...Flash flooding will continue to be possible today and tonight... ...FLASH FLOOD WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT THROUGH LATE TONIGHT... The Flash Flood Watch continues for * Portions of Arkansas, Louisiana, southeast Oklahoma, and Texas, including the following areas, in Arkansas, Columbia, Hempstead, Howard, Lafayette, Little River, Miller, Nevada, Sevier, and Union. In Louisiana, Bienville, Bossier, Caddo, Caldwell, Claiborne, De Soto, Grant, Jackson, La Salle, Lincoln, Natchitoches, Ouachita, Red River, Sabine, Union, Webster, and Winn. In southeast Oklahoma, McCurtain. In Texas, Angelina, Bowie, Camp, Cass, Cherokee, Franklin, Gregg, Harrison, Marion, Morris, Nacogdoches, Panola, Red River, Rusk, Sabine, San Augustine, Shelby, Smith, Titus, Upshur, and Wood. * Through early Friday morning. * Periods of moderate to heavy rainfall with storms repeatedly moving over the same areas will be possible. Additional rainfall amounts of two to three inches, with isolated higher amounts will be possible. * Flash flooding of roads, low lying, and poor drainage areas will be possible. If you encounter flash flooding while driving your vehicle, remember to turn around, don`t drown.
Current Conditon: Overcast
Wind Speeds: 4.03mph
Chance of Precipitation: 0.1%
Temperature: 59/56 Rain until evening. Saturday:
Temperature: 69/42 Rain until evening. Sunday:
Temperature: 61/42 Partly cloudy starting in the afternoon, continuing until evening. Monday:


The Atmosphere Observing System (AOS) will provide measurements that are critical for clarifying aerosol and cloud processes that drive extreme weather and climate change. A dedicated team from several NASA facilities and international partner organizations will develop instruments, build and launch spacecraft, coordinate suborbital instruments and operate the new observing system. AOS is one component of the Earth System Observatory designed by NASA to provide key information to guide efforts related to climate change, natural hazard mitigation, fighting forest fires, and improving real-time agricultural processes. AOS plans are under consideration by NASA and the international partner governments.
Mission TimelineA high-level overview of the AOS mission timeline is presented here. The AOS mission was preceded by the Aerosols, Cloud, Convection and Precipitation (ACCP) Study. The nominal phases shown apply to AOS satellites in an inclined orbit (AOS-Storm). The timing of mission phases associated with the polar AOS satellite (AOS-Sky) are noted in italics.
Instrumentssuborbital platforms. Four satellites will work together to provide these data. Two satellites traveling in a polar orbit (AOS-Sky and HAWCsat) - passing over both poles with each satellite pass - and two satellites traveling in a 55° inclined orbit (AOS-Storm and PMM). A mix of both the active and passive sensing, from the microwave to the ultra-violet, providing a comprehensive view of how these systems work and interact with each other. The spacecraft will carry a core set of instrument types:
NASA Earth System Observatory
Areas of focus for core of the Earth System Observatory include:
Aerosols: Answering the critical question of how aerosols affect the global energy balance, a key source of uncertainty in predicting climate change.
Clouds, Convection, and Precipitation: Tackling the largest sources of uncertainty in future projections of climate change, as well as improved understanding and prediction of convective storms and severe weather.
Mass Change: Providing drought assessment and forecasting, associated planning for water use for agriculture, as well as supporting natural hazard response.
Surface Biology and Geology: Understanding climate changes that impact food and agriculture, habitation, and natural resources, by answering open questions about the fluxes of carbon, water, nutrients, and energy within and between ecosystems and the atmosphere, the ocean, and the Earth.
Surface Deformation and Change: Quantifying models of sea-level and landscape change driven by climate change, hazard forecasts, and disaster impact assessments, including dynamics of earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides, glaciers, groundwater, and Earth's interior.
Once the core missions of the Earth System Observatory (AOS, Mass Change, Surface Biology and Geology and Surface Deformation and Change) are established, NASA will augment the core with a new class of mission, the Earth Explorers, to make additional high-priority observations and encourage innovative solutions through competitive selection at the mission level.


The use of Airborne Wind Energy has seen a lot of research and development over the
past 15 years. Today, more than 50 companies and research institutes are active in this field worldwide. While numerous theoretical concepts have been proposed and some prototypes have
impressively demonstrated the feasibility and potential of the use of high-altitude wind energy, so far no airborne wind energy system has been in automatic continuous operation.This overall joint research project sets out to close this knowledge gap.
The use of high-altitude wind IS the next generation of wind power!


