Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Weather/General meteorology task force/Archive 8

IRC channel

Like the Wikipedia:WikiProject Tropical cyclones, I have created an IRC channel for all to use. Go to this site put your wikiname as your nickname. Put irc.freenode.net in the next box as the server, and put #wiki-weather as the channel. Hope to see you there! It is a chatroom to discuss the WikiProject Meteorology and it's articles. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Juliancolton (talk • contribs)

Active members

We have close to 70 members in this project, but very few actually contribute from what I can tell, and I see several members that have retired. Should we do as the WP:WPTC did and send a message to every member, and ask them to sign up somewhere to show they are still activly contributing, and then whoever doesn't respond within two weeks is moved to a Inactive member section? Juliancolton (talk) 18:54, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

That sounds good to me. Gopher backer (talk) 19:23, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Good. I think we should get the opinion of a few other members first. Other than that, we will have everybody sign up and notify us that they are still active here:

List of Active Members

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

1. Juliancolton (talk) 19:28, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
2. Gopher backer (talk) 19:46, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
3. RingtailedFox • Talk • Contribs 21:39, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
4. Hello32020 (talk) 22:00, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
5. CrazyC83 (talk) 22:11, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
6. Hurricanehink (talk) 22:23, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
7. IrfanFaiz —Preceding comment was added at 22:40, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
8. Trvsdrlng (talk) 23:08, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
9. Jamie|C 23:26, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
10. --JForget 23:55, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
11. Thegreatdr (talk) 00:18, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
12. Theonlysilentbob (talk) 00:39, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
13. Evolauxia (talk) 01:50, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
14. Southern Illinois SKYWARN (talk) 03:27, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
15. Andreas Willow (talk) 12:12, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
16. Mbrstooge (talk) 14:44, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
17. bob rulz (talk) 20:04, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
18. Senorpepr (talk) 23:18, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
19. WindRunner (talk) 00:03, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
20. The Canadian Roadgeek (talk) 23:44, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
21. Ks0stm (talk) 20:00, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
22. -WxHalo(T/C) 00:02, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
23. --Μ79_Šp€çíá∫횆^{tell me about it} 20:18, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
24. Deditos (talk) 22:41, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
25. RunningOnBrains 00:00, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
26. Coredesat 13:47, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

GA review of Station model

I got some odd comments during the first GA review for this article, including shortening sections, when sections within the article aren't very long. There was also a recommendation to add bullet points, though previous articles I've placed for GA or FA have shunned bullet points. I've been editing the copy, which seems to be its biggest flaw. I definitely need a second opinion here, since it seems more than half their points used for preventing GA by the initial reviewer seem invalid. Thegreatdr (talk) 17:35, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you to the two people who have commented so far (one from within the project, and one outside the project). Thegreatdr (talk) 23:07, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Missing meteorology articles

I am not sure if it is in the scope of the Severe Weather project or the General Met project but here it goes... (this is also posted on the SVR Proj Page)

We definitely need a stub discussing a hydrolapse while keeping it separate from lapse rates. Can provide a See Also section or whatever linking to lapse rate. Hydrolapse and lapse rate go hand in hand since they are part of the same thermodynamic processes but I would argue for keeping them separate so as to allow specificity in articles which may link directly to hydrolapse or readers who are just interested in that particular term.

Secondly, we need an article dealing with dynamic instability specifically related to meteorology, right now an article exists but it deals with some biochemistry cellular stuff. At the same time we also need something which is related to dynamic lifting, either in a separate article or as part of the article dealing with dynamic instability.

These are two atmospheric conditions/processes which are critical to severe weather at both a storm/mesoscale level and synoptic level. Theonlysilentbob (talk) 04:46, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

My first comment is to say {{be bold}} and create them. Whether you have knowledge on the topics or not, do some research. It's a great way to gain knowledge concerning a topic. Related to this comment, someone has created a page for articles not covered within wikipedia yet within meteorology, which is located here. They made not all require articles...I took some off the list and merely created redirects to the articles which already covered the topic. Thegreatdr (talk) 19:35, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Reminder of the Philip Greenspun Illustration project

Hi. You may be familiar with the Philip Greenspun Illustration Project. $20,000 has been donated to pay for the creation of high quality diagrams for Wikipedia and its sister projects.

Requests are currently being taken at m:Philip Greenspun illustration project/Requests and input from members of this project would be very welcome. If you can think of any diagrams (not photos or maps) that would be useful then I encourage you to suggest them at this page. If there is any free content material that would assist in drawing the diagram then it would be great if you could list that, too.

If there are any related (or unrelated) WikiProjects you think might have some suggestions then please pass this request over. Thanks. --Cherry blossom tree 16:54, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Diffluence

I've begun a page on a topic that has been requested for a while now, diffluence. It actually redirects to a larger subject that had yet to have an article about it, Deformation (meteorology). Any help in researching/expanding this topic would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! ~ Triberocker (talk) 04:06, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Tornadocane/Landcane/Landphoon

We recently had a similar article to tornadocane called landphoon removed from wikipedia because the term was not in the glossary of meteorology. What's interesting is that landphoon had about seven unique sources, while tornadocane has exactly one source using the term. I'm going to propose the article's removal, for consistency's sake. For reference, I was the creator of landphoon last August. This posting is also in BWER, tornadocane, and Severe Weather wikiproject and will also be in the tropical cyclone project talk page to get the largest possible response. Thegreatdr (talk) 16:18, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Marion, Illinois tornado outbreak

I brought this up at WikiProject Severe weather, but only one person responded. I thought that by bringing it up here, it would hopefully get a larger response.

I have been working on the above article since early January. The article appeared on the front page under DYK at one point. I would like to improve the aricle further, but could not think of to do myself. Any suggestions? Southern Illinois SKYWARN (talk) 02:49, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

List of meteorology topics

List of meteorology topics needs expert attention. It went though an afd and consensus was to keep. I have cleaned out a large number of unrelated terms but the article needs more work. -- Alan Liefting-talk- 08:48, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Why?? Why do cold fronts move west to east?

~~Reader —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.195.247.157 (talk) 19:20, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Because cold fronts are steered by the upper level winds, which normally flor from west-to-east in the mid-latitudes, such as the United States, Europe, Asia, southern Australia, southern Africa, and southern South America. Thegreatdr (talk) 01:21, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Rainfall patterns in the United States

This article has been in bad shape for quite some time. I've almost completely rewritten the article, which also means it could be a while before I'm able to bring it up for GAC, even when it finally becomes filled out with references. Let me know what you think of the improvements, and what might be missing from the new article. Thegreatdr (talk) 18:59, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Second opinion on BWER

One of the contributors to the severe weather project reviewed the article in response to GAC, and made a comment about expanding the article, but isn't sure how it can be expanded. I'm looking for a second opinion, to see if there are any additional avenues for expansion of this article. Thank you for whatever help any of you can provide. Thegreatdr (talk) 23:47, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Added picture of stratocumulus lenticularis

I added a picture on the stratocumulus page but I messed up the formatting. I hope someone can fix it! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Djclimber (talk • contribs) 23:45, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

North American ice storm of 1998 GA Sweeps Review: On Hold

As part of the WikiProject Good Articles, we're doing sweeps to go over all of the current GAs and see if they still meet the GA criteria and I'm specifically going over all of the "Meteorology and atmospheric sciences" articles. I have reviewed North American ice storm of 1998 and believe the article currently meets the majority of the criteria and should remain listed as a Good article. I have left this message at this WikiProject's talk page so that any interested members can assist in helping the article keep its GA status. In reviewing the article, I have found there are some issues concerning sourcing that may need to be addressed, and I'll leave the article on hold for seven days for them to be fixed. I have left messages on the talk pages of the main contributors of the article along with other WikiProjects. Please consider helping address the several points that I listed on the talk page of the article, which shouldn't take too long to fix if multiple editors assist in the workload. If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Happy editing! --Nehrams2020 (talk) 02:10, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

{{current disaster}}

A TFD discussion I started for the {{HurricaneWarning}} and {{StormWatch}} template (which tells people specifically to get information from other sites, complete with a big bold ATTENTION, which I think violates WP:NDA) has led to major improvements into a new similar template I created called {{Current disaster}}. But we could use some more input on this. Some improvements I've done include being able to specifiy what disaster or weather event the template is for, and other options. If you have any comments about implementing this in place of the 2 other templates, think we could discuss it here and on {{current disaster}}'s talk page? I was asked to discuss this with the Meteorology and Tropical Cyclone WikiProjects. ViperSnake151 17:16, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

DISPUTE (AND POTENTIAL EDIT WAR)IN NEED OF ATTENTION AND EXPERT INPUT

I would like to call the attention of the general WikiProject: Meteorology community to an ongoing dispute within our section that requires additional attention and expert input. There is a very heated and ongoing debate over the definition of the words 'Hail' and 'Sleet,' and the differences between their uses amongst experts and laymen, as well as regional differences. I am very surprised that there is not more expert interest in the topic, as misuse of these words has long been a pet peeve not just for me, but for every other meteorologist that I have ever met. Very few meteorologists have been giving their input leading to disputes between the lay and expert definitions. What's more is that those few meteorologists paying attention to these pages (myself included) are almost all either American or Canadian, leading to many accusations of Amerocentric bias. WE DESPERATELY NEED INPUT FROM METEOROLOGISTS FROM OUTSIDE THE U.S. AND CANADA--PARTICULARLY THE U.K. AND AUSTRALIA to confirm regional differences and to properly define the terms as they are used outside the U.S. - user:dayjes 20:41, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I replied here. Gopher backer (talk) 21:57, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

METAR

METAR is being moved around because of a town in Israel called Meitar. 70.51.9.57 (talk) 04:21, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Identifying clouds

Is it possible to identify the cloud type seen in this picture? Carcharoth (talk) 21:09, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Those look like cumulus clouds with cirrus clouds above them. Southern Illinois SKYWARN (talk) 21:21, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Numerical model template

We have some handy templates for environmental observing systems. I've been building a new template which includes the major numerical weather and climate models. I'd appreciate project members' input; particularly Thegreatdr, given his experience at HPC with various models.

