In the wake of the blizzard that wasn’t, New Yorkers on Tuesday were asking how the weather forecasters could have been so wrong… The answer, the forecasters say- and they are backed up by atmospheric scientists who do not have any reason to be defensive- is that they were not so wrong. Computer models predicted that the storm would become extremely powerful, which it did, but the intensification occurred 50 to 100 miles east of where the preferred model predicted it would… But David Robinson, an atmospheric scientist at Rutgers University, said that just because the European model was more correct on average did not mean that it always would be right. He likened it to baseball players. “It’s as if the Euro is considered the all-star and the U.S. is considered a good, solid, everyday player,” Dr. Robinson said. “But in any given game, the solid regular guy might get the hit while the all-star doesn’t.”
The Heat is On; NOAA, NASA Say 2014 Warmest Year on Record
For the third time in a decade, the globe sizzled to the hottest year on record, federal scientists announced Friday. Both the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA calculated that in 2014 the world had its hottest year in 135 years of record-keeping… “The globe is warmer now than it has been in the last 100 years and more likely in at least 5,000 years,” said climate scientist Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University, who wasn’t part of either research team. “Any wisps of doubt that human activities are at fault are now gone with the wind.”
Ocean life faces mass extinction, broad study says
A team of scientists, in a groundbreaking analysis of data from hundreds of sources, has concluded that humans are on the verge of causing unprecedented damage to the oceans and the animals living in them… “We’re lucky in many ways,” said Malin L. Pinsky, a marine biologist at Rutgers University and another author of the new report. “The impacts are accelerating, but they’re not so bad we can’t reverse them.” Scientific assessments of the oceans’ health are dogged by uncertainty: It’s much harder for researchers to judge the well-being of a species living underwater, over thousands of miles, than to track the health of a species on land.
With electric jackhammers, plans to quiet an earsplitting city sound
At one Midtown Manhattan construction site recently, the difference between the pneumatic and electric models was palpable, both to Mr. Guzman and to Eric M. Zwerling, the president of the Noise Consultancy, who was enlisted by The New York Times… Ar…
