Clouds can be seen breaking up in today’s morning movie. Look for sunshine areawide this afternoon.

As far as the weather goes for the rest of the week, temps should stay at or above normal. Same goes for next week (the first week of October). There are not any signs of cold Fall air or frost until (maybe) the second week of October.  There will be a couple of "cool" days with igh temps in the low 60s but most days should be in the mid to upper 60s with a couple topping out in the low 70s. I just hope it doesn’t turn out like last year when we had mild weather during the first week of October and then record cold and traces of snow for the rest of the month. So the temps will be mild but what about rain chances. It looks like some light showers are possible tomorrow and some heavier rain possible Sunday and next Tuesday.

AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) News:

The top news item from today is a possible rapid snow melt in Greenland. You can read the news here and here. Here is the most dramatic quote from the articles and the quote that leaves me scratching my head:

"The amount of ice that has melted away from Greenland’s ice sheet this year could cover an area twice the size of the United States, with more melting occurring in 2007 than the average going back to 1988, a new study finds. " (from livescience.com)

"A new NASA-supported study reports that 2007 marked an overall rise in the melting trend over the entire Greenland ice sheet and, remarkably, melting in high-altitude areas was greater than ever at 150 percent more than average. In fact, the amount of snow that has melted this year over Greenland could cover the surface size of the U.S. more than twice." (from sciencedaily.com)

First notice there is some sloppy writing going on here. One article says a lot of snow has melted while the other says a lot of ice has melted. Whichever it is, it is a bold statement (not sure if it can be attributed directly to researcher Marco Tedesco) that is almost meaningless without some additional information. So the melted ice/snow could cover the U.S. twice. How thick would this layer be? One millimeter? An inch? A yard? What is it? An inch of ice contains a lot more water than an inch of snow? I don’t have access to the original paper from which the news articles are based so I can’t really derive any significance from this. The "melt index" has been derived from microwave satellite measurements. The lead researcher plans to make a trip to Greenland in 2008 take verify the measurements made by satellite. This will be a good thing because other scientists have found that the mass of ice over Greenland is getting thicker and not thinner. Take a look here for a review of a paper published back in 2003. Again, I can’t get access to the original paper, so we will have to rely a bit on the "reporting".

Space News:

I emailed JAXA yesterday to find out when their satellite will be reaching the moon but I have not received a reply as of yet. However, an article here indicates that Kaguya will not reach the moon until early October. Earlier reporting on the satellite had claimed it would only take 5 days. So the wait is on. The article is a review of future space plans of the Asian nations of Japan, China, and India. I am thrilled that more people are getting into space exploration. I only hope that it doesn’t turn into a "military" based space race, like that between the former USSR and the USA. If countries work together then we should be able to get space exploration by private citizens off and running a lot quicker. A thought echoed by an Indian scientist:

In the scramble to reach the moon, spacefarers risk duplication of effort, said Indian scientist Rao, who called for cooperation between the world’s space agencies to avoid that.
"Everyone doing the same work would be a waste of resources."

In other news DAWN will be lifting off tommorrow if the weather holds up.

Meteorologist Justin Loew

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