For this assignment we will be looking at a variety of types of weather systems. I have located Web sites providing information or images on storm tracks, thunderstorms and tornadoes, tropical cyclones, and El Nino/Southern Oscillation. There is no way you can possibly wade through all of this material unless you spend your entire week on this assignment. I suggest that you pick one of the major topics indicated below and concentrate on that. Feel free to browse through the other sites - I certainly don't mind if you get addicted to learning about this stuff. The first site in the list, Electronic atlas of storm tracks: http://www.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/storms1 provides access to global maps of individual storm tracks and storm track frequencies for any location and provides seasonal distributions and archived information going back several years (I've forgotten how far, but you can look it up). I recommend you quickly browse through some of this as it helps to reinforce what we have learned about the connection between weather systems, jet streams and polar fronts, and seasonal shifts related to the annual cycle of insolation. After doing this, feel free to record comments about anything that particularly surprised you or captured your attention, but then go on to one of the following major topics to complete the assignment. But before you do, take a look at this satellite image showing the extent of snow cover following the blizzard we had in January: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/images/blizzard-96-avhrr-snow.gif TOPIC 1: SEVERE WEATHER IN THE MIDLATITUDES: THUNDERSTORMS AND TORNADOES The first stop on your tour should be the following: Meteorology electronic textbook http://www.atmos.uiuc.edu/covis/modules/html/module.html Try looking through the section on thunderstorms, supercells and tornadoes. This is a very detailed discussion and may go into greater depth than you care to pursue, but if you're interested in these types of storm systems you'll find it highly informative. A somewhat less detailed discussion, but still informative, is: http://www.sirs.com/partner/snow/snow595/snow595.htm Some of the following sites have interesting stories and pictures filed by storm chasers in the midwest. I've forgotten what's in this one but you can look it up: http://cc.usu.edu/~kforsyth/Tornado.html The next one is a detailed report by a storm chaser in Illinois about a tornado-generating storm that he tracked last May. One thing you might do is to read through the account, which is full of technical jargon, and make notes of any unfamiliar technical terms. Look these up either in the textbook or in the electronic meteorology text cited above. Then see if you can come up with a brief, simple version of the history of this tornado and the meteorological conditions responsible for it. Here's the address: http://java.meteor.wisc.edu/ftp/torngifs/report.html This next one is a radar cross-section of a tornado-producing supercell: http://www.atd.ucar.edu/rsf/VORTEX95/images/tall_tornado.html The next one has pointers to a variety of sites on severe weather: http://www.infi.net/~cwt/storms.html This next one is a detailed technical discussion by a well-known storm chaser summarizing his impressions following the 1995 field campaign. One thing you might do is to read through this, again using other sources to decipher the technical jargon, and see whether you can summarize what appear to be the main unresolved questions about these types of systems that the researchers are trying to unravel. There is a method to the apparent madness of driving all over the midwest trying to track down these storms. How do they hope to answer their primary questions in doing this? The address: http://www.nssl.uoknor.edu/personal/Doswell/Tornadostuff.html Doswell also is quite an accomplished photographer and he includes a lot of nice images on this next page. Feel free to comment on anything that strikes you as interesting: http://www.nssl.uoknor.edu/personal/Doswell/photo.html?17,17 The storm chaser page includes a lot of shop talk and some eyewitness reports. Look especially at the ones on the Claude, Texas tornado. http://taiga.geog.niu.edu/chaser.html There is also a very nice photo gallery and links to various collections of tornado photos on this page: http://taiga.geog.niu.edu/chaser/photo.html If any of these pictures raises an interesting question in your mind, please post it. TOPIC 2: TROPICAL CYCLONES The place to start definitely is with the list of frequently asked questions at the site below. The first list provides information on tropical cyclones and covers a wide range of topics, including the linkage between tropical cyclones and El Nino, the effect of global climate change and increased CO2 content on frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones, the reason why the South Atlantic doesn't have tropical cyclones, the origin of easterly waves, etc. The second list provides links to useful sites with information or images on tropical cyclones. Here are the addresses: ftp://downdry.atmos.colostate.edu/pub/TCfaqI ftp://downdry.atmos.colostate.edu/pub/TCfaqII Another site with some useful and interesting information is the page where Dr. William Gray of Colorado State University, together with his coauthors, discusses his predictions of Atlantic Ocean hurricane activity, the factors that control hurricane activity, and the anticipated conditions for 1996 (periodically updated). Here's the address: http://typhoon.atmos.colostate.edu/~thorson/forecasts/index.html The SIMS hurricane watch provides a lot of good information about the 1995 season, which was the most active (or the second-most active?) ever: http://www.sims.net/links/hurricane.html The NOAA address below provides a map showing storm tracks for all of the 1995 Atlantic tropical cyclones. You can tag the name of any storm on the map legend and call up the National Hurricane Center report on the origin and evolution of that storm: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/index.html Try picking one of these storms, reading through the report, and seeing whether you can relate what you see in the report to the general mechanisms controlling origin and evolution of these storms as discussed in the textbook. The next address is for the NASA movie catalogue, which includes animations for some of last year's tropical cyclones: http://rsd.gsfc.nasa.gov/rsd/movies/preview.html The next one discusses field experiments proposed for 1996 on genesis of tropical cyclones, among others. Read through the document, picking your way around the technical jargon, and see if you can determine what questions are currently unresolved and are under investigation in these experiments? How will the experiments help the research team toward resolving these questions? http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/HFP.html The following are some additional links to sites that discuss tropical cyclones or that provide storm tracks, images, and animations: http://www.typhoon.org.hk/ http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/data/index.html#special http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/images/olimages.html http://thunder.atms.purdue.edu/hurricane.html http://oldthunder.ssec.wisc.edu/tropic/tropic.html NASA advanced visualizations http://globe.gsfc.nasa.gov/globe/sample/advanced.html Visit this site for a perspective view of Hurricane Andrew in 1992, particularly the animation. TOPIC 3: EL NINO/SOUTHERN OSCILLATION El Nino is a recurring pattern of disturbance in tropical Pacific sea-surface temperatures, pressure, and winds that has far-reaching effects on global weather. An increasing amount of attention has been paid to this phenomenon in recent years. The first document provides a good basic discussion. Science Now, March 1994: http://www.sirs.com/partner/snow/snow394/snow394.htm The next site is sponsored by the research team at NOAA that is involved in an international project monitoring ocean surface conditions and associated meteorological variables. El-Nino theme page: http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/toga-tao/el-nino/home.html Visit this site for an illustrated, well-written explanation of El Nino/Southern Oscillation and its global effects. If you feel ambitious, try selecting an El Nino and a non-El Nino year; then go back to the electronic atlas of storm tracks and compare summer or winter tracks between the two years. The next site discusses the predictions made for 1996 by William Gray of Colorado State University, together with his colleagues, regarding El Nino/Southern Oscillation conditions. http://typhoon.atmos.colostate.edu/~thorson/forecasts/enso.long.dec95/enso96.html Here are a few miscellaneous other sites I included while I was looking for information on regional climates. If I can get a better group of sites to do this, I will post addresses that discuss regional biomes that are associated with major climate classes. I don't expect you to do anything with these this time around, but feel free to browse through them. http://www.datasync.com/~farrar/clim.html http://climate.konza.ksu.edu/region.html http://kaos.erin.gov.au/database/WWW-Fall94/species_paper_new.html http://amazon.sr.unh.edu/pathfinder/index.html