Although the listing is not meant to be exhaustive -- that's left to the respective categories and article pages (perhaps some list articles could be made, too) -- there is a bias for weather models.

• Although climate model is in the name, it does concentrate on NWP. I'm undecided on how much (if any?) climate models to include with this.
  • If yes, should they receive their own section (and how are GCMs subdivided from RCMs); if no, should a separate template be made for climate models?
• Along the lines of not including climate models (yet?), I've not included oceanographic or coupled models.
• There's also a potential bias towards North American models, although I'm not remembering many other widely used operational models.
• To keep the template trim, I've also not included various models like the QLM.
• I've not included the various "flavors" of models such that the WRF and MM5 have. This includes the specialty models such as those for TCs/hurricanes. Some of the major ones could be included (if the respective model has an article)?
• I've not included ensemble models; mostly because of the lack of articles and the multitudinous runs out there. Ensembles are very important to weather forecasting, however.
• I've concentrated on popular operational models and mostly not included experimental models; although some are included, particularly hybrids like the WRF and those widely used by operational meteorologists like the MM5 (which has its own article).
  • Re-analyses aren't included.

Basically, I'm thinking of including a few other weather models, but haven't yet due to lack of articles for these. The articles for various models need improving and in some cases articles still need to be created. Being an encyclopedia we won't have to get too detailed, but most of the articles are deficient at the moment. It's one of many projects on my To Do list.

I included a section on major discontinued and supplanted models, none of which have articles. This could be removed (the above concerns more or less apply here as does notability) or articles created. Another possibility is a single summary article with subsections linked from the template. In the example of the NGM, I included it because it is still run as a control for comparison purposes, even if not operationally per se. There's also the issue that some models are the same basic architecture with updates and a new name. For example, the AVN/MRF becoming the GFS and the Eta the WRF-NMM/NAM.

Aesthetically, is it better to only include acronyms? Are there any other comments? Thanks for any contributions. Evolauxia (talk) 06:03, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

If a model is mainly known by its acronym, then yes, it would be best that its name be the acronym. The first line of the article could be used to define what NGM, LFM, RUC, etcetera, mean. If computers are being used to simulate the atmosphere, which does include climate models, it would be considered an atmospheric model. One needs to be careful in the case of the NAM, where WRF is the name of its physics package, not the name of a model per se. Of course, WRF itself could have its own mention if editors aren't sure. Thegreatdr (talk) 01:33, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

New SVG images

I am going through and manually drawing SVGs for any good weather images I find. So far these are the ones I have done, and I will be converting these soon: (Image:Meso-1.PNG, Image:Meso-2.PNG, Image:Meso-3.PNG). Does anyone have any comments or see anything they would like fixed/improved? How about suggestions for other images to convert?

• 
  based on Image:Warm_front.jpg
• 
  based on Image:Example_of_a_cold_front.jpg
• 
  based on image:Occludedcyclone.gif
• 
  based on Image:Meso-1.PNG

Good article icon

A proposal to add a symbol identifying Good Articles in a similar manner to Featured ones is being discussed: see Wikipedia talk:Good articles#Proposal. Cheers! Wassupwestcoast (talk) 19:35, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Vancouver, British Columbia meet-up

Vancouver Meetup Please come to an informal gathering of Vancouver Wikipedians, Monday, May 5 at 6:30 pm. It will be at Benny's Bagels, 2505 West Broadway. We'd love to see you there, and please invite others! Watch the Vancouver Meetup page for details.

Cheers! Wassupwestcoast (talk) 15:35, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Atmospheric convection article

Hi all, I thought I would try and become an active member of this group (finally!) by reworking the atmospheric convection page since it seems to be on the to-do list. I'm brand new to editing articles on here so any help would be much appreciated. Right now I've put something together on my sandbox page user:Atscgeek07/Sandbox to see how it goes. So again, anyone interested in helping is welcome! Atscgeek07 (talk) 06:08, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Climate is up for GA

...and has been on and off since April 15. Any reviews would be helpful here as the article was in a state of neglect for 2 years before it was improved late this winter and early this spring. Thegreatdr (talk) 00:10, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Featured Portal Candidate for Portal:Weather

Also posted at WT:SEVERE

I'm going to nominate Portal:Weather for Featured Portal status, and I was looking for some feedback from other members of the WikiProject. Sooo.....take a look, let me know what you think, thanks! -RunningOnBrains 07:20, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Hurricanes

Could someone take a look at Political effects of Hurricane Katrina and Alternative theories regarding Hurricane Katrina. These two sources appear to present the idea that global warming has contributed to an increase in the number and intensity of hurricanes in recent years as fringe theories. Yet from Effects of global warming (also Kevin E. Trenberth) from what I can tell this is not the case, global warming having a contributing effect on the intensity is definitely accepted as a possibility by current science (although it's far from settled) and there was even more acceptance of the idea at the time, in particular from Kerry Emanuel et al's research (although he has now done further research which has lead to a rethink, this was not the case at the time of Hurricane Katrina which is what the article's above are presenting) Nil Einne (talk) 02:05, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Red rain in Kerala GA Sweeps Review: On Hold

As part of the WikiProject Good Articles, we're doing sweeps to go over all of the current GAs and see if they still meet the GA criteria and I'm specifically going over all of the "Meteorology and atmospheric sciences" articles. I have reviewed Red rain in Kerala and believe the article currently meets the majority of the criteria and should remain listed as a Good article. I have left this message at this WikiProject's talk page so that any interested members can assist in helping the article keep its GA status. In reviewing the article, I have found there are some issues that may need to be addressed, and I'll leave the article on hold for seven days for them to be fixed. I have left messages on the talk pages of the main contributors of the article along with other WikiProjects. Please consider helping address the several points that I listed on the talk page of the article, which shouldn't take too long to fix if multiple editors assist in the workload. If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Happy editing! --Nehrams2020 (talk) 20:56, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Weather forecasting up for GA

It has taken a while for another one of our core articles to be ready for GA. Weather forecasting should now have enough information and inline references to fulfill the qualifications. If you haven't edited the article significantly over the years, feel free to review it. Thegreatdr (talk) 00:12, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

C-Class cometh!

For those of you who haven't been following the discussion, a new C-class will be created shortly (see incredibly long discussion here). I will soon be adding it to Wikipedia:WikiProject Meteorology/Assessment (and for that matter, personalizing it to our project). I feel that we need to clarify exactly what articles will be let in to B-class, which seems exceedingly overpopulated with bad articles these days. Discussion here or at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Meteorology/Assessment would be appreciated.-RunningOnBrains 05:43, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Since WPTC's scale feeds directly into here, this discussion is probably of relevance here too. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 05:47, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

It's official. I was (and still am) strongly opposed to making the assessment scale more confusing, but I guess I (and a few dozen others) were overruled. Since this isn't the place for me to rant about my preference, I have found some C-Class examples:

• • Great Flood of 1993 – Good content; some references, but not nearly enough for anything higher than B.
  • Climate of Puerto Rico – Mostly well-written, well-referenced, but lacks a lot of information.
  • April 2007 Nor'easter – Decent article, but needs lead expansion, more overall information, and prose improvements.
  • Heat wave of 2006 derecho series - Good content, but lacking references in some areas. Juliancolton ^{Tropical Cyclone} 13:21, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Weather up for GA

Another of our core articles is up for GA. Feedback is always appreciated. Thegreatdr (talk) 23:21, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Unknown cloud formations

Hi!
I was hoping that someone from this project will be able to identify the clouds in this dramatic formation. -- Preceding unsigned comment added by Fir0002 (talk) 07:01, July 2 2008 (UTC), comment signed by IRP ☎ 19:38, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

I would say that it's a roll cloud, but it looks just like a Morning Glory cloud, except dark, with dark clouds behind it. -- IRP ☎ 19:28, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

You may also be interested in this, and some of its related videos. -- IRP ☎ 19:32, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your help, I think it's probably actually a shelf cloud from the Arcus cloud article as it has a turbulent underside. Thanks again, --Fir0002 00:08, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Unknown cloud formation

Rename proposal for the lists of basic topics

This project's subject has a page in the set of Lists of basic topics.

