The National Centers for Environmental Information, an office of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), includes products by category surrounding the monitoring of the climate. The objective of the National Centers for Environmental Information is to develop products and services spanning all the science disciplines and allow for enhanced data discovery. Their website is “one of the largest archives of atmospheric, coastal, geophysical, and oceanic research in the world.” There is data for monthly climate reports, including reports on wildfires, droughts, tornadoes, snow, and ice, and overall information about the climate. You are able to specify what year, month, and type of report you would like to view. Once decided on what you would like to look at, there is a national overview that lays out significant climate anomalies and events for the specific month and year that was chosen. There will also be maps detailing the average temperatures and precipitation percentages. There is much more to this website besides the climate reports, however, I chose to just focus on one aspect. The main goal of these reports is to display monthly summaries of climate-related occurrences on the global and national scale.

The climate reports are extremely relevant to our class, as we have an entire chapter of our textbook dedicated to water, weather, and climate systems. We will spend a decent amount of time discussing the atmosphere, as well as the climate. Through these monthly climate reports we can compare months to examine how the climate/temperature has changed and come up with potential reasons as to why. Throughout week 2 we are going to focus on the atmosphere as well which has to do with the climate, weather, and other things occurring.

Below is an example map of the temperature, and significant climate anomalies and events for the month of July. 

Photo from The Geographical 

An article from The Geographical, the official magazine of the Royal Geographical Society. In London, they are currently burning 53% of trash, which is an amount that has almost doubled in the last decade. The British government is looking to cut down on the amount of burned trash, and the Treasury has announced that it now is considering imposing a tax on the incineration of waste, creating an active opposition to what was originally thought of as a favorable alternative to adding waste to landfills. One positive of the burning trash is that it can be used to generate steam energy, and it lowers the physical amount of trash in landfills. However, opposition to this process critiques that incinerating plants have never been required to report particulate emissions in enough detail to moderate the potential health impacts. The plants are also contributing to greenhouse gas emissions, with approximately each ton of waste burned adding one ton of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. The last critique is that increasing incineration may decrease motives to recycle. Although the negatives appear to outweigh the positives, this situation does demonstrate the importance of trying to best consider all components of the Earth when making environmentally-conscious decisions. By this I mean that in this instance it appears that the damage to the atmosphere would outweigh any benefit to the biosphere of less physical trash, but it is important to assess both. This article relates to our discussion of climate change in class, and specifically how humans may be contributing to it, through greenhouse gas emissions such as this. It also introduces the political component of addressing climate change, such as the tax considered in this article, and how that may help to combat the further damage.

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LightningMaps.org is a map that shows lightning strokes around the globe in real time. The site gathers data from radio frequency signals that collect information on where lightning strokes occur. This is a community driven website so the information is crowdsourced and does not come from one specific governmental agency. Operators at radio frequency stations submit their information and the website then creates digital markers at the locations where lightning is being recorded. Due to a large network of operators sending information, the accuracy of the strokes is about one mile. This system covers specific areas in Europe, America, and Oceania. The website also stores strokes for up to 24 hours.

This website is especially interesting because amateur weather scientists can get involved recording lightning and adding to a global database. Also, this website acts as a good supplement to people who are looking to follow storms in real time. The website is easy to use with just a few buttons and four different overlays.

https://www.lightningmaps.org/blitzortung/europe/index.php?lang=en