Stump the Meteorologist

Wow I missed this entire page so far when making that post so I'm really behind.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Yes and in several parts of Africa and China- still leaves the question if there was no communication of ideas between them why they all started settling at the same time independently when any one group could have done so at any point in the preceding 30, 000 years.

It didn't happen all that the same time, but it's not hard to come up with hypotheses as to why human populations increased (and social organizations thus developed among the new, larger populations) at roughly the same time. Probably the simplest explanation is the end of the last ice age and associated climatological changes that made it easier for humans to spread and thrive.

yh i donte think the pre-philosophical ancients wer concerned so much wiv tays dress tonight looked like the one I saw on VS like a night gown/pjs haha love you LOL @ the ancient tower of the 8 principal winds atHens.Was build by Andronicus at the first century BC

I think thats a valid point Eldo about the poor health of the original agriculturist (I also think Genesis has the remenants of an early power struggle between the new farmers and the older hunters in the tale of Cain and Abel- and its interesting God prefers the hunters).

Domestication of animals and plants took longer than 1000 years, but the idea of doing it and trying it out did not.
It just took a long time to develop and get right.

I think the concepts of agriculture could easily make it around the world in 1000 years. Hell, the polynesians spread clear across the Pacific, so geographic barriers are not as big as we'd like to think.

I seem to remember there's evidence of electroplating in the same area and time of the Baghdad battery. Seems a likely use.

Look up the book "Ancient Inventions". Cracking good read, covers nearly everything in the last few pages of this thread.

I had forgotten bout the electroplating stuff Halfy- thanks- I will check out that book- it may even be one of the ones I read before that I have been vaguely recalling in previous posts!

More on the solar pole switch-

'As the field shifts, the "current sheet" — a surface that radiates billions of kilometers outward from the sun's equator — becomes very wavy, NASA officials said. Earth orbits the sun, dipping in and out of the waves of the current sheet. The transition from a wave to a dip can create stormy space weather around Earth, NASA officials said.'

Interestingly enough stormy weather severe stormy weather including massive localised flooding was what the Mayans recorded in their stories-


Mayan fresco depicting the flood and also a half drowned volcano going off in the background.


'The sun's north pole has already changed sign, while the south pole is racing to catch up.
The current solar maximum is the weakest in 100 years, experts have said. Usually, at the height of a solar cycle, sunspot activity increases. These dark regions on the sun's surface can give birth to solar flares and ejections, but there have been fewer observed sunspots this year than in the maximums of previous cycles.'

Also interesting this particular 11 year event hasn't been panning out as scientists expected- with the poles switching at different times and a lack of the normal sunspot activity that marks these events.
Here's hoping the reason for this is not that the sun about to do something it hasnt done for a couple thousand years and is going into a Mayan Grand Cycle!

Question: How did the recent cold wave across North America pick the name "Polar Vortex"? It didn't seem to be centered on either pole, and it didn't appear to me to be any more vortex-y than many weather systems, certainly not hurricanes and typhoons. What was special about this one?  

Does the rain in Spain fall mainly on the plain?

If you look back on the first page of this thread, I talk about a ring of ascending air near 60 degrees latitude, being forced by the air that descends over the Pole then gets turned by the coriolis effect so it can't make it all the way to the equator (only makes it 1/3 of the way).  It's entered a warmer area so may as well rise.  Only those of us who live to the south of this region would refer to something going on at 60 degrees as polar, but hey, we are who we are.

In the winter the ocean waters are warmer than the land, causing a local reinforcement of the upward rising air: this concentrated region of ascent is called the polar vortex.  Recalling that air goes counter clockwise around a low, this area would normally drag cold air down around the middle of Canada.

But for some reason not well understood (mumble "North Atlantic Oscillation, or NAO" and hope nobody asks questions) this polar vortex got deflected to the south.  Now the air coming around it from the polar regions comes further south.  Meanwhile the typical High Pressure over Greenland (colder than the ocean) helps funnel the air around faster, just making things worse.  Here's a nice picture:



Though I have to disagree with the 'blocking high' extending clear across canada, shouldn't go that far west.

What's a North Atlantic Oscillation, Halfy?   

Does it keep a well defined center when it leaves home, and does it have a favorite route when it decides to go on a pub crawl?

Inquiring minds want to know!  

I think the microbrew culture has finally reached a threshold where the Polar Vortex considered it worth a trip. Given the decent beer explosion in this country I'm afraid we'll only see more of these sojourns.   

NAO.   I'm afraid the science is even further behind than that for El Nino, which we at least have a half assed shot of predicting these days. You can find some nice descriptions of the prevailing theory of the delayed oscillator: http://iri.columbia.edu/climate/ENSO/theory/index.html

The same can't be said for the NAO unfortunately. There's some similarities, but the El Nino and Southern Oscillation (ENSO) both depend on the equator acting as a sort of barrier along which things slosh against. No such thing for the NAO.

Interesting! It will take a little work to get my head around that Kelvin and Rossby Wave stuff, but it's a lot more applicable to my cranberries than the NAO (at least for now.....

They don't attempt to really explain Kelvin waves and Rossby waves on the IRI site.  You can think of Rossby waves carrying along the high and low pressure systems that we see: typically along the boundaries between global cells marked by the jet streams.  In our latitudes the prevailing winds are to the east, carrying highs and lows along with them making a wave like pattern.  In the tropics this all happens towards the west, but because of smaller temperature contrasts in the tropics the frontal effects of high and low pressure systems are nearly non existent: instead what you see are storm systems that travel with the lows.