See the proposal at the Village pump to change the names of all those pages.

The Transhumanist 10:13, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme

As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS.

• The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
• The criteria for B-Class have been tightened up with the addition of a rubric, and are now more in line with the stricter standards already used at some projects.
• A-Class article reviews will now need more than one person, as described here.

Each WikiProject should already have a new C-Class category at Category:C-Class_articles. If your project elects not to use the new level, you can simply delete your WikiProject's C-Class category and clarify any amendments on your project's assessment/discussion pages. The bot is already finding and listing C-Class articles.

Please leave a message with us if you have any queries regarding the introduction of the revised scheme. This scheme should allow the team to start producing offline selections for your project and the wider community within the next year. Thanks for using the Wikipedia 1.0 scheme! For the 1.0 Editorial Team, §hepBot (Disable) 20:57, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Template

I deleted Template:Average and record temperatures per TfD consensus. Can an editor who knows how to use {{Infobox Weather}} replace Special:Whatlinkshere/Average and record temperatures? Thanks, Maxim_(talk) 02:29, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Fixed the last few. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 06:43, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

K. Banerjee Center of Atmospheric and Ocean Studies at AfD

FYI this article is at AfD, discussion is at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/K. Banerjee Center of Atmospheric and Ocean Studies. Banjeboi 08:21, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Articles flagged for cleanup

Currently, 450 articles are assigned to this project, of which 120, or 26.7%, are flagged for cleanup of some sort. (Data as of 14 July 2008.) Are you interested in finding out more? I am offering to generate cleanup to-do lists on a project or work group level. See User:B. Wolterding/Cleanup listings for details. More than 150 projects and work groups have already subscribed, and adding a subscription for yours is easy - just place the following template on your project page:

{{User:WolterBot/Cleanup listing subscription|banner=WikiProject Meteorology}}

If you want to respond to this canned message, please do so at my user talk page; I'm not watching this page. --B. Wolterding (talk) 18:02, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

"Standard height" in List of Category 5 Atlantic hurricanes??

List of Category 5 Atlantic hurricanes contains an odd and confusing reference to "standard height" when measuring windspeeds. I think that this phrase belongs in the sentence following the one where it appears, but am not sure. Can somebody please take a look? Thanks. -- 201.17.36.246 (talk) 10:48, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

This might be more appropriate on the article in question's talk page, as it does not concern the whole WikiProject. Cheers, IceUnshattered ^{[ t ]} 19:19, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

GA Sweeps Reassessesment of Gulf Stream

Just a note to let the project know that Gulf Stream has been placed on hold following its GA Sweeps Review, which can be found here. --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 19:54, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Monsoon needs additional cites

Monsoon looks pretty good (as far as I can tell), but contains some statements that need cites. -- 201.53.7.16 (talk) 17:10, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

That's an understatement. I've been occasionally adding to the citations, but it's unrewarding work. Anyone else who wishes to help out, feel free. Thegreatdr (talk) 20:36, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Meteorology

Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 22:50, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Extremes

Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection before December 2008, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 16:15, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Storm train

User: Bongomatic, has tagged the article I created, storm train, for deletion twice. The first time it was tagged, User: Runningonbrains said that the deletion tag was not appropriate for that article, and removed it. So Bongomatic decides to make an attempt to start an edit war by re-adding the deletion tag. Could someone help me with this? Should it really be deleted? Should I revise it? Please also look at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Storm_train -- IRP ☎ 19:22, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

If you would like to reply to this message, please reply here, and leave a notice on my talk page. -- IRP ☎ 19:59, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

looking for an image

Do you have an image of the earth (not flattened down on a map), where some wind velocities are shown? It does not matter whether it is a schematic map or a real photo. For example something like the one at the right, but for the whole earth (or at least one half that you see from one side). Thanks, Jakob.scholbach (talk) 21:29, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Noctilucent cloud up for GA

Hi everyone,

over the last few days I have done a lot of work on the Noctilucent cloud article, greatly expanding it and taking it from a Start class article to one that I think is at least a B. I think it can be made even better, although I've reached the limit of what I can do on my own.

I would appreciate opinions on what further improvements can be made, hopefully to bring it up to GA standard.

Thanks, Reyk _YO! 01:50, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

• After some helpful suggestions and improvements, this article is now nominated at WP:GA. Cheers, Reyk _YO! 07:28, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Upper tropospheric cyclonic vortex

Hi all. Could somebody expand this and improve it to give it a balanced encyclopedic account. P.S> I started an article on James C. Sadler. Perhaps someone has some reference material to expand it too. Thanks Count Blofeld 22:38, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Diurnal temperature variation

Hi, I tagged Diurnal temperature variation with {{Meteorology|class=Stub|importance=high}}. I was surprised to find it so stubbish, and then even more surprised to see it wasn't part of the Meteorology wikiproject. It should be. I've been bold and tagged it as high-importance; but I don't know if this is in correspondence with guidelines at this wikiproject, maybe it's Mid-Importance. When I find the time I will write some more on this article, it could at least be Start-class. --Gerrit ^CUTEDH 08:56, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Another North American Storm Complex

The current storm appears to be article-worthy at first blush. More than a dozen tornadoes, as well as an extremely unusual southern snow and a possible historic ice storm in the northeast. Following convention, I think a name similar to 2008 North American storm complex should be used, unless some agency comes up with another name for it. I'm going to start gathering sources, but I want to see if anyone else had any input.-RunningOnBrains 15:35, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Looking for ideas: rainbands

This article was upgraded from a short stub into a C class article over the last few days. A significant effort has been made to make the article understandable to non-scientists...but I'm beginning to wonder if I need to be more technical. What do you all think is needed to improve the article prior to submitting it for GA? Thegreatdr (talk) 01:21, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Proposal to make tropical rain belt a redirect to monsoon trough

It appears the article tries to tackle the topic in a less developed way than the monsoon trough article, which is a GA. I propose this article be cleaned out and made into a redirect for monsoon trough. Opinions? I'll wait either a month, or for 5-10 responses (whichever occurs first), for feedback before doing anything with the article. Thegreatdr (talk) 22:16, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Gulf stream

Gulf Stream has been nominated for a good article reassessment. Articles are typically reviewed for one week. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to good article quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status will be removed from the article. Reviewers' concerns are here. Richerman (talk) 14:10, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Plea for wet season review

It's about to make the list of longest lived articles on GAN without a review (it was nominated in December). Any help would be appreciated, even if it were an informal review on its talk page. Thegreatdr (talk) 17:19, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Milestone Announcements

All WikiProjects are invited to have their "milestone-reached" announcements automatically placed onto Wikipedia's announcements page. Milestones could include the number of FAs, GAs or articles covered by the project. No work need be done by the project themselves; they just need to provide some details when they sign up. A bot will do all of the hard work. Click here for more information or to sign your project up.

I thought this WikiProject might be interested. Ping me with any specific queries or leave them on the page linked to above. Thanks! - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 22:06, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

The Deniers

I am not really able to devote much time to climate change topics, but I note that edits are being made to the article on The Deniers, by Lawrence Solomon, that appear to be to be broadly promotional in nature. The status of critical and favorable reviewers alike is being obfuscated, and one entire section read like a book blurb, consisting solely of a large block quote from the author. The article would benefit from a little attention that I myself cannot afford to devote to it. --TS 18:50, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Restructuring of the project page

I was bold and reorganized the names (including moving Hurricanehink to inactive) and removed the comments we all originally placed on the main project page. If there is a swell of disapproval, it can be reverted to its former state easy enough. The new look is cleaner, similar to the TC project, and this change shortened the page. Thegreatdr (talk) 01:39, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

A-Class assessment

While the discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Assessment seems to be going nowhere fast, I figured I'd bring it up here. I've always really wanted an A-Class assessment for our project, but I was never convinced (and still am not) that we have enough manpower to maintain a functioning WikiProject assessment. It was mentioned here that projects could team up to make it work, with ours used as an example in fact.

In my view, we could make a functional Assessment system (A-class, or A and B class) here—to serve the needs of the Meteorology, Severe weather, and Non-tropical storms—with the current combined number of editors we have now. However, an easier way to make this work would be to drop a line over at WikiProject Tropical cyclones, who have been doing this successfully for a while (see their Assessment page), and ask if we can piggy-back on their assessment for a while, at least until we get our bearings (I would of course help out there in turn, as I'm sure some of you would).