Global Thermometer Still Climbing
The Earth’s average temperature is continuing to rise, regardless of the fact that some parts of the United States now are experiencing an atypically cold winter.
The U.S. land area covers only about two percent of the Earth’s surface, which means that even when much of the United States is cold, most of the rest of the world may be warmer. This winter, for example, many Americans are experiencing extreme cold, but the oceans and much of the rest of the world are much warmer than usual. Overall, the past ten years have been the warmest on record globally. Here at home, the continental United States record daily highs have exceeded record daily lows by a margin of two to one from 2000 to 2009.
The Globe is Warming
Burning coal, oil and gas and destroying forests overloads the atmosphere with excess carbon dioxide, adding to heat-trapping gases that already are present in the atmosphere. Combined, these gases act like a blanket covering the earth. The human contribution to this effect is unmistakable. The part of the atmosphere where excess carbon dioxide accumulates has expanded and warmed dramatically in recent years precisely during the period when emissions from human activity have increased.
Scientists from NASA and other research institutions routinely collect temperature data from around the world and have records of the Earth’s average temperature going back to the 1880s, when temperatures were first recorded. The data shows that, globally, the last decade has been the warmest ever recorded. ,
Over the last century, global average temperature has increased by more than 1°F (0.6°C). While the record shows significant regional differences in warming, the long-term global upward trend is unambiguous.
However, surface temperature is only one indicator of climate change. Patterns of rainfall and snow, droughts and storms, and lake ice also are changing. Plant and animal behavior are changing. Glaciers are melting and sea level is rising. These shifts are well documented and are largely attributed to human-caused global warming.  Scientists can now positively identify the “human fingerprints” associated with these changing patterns.
Climate and Weather
Climate is a good indicator of what to expect in general, such as cold days in February in New England. Weather, on the other hand, is what we actually experience, like a blustery, snowy day with temperatures in the low 20s. In other words, climate describes phenomena observed over long time periods, such as decades and centuries, while weather is observed over short time periods, such as days and weeks.
It is clear that the Earth’s climate is changing, largely due to human activity. Over the last 25 years, Earth’s global average temperature has been increasing at more than twice the rate of the last century. In fact, nine of the warmest years on record have occurred in just the last 10 years.,  This warming has been accompanied by a decrease in very cold days and nights and an increase in extremely hot days and warm nights. Additionally, the oceans reached their highest recorded temperature in the summer of 2009. Oceans have absorbed much more heat from global warming than the air at the Earth’s surface because water is much better at retaining heat.
The “Long” and the “Short” of Temperature Trends
Relatively short-term natural phenomena that cause global temperatures to fluctuate are occurring at the same time human activity continues to drive up average global temperatures by overloading the atmosphere with heat-trapping emissions.
These short-term effects on climate make it possible to have “cooler” periods in regions even as the general trend of warming continues. For example, during late 2007 and early 2008, the tropical Pacific Ocean was much cooler than normal due to a strong La Niña episode that kept temperatures across much of the globe lower than usual. Nevertheless, both years were still in the top ten warmest years on record and would have been even hotter without this short-term cooling effect. Conversely, in 1998, a very strong El Niño episode, which made the tropical Pacific Ocean warmer than normal, combined with human-induced global warming to make that year one of the hottest on record.
Focusing on relatively short time periods to claim global warming is not happening is a misleading way to use statistics. These false claims have become so persistent that late last year the Associated Press asked a team of independent statisticians to review global temperature data without revealing to them what the data represented. All of the statisticians concluded that the data showed an unmistakable upward trend over time.
It’s Not Too Late
The choices we make today can help determine what our climate will be like. Putting a limit on heat-trapping emissions and encouraging the use of healthier, cleaner energy technologies, such as solar and wind power, would help us to avoid the worst potential consequences of global warming.
1. NOAA National Climatic Data Center, accessed January 12th, 2010: www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/anomalies/index.html
2. NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, accessed January 12th, 2010: data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/
3. IPCC (2007) Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (AR4). S. Solomon et al. eds., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and NY, USA.
4. Easterling, D.R. and M. F. Wehner (2009). Is the climate warming or cooling? Geophysical Research Letters, 36, L08706.
5. Associated Press: www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/26/tech/main5423035.shtml
Note: The surface temperature of the Earth expressed as a global average is determined from thousands of individual thermometers based on land areas and on ships and buoys in the ocean. To obtain consistent changes over time, scientists compare the different data sets using the departure from the climatological mean at each location.
For more information see the UK Met Office: www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/science/explained/explained5.html


