Hurricane Season begain June 1st, and experts are expecting an average number of tropical storms and hurricanes. 

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 The United States wants to paint the world white….well at least roofs.  Now, don’t run outside to get the ladder and start painting your  roof.  What the Obama Administration wants is to see flat roofs painted white or a lighter color to keep the buildings cooler.   It makes sense.  White reflects sunlight away from the buildings, while black attracts the sunlight to it.  Flat roofs are especially common in city environments like New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles.  Painting these flat roofs would, in turn, reduce the amount of energy used by air conditioning.  

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Some new information regarding El Nino has been published by the International Research Institute (IRI).  The information indicates that according to computer models, El Nino will definitely kick in this summer.  Also, the chart below indicates that a moderate El Nino could exist by the end of summer…the peak of hurricane season.  On the bottom of the chart, there are groups of 3 months.  For instance, ASO means August-September-October.  The vertical shows the Sea Surface Temperature (SST) anomaly or distance from the average.  I know..this is getting a little technical.  Basically, most of the computer models show that El Nino will strengthen during the next several months.  The dynamical models (the ones with the squares) use the below-sea-surface data to arrive at their solutions, and are probably more accurate.  Bottom line….El Nino is kicking in and will strengthen through the summer.

El Nino, if you remember, is the warming of the East Pacific waters around the equator. 
This warming effects weather patterns around the globe, including over New England and the Atlantic Ocean.   Below are maps of the Pacific Ocean from NOAA.   The bottom map is the one which should interest you the most….the anomalies.  That peachy color off the coast of South America (right side of map) indicates above normal temps in the East Pacific.  El Nino has begun.

It’s important to track these slight temperature changes (which are actually large) because El Nino can impact the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic.  El Nino can prohibit hurricane growth.   The upper-level winds, which develop over the Atlantic during an El Nino, can blow the tops off developing tropical storms/hurricanes….stopping their ability to grow.

If those NOAA scientists are correct, we could be seeing an early end to hurricane season.  However, nothing is carved in stone.  El Nino may not strengthen to forecast levels and those upper-level winds may not knock down those developing hurricanes.  Obviously a constant monitoring of the tropics is necessary through the summer and fall.  That’s what we’re here for!

Hurricane season begins on Monday, and I’ll be conducting an online chat on Sunday evening to talk all about hurricanes.  Look for more information soon on wpri.com.

We’ve been monitoring this fairly broad area of low pressure over Florida and the Bahamas for the past few days.  We’ve been watching it very closely because the forecast charts we look at are indicating that this system will move into the Gulf of Mexico and strengthen a bit…and, of course, the first thing to comes my mind is…”hurricane”.    As I’m typing (3:35pm on Tuesday, May 19th), it isn’t tropical, but the system has dumped a tremendous amount of rain and given some big wind to the state of Florida.  Florida has been desperate for some rain, so this is a good thing for them.  Although, some areas have been seeing 8 to 13″ of rain!!!  That’s probably a little too much.

Anyway, that low is expected to move out into the Gulf of Mexico and become better organized; however, it does not appear, right now, that it will become a tropical system.  In fact, the National Hurricane Center said in a statement that the system has “less than 30 percent (chance) of tropical cyclone development….during the next 48 hours.  We’ll see…maybe it should serve as a gentle reminder that hurricane center is just around the corner.  It begins June 1st and runs until November 30.

What kind of of hurricane season will it be?  Many forecasters are expecting it to be a fairly busy year.  There are a number of factors which they consider when making their forecasts including El Nino, water temperatures and Sahara Desert dust…yes…Sahara Desert dust.  We’ll talk about the dust another time.   Some forecasters have stated that the East Coast has a higher than average chance of being struck by a hurricane.  It’s been nearly 18 years since we’ve had a hurricane up our way!! Let this seemingly harmless low over Florida serve as reminder to you that hurricane season is just about here.  Prepare yourself and your home. 

Here’s a great website to peruse for preparations: American Red Cross

And we’ll be talking about this a lot more throughout the summer.

Be safe!

The astronauts are scheduled to link up with the Hubble Telescope today (Wednesday) and you can watch it all live on NASA TV. 

Here’s the link: NASA TV

This is a very cool site because you can watch the astronauts during their space walks, see live rocket launches and learn about space and space travel with their educational program.

Check it out!

 The Space Shuttle Atlantis is orbiting the Earth right now (May 12), unfortunately this time we won’t be able to see it.  Atlantis will be servicing the Hubble Telescope among other projects.  The Hubble is orbiting the Earth around the Equator.  However, you can see the International Space Station pass over the Southern New England skies….check out this link.

International Space Station Sightings

This will be the last service mission by a Space Shuttle to the Hubble Telescope.  In a few years, the Hubble will be plunged into the Ocean.  Hubble’s orbital life started with bad eye sight (remember that debacle?)   Well that problem was fixed, and the telescope has been delivering stunning pictures back from the far reaches of the universe.  This is my favorite:

 
Hubble Deep Field courtesy HubbleSite.org.  This image shows
hundreds of distant galaxies, some nearly 12 billion years old. 

To see more of Hubble’s pictures…you can go to HubbleSite.org

Here’s a question for you….how many planets do we know about?

