CHANGES IN THE WEATHER

(Site under update July - August 2007)

Unusual United States and worldwide changes in weather patterns are having a great impact on all of us. Farm crops, wildlife, trees, and our water supplies are beginning to be impacted by these weather changes. Drought areas are increasing, more severe storms, and other unusual and severe weather events are taking place more often. The changes are wreaking havoc in other areas as well. A chronology of events and some reasons why the climate is dramatically changes in many places follow:

The weather in the Mendocino County has been changing for the last several years. In Ukiah (since 2002), once hot summers are being replaced by cooler summer temperatures. Winds are becoming more prevalent and the normal wind directions change dramatically during most days than in past years. The skies, once clear deep blue most of the time, when we are not in a rain pattern, are now hazy from varying forms of lingering jet contrails and jet fuel emissions. The normal low humidity is much higher and fog is now seen in the summer and fall months in the Ukiah Valley. (Historically fog was only found on the Mendocino County Coast during this time of year.)

****************************

USA Today - Friday, January 31, 2003

Newspaper Article: "Weather forecasts urged to continue despite complaints...The National Weather Service should continue issuing forecasts despite complaints that the government gives away information that private companies sell, the national Research Council said Thursday. Some members of Congress want the Weather Service to forgo some services such as forecasting to avoid competing with private companies. Federal law requires the Weather Service to issue warnings of hazardous weather and to provide forecasts affect air and marine travel. Those forecasts are done with taxpayer money and should continue to be routinely available to the public, the report said. (Frost warning targeted to fruit growers already have been discontinued." Why should the public have to pay a private company for weather information paid for by taxpayers? What is the ulterior motive?

San Francisco Chronicle - Friday, January 31, 2003

Newspaper article: "...Investigation at UC-run lab...The University of California manages Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore National laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory under contracts with the Department of Energy...Work at the Labs: Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore are two of the nation's three nuclear weapons labs. Their prime nuclear-related missions include ensuring the reliability and safety of the existing atomic arsenal and developing ways to counter nuclear proliferation. These labs also conduct non-nuclear work in such areas as climate change, DNA mapping and astronomy.." It would be interest to know what work they are doing on climate change ...Modification?

Scientific American Magazine - November 2002

"Working Knowledge ...Weather Radar...See the Wind" by Mark Fischetti

This article is about Doppler radar and references the Navy's phased array radar system. (Could this be part of the experimental jet spraying program taking place over Mendocino County?)

"...Radars transmit microwaves that reflect off water, ice and other particles in the atmosphere. They can therefore indicate only the distance and size of particles such as raindrops. But Doppler radar can also measure the speed and direction in which the particles are moving, giving a picture of wind flow at various elevations. Today a national network of 158 Doppler radars known as a Nexrad, erected in the 1990s by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, enables NOAA's National Weather Service meteorologists to issue hazardous weather warning with far greater accuracy than before..."

"...Doppler weather radars do have limitations. Because the beams are aimed slightly upward to scan the surrounding troposphere, they miss precipitation and wind very close to the ground. Also, the beams can determine only the horizontal width of particles they intercept because they transmit only horizontally polarized waves (the electric field lies in the horizontal plane). Engineers at the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman , Okla., are developing polarimetric radars that send vertically polarized waves as well, to gauge the vertical dimension of particles. The dual measurements will provide superior information on the size, shape and density of precipitation, ice particles and clouds, thereby allowing forecaster to better determine rain and snow rates. NOAA plans to install the technology in five to 10 years..."

"...The storm lab is also experimenting with the U.S. Navy's phased array radar, the most advanced way for ships to detect enemy vessels. With multiple beams and frequencies, radar could reduce a Nexrad stations's scan time of storms from five minutes to one minute..."

***************************

In an article in the New York Times dated October 1, 2002, written by Carol Kaesuk Yoon, she states that during "...a devastating storm in its wintering ground in Mexico ...hundreds of millions of monarch butterflies were killed...Now scientists have learned that, as many fear, monarch numbers plunged over large areas of the United States this summer ...Scientists say the spring freezes in Texas when the Butterflies were arriving and widespread summer drought did not help monarch numbers this year ...scientists fear that was only the first of the major freezes the butterflies will encounter as loggers and residents continue to degrade the Mexican forests..."