What does everyone think?-RunningOnBrains 08:18, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

It might actually help contributions to this general project. I like the idea. User:Thegreatdr 17:26, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

By the way, we already have an assessment page set up, but it has never been active. I have posted a draft proposal there, but it is almost completely based on the tropical cyclones project, and I'd like our assessment page to reflect our needs as a project. So fire away with the comments! -RunningOnBrains 02:10, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Seems like a good idea to me. All three projects are pretty quiet nowadays, so it'd be good to have a collaborative assessment system. –Juliancolton ^{Tropical Cyclone} 02:49, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

I also think it's a good idea to bring together the three projects into one. Mbrstooge (talk) 02:55, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Me three (or four). It would be nice to set up an ACR (or ACA) for the projects. Cyclonebiskit 02:57, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

I say it is a great idea! Even though I am not good at assessment (I tend to focus on keeping things current). CrazyC83 (talk) 03:06, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

I think it's a good idea as well. I haven't been very active lately, but I feel that I'm pretty good at assessment and I can try to see what I can do. Combining the projects seems like a great idea. That would help a lot with organization. bob rulz (talk) 05:00, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Whatever you think is best, you should do. I'll back ya and help you with whatever you decide upon. RingtailedFox • Talk • Contribs 06:33, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

seems like a great idea!--Bhockey10 (talk) 07:04, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Good move. These fields are in fact quite outdated. I have quite a lot of interest in these subjects and can help with facts and figures, including wiki-formatting. But unfortunately, i am quite busy in real life till i finish a certain work. But do feel free to ask me if you need any sort of help. I'll be popping in and out at times to see what i can do... Have a nice day. Rehman (talk) 07:26, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Shouldn't we include the Tropical Cyclones one as well??? User:Itfc+canes=me ^Talk Sign me! Its good to be back! 18:00, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like a great idea. I'd be willing to participate, though I'd need a little coaching/guidance in article assessment; it's not really something I've done before. Inferno, Lord of Penguins 17:08, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't see any issues on grouping the three together (perhaps also the Tropical systems part as well). As for myself as doing assessment - maybe only for lower ranks but not higher then that since I risk of giving higher grades that suppose and also I'm not the greatest in terms of WP:MOS and grammar.JForget 02:33, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Further explanation

I think a few people misunderstand what I'm trying to start up here (granted, I really didn't explain myself very well).

Some WikiProjects, especially larger ones like WikiProject Tropical cyclones, have a system where articles can be rated Start-Stub-C-B by anyone, but in order for an article to become A-class (and before it can go on to featured article candidacy), it must be checked by members of the project to ensure that it satisfies project standards such as depth, format, infoboxes, and accuracy (among others). I'm proposing that we either start our own (created but not active yet here) or piggyback on the Tropical Cyclone project's assessment page (here). From what I gather above though, there is enough interest that we should be able to strike out on our own.-RunningOnBrains 18:22, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

• If striking out on our own doesn't have enough participation, I'd be supportive of asking WikiProject Tropical cyclones if Meteorology, Severe weather, and Non-tropical storms could piggy-back with it to establish an Assessment program. --Rosiestep (talk) 18:31, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
  • The problem is, if they were all lumped together, it would be under this project, not the others, because this is the parent project. Thegreatdr (talk) 18:54, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
    • I wouldn't see a problem with that. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 22:09, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
      • As long as it encouraged participation within the general met project, it would work out fine. The general met project has been traditionally less active than the severe weather and tropical cyclone projects. Thegreatdr (talk) 22:42, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
        • If this encourages more assessment, I support the idea. I haven't done much article assessment myself but could take a look at it. ~AH1^(TCU) 00:01, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the editorial team is weak and doesn't do anything. It is time we make our own functional assessments and decide for ourselves! Showtime2009 (talk) 15:37, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Ok then, it's settled

It seems clear to me that there is definite interest in this system. I will be changing around stuff at our assessment page to set up the stuff I'd like us to do, I invite everyone to comment there as they please. Here is a basic outline of what I will be setting up:

1. A-class review
2. Assessment requests
3. Re-assessment requests

"A-class review" would be a Wikiproject review to make sure an article is ready for featured article candidacy. An A-class review would involve ideally 3 or more editors coming to consensus whether an article should be passed on to FAC, and thus given an A-class rating or not.

"Assessment requests" would be for articles which have a Wikiproject banner but are missing a class and/or importance assessment, or where an editor wants a second opinion on his assessment. "Re-assessment requests" would be akin to Good article reassessment or Featured article review, where we would try to improve GA-, A-, and FA-class articles which have slipped in quality, or, if they are too far gone to easily fix, demote them.

I will not be able to start this up for about two weeks; I have mid-terms and I will be visiting a graduate school. After then, however, I plan on throwing my full weight behind this.-RunningOnBrains 21:14, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

That sounds mostly okay, but we at WP:WPTC/A have noticed that what you're trying to solve with the re-assessment requests section is best done informally, as it doesn't need the full bureaucracy of ACR.

That said, what's the plan with respect to WP:WPTC/A? Is it being sent here as well? Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 00:06, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Coordinators' working group

Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators.

All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. — Delievered by §hepBot (Disable) on behalf of the WikiProject coordinators' working group at 05:59, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Not everything is metereology related

A dyke is not limited to uses that are associated with metereology. There are dykes to ensure that a certain water level is maintained while this is not to be associated with protecting land on the other side of the dyke. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 11:09, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

No, it's not. Therefore, it can be in multiple projects. Thegreatdr (talk) 15:49, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

It's great how progressive society has gotten that dykes can have important jobs such as water level maintenance and land protection :-D -RunningOnBrains 19:22, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

It's funny, that's the first thing that came to mind... but why is this discussion on this talk page? Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 01:23, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

1998 Comfrey – St. Peter tornado outbreak

This is up for FAC if anyone feels the need to comment. Thanks! WxGopher (talk) 20:46, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Wind and Westerlies up for GAN

In a continuing effort to improve basic articles within the meteorology project, wind is undergoing a significant upgrade in content, format, and inline reference inclusion. Check it out and, if you see any significant omissions, comment either here or on the main talk page for wind. Thanks for whatever comments you can provide. Thegreatdr (talk) 21:08, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Wind is now up for GA. In a related note, Westerlies is now undergoing a significant upgrade. Thegreatdr (talk) 19:54, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Westerlies is close to becoming one of the oldest non-reviewed GAN candidates, since it was nominated 5 weeks ago. Help here would be appricated. Thegreatdr (talk) 15:02, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Peer review and FAC

Wind has been submitted for peer review in preparation for FAC. Thegreatdr (talk) 20:51, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Wind has been submitted for FAC. Oy. Thegreatdr (talk) 22:19, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Wind is now an FA. Thanks for your help. Thegreatdr (talk) 16:00, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Weather Stick

Dampness causes wood to twist or warp. The wood used to construct a weather stick is from a tree whose branches differ in density between the top and bottom of the branch. Wood, as the product of a living organism, is made of cells. In green wood, these cells are filled with liquid. In dry wood, however, the cells have lost their moisture, shrunk, and left air pockets between them, the reason why a dry piece of wood is much lighter than a green or a waterlogged piece. Differential swelling is what causes the branch to bend - under certain conditions, such as a change in relative humidity, the top of the branch will swell to a different degree than the bottom, forcing the branch to bend in an arc with the less swollen part of the branch on the inside of the arc.

Excuse my french, but that is the biggest load of shit that I have ever heard. One thing that the article fails to mention is that the fir trees branches move up and down with the weather while it is living as well. AKA before it has dried out AKA 100% humidity. The earlier part about the branches reacting to humidity is fine. Its a controlled study, where it was in fact reacting to humidity. I just hate this hearsay stuff where it claims humidity as the main factor. The study mentioned above the article did not equate the way the stick moved to humidity levels. It said "Don Ross, a New England researcher, has found that, in a controlled environment test, weather sticks show a strong response to relative humidity."This does not even mean that 50% of the reaction could be humidity. For all we know the humidity just allows it to react to something else, as far as this study is concerned. & that does not really say a lot. I don't see the study doing a comparative analysis where the living branch is subjected to more humidity..... wait..... 100% is the highest. Oah yea. For got that.

Ok. I know I was ranting a bit, but really guys.

Knightt (talk) 20:18, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

For the record, that was written in 2004, a full two years before this project got started. </excuses> Honestly, traditional weather instrumentation is a little out of my realm of interest, but I'll take a crack at it.-RunningOnBrains 01:04, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Convective available potential energy / Convective instability

Hello

Two articles in WikiProject Meteorology—Convective instability and Convective available potential energy were merged. Now there is a discussion as to whether it is appropriate to have the merged article recreated to describe the phenomenon in less technical specificity and in a manner appropriate to at least one class of interested readers. If you care, could you please review Talk:Convective instability#Fork?

Thanks, Bongomatic 00:52, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Climate

I noticed that Wikipedia:WikiProject Climate appears dead. Perhaps it should be merged here, and the purview of this project be expanded? 76.66.202.139 (talk) 15:33, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

I'd agree to that. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 15:40, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

GA Sweeps invitation

This message is being sent to WikiProjects with GAs under their scope. Since August 2007, WikiProject Good Articles has been participating in GA sweeps. The process helps to ensure that articles that have passed a nomination before that date meet the GA criteria. After nearly two years, the running total has just passed the 50% mark. In order to expediate the reviewing, several changes have been made to the process. A new worklist has been created, detailing which articles are left to review. Instead of reviewing by topic, editors can consider picking and choosing whichever articles they are interested in.