The old answer used to be 9.  Today, the answer is not 8 (with the loss of Pluto), but instead 358.    Yes…that’s right…358! For more than a decade now, astronomers have been finding distant planets orbiting distant suns.  The first was discovered in 1995.  Now, we know of 350 other planets outside of our own solar system.

Amazing isn’t?

I would love to show you a picture of these planets, but there aren’t any.  These “exoplanets” are discovred by their gravitational impacts on their suns and other planets. 

Almost all of those planets have been determined by astronomers to be much too big, or too far/too close to its sun to support life.  When astronomers say that the planets are too big, they mean that the planets have likely developed a toxic gaseous atmosphere which would almost certainly not harbor life.  If a planet was too far away or too close, liquid water may not exist.

All that scientists have found are gas giants (similar to Jupiter).  That is, until now.  This is truly some of the most exciting news from this new field of astronomy. 

A telescope in Chile was pointed at the star “Gliese” in the constellation Libra.  Two planets were recently discovered… Gliese 581 d and Gliese 581 e. 

Gliese 581 d has an orbit in what astronomers call the “habitable zone”….an orbit around the sun where a planet could sustain ingredients to support life.  The problem with 581d is its size.  According to the Grenoble Observatory in France, “d” is 8 times as large as Earth.   A big ball of just rock is unlikely, but astronomers from the observatory have stated that deep oceans could possibly exist on the planet.  Interesting, huh? I could envision at least amoeba or some other single-celled organism there, couldn’t you? 

Gliese 581 e is not in that “habitable zone” .  Instead it orbits its sun too close to hold liquid water.  However, the size of “d” is only about 2 times the size of Earth, making it the smallest exoplanet ever discovered”. Its surface is probably mainly rock, but its proximity to its su, makes it too hot to sustain life.

While these discoveries do not prove the existence of life on other planets, we are certainly getting closer to that big discovery: a potentially life harboring planet.  It would be interesting to see how the scientific and religious communities would react to such a discovery.  A scientist with the Grenoble Observatory stated that finding a planet of the right size and distance from its star is the “Holy Grail of exoplanet research”.  

What would your reaction be if this life harboring planet was found? I would be excited.  Think about the billions of stars out there.  There must be planets similar to Earth out there.  I’m confident there’s life elsewhere, but confirming it would be exciting to me. 

Let me know what your reaction would be if the “Holy Grail of exoplanet research” was found.  Drop me an email at tdelsanto@wpri.com

The Space Shuttle is now in orbit above the Earth and you could see it pass over Southern New England during the next couple of weeks.

Check out this website from NASA.  Just click on a city near you and you can get the times the Shuttle and Space Station pass overhead. 

You can see them without binoculars, but it’ll only look a star moving quickly across the sky.  A good pair of binoculars may give you the shape of the shuttle.

Enjoy!

We had a close call the other day (on an astronomical scale).  We (Earthlings) came pretty darn close to getting hit by an asteroid the size of a ten story building.  Scientists are saying that this was the same size of an asteroid that leveled more than 800 square miles of a forest in Siberia back in 1908.  It is believed that the Siberian asteroid actually exploded just above the Earth, but still destroyed a huge area in Russia.

I remember when I was little guy and looking through some kids’ encyclopedias my parents got for me.  I was always fascinated by space since I was about 8years old.   I remember looking through the encyclopedia at the solar system.  I remember telling my mother how cool it all was.  My mother said, “well, maybe someday you can explore the solar system”.    I then remember saying…”no way, not with all those asteroids around”.

I’ve always feared the asteroids.  I never even liked the game Asteroids for Atari (mainly because I couldn’t steer my little space ship too well, and I always crashed into an Asteroid).

Anyway, this particular Asteroid, named 2009 DD45 was discovered only a few weeks ago!  They knew fairly quickly that this Asteroid would not threaten the Earth.  If it had, with such short notice, we probably would not have had enough time to load up a space shuttle with Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck.  Truthfully…it’s pretty scary.  We are pretty much sitting ducks right now.  We have no defense for something like this.

The government spends millions, if not billions of dollars each year on programs where Near Earth Asteroids are detected.  I don’t think that it’s very cool that one this size was missed.  It was discovered while it was still a million miles away, but still. What would we have done if it made a direct hit? Nothing. Nothing could be done.

There’s been a lot of talk over the years about launching nuclear weapons into an approaching asteroid.  Some have suggested that we could just easily nudge a threatening piece of space rock away from us with a small rocket ship or some other kind of space craft.  Obviously obliterating an asteroid with a nuclear weapon would be a good thing because Earth would survive.  But…you might lose the signals for your Dish Network, or cell phone or GPS because all the left over debris would surely destroy all the satellites around the Earth.  I guess losing all that technology would be a small price to pay.  Guiding the asteroid away from Earth is the most popular choice but how do you practice this to be sure? 

Now this asteroid passed 48,800 miles from Earth.  That seems pretty far away, right? Well, some of our satellites are about 24,000 miles up.  So, we only had 24,400 miles to spare.  That’s actually not that far on an astronomical scale.    An astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (where I once worked) was quoted as saying, “This was pretty darn close”. Yuh.

It seems impossible, right now, to know if another asteroid of this size will threaten us anytime soon.  NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program has said, however, that in 2029 (mark your calendar) an 885 foot asteroid could threaten us…coming within 20,000 miles.  By they way, some of our GOES weather satellites are up there at 22,000 miles above the Earth!!!