Weather
Boulder weather from Boulder Channel 1 News : Includes latest up to the minute weather forecasts from Nationals Weather Service in Boulder. Team coverage from Boulder Channel 1 News during Snow, and floods. See our weather on Twitter @BoulderCh1News and FaceBook Boulder Channel one. Be a weather watcher: write Boulder.BoulderChannel1@gmail.com or call News 303-447-8531
Boulder Tornado watch, flooding, rain until 10:00pm
Aug 3rd
By 5:00 pm yellow clouds rolled in over Boulder. Sheriffs dispatch tells Boulder Channel 1 news that “what is in the clouds is dust, humidity and low laying clouds stirred up by 70 mph winds from Weld county north east of us.
Boulder Police department dispatch then started getting calls but most of the action was in the East county. By 8:39 flooding had occurred at 63rd and Lookout Road according to dispatch. Trees were down all over county. Arapaho was closed for a while due to flooding and downed trees.. Tornado warning sirens went off in the county though no funnel clouds were seen. Dispatch told BC1 news ” there was no official weather warning but Sheriffs department was proactive since we were on the ground and could see what was happening.
The office of Emergency Management opened. At 7:30 pm Boulder OEM sent out a press release 3 hours late which would have done nobody any good. seen below:
“Are you wondering why sirens went off in the communities around Erie tonight when the tornado threat was only in Erie?
siren technology allows a specific number of programming options. Most tornado warnings are more widespread than the warning we saw in Erie tonight. For this reason, tornado sirens are programmed to go off in small regions. Otherwise, there would be a severe delay in cases where officials need to alert a handful of towns all at once.
Remember, when you hear a siren or other warning, gather additional information and take action for your safety. Weather radios, news stations and www.BoulderOEM.com are good places to seek additional information”
It is very clear Boulder dodged at weather bullet on this day. Erie, Superior, Lafayette and Louisville took the brunt of this storm.
Ice-free Arctic winters could explain amplified warming during Pliocene
Jul 29th
Year-round ice-free conditions across the surface of the Arctic Ocean could explain why the Earth was substantially warmer during the Pliocene Epoch than it is today, despite similar concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, according to new research carried out at the University of Colorado Boulder.
The last time researchers believe the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere reached 400 ppm—between 3 and 5 million years ago during the Pliocene—the Earth was about 3.5 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit warmer (2 to 5 degrees Celsius) than it is today. During that time period, trees overtook the tundra, sprouting right to the edges of the Arctic Ocean, and the seas swelled, pushing ocean levels 65 to 80 feet higher.
Scientists’ understanding of the climate during the Pliocene has largely been pieced together from fossil records preserved in sediments deposited beneath lakes and on the ocean floor.
“When we put 400 ppm carbon dioxide into a model, we don’t get as warm a planet as we see when we look at paleorecords from the Pliocene,” said Jim White, director of CU-Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research and co-author of the new study published online in the journal Palaeogeography, Paleoclimatology, Palaeoecology. “That tells us that there may be something missing in the climate models.”
Scientists have proposed several hypotheses in the past to explain the warmer Pliocene climate. One idea, for example, was that the formation of the Isthmus of Panama, the narrow strip of land linking North and South America, could have altered ocean circulations during the Pliocene, forcing warmer waters toward the Arctic. But many of those hypotheses, including the Panama possibility, have not proved viable.
For the new study, led by Ashley Ballantyne, a former CU-Boulder doctoral student who is now an assistant professor of bioclimatology at the University of Montana, the research team decided to see what would happen if they forced the model to assume that the Arctic was free of ice in the winter as well as the summer during the Pliocene. Without these additional parameters, climate models set to emulate atmospheric conditions during the Pliocene show ice-free summers followed by a layer of ice reforming during the sunless winters.
“We tried a simple experiment in which we said, ‘We don’t know why sea ice might be gone all year round, but let’s just make it go away,’ ” said White, who also is a professor of geological sciences. “And what we found was that we got the right kind of temperature change and we got a dampened seasonal cycle, both of which are things we think we see in the Pliocene.”
In the model simulation, year-round ice-free conditions caused warmer conditions in the Arctic because the open water surface allowed for evaporation. Evaporation requires energy, and the water vapor then stored that energy as heat in the atmosphere. The water vapor also created clouds, which trapped heat near the planet’s surface.
“Basically, when you take away the sea ice, the Arctic Ocean responds by creating a blanket of water vapor and clouds that keeps the Arctic warmer,” White said.
White and his colleagues are now trying to understand what types of conditions could bridge the standard model simulations with the simulations in which ice-free conditions in the Arctic are imposed. If they’re successful, computer models would be able to model the transition between a time when ice reformed in the winter to a time when the ocean remained devoid of ice throughout the year.
Such a model also would offer insight into what could happen in our future. Currently, about 70 percent of sea ice disappears during the summertime before reforming in the winter.
“We’re trying to understand what happened in the past but with a very keen eye to the future and the present,” White said. “The piece that we’re looking at in the future is what is going to happen as the Arctic Ocean warms up and becomes more ice-free in the summertime.
“Will we continue to return to an ice-covered Arctic in the wintertime? Or will we start to see some of the feedbacks that now aren’t very well represented in our climate models? If we do, that’s a big game changer.”
CU-Boulder geological sciences Professor Gifford Miller also is a co-author of the study. Researchers from Northwestern University and the National Center for Atmospheric Research also were involved in the study, which was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation.
-CU-[includeme src=”http://c1n.tv/boulder/media/bouldersponsors.html” frameborder=”0″ width=”670″ height=”300″]
Boulder Sheriff’s fire ban extends to county borders
Jun 17th
The dry conditions, along with the consistent reports of new large fires across Colorado and the western United States, have moved many federal fire aviation and ground crew resources out of the area. In addition, the holiday camping season is close at hand, increasing the potential for human caused fires.
(See attached map)
State statutes authorize counties to impose a fire ban “to a degree and in a manner that the Board of County Commissioners deem necessary to reduce the danger of wildfires within those portions of the unincorporated areas of the county where the danger of forest or grass fires is found to be high, based on competent evidence.”
The amended fire ban allows for:
- Indoor fires in fireplaces or stoves.
- Smoking indoors or within an enclosed vehicle.
- Campfires in improved and maintained public campgrounds that are currently open to the public, as long as the actual size of such fire is smaller than two feet in diameter by three feet in height.
- Liquid or gas fuel stoves use on private and public lands.
- Charcoal grill use on private and public land.
- Smoking outdoors in areas free of flammable material.
The amended fire ban prohibits:
- All other outdoor burning, slash fires, use of any kind of fireworks, model rockets, and all other outdoor spark or flame producing activities.
The fire ban does not affect open fires within incorporated cities and towns; however citizens must comply with applicable ordinances and regulations in their respective cities and towns.
Anyone found in violation of the fire ban may be convicted of a class 2 petty offense and may be subject to a $500 fine, in addition to any possible civil penalties. Higher fines may be imposed for subsequent offenses.
For current fire and shooting restrictions for United States Forest Service properties go to the following website:http://www.fs.usda.gov/alerts/arp/alerts-notices
For current fire restrictions in Eldorado Canyon State Park go to the following website:http://www.parks.state.co.us/Parks/eldoradocanyon/Pages/EldoradoCanyonHome.aspx
This media release may be found on the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office website at: http://www.bouldersheriff.org