L'aria di Milano
A data visualization project about air quality and pollution in Milan, Italy. Data is gathered from the City of Milan Open Data portal.
This website used the City of Milan Open Data portal to get daily information about air pollution. The data was shown on a simplified map of the city, highlighting the level of each substance in the different areas of the city, and on simple candlestick-like charts, developed with D3.js, to show the daily variation of values for each substance, and the daily readings for each station.
Station-based data was also available for up to 30 days in the past.
The source API, which used to work perfectly during 2019 saw a performance degradation during 2020, and has been eventually removed in 2022. At the moment there are no free and reliable data sources regarding air pollution in the city of Milan.
The original URL of the project was: https://aria.mia.mi.it/.


A fascinating insight into the minds of the Met Office and the (till now secret) 3-month forecast they produced last spring - favouring a drier than average outlook, just before the wettest three months in history.
The Met Office says the forecast was not wrong, just probabilistic. Which is a great way of covering up the computational equivalent of sticking a pin in a list of horses.
I would therefore like to offer up my own forecast for the next 3 months.
Temperatures in April-June will, on average, be warmer than January-March. Chances are there will be less snow than in the first three months of this year. The warmest day will be pretty warm, but colder than Death Valley in midsummer.
There is a 50% chance that it will be warmer than normal, and a 50% chance that it will be cooler. Whatever it is, there is a 100% chance of a climate scientist telling us it's due to global warming, or at least of the media reporting it that way.
There is a 100% chance of the days getting longer through to late June, at which point I'm fairly sure they'll start shortening again.
Rain will mostly fall down, if it fails. Bears in the woods will do what comes naturally.


Ultra-fine dust can enter our bloodstream via the lungs and thus reach all organs. Guess what the biggest fine particulate matter emitter is in road traffic. A little hint: It is not diesel exhaust fumes! By the way, the nitrogen oxides are not to blame for this either, because they are not particulate matter per se. Nitrogen oxide is a collective term for various gaseous compounds made up of the atoms nitrogen N and oxygen O. Nitrogen oxides are thus so-called precursor substances of particulate matter, and thus also indirectly responsible for particulate matter pollution.
Air Quality – Peak ambient fine particulate matter concentrations at monitoring stations, Canada
Back to the particulate matter sources in traffic. These are PM10 particulate matter. In Germany, fine particulate limit values of a maximum of 50 micrograms per cubic meter of air exist in cities. This average value may be exceeded on a maximum of 35 days a year, after which driving bans are imposed on certain vehicle categories.
You've read right, "for certain vehicle categories. An honest approach to the subject of particulate matter is different. Conclusion: Based on these measured values, it doesn't help much to exchange the diesel engine for an electric car. In agriculture, the gaseous nitrogen compound ammonia NH3 is the main cause of particulate matter.
Ammonia is produced during the processing of liquid manure and fertilizer and is a so-called precursor gas.
Environmental Monitoring – Why We Finally Have to Face Particulate Matter Honestly