We are always looking for new members to assist with reviewing the remaining articles, and since this project has GAs under its scope, it would be beneficial if any of its members could review a few articles (perhaps your project's articles). Your project's members are likely to be more knowledgeable about your topic GAs then an outside reviewer. As a result, reviewing your project's articles would improve the quality of the review in ensuring that the article meets your project's concerns on sourcing, content, and guidelines. However, members can also review any other article in the worklist to ensure it meets the GA criteria.

If any members are interested, please visit the GA sweeps page for further details and instructions in initiating a review. If you'd like to join the process, please add your name to the running total page. In addition, for every member that reviews 100 articles from the worklist or has a significant impact on the process, s/he will get an award when they reach that threshold. With ~1,300 articles left to review, we would appreciate any editors that could contribute in helping to uphold the quality of GAs. If you have any questions about the process, reviewing, or need help with a particular article, please contact me or OhanaUnited and we'll be happy to help. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 06:20, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Strange controversy

At talk:List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming, user:KimDabelsteinPetersen is insisting that the minute a person dies, he or she must be removed from this list, since dead people have no opinions. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:55, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

New cloud formation

"Bid to classify cloud formation". Is asperatus worthy of an article? Jolly Ω Janner 15:17, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Not unless some official organization recognizes it. Why is BBC covering this? Some guy said he wants to classify a new type of cloud...seems kind of weird. To me, a different shape does not a different cloud make. -RunningOnBrains^{(talk page)} 19:32, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Micheal Fisher was commenting on it. That's probably why the BBC were intested. If the Met Office were to give their support and apply for it, would it be notable enough? It said it'll take years before it would be recognised anyway... Jolly Ω Janner 19:49, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure there is an official process for approving new cloud names. I suppose if Met Office (or any other official agency like WMO) recognizes it, or even officially says something like "We're considering it", it could get an article. -RunningOnBrains^{(talk page)} 19:53, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Sweeeet. I'll keep tabs on the story. Cheers, Jolly Ω Janner 19:58, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

That might be an interesting story for Wikinews, though. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 20:01, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

It appears someone has been WP:BOLD and created the article. I have no problem with letting it stay for now, as it appears well-sourced. -RunningOnBrains^{(talk page)} 20:26, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

It lacks any scientific information. E.g. how it was formed. I'm sure there are few reliable sources around giving various theories for its information, rather than waiting for the official data to be released, which could take ages. Jolly Ω Janner 20:43, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

For over a century there has been an international clouds committee that deals with this sort of thing. See Cloud atlas. --Una Smith (talk) 18:00, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Tornado myths

Would someone be willing to write a comprehensive lead section for Tornado myths? I've put it up for its second GAN, and one concern at its first GAN was the short lead section, but I'm just way too burnt out from staring at this article for a couple years to make it. Thanks in advance. -RunningOnBrains^{(talk page)} 07:22, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikinews weather

There is a discussion on the wikinews mailing list about setting up bots or other software agents to track weather conditions. The intent is to have quite a high level of detail to present weather conditions as news. Obviously, if you maintain a historical record of the data there are other uses for the data - some of which may benefit Wikipedia.

We'd welcome any and all input on this, particularly on the presentation of the data and what should be stored. --Brian McNeil /^talk 13:16, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Geomagnetic storm → Geomagnetic solar storm

A WP:RM requested move has been filed to rename Geomagnetic storm → Geomagnetic solar storm

70.29.208.69 (talk) 04:07, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Cloud Atlas

An article is needed about cloud atlases. See Cloud Atlas and Talk:Cloud Atlas (novel). --Una Smith (talk) 04:23, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

I disagree. All that is needed to describe a cloud atlas is a dictionary definition, like the one already at Cloud atlas. Specific cloud atlases with their own articles can also be mentioned at that page; that's what a disambiguation page is for. -RunningOnBrains^{(talk page)} 05:16, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

I think the history of this type of atlas merits an encyclopedia article. --Una Smith (talk) 13:49, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

See International Cloud Atlas; an article about cloud atlases in general is in the works. However, on Talk:Cloud Atlas (novel) is an open request to move an article about a novel to Cloud Atlas, leaving Cloud atlas occupied by a disambiguation page. I think the disambiguation page should be at Cloud Atlas. --Una Smith (talk) 17:39, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

That sounds like a good compromise, provided Cloud atlas is a decently sourced article. I have no objections. -RunningOnBrains^{(talk page)} 17:49, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

The cloud atlas article is at User:Una Smith/sandbox, pending closure of the requested move. Please weigh in on Talk:Cloud Atlas (novel). --Una Smith (talk) 17:57, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

The requested move has been closed, with no move. The requested move of the dab page is at Talk:Cloud atlas. --Una Smith (talk) 19:18, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Earthquake weather

I've just completed a long-proposed merge of earthquake cloud, earthquake light, and earthquake weather. This was by no means elegant, but more the work of a rather thoughtful bull in a china shop. I've removed plenty of Youtube refs, and basically shuffled the text into somewhat-congruent sections, but I'm starting to lose focus. Would anyone care to help edit? It's almost impossible to make an edit that does not improve the article. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 21:48, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

My above merger has led to a Request for Comment. If you are so inclined, I request your comments. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 03:02, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

AFD for Yellowknife tornado

Yellowknife tornado is up for deletion, as I believe it to be a hoax and/or non-notable. Please weigh in at the discussion; if there are any sources at all showing notability I would love to have them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Runningonbrains (talk • contribs)

I don't think the tornado is a hoax, as one of the refs supports that one did occur. However, I think there is a bigger question here that needs to be discussed. Does having just a regular old tornado in a region that does not normally see them warrant an article? That's the only thing that would keep this around. It's not in the current notability criteria for them, but it seems like these pop up every once in a while. The 2008 Vancouver tornado article is another one like this. WxGopher (talk) 17:40, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Precipitation (meteorology) Peer Review

After recent updates to the snow article, it was discovered that the precipitation article had little mention of snow, which has since been rectified. To prepare for a possible FAC run, I've submitted the article to peer review, in case anything else is missing from, or at issue within, the article. Thegreatdr (talk) 20:45, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Hydrometeor is a redirect to Precipitation (meteorology), but the 1975 International Cloud Atlas defines hydrometeor among several other types of meteors. Please expand Precipitation (meteorology) to explain the origin and history of the term hydrometeor, and distinguish it from these other "meteors". (Meteor and Meteors are redirects to Meteoroid, and there are separate Meteor (disambiguation) and Meteors (disambiguation); maybe that should be changed.) --Una Smith (talk) 03:19, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

I have just included a section explaining what a hydrometeor is, which is now fixed within the hydrometeor redirect. I'm looking for a good book-related source for a meteor definition, which should be easy to find. Thanks for the feedback. Thegreatdr (talk) 22:34, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

New template for tagging NWS images

This has also been posted at WT:SEVERE

I'm not sure how often others have run into this problem, but images we upload from NWS damage surveys which state "Courtesy of" some party tend to get deleted as copyright violations. However, as this discussion at Commons confirmed for me, these images are in fact in Public Domain, and so can be used at Wikipedia. I have created {{PD-NWS}} to use on National Weather Service photos; we should use this to prevent confusion in the future. -RunningOnBrains^(talk) 04:22, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Severe weather

This article is in need of some help. I have nominated it for the WP:ACID collaboration, but it needs support to make it through the nomination process. Also, despite it being the core article of a descendant wikiproject, I was somewhat surprised to find that the Severe weather article isn't even included in WP:METEO. --Ks0stm ^(T•C) 19:25, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Currently this article requires a copyedit. The coverage of the article is almost complete; this is perhaps one of the only major problems left that is needed to be solved. Would anyone be able, or know of anyone that is able to assist? KnowledgeRequire (talk) 20:41, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Freezing rain vs. supercooled rain

I would like to discuss here about these terms. Thanks.--Carnby (talk) 23:39, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Thunderstorm up for GA

Thunderstorm has been improved enough to be submitted once again for GA consideration. It was once a good article, but was delisted in October 2006. Thegreatdr (talk) 22:27, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Snowflake up for GA

It appears the snowflake article is complete enough, and referenced enough, for a GAN attempt. Feel free to review it if you have the interest and the time. Thegreatdr (talk) 22:28, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Article requests

Is our article requests page still active? I seem to be the only one to have edited it since early 2008...Ks0stm ^(T•C•G) 15:18, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Air mass and Trade wind up for GA

As part of the series of wind articles I've been upgrading, both air mass and trade wind are on GAN. FYI. Thegreatdr (talk) 19:58, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Second opinion needed at List of weather records

There is a difference of opinion at Talk:List of weather records about what constitutes an "official" record, I would appreciate any input. Thanks! -RunningOnBrains^(talk) 10:21, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

1. get the source. If all they do is play like they are cooperating, and just post tidbits and not the site source, then they know what they have is false, period.
2. get an admin to restrict the page to registered users, disallow anonymous posting, the page itself attracts cretonous behavior.
3. ... that's all... —Will research for food (talk) 12:22, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

