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Before I could start my “great capitals of the world” tour, had to put in a full workday followed by teaching a three hour class; at least it was on my favorite topic, seasonal forecasting. From class I went straight to the airport and caught my late flight to London Heathrow. Then another three and a half hours by train to the UK Met Office/Hadley Centre in Exeter. As Janusz Eluszkiewicz told me, the Hadley Centre is a world leader in climate modeling research. I was nervous I would miss my own seminar but made it in time with an hour to spare. Began the seminar with one request, if I stop talking for an unusually long time would someone from the audience please give me a shove and hopefully I will start talking again. But despite sleeping for only an hour on the plane and a long trip, I held up pretty well. Even joked that the laser pointer the UK Met Office provided was fading much faster than I was.

My talk on using snow cover in seasonal predictions went well with positive reviews including “great,” “fantastic” and “very interesting” talk. Of course those who might have felt differently are less likely to tell me so to my face.

Friday morning I returned to the UK Met Office for more discussions, mostly with my host Adam Scaife, the head of Monthly to Decadal Predictions at the Hadley Centre, and his group. I am very pleased that we agreed to collaborate on two projects, including analyzing snow cover in their seasonal forecast model and improving a statistical model that they are developing for research purposes. My only regret is that the trip was too short. Anyway now I am en route to London to spend the weekend with friends before flying to Vienna to attend EGU where I present a talk on Tuesday. BTW It hailed on me in Exeter and again in London, the curse of the weatherman.

Cheers,
Judah

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Last week’s hail has followed me to London! Weatherman’s luck!

The American Meteorological Society recognized Dr. Ross Hoffman with an Editor’s Award for Weather, Climate and Society at the 2012 AMS Meeting. He received this award for his careful, wide-ranging and thoughtful reviews of difficult manuscripts.

To read Dr. Hoffman’s full bio click here.

To see his list of peer reviewed publications and presentations click here.

Click here for a full list of AMS 2012 award recievers.

Space weather events from the Sun are increasing in frequency as we head towards the solar maximum in 2013. Things won't slow down until 2-4 years past maximum, so expect these types of events to be frequent over the next several years. Satellite owners, operators, and insurers will be most affected, but other industries such as the airlines, high-precision GPS users, and the electric utilities will also be on alert for major solar storms. Satellites directly feel the effects of energetic particles during a space weather event, and can suffer permanent damage. A part of our atmosphere called the ionosphere becomes severely disturbed after a solar storm, sometimes enough to cut out radio communication and interfere with GPS signals.

One issue on everyone's mind is the space weather threat to the electric power grid. A scenario where electric power is unavailable over a wide geographic area for an extended period of time makes people understandably anxious. This recent storm was nowhere near energetic enough to cause widespread damage. The coronal mass ejection started off at a very fast clip, approximately 2300 km/s upon leaving the Sun, which could have triggered a moderate to strong storm when it hit the Earth's atmosphere. But, we had no way of knowing how strong until it arrived, because the key component for energy transfer (magnetic field orientation) can only be measured very close to Earth (by the ACE satellite at the L1 position).The magnetic field of the coronal mass ejection was not in an orientation favorable for a strong storm (the most favorable orientation is opposite polarity of Earth's), and it turned out to be mild-to-moderate.

Space weather forecasting took a major step forward last year with the release of the WSA-ENLIL model. The model has predicted the arrival time of the last two major CME events to within an hour, which is a fantastic achievement. The next step in forecasting will be the prediction of the magnetic field strength and orientation upon arrival. Hopefully in the next several years the scientific community will have reached this forecasting milestone. Then we will be much better prepared for stormy weather from the Sun. For now, we have to watch and wait until it arrives to know how extreme the storm will, or will not, be.

*Blog photo is from NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory

Scientific publisher IOP Publishing just congratulated AER that our research is the 2nd most downloaded article this year from IOP Journal!

‘Arctic warming, increasing snow cover and widespread boreal cooling’ by AER authors Dr. Judah Cohen, Dr. Jason Furtado and others, was published in January 2012, and in just 4 weeks is the second most downloaded paper from IOP Journal with 3,400 downloads plus media stories in 12 countries.

You can read many of these news stories about the science and how it helps improve the accuracy of winter predictions in AER In-the-News. Highlights include:

• Cold Winters tied to Arctic summers, study says; MSNBC
• Aquecimento é causa de invernos severos no Norte; O Globo
• Warmer summers may be causing colder winters; CTV News
• Warming Arctic May Be Causing Cooler Winters In Eastern U.S., Europe; Oregon Public Broadcasting
• Weatherwatch: Winters in northern hemisphere set to get colder; The Gaurdian
• Why global warming means... more snow, Financial Times
• Press release by IOP Publishing about this peer-reviewed article in Environmental Research Letters authored by scientists at Atmospheric and Environmental Research Inc., (AER)