Ammonia reacts in the atmosphere with other gases to form particles with health effects and is thus a so-called secondary fine particulate matter of category PM2. A small excursus on the subject of "global warming" vs. During the digestive process a cow emits methane among other substances. Methane, or CH4, is a so-called greenhouse gas, and oxidizes in the atmosphere to carbon monoxide and finally to carbon dioxide.
- What is particulate matter (PM)?!
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Due to its high global warming potential, it contributes significantly to global warming. However, it has nothing to do with fine dust pollution. Several studies have now been conducted on the mortality rate in connection with particulate matter pollution. There is no doubt that humans die as a secondary factor due to exposure to particulate matter. In this context, I deliberately do not wish to give an assessment of existing studies.
In fact, epidemiological studies showed that fine dust pollution is a mortality factor involved in approximately 8. By the way, depending on the parameters specified to define the mortality rate, the interpretation of the underlying measured values can vary a lot. Air pollution doesn't shorten everyone's lives. This means that an overall decrease in average life expectancy is an average value. The particulate matter pollution will only affect the mortality rate of those who are exposed to the substances in their daily lives.
A life on a mountain hut is therefore preferable to a life in a big city in terms of particulate matter pollution.
- Particulate Matter (PM2.5) Trends?
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- Fine Particulate Matter!
Before we take a closer look at how fine dust is measured in the air, I'll tell you a few things about fine dust at your workplace. In the workplace, a distinction is made between the typical office building and production facilities. Think of the dust pollution in a carpenter's workshop or of companies in which grinding machines are installed.
In the office, a particulate matter limit value of a maximum of 60 micrograms per cubic meter of air applies in Germany. Remember that the limit outside is 50 micrograms. Carpenters, grinders and production workers should now make sure that they are in their seats and only then read on. The fine dust limit in production plants is no less than 10 milligrams. Yes, 1 milligram is 1, micrograms. So we are talking about times the outdoor air limit!
What is an Air Zone?
Even modern filter systems in production plants have only a filter capacity of approx. This is still 40 times the outdoor air limit. Now that you know the theory and have briefly learned the most important terms and measurements relating to fine dust, I will show you how it is measured in practice. You will see that the current methods for measuring particulate matter offer room for improvement. The standardized measurement of fine dust serves to ensure compliance with air pollution control regulations.
A distinction is made between the measurement at the point of origin of the air pollution emission and the measurement at its place of impact immission. In practice, various types of sensors are available for measuring particulate matter.
To obtain comprehensible measurement results, you must know that it makes a difference whether you want to measure particulate matter indoors or outdoors. For outdoor measurements, humidity is a variable component that is not taken into account when indoor sensors are used. Such sensors can also be used outdoors, but only if the humidity is measured with an additional sensor that compensates for the measurement results.
Under a Creative Commons license. Abstract Exposure to ambient fine particulate matter PM 2.
Keywords Fine particulate matter. Recommended articles Citing articles 0.


