[AZ-Observing] Re: Weather in AZ
- From: "Spencer, Darrell" <DSpencer@xxxxxxx>
- To: <az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 08:17:49 -0800
You scared me there for a minute, Tom. For a second, I thought you were
going to empirically prove that "man is causing global warming".
(Although I believe that's, arguably, already been done).
The data you have presented is compelling, though and I'm glad to see
confirmed that Arizona will likely continue to live up to its reputation
for us - even if we have to wait for spring.
Thanks for sharing!
Darrell Spencer
-----Original Message-----
From: az-observing-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:az-observing-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Tom Polakis
Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2008 9:07 AM
To: az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [AZ-Observing] Re: Weather in AZ
--- Richard Harshaw <rharshaw2@xxxxxxx> wrote:=20
> 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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