[AZ-Observing] Re: Weather in AZ

--- Richard Harshaw <rharshaw2@xxxxxxx> wrote: 
> I'm not a big fan of the "man is causing global warming" scare-- I think it
> is more likely due to solar activity and natural planetary cycles.  But one
> does wonder if this may not be due to a global climate change?


I am a big fan of analyzing data, and drawing conclusions from it, as everybody 
on this list should be.  If I am not intimately involved in a particular 
discipline such as climatology, I trust the conclusions of the science 
community more than anybody.

The recent cloudiness in Arizona hasn't been any more than slightly below 
average.  Brian Skiff has been gathering cloudiness data for Flagstaff since 
1980 (http://www.lowell.edu/Research/cloudiness_data/clouds.html), and i have 
the yearly data plotted through 2006 here.

http://members.cox.net/tpolakis/astro/clouds1.jpg

You can see that there really was no "golden age" when it was always clear in 
Arizona.


Now look at this monthly plot of average with 1-sigma standard deviation.

http://members.cox.net/tpolakis/astro/clouds3.jpg


Typical number of "clear" nights for for Winter are:

December: 11 +/- 4
January: 10.5 +/- 4

What we have so far for 2007-08 (assuming cloudy nights through the rest of 
January) are:

December: 8
January: 7

So you could say that this Winter storm season has been worse than average for 
observing, but only slightly so.

Tom
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