{{Climate}}

Template:Climate has been nominated for deletion. 76.66.197.2 (talk) 04:46, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Didn't know it existed. Thanks for the heads up. Thegreatdr (talk) 19:52, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Someone with a strong background in dynamic meteorology needed with the met articles

It was come up within the Wind talk page, and elsewhere, that the meteorology articles are lacking in depth concerning atmospheric dynamics. While I have some understanding concerning the topic, it is not my strong suit. Synoptic meteorology is, which is noticeable when you look at my contributions over the years within the project. If someone with a strong background in dynamics is within the project, please help out. Thegreatdr (talk) 19:52, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

I perused quickly...where (or how) do you mean in the Wind article? I find possible fault in the cause of wind, is that what you are talking about? Otherwise the article is very good. —Will research for food (talk) 00:09, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

It's good to have a second opinion. There was some editing a couple days ago when it was featured on the main page, and at least one obvious error was found. Otherwise, the edits made are mainly to the article's wording. Maybe it's the prose itself that needed the help. Thegreatdr (talk) 03:23, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, it would take some time to pick through and verify anything, that is before I would make a definite suggestion at changing anything. —Will research for food (talk) 12:04, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Article Heat lightning should be deleted

I am thinking this article should be deleted, as most of this article's contents should be discussed in Lightning, under another section like atmospheric audio effects. There is not enough factual supportive information for there to be a Wiki-article...it would just be a stub. —Will research for food (talk) 19:30, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

User:Ks0stm/Mesovortices Mesovortices (Moved into mainspace)

This page is a draft of an article that I am writing about mesovortices, and I am looking for feedback on how it can be improved (I'm guessing by adding more sources, but what else?) and assistance from people more knowledgeable on the topic than I am. Right now the article incorporates text from mesocyclone and Eye (cyclone)#Eyewall mesovortices, and will hopefully eventually be a main article for those two topics, rather than vice versa. Any and all input appreciated, Ks0stm ^(T•C•G) 00:30, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Looks like a good start. Just keep in mind that not every article is going to be able to be 5000 words long. Some might not make it beyond 1000 words. As long as it is a thorough treatment of the subject matter, that is all that is really important to wikipedia. Make sure your lead (initial lines/paragraphs above the table of contents) is a general summary of the article below. It's not supposed to an introduction, but rather a summary. For an article of that length, a few sentences should suffice for the lead. Thegreatdr (talk) 00:49, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Paragraph 3 of Eyewall mesovortices is partially incorrect and uncited as well. Forming mesovortices have been known to spawn tornadoes anywhere in a hurricane system after landfall, for instance. Otherwise, the article is a good start, don't be afraid to post it, just be sure to apply the Wikipedia Project Tag in its talk page. —Will research for food (talk) 20:40, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I moved it into mainspace. It is now located at Mesovortices. Ks0stm ^(T•C•G) 21:43, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Hurricane Floyd FAR

I have nominated Hurricane Floyd for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 02:30, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

North American snowstorms

Hi, I have recently created a stub for the snowstorms in America entitled December 2009 North American snowstorms. Can some people expand the article to a reasonable standard? 03md 22:48, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I'll pass this on to Non-tropical Storms if it hasn't already. Ks0stm ^(T•C•G) 01:39, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Ice cloud

There's been some dispute at Ice cloud about exactly what that term means and whether ice clouds really exist on Earth, or are only known on Mars. The stub seems to have had hoax information inserted in the past, which has since been removed. I couldn't find much on a quick Google search. Someone who's up for a challenge might like to check this out. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 14:25, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Low-pressure area - Reassessment number 2

Low-pressure area was delisted as a good article last month due to jargon and technical wording. Unfortunately, the reviewer of that GAR brought up few specific examples, and was unclear how I was to proceed to solve the problems, and then failed it. I need new reviewer/s not steeped in meteorology to explain what is unclear in this article, so it can be improved/promoted back to GA. Thegreatdr (talk) 13:58, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Global warming: proposal for discretionary sanctions

At Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Climate Change there is an ongoing discussion of a proposed measure to encourage administrators to enforce policy more strictly on articles related to climate change. I'm placing this notification here because global warming is a member of this WikiProject. It doesn't belong on the main WikiProject page because it's a user conduct matter and isn't really on topic there. --TS 13:28, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Floods

Move? See Talk:November 2009 Great Britain and Ireland floods#Requested move. Simply south (talk) 18:04, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

And now snow. See Talk:December 2009 European snowfall#Requested move. Simply south (talk) 21:58, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Unusual request - urgent analysis wanted

Hi. Please take a look at links to sea surface temperatures and satellite images, for example: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], etc. There is currently research on the El Nino "Modoki" pattern that appears to be more predictable, but after looking at the situation for the past five weeks, it has been anything but predictable due to storms forming in the temperature anomaly zones that in turn affect the anomalies themselves, both with atmospheric patterns and ocean currents, and I think this is likely due to a combination of factors indirectly stemming from global warming. We will probably require reliable sources, but if you think this belongs somewhere other than here or if more links are needed, please reply here and leave a message on my talk page. Thanks. ~AH1^(TCU) 21:39, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

The weather is unpredictable by its nature, and occasionally patterns differ. Not worth spreading speculation about global warming and potential climate changes. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 21:47, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

This is a little bit speculative, but I have been tracking the global SSTs for five weeks and I've seen a really disturbing pattern. For one thing, El Nino has accelerated, but in the past week the area west of the Central/East Pacific pool has warmed all the way to Australia, with the eastern end of the pool advancing directly into the Humboldt Current. At one point in late December, the Humboldt "cut-off" near Chile warmed 2C in 5 days. In the past 5 days, the width of the ≤20C swath has shrunken by half.

By the beginning of December, there was a very intense North American storm roughly once a week, and now it's occuring around twice a week. The storm that hit West Virginia with around 60 cm of snow killed five people in Virginia, then the next storm, the 2009 Christmas winter storm killed around 21 people in the United States as it spun around itself over the Midwest (check the Plymouth State satellite archives). We had two days of rain here in S. Ontario, then after that we had two days of snow, and on the last day there was a cold front sweeping across here that was fed by snowsqualls and dropped temperatures 16C in 10 hours. If you look at the satellite archives, the storms are also bringing snowstorm cyclones to Europe, and I tracked one storm creating cyclogenesis to five different storms that eventually hit Europe. The last time I checked, there were close to 100 deaths from this. Now cold air is spreading into northeastern China, with snow and rain reported in the south.

The Siberian Arctic high is filtering into the US, and one computer model, the CMC predicts a 1060 hPa high pressure system to sit over Wyoming-Nebraska in 6 days. There is also a high pressure system stretching all the way to Greenland and the North Atlantic, where there is supposed to be a low pressure system. This is conducive for the Gulf Stream to meander near Bermuda, then divert northwest toward Jakobshavn Isbrae (SSTs currently near 7C). The two most intense low pressure systems on the Earth right now are near Antarctica, and one is expected to pass over the Ross Ice Shelf and the other over the Ronne Ice Shelf.

Water temperatures are still up to 28C east of Brazil, and this recent flooding event has killed at least 64 people. According to the most recent version of the Climate4You maps, there is an area in the Gulf Stream that is 7C above normal directly adjacent to an area 8C below normal. There have been heavy snowfall amounts in Texas, some places even more than the snow we have here right now in S. Ontario (roughly 5 inches). In short, cold Arctic air is flooding into the Northern Hemisphere continents while the global ocean currents are slowing down and weakening, and this redistribution of heat content means the oceans are warmer.

It's not just El Nino, the PNA, AO and NAO are at unusual levels, and at one point the AO was off-the-charts. I also think that Super Typhoon Nida started this process after it allowed colder water to enter the West Pacific and for the El Nino pool to drift eastward. Unfortunately, I don't think I'll be able to find any reliable sources that directly puts all this together, although the experts at Accuweather[8] are starting to do this, but most of the information is from blogs. This is also unpredictable (also unlike Modoki ENSO), as storms are forming in areas of anomalous (is that a word?) sea surface temperatures and air pressure, then the storms themselves are affecting these temperatures.

Some places in the US have gotten close to a meter of snow, and the Bermuda High is currently reduced to a small area in the southeastern North Atlantic extending into the Caribbean. A huge bulge of warm water is also at the eastern part of the El Nino warm pool, moving toward the space between the Ross Ice Shelf and Pine Island Bay. Southeast of Uruguay, a finger of 10C water is directly colliding with a finger of 22C water. The SSTs in the Indian Ocean have been extremely variable in the past few days. In the Yellow Sea, temperatures are cooling after cold air dived into the eastern parts of China, but there are still plenty of warm spots off the coast of the Korean Peninsula and Japan warmer than 20C.

Warm water from the Indian Ocean is also spreading toward East Antarctica. Just over a week ago, a large iceberg headed toward Western Australia. The remnants of Cyclone Laurence is helping to bring the largest warm anomaly pool in the South Pacific toward the Ross Ice Shelf. Worldwide, the usually warmer sides of ocean current circulations have been generally cooler, and the cooler sides generally warmer.