Pesticides’ carbon footprint is massively underestimated. We need better metrics for innovative technologies.
Crop protection does not have one big bad wolf pesticide like fertilizers’ nitrogen. According to phys.org (1, 2) “Manure and synthetic fertilizers emit the equivalent of 2.6 gigatons of carbon per year -more than global aviation and shipping combined.” For impact and climate investors going after one big problem with a significant impact is a no brainer. Calculating reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in terms of gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) is easy because there are many publications and market reports available for climate and impact investors (3). Nitrogen alone cannot solve agriculture’s carbon emission problem because the bigger problem, crop protection, is overlooked and underestimated.
Crop protection has many medium size wolves which collectively create more CO2e emissions than nitrogen. Furthermore, GHG emissions produced by pesticides are massively underreported for the following reasons (4). Keep reading


The northern lights (Aurora borealis, aurora australis) – a light phenomenon observed in the upper atmosphere near the planet’s magnetic poles.
The sun constantly emits a stream of charged particles, the solar wind. During solar flares, the Sun ejects larger amounts of these particles, including protons and electrons. Near the Earth, the flight paths of these particles are mostly deflected by the Earth’s magnetic field. Captured by the Earth’s magnetosphere, particles move along a helix-shaped path along the magnetic field lines connecting both Earth’s magnetic poles, causing excitation of atoms in the polar region, and consequently auroral glow.
I have been hunting the Northern Lights since 2013 and since 2016 I have been living in Tromsø, where I can admire them almost every day. I can’t count the sleepless nights and how many auroras I’ve seen. I can say for sure that every night is different and we can never be sure what the Green Lady can show us.
I will describe how to hunt the Northern Lights mainly from where I am staying, which is Tromsø.
Tromsø lies in the “belt” of the aurora, which is where the reaction takes place and we can watch the aurora
In Tromsø, the Northern Lights season starts from mid-September and lasts until the end of March – the so-called Northern Lights season. the official season when tour companies offer trips to Hunt for the Northern Lights. And really when it’s night. To be able to admire this wonderful phenomenon, we must see the stars (night) and have a sufficient number of “dark” hours. The first aurora can be seen from August 20, and the latest when I saw it was April 17. However, at such early and late dates, it is a very short time frame (30 min – 1 h) to watch the Green Lady
This is related to the polar day and night.The polar day in Tromsø lasts from May 19 to July 26, which means that the sun is always above the horizon. Polar night from November 28 to January 14 – The sun is always below the horizon, it does not mean that it is dark here for 24 hours.The sun is below the horizon and does not cross it, then it is bright here for a few hours – you can compare it to sunrise and sunset without direct sun
Let us remember that Tromsø lies at 69°40’N, 350 km beyond the Arctic Circle.
In short: in northern Norway from mid-September to the end of March
For the best chance of seeing a really good spectacle in the sky, head north. To the regions of northern Norway (e.g. to Tromsø), Finland, Sweden. Also Iceland, Alaska, Canada, Greenland… All places that are beyond the Arctic Circle, i.e. the Earth’s parallel with a width of 66°N.Then you can be almost certain that you will see the Northern Lights.
Almost – remember that the Northern Lights are a natural phenomenon, there is never a guarantee that they will appear in the sky.In addition, of course, night and no light pollution.It’s hard to see the Northern Lights in the city, but it’s possible.This most often happens with very strong activity.
Of course, auroras occur mainly above the Arctic Circle, but in favorable conditions they can be visible even around the 50th parallel – I managed to get a shot near Oslo Gardermoen airport and even near Warsaw a few times.
In short: beyond the polar circle
To observe the Northern Lights, we need a starry sky – no clouds or partial cloud cover, where we will still see the stars – the Northern Lights are over 100km above the ground
A place without light pollution – outside the city. And then we have to wait for the Green Lady to appear in the sky.
Of course, warm clothes, a camera (link) and a positive attitude
Northern Lights Forecast
On the websites: Aurora Service, SWPC NOAA, Space Weather Live there is information about the Northern Lights forecast.
Most applications are based on the KP forecast (2, 3, 4.33, 5 (G1) this is a coefficient that informs us how far south we can see the aurora. These parameters are helpful if we are not in the “band” of the aurora, e.g. near central and southern Norway.
The most important parameter for us is the coefficient Bz, it relates to the polarization of the magnetic field. In the simplest terms, the value of Bz must be negative for the glow reaction of the particles to be directed towards the Earth. At a positive value, of course, the reaction takes place, but the Aurora Borealis shines into space, reflecting off the magnetic field like a mirror. Then we can say that there is no activity.
Parameters such as solar wind speed and density are very helpful in determining what kind of aurora we can see on a given day. And we distinguish strands, arcs, curtains, rays, crowns and others.
Colors of the northern lights
The color of the aurora depends on the type of gas and the altitude at which the phenomenon occurs
Green, the most commonly seen color in the aurora, is formed when charged particles collide with oxygen molecules at altitudes of 100 to 250 km.
Pink appears at the lower edge of the aurora,produced by nitrogen molecules at an altitude of about 100 km.
Red is at an altitude of 250 to 400 km when molecules collide with oxygen atoms.The lifetimes of these excited states, the time between an electron in an atom gaining energy and then releasing it as a photon, are much longer than the emission time of green oxygen, at over 200 seconds each.
Hydrogen and helium molecules can produce blue and purple auroras
Although our eyes cannot see all of these colors, cameras capture a wider range of shades when exposed to light.
The colors of the northern lights depending on the height
Above 250 km: red, oxygen
Up to 250 km: green, oxygen
Over 100 km: pink or purple, nitrogen
Up to 100 km: blue, nitrogen
photo. hjmnightskies (https://www.instagram.com/hjmnightskies/) pink aurora November 2, 2022 – one of the pinkest auroras in recent years
Red Aurora – January 14, 2023


