurries tomorrow as a weak disturbance moves eastward to the south of the area. (Note: Forecast confidence is especially low today, since I have been unable to access the latest model output, evidently because of a network problem at NCEP.)
Icy U
Researchers at the University of Kansas and NASA have jointly published a study of the Greenland ice sheet in this week's issue of the journal Science. Using remote sensing via microwave, they were able to determine that glacier melting has accelerated in the last decade to about 220 cubic km per year, more than double the earlier estimate. (By comparison, the entire city of Los Angeles uses about 1 cubic km of water per year.) This means that previous projections of sea level rise from climate change have been too low.The WaPo featured a story, "Glacier Melt Could Signal Faster Rise in Ocean Levels" on this subject on page A1 today. Other media coverage includes:
- Scientific American: "Greenland's Glaciers: Melting and On The Move"
- USA Today: "Greenland glacier runoff doubles over past decade"
- U.K. Telegraph: "Greenland warming speeds rise in sea level"
- London Times: "Coastal cities could disappear as glaciers melt faster than predicted"
- N.Y. Times: "More Greenland Ice Flowing Into Sea, in Sign of Warming"
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