The cold weather, by the way, was a possible contributing factor to the faliure of the Copenhagen Conference. So while all this may be a coincidence, I think there needs to be some discussion into the possibility, then updating articles with reliable sources where this is relavent. By the way, is the tropical cyclones WikiProject experiencing a slowdown due to the relatively inactive 2009 Atlantic hurricane season? Thanks. ~AH1^(TCU) 01:52, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

But do you have any sources from experienced or professional meteorologists that says there's something unusual happening? –Juliancolton | ^Talk 02:18, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Can I get a plain-english summary of what you are saying? It may be easier for me to search for sources that way... Ks0stm ^(T•C•G) 02:30, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

I have links in my reasoning, and Accuweather has some professionals who are noticing strange things and reporting them. I also have links in my original post, so please take a look at them, and the internal links in my explanation will point you toward articles. I just split everything into individual paragraphs, and the last few sentences summarises what I am trying to say. ~AH1^(TCU) 02:59, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Also, this is another non-reliable source, but I suggest looking at this post, and reading the comments. I'm trying to use the blog to ask for more resources, so that more useable sources could be found. Thanks. ~AH1^(TCU) 18:29, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Even if all of what you are saying is true and El Nino is spinning out of control, without a reliable source published by a university or refereed journal, nothing can be added to any wikipedia page, because it is original research. Accuweather is not a reliable source, since they don't publish anything refereed. Blogs are very sketchy for wikipedia use, since wikipedia is meant to be an encyclopedia based upon established information and established research. As it is, the meteorology and tropical cyclone articles use newspapers for information, which is a secondary or tertiary source, which is problematic for wikipedia. However, in some cases, there is no other way to compile information for older storms. For everyone's information, these types of comments on talk pages relating to global warming have partially led to a probation within that set of articles, similar to what wikipedia enacted in the Obama article some time ago. We cannot let the general meteorology articles go the way of the global warming set of articles. Primary sources need to be used within wikipedia, end of story. Thegreatdr (talk) 19:13, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

OK, but if peer-reviewed scientific journals are the only source that can be used to support this, then there would be no way for any of this information to be included in Wikipedia articles. Journals take years to research and at least months to be reviewed and edited, and this is why some of the information used in the IPCC reports. Also, I am aware of non-scientific journal sources being used for other topics that aren't so controversial and don't require intense scientific research, so I don't think that the top-notch sources are the only ones that can ever be used for articles, because current event articles on Wikipedia often require news links to back up the information. I'm in no way suggesting using the blog as a source of information, but rather I am trying to access more information regarding past and present El Nino cycles and those of the other osciallations, such as the NAO, AO, and PNA, all three of which are at unusual levels. I have a month's worth of complied SST maps, but I don't think that the images would be suitable to upload to Wikipedia or any other website.

In the case of tropical cyclones, AFAIK the main sources that are used are the "official" ones, such as the National Hurricane Center for the Atlantic and East Pacific basin. But in other basins such as the West Pacific and Indian Ocean, there is more than one source that is considered official. In the Atlantic, the NHC is run by the American National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, but there are close to twenty different countries other than the US affected by tropical cyclones in the Atlantic basin, and although there is a recently-established Canadian Hurricane Centre, it can only be used for back-up supporting information because it is not considered official.

In the case of established research, there is current research into whether El Nino Modoki is a recent phenomenon and whether La Nina is undergoing the same cycle. Research has indicated for the possibility for the "Modoki" variant to be more predictable and there is the likelihood that this phenomenon, where a warm pool of anomalous water emerges in the Central Pacific instead of in the East, and early indications showed that this was likely the case for the current season, as the El Nino pool started in the West Pacific, moved to the Central Pacific after Nida, and then moved more into the Eastern Pacific as the warm pool drifted, and on 26 December hit a peak temperature of 31C+. After that, the temepratures in the Nino 3.4 region declined, and high SSTs returned to the Western Pacific all the way to Australia through the Walker circulation (currently, another tropical cyclone has just exploded in intensity northeast of Darwin, Australia, south of Timor due to the warmer temperatures, and it is developing an eyewall just in the past few hours). However, if the El Nino warm pool could be considered a rectangle, the southeastern quadrant is actually advancing toward Chile (check the three animations in the seventh link in my original post), and the coldest water in the entire current is currently excuse the pun 16C, well south of where it should be (check the Weather Underground SST maps I linked).

In 30 days, the width of the <20C part of the Humboldt Current has been reduced to less than one-quarter its former size. In the past five days, the cold upwelling in the current has pushed northwestward, but only because warm, equatorial water is blocking it along the Peruvian coast to the Chilean border, and the warm water from El Nino is stretching toward Chile. The Gulf stream has also been meandering and taking shortcuts (all of this can be seen from my links). The North Atlantic Drift is fine, but it's alternating between paths as storms are filling the area with very cold or warm air. Currently the nor'easter near Maine is developing a "back-door" warm front in Quebec. Yesterday, as the storm made landfall in Southern Nova Scotia, there were storm surge warnings out for Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. This is due to a high pressure system stretching from Siberia to the US to Greenland (think negative AO), forcing the storm to spin around itself (just like the Christmas Midwest storm) back toward Canada. If you look through the satellite archives, you'll see that at one point, one Nor'easter drifting over the North Atlantic has split into five separate storms, each of them hitting Europe. At certain times, The main low center has detatched from the frontal system, or the frontal system underwent cyclogenisis and became a storm on its own. Around 23 December, a convective flare-up developed in the Caribbean before hitting Hispanola, emerging over the Virgin Islands, then joining a low pressure center emerging off North America. After this, the entire storm intensified, and the Bermuda-Azores high was, and still is, reduced to the far southeastern Atlantic (although it now extends into the Caribbean).

The Humboldt Current itself, by the way, is very close to getting cut off by the El Nino warm pool, and the 20C isotherm (if you can call it that) is edging closer and closer to the very spot where the 16C water is concentrated. Behind the 20C line are temperatures all the way to 30C, poised in a nearly-straight line extending toward the main Central Pacific El Nino Warm Pool. At the current rate, the 20C line will reach the Chilean coast in about a week. However, any predictions at this point are speculative because the very nature of the current scenario means it's unpredictable. Also, as cold air is moving into the continents, the warm El Nino pool is warmer and larger. According to the current SSTs anomalies map based on the current SSTs (there appears to be a hole forming at the North Pole), the biggest warm anomaly in the oceans is not on the equatorial Pacific, but rather in the South Pacific, halfway between New Zealand and southern Chile. Immediately west of this warm anomaly, there is a cool anomaly, stretching from the Solomon Islands to New Zealand to 60S. The warm pool developed around the time of Cyclone Mick, and after that the storm's remnants along with two other extratropical systems have acted to bring the warm anomaly pool farther south and east, and now the warmth from the El Nino pool appears to be partly draining into this one. Currently, the remnants of Laurence is the intense storm near the Ross Ice Shelf, and it is pulling the warm water towards it. So it appears that at least in the S. Pacific, the warm parts of the Thermohaline circulation are cooler than normal and the usually cooler parts are warmer than normal. The same pattern is true in the North Atlantic. As for the Indian Ocean, the sea surface temperatures have been extremely variable for the past few days.

In short, it appears that the global ocean currents are slowing down, the atmospheric quasi-stationary semi-permanent highs and lows are becoming displaced (in some cases they have moved all the way over the Arctic Ocean, probably due to the Arctic Dipole), and the removal of atmospheric temperature gradient barriers has led to a meandering and active jet stream, allowing strong continental storms to form and flooding North America, Europe (think recent snow cyclones and cold air), and East Asia with cold air [9][10]. I'd hate to say this, but the conditions seem to be setting up for a repeat, but that was during a La Nina year. Some people are commenting on the WunderBlogs and saying that this seems more like a La Nina year than an El Nino, but I think it's the combination of the abnormal current phases of the different oscillations that is contributing to this. It's a self-reinforcing cycle.