Winds blow towards the west in the tropics build up warm water against the  Asian coast.  Every now and then this build up releases, and travels along the sides of the pacific (but with the equator acting as a boundary) like what happens if you are sitting in the middle of your tub and slosh all the water to the back.

The Kelvin wave is most easily understood along our west coast: northbound water gets turned by the coriolis force to the right, but hits the coast so can't do anything but travel north.  Water that sloshes against the Asian coast will travel to the south (opposite coast) until it hits the equator where the coriolis force disappears so it rebounds to the east.  If it starts to slosh away from the equator it gets turned back to the south by the increasing coriolis force.  So the wave just travels along the equator, then up the Central American west coast until the eastward winds turn it back into the pacific.

Sloshing water that hits the asian coast and deflects north goes through a much more diffuse path, it's not confined in the same way.

So you get this stretched figure 8 sloshing pattern that goes up and down in amplitude, called El Nino.

You wouldn't happen to have an animation of that handy, would you? I couldn't watch it now, but I'd love to get a visual explanation when I have a faster connection!

What's the best PH for cranberries, Dave? And is constantly irrigating and draining (ala aquaponics) suitable if I get the PH right?

Btw I'm not really norcing this thread, Halfy, as I believe my little aquaponics set up has created a microclimate (sort of).   

A video of your aquaponics may fit in nicely here.

Sadly Dave, I've rarely found videos that fall between the simplistic public consumption level and the professional nod-your-head-sagely-and-say-'ah yes...vorticity advection' level. You're as likely to find one poking around as I am, though maybe not since my connection is faster.   

They're pretty acid-tolerant, Orwell. Mid to low 5's isn't a bad pH for the plants, and it suppresses a lot of other weeds.

I've never known them to be grown in true aquaponics, though our local ag laboratory does something similar with test trays for experiments. But I don't see why it wouldn't be worth a try.   

Is your set-up starting to bear fruit? (either figuratively or literally?)

Great Uncle Orwell is getting me to type this response. I'm sitting on his knee at the moment. It's like old times really -- though it does seem odd now that I'm grown up and finished college. Anyway, David, the cranberies are barely growing at all. We think the PH is too high.  

(Oooh! Did you touch me there on purpose, Uncle Orwie! Tush tush!)

Perhaps there are not enough fish to fertilize either...

(Stop it!)

They began dying off at one time and Uncle Orwie had to trim the dead bits. Perhaps you could explain why they'd died off? Do they need to be flooded all the time - or is draining them and so repeatedly oxyenating the roots likely to be a problem?

(Do you mind? No - you wouldn't, would you! [slap] ... I don't care if it hurt, Uncle Orwie!)

Anyway, I hope you can help, David.   

Anne wrote:

Anyway, I hope you can help, David.   

I'm afraid there's not much I can do to help about Orwell, Anne. But about the cranberries, if you could send me pictures, I might be able to get a better idea of what's going on.

Consider it done...

(Oh dear... Stop it... and stop photographing them... I'm sure that's not what David meant! Oh put them away.. Pleeeease put them away....!!!)

  Back soon, David...

{Hey!)

Looks like you got kangaroos the way we've got deer!

I'm no cranberry farmer, but somehow I can't imagine a bog plant being very happy sitting on top of rocks in the southern sun. Pining away for some nice wet mulch, I figure, but Davey will weigh in and set up all straight, I reckon.

  I was having thoughts that way too, Halfy. Probably greens like lettuce - quick growers - would be a better option, but, well, that's what everyone does! Where's the imagination in that, I say?  Hey, maybe that's why I put the cucumber there. I thought I was putting it in to add a bit of quirky randomness, but maybe I was being acted on subliminally by Earth Spirits. Cucumbers are a good aquaponics plant I believe! Whoooooo-woooooh!   Or maybe I could grow kangaroos in it!    Now, I bet no one else is doing that... Halfy - without seeming to brag - it's exactly these kinds of ideas that set me apart from the rest.    

Oh yes that was 41 degrees Celsius - in case anyone was wondering.

I'm on my usual dialup connection which is slower than a receding glacier right now, but I'll try to drive down the road and poach some wifi later tonight.

Still, 41C!   Our hot days run about 23C, and when it gets above about 28C we have sprinklers all over the bogs that come on to control the temperature and humidity so the vines don't scald.

In the simplest terms, cranberries don't have the ability to close off their pores to control evaporative moisture loss like many dry-land plants do, so they can literally sweat themselves to death, especially in hot dry climates. Hillbilly can tell you more about hot-country cranberry growing than I can. Their part of the world has summers that can get up to 38C and above.

On the other hand, we've never had any luck growing kangaroos here.

I have misgivings about kangaroo growing... I mean... I'm sure the Greenies will complain about me collecting seed from the wild!

Maybe I'll move the cranberries to the bathtub where my strawberries are growing. The soil is a little acidic (at least, the strawberries went okay!) I'll plug it and try it that way. Might even put abit of shade over them on the hottest days. I'll try something else for the aqauponic bed. Parsley did well last year... Might be a bit late for a new planting of cucumbers now. Thanks Dave.