A nor’easter is setting up shop to dump over two feet of snow in the northeast Monday night, and forecasters are using the term weather bomb to describe the event.
But what does that mean?
Winter Storm Stella could undergo a process called bombogenesis, reports the Weather Channel, where the system ‘bombs out.’ It’s similar to what happens when a low-pressure tropical system hits warm water and winds, causing the pressure to drop and strengthening the storm’s winds and precipitation to form a hurricane, except in this case, the winter low-pressure storm system enters the ocean and hits the boundary where a cold and warm front meet, causing the pressure to drop and strengthening the storm’s winds and precipitation.
To qualify as a bombogenesis, the pressure has to drop 24 millibars within 24 hours. This causes a rapid strengthening of the storm, bringing hurricane force winds and a large amount of snow that together create blizzard conditions. There is even the possibility of thundersnow with these storms, and higher tides may cause some coastal erosion.
Winter Storm Stella could turn into a ‘weather bomb’ — here’s what that means pic.twitter.com/kZNEtd4xas
— Business Insider (@businessinsider) March 13, 2017
— Local Now (@LocalNowTWC) March 13, 2017
— The Weather Channel (@weatherchannel) March 13, 2017
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Create your own weather diary so that you can record the daily weather forecast. Use my example to help you create yours. Include a drawing and a short description of the weather.
Check the weather at the same time each day for one week and record it in your diary.
At the end of the week compare the different weather forecasts throughout the week.
Was the weather the same each day?
Is their a pattern in the weather?
Consider what the weather looks like, as well as how it feels (temperature). If you can, record the daily temperature.
Once your week is over, you can become the weather reporter.
You will need your weather diary and a device.
Record yourself reporting the weather for each day of the week, use your weather diary as a guide to help you through your report. Share your video recording with us on SeeSaw. :)


1. The term “greenhouse effect” has two common meanings. There is a natural greenhouse effect that keeps the Earth’s climate warm and habitable. There is also a man-made greenhouse effect, which is the enhancement of Earth’s natural greenhouse effect by the addition of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels (mainly petroleum, coal, and natural gas).
2. Earth’s natural greenhouse effect is critical to supporting life. But human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels and clearing of forests, have intensified the natural greenhouse effect, causing global warming.
与我们生存环境密切相关的另一种自然效应是“城市热岛效应”（urban heat island effect）。例如：
3. Temperatures are often a few degrees higher in cities than they are in their surrounding rural areas. This temperature discrepancy is the result of a bizarre phenomenon known as the urban heat island effect. As the name implies, the effect turns cities into islands of heat.
4. According to the latest statistics from the China Meteorological Administration, about one-fourth of the temperature rise caused by climate warming can be blamed on the urban heat island effect. This effect is adding to our woes.
5. A few occasional flaps of the wings of a butterfly in a South American tropical rain forest in the Amazon Basin may cause a tornado in Texas, the United States two weeks later. This is because the movement of the wings of the butterfly will bring about changes in the air system around it, and also cause weak air flow, which will lead to relevant changes in the air and other systems around it. This will cause a series of chain reactions, and eventually lead to significant changes in other systems.
6. In Norway, live sardines are several times more expensive than frozen ones, and are valued for better texture and flavor. It was said that only one ship could bring live sardine home, and the shipmaster kept his method a secret. After he died, people found that there was one catfish in his tank. The catfish keeps swimming, and the sardines try to avoid this predator. This increased level of activity keeps the sardines active instead of becoming sedentary.
Catfish effect is a term used in human resource management to describe how groups are motivated by the addition of a strong competitor. Actions for actively applying the catfish effect in an organization are called catfish management. This is a method used to motivate a team so that each member feels strong competition, thus keeping up the competitiveness of the whole team.
8. The halo effect of celebrities gives people a cloak of generalized trustworthiness which extends well-beyond their industry or expertise. The halo effect works both in positive and negative directions.
In sociology, the Matthew effect is the phenomenon where “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer”. In both its original and typical usage it is meant metaphorically to refer to issues of fame or status, but it may also be used literally to refer to cumulative advantage of economic capital.


Unmet need for public education on increases in rainfall intensity due to climate change
23 Aug 2007
Excerpt from Aug 21 comment by a person from Rochester:
... "Anyone with the slightest knowledge of the land here in SE MN (I'm in Rochester) could tell what was going to happen when the rain kept coming. And, accordingly, most people escaped with their lives." ...
Midwesterners haven't seen the intensity and volume of recent rain before and they didn't know the rain would "keep coming". They didn't realize that climate change has been increasing the intensity and volume of heavy rains. National Weather Service supervisors have not allowed their staffs to research and comment to the public on climate change hydrologic changes as a result. My removal by NWS in 2005 from the North Central River Forecast Center in Chanhassen for my research and talk about climate change affecting flooding (rainfall intensities and timing of snowmelt runoff) is evidence of that irresponsible "policy" by NOAA NWS from 1993-2005.


In what environmental experts warned could be President Donald Trump’s most dangerous assault on science yet, the White House is reportedly moving to end long-term assessments of the impacts of the climate crisis while pushing a polluter-friendly agenda that is making the planetary emergency worse.
As the New York