Today, the Turley Blog is posting early due to the shortening of the day after the Chilean earthquake. The reason that many of our regulars are likely to feel a bit groggy this morning is that the earthquake has shortened the day by one-millionth of a second. Yes, you are right: you did get less sleep last night.
Scientists have concluded that the earthquake shortened the length of a day by about 1.26 microseconds. A microsecond is one millionth of a second.
The 8.8 magnitude earthquake also shifted Earth’s axis — according to Dr. Gross of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory by about three inches.
Worse yet, we are unlikely to get the time back — the shorter day is permanent so we are going to be working longer days without compensation for the added time.
The Turley blog pledges to remain on the accelerated schedule so that our regulars do not have to wait for the first blog entries to appear each morning. The blog is the only site to adopt such an AGS (accelerated global schedule) policy rather than (as with our competition) just grabbing the added time for production and recreation. We are also tilting our homepage ever so slightly to adjust for the change in the Earth’s axis to avoid neck strain for our readers.
For the full story, click here.
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Now that we have reached the end of the meteorological winter (December-February,) Rutgers University Global Snow Lab numbers (1967-2010) show that the just completed decade (2001-2010) had the snowiest Northern Hemisphere winters on record. The just completed winter was also the second snowiest on record, exceeded only by 1978. If you’ve never read the book “Not by Fire but by Ice”, you should.
Average winter snow extent during the past decade was greater than 45,500,000 km2, beating out the 1960s by about 70,000 km2, and beating out the 1990s by nearly 1,000,000 km2. The bar chart below shows average winter snow extent for each decade going back to the late 1960s.
Here are a few interesting facts.
* Average winter snow extent has increased since the 1990s, by nearly the area of Texas and California combined.
* Three of the four snowiest winters in the Rutgers record occurred during the last decade – the top four winters are (in order) 1978, 2010, 2008, 2003
* The third week of February, 2010 had the second highest weekly extent (52,170,000 m2) out of the 2,229 week record
The bar graph below shows winter data for each year in the Rutgers database, color coded by decade. The yellow line shows the mean winter snow extent through the period. Note that the past decade only had two winters below 45 million km2. The 1990s had seven winters below the 45 million km2, the 1980s had five winters below 45 million km2, and the 1970s had four winters below 45 million km2. This indicates that the past decade not only had the most snowfall, but it also had the most consistently high snowfall, year over year.
It appears that AGW claims of the demise of snowfall have been exaggerated. And so far things are not looking very good for the climate model predictions of declining snowfall in the 21st century.
Many regions of the Northern Hemisphere have seen record snowfall this winter, including Washington D.C, Moscow, China, and Korea. Dr. Hansen’s office at Columbia University has seen record snowfall, and Al Gore has ineptly described the record snow :
“Just as it’s important not to miss the forest for the trees, neither should we miss the climate for the snowstorm,”
A decade long record across the entire Northern Hemisphere is not appropriately described as a “snowstorm.”
The recent magnitude 8.8 earthquake in Chile caused the earth to shift its axis by 3 inches. This may not sound like a lot, but scientists are saying that it was the much needed remedy to global warming. While many have been taking steps to “save the earth”, it turns out that the earth decided to save itself.
Before you get too comfortable and start celebrating the heroic steps taken by Mother Earth, some scientists have already concluded that she “went too far”, and the tilt will likely result in global cooling.
On the bright side, Jamaica is now being considered as a viable host for the 2027 Winter Olympics.
Scientists are now looking for a way to help warm the earth. Turns out we went green, and now we need go red. In a press conference scheduled for noon tomorrow, U.S. President Obama is set to announce his plan to throw truckloads of money at the earth in order to appease the gods. The new program will be called BERP (Buying Earthly Rewards Pretense). Don’t worry, it’s only a symbolic gesture. The real money will, as always, be funneled into the hands of Wall Street CEOs and CFOs.
Think of what the tin-foil hat people are going to do with this!
The Turley blog is like a giant down comforter … a safe and warm cocoon for all its readers … a Mother Teresa of the blogosphere ……
That explains why I still have so much in my in basket. Ah ha.
Actually we will get the time back.
The reason that the moon only shows one face to us is that it’s tidally locked. Friction has slowed its rotation down until the orbital period is the same as the rotational period. This same effect is slowing the earths rotation down, at a rate of about 0.002 seconds per century, or approx 0.055 microseconds per day.
If you do the math, you’ll see we’ll get the 1.26 microseconds back in a day in a little over 23 days.
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