Posts tagged weather
Boulder police training exercise next week
Sep 23rd
Boulder police officers are scheduled to train at Tom Watson Park next week. The park is located at 6180 N. 63rd St. in Boulder, and although the park will be open to the public, there will be very limited access to the parking lot. The picnic area will remain open, and people will be allowed to park along the frontage road or across the street at Coot Lake.
Officers will train with a driving instructor using a “skid car” in the Tom Watson parking lot. The goal is to allow them to practice their driving skills in simulated bad weather conditions. The skid car is controlled by an instructor, who operates the vehicle’s hydraulic system with a keypad that can cause the car to skid, mimicking wet or icy roads. Police officers are taught how to handle their vehicles in a variety of weather conditions.
The training will take place from 12:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Sept. 26 through Sept. 30.
Boulder CU: Arctic sea ice all-time low
Sep 15th
THE SECOND LOWEST IN THE SATELLITE RECORD
The blanket of sea ice that floats on the Arctic Ocean appears to have reached its lowest extent for 2011, the second lowest recorded since satellites began measuring it in 1979,
The Arctic sea ice extent fell to 1.67 million square miles, or 4.33 million square kilometers on Sept. 9, 2011.
While this year’s September minimum extent was greater than the all-time low in 2007, it remains significantly below the long-term average and well outside the range of natural climate variability, according to scientists involved in the analysis. Most scientists believe the shrinking Arctic sea ice is tied to warming temperatures caused by an increase in human-produced greenhouse gases pumped into Earth’s atmosphere.
“Every summer that we see a very low ice extent in September sets us up for a similar situation the following year,” said NSIDC Director Mark Serreze, also a professor in CU-Boulder’s geography department. “The Arctic sea ice cover is so thin now compared to 30 years ago that it just can’t take a hit anymore. This overall pattern of thinning ice in the Arctic in recent decades is really starting to catch up with us.”
Serreze said that in 2007, the year of record low Arctic sea ice, there was a “nearly perfect” set-up of specific weather conditions. Winds pushed in more warm air over the Arctic than usual, helping to melt sea ice, and winds also pushed the floating ice chunks together into a smaller area. “It is interesting that this year, the second lowest sea ice extent ever recorded, that we didn’t see that kind of weather pattern at all,” he said.
The last five years have been the five lowest Arctic sea ice extents recorded since satellite measurements began in 1979, said CU-Boulder’s Walt Meier, an NSIDC scientist. “The primary driver of these low sea ice conditions is rising temperatures in the Arctic, and we definitely are heading in the direction of ice-free summers,” he said. “Our best estimates now indicate that may occur by about 2030 or 2040.”
There still is a chance the sea ice extent could fall slightly due to changing winds or late season melt, said Meier. During the first week of October, CU-Boulder’s NSIDC will issue a full analysis of the 2011 results and a comparison to previous years.
NSIDC is part of CU-Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences — a joint institute of CU-Boulder and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration headquartered on the CU campus — and is funded primarily by NASA.
NSIDC’s sea ice data come from the Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder sensor on the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program F17 satellite using methods developed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
Tree removals to impact traffic the week of Aug. 29
Aug 27th
Traffic impacts include:
● Tuesday, Aug. 30, between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m.: Intermittent lane closures on Pearl Street between 18th and 20th streets due to the removal of a large Siberian elm tree in poor health.
● Wednesday, Aug. 31, between 6 and 9 a.m.: Intermittent delays to bike and pedestrian traffic along the Boulder Creek Path during tree pruning operations west of the Boulder Public Library Main Branch.
● Wednesday, Aug. 31, between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m.: The northbound, outside lane of Broadway Avenue between Arapahoe Avenue and Canyon Boulevard will be closed so crews can remove a honeylocust tree in poor health. The tree was struck by lightning in July 2010 and its health has significantly declined since that time. The transit stop at Central Park will be moved south to the bridge over Boulder Creek during the removal operation.
● Thursday, Sept.1, between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m.: The southbound, outside lane of Broadway Avenue between College and Euclid avenues will be closed so crews can remove a silver maple tree that is a safety concern due to a large trunk cavity and advanced decay.
Most of the wood from the trees being removed will be recycled into mulch and used in City of Boulder parks. Trees that are being removed will be replaced where possible next spring.