Now, due to its complexity, it would be difficult to determine the cause of this whole set-up. But that's exactly part of the argument used by global warming skeptics to say that we need more time in order to determine a higher certainty for the effects before any "unreasonable" action is done to mitigate or adapt. So while the scientific debate has largely settled, the political debate is as rampant as ever. They say that climate change models are unreliable because it is difficult to predict year-to-year changes, as it is to forecast weather in the long term. While that is true, the models predict the averages, not the extremes. But what really affects people in our day-to-day lives are not the averages, but the extremes. And if the weather is this extreme now—how extreme is it going to get in 20, 50, 100 years? Delay is as dangerous as inaction due to denial.[11]

It may seem complete speculation to attribute all of this to a single cause, but look back at when this process started. I tried posting something similar to this more than a month ago when Super Typhoon Nida was still active[12], but eventually that post was removed, and I needed more time to research this phenomenon anyway. The JMA's Best Track for Nida isn't even out yet. But while I was tracking the storm, as it weakened from a category 5 to a category 4, it exploded in size, though not nessecarily either in windspeed nor barometric intensity. It then created a gap in the subtropical ridge of the Western Pacific (check the archives for the storm), spinning itself around its own outflow and keeping quasi-stationary for nearly three days. While it did this, it encountered high wind shear, but was able to keep at its strength because of the "poleward outflow" that it drew into itself from much of the West Pacific basin. From then and there, I predicted that the high pressure system would drift into Asia, leaving a cold outflow in the Central Pacific. It then weakened while it became reduced in size and intensity, pumping pieces of itself into the subtropical jet, before these merged with storms coming off the Sea of Japan (maybe that's why there are so many anomalies at the latitude of Japan), before exploding in the North Pacific (at least three storms did this) and strengthening to a pressure under 950 hPa (I added some of this information into the main article, but it was removed due to being "trivia"). After that, a piece of the ICTZ merged with half of the final remnant of Nida, forming Tropical Storm 28W. While this occured, the cold upwelling was already in place in the West Pacific, and in a few days the high pressure system east of the gap would drift west and south, merging with the Asian high, allowing cold air to flood into the western part of the El Nino Central Pacific warm pool. I also predicted that trade winds would weaken in the Eastern tropical Pacific, allowing the warm pool to drift eastward, strengthening El Nino. According to a friend who has written a paper about El Nino for school, "supercomputers can't even do that".

So while there may be no single cause, the most likely explaination for the convergence of all these contributing factors is global warming. While this may seem strange, look back to Nida again: El Nino intensified the storm, the storm intensified El Nino, and the El Nino "Modoki" phenomenon is possibly caused by global warming. It's another self-reinforcing cycle. Besides, if El Nino is going out of control, would we really expect this to all be natural? Responding to questions like this, the folks at WeatherUnderground have accused me of posting "AGW rhetoric". But that's why debate still rages, because there is no rhetoric. Now, many people at Wunderground are more friendly, and there have many stories about how WU members have helped each other after catastrophe. In the words of one member, "faith without action is futile". But there are still skeptics, and their arguments have helped me learn more about the El Nino phenomenon. If the current weather patterns are natural, then we would not expect the global ocean currents to start destroying themselves. A natural cause does not seem to be the case.

Of course, the global warming skeptics will be looking back at this winter and claim that global warming has been disproven, because it has resulted in abnormally cold weather. But they're missing the bigger picture, because the oceans are warming, mostly in the southern hemisphere, but some areas in the northern hemisphere have warmed very quickly as well, and it's winter here. I just came back from shovelling snow about two hours ago, and there was close to 20 cm of snow on the ground, when the local forecasts were forecasting close to 8 cm, Accuweather close to 10 cm and my own amateur forecast closer to 12 cm. In some cases at certain times during the month of December, the local The Weather Network forecasts have been changing every six hours to coincide with computer models that were changing just as quickly (because they have four runs in a 24-hour period). They were forecasting a weak to moderate El Nino, but their precipitation/temperature predictions have been somewhat off. El Nino right now is not weak/moderate, and also not predictable...this is scary.

Since the current El Nino is intensifying in some aspects even as it is weakening in others (El Nino is currently predicted to be gone by spring 2010), and cold Arctic air is, according to AccuWeather, going to be "locked in for weeks" over North America (although I'm not quite so sure this is the case because of the very erratic nature of the current oscillation co-interactions), this pattern should be expected to both progress and continue. Even though that's how science works, I don't think we should wait until the year is over, reports are published and peer reviewed, and the Wikipedia community discusses the inclusion of this until at least a portion of the information is included into Wikipedia. Because if this is true (another rhetorical point), and all these atmospheric interactions are inter-connected, then it has already resulted in hundreds, if not thousands of deaths worldwide. And this pattern is going to continue and progressively get worse. If this is the result of global warming, then it's not progressing every year, as we and computer models would expect, but every hour.

Now, to be clear, I'm not posting any of this to force meteorology articles into making Wikipedia look bad. I only posted it here because I think that this project has some good professional and amateur meteorologists who could take a few minutes to examine the current situation, and help me put it into prespective. I am well aware of the current ArbCom case regarding global warming. It looks like the tensions regarding this subject are now starting to boil down on Wikipedia. But the fact that there is a probation on this subject being discussed right now should not be seen as an un-overcomeable obstacle, but rather as a challenge and maybe as a point of special significance. If anybody can provide me with a brief background on how this occured in the first place, please do so on my talk page.

Speaking of Copenhagen, after hackers supplied skeptics with leaked emails, talks started to break down. There was mistrust between nations, and this continued until the conference utterly failed to produce a binding goal that the world has asked for. Now all the world leaders can do is blame each other for the collective faliure. Despite leaders desperately trying to come up with a last-minute deal, nothing worked. Despite global protests and letter writing to the world leaders, nothing worked. The skeptics had won, and collective humanity had lost. For goodness sakes, the hacked emails do not disprove the entire notion that global warming exists. This is called shooting the messenger. By now, there is growing worldwide sentiment that the traditional political institutions no longer work, that direct political protest action no longer works, and that the world leaders cannot be trusted to collaborate. This is ridiculous.

So by now, the skeptics on this issue, who refuse to budge on their viewpoint, are winning over the scientific majority. And because of the recent economic meltdown, overall concern about global warming has actually decreased. The skepticism seems to be boiling over on Wikipedia too, especially with all the statusquoism going on. But sometimes it takes being able to see the bigger picture to really do anything about it. To quote Albert Einstein, "no problem can be solved at the same level of thinking that it was created".

So while I don't expect any changes to happen immediately, I'm working on speading my message throughout the internet. While I do realise that Wikipedia is not intended for advocacy, we don't have 20, 10, or even 5 years to debate. If people concerned about global warming are ever going to act, the time is now.

So while I might not succeed in getting my point across, please do not dismiss this entire thing due to the length. I don't mean to be rude, but if I wrote that much, I expect you to read it ;) . I myself don't have that much time, because I'm not going to be on Wikipedia or any other website for that long tomorrow. I didn't just spend half a day on the computer for two weeks for nothing.

Knowing all of this, sometimes I want to tell the world to WAKE UP, just like the millions of protesters worldwide calling for a "fair, ambitious, and binding" goal on global warming. But if I randomly do that in public, then everyone will think I'm crazy and tell me to shut up. That's reality. Which is exactly why I'm trying to make my point on the Internet (not just Wikipedia), because this way I can get people to notice faster. So if I don't succeed in getting a lot of people noticing the bigger picture, at least I tried. "Next to trying and winning, the best thing is trying and failing" (Lucy Maud Montgomery). Ironically, the most difficult people to convince of my viewpoint are those my age and slightly younger, because I'd have to tone down the language and obscure facts. This is a real conundrum.

So if nobody pays attention to the bigger picture I'm trying to get across, that's OK. Maybe this post could be used for "historical reference". At least all the links I've provided could inspire some of my fellow Wikipedians to contribute to articles, many of them about meteorology. I'm just putting this out there because I do not want to be responsible for millions of deaths when I could have easily done something about it. However, still keep in mind that at this point, any predictions are speculative, and subject to a large uncertainty.

For now, I'll leave it at that. Please discuss how to incorporate this information into Wikipedia, if at all possible. As for the rest...I'm working on it. ~AH1^(TCU) 01:22, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

tl;dr worthy, yet I read it anyway. And I have no clue what you trying to get across. Again, could I get it condensed into about a paragraph of what you want done? I understand the meteorological stuff, but I don't know what you are asking be done. Sorry, but I'm one of those people who likes to get to the point. :-) Ks0stm ^(T•C•G) 01:59, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Ahh, didn't read?! How ironic. But seriously, I didn't even directly mention "what I wanted to get done" in my post, and I'm probably going to try doing that myself. But basically, right now I want some of this information to be included in articles with discretion, and if we can get a single reliable source, and settle the debate, put it on the main page (if not, I have two links to news stories that are noteworthy enough for the main page). After you read it. I know this seems like undue alarmism, but remember that I myself posted the ITN suggestion for Michael Jackson's death on ITN before it was confirmed, and Wikipedia's visitor levels hit a new record. Is Michael Jackson really more important than the entire world? Remember again to read the entire post before you make any assumptions or suggestions. I will not be online as much tomorrow, but I'll try to look over a few Wikipedia pages before going to sleep on Monday. If you want, you can condense the last five sentences into a [show] box, then I could add more details about actually what I want to do. But reading the post might actually be better than endless discussion. If you can't read it today, do it tommorow. But in short, global warming may be causing a disruption of global weather patterns and we need to take a closer look at this. Now. (not to be rude) ~AH1^(TCU) 02:26, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Global warming is obviously changing the weather, but nothing dire is happening in the short term... –Juliancolton | ^Talk 03:06, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't think there's any chance we could possibly get this to ITN/C. Not only we have the burden of needing reliable sources, we are also getting too close to WP:NPOV compliance issues if we try to incorporate anything before we have very solid evidence, simply due to the charged political nature of the topic. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 06:57, 4 January 2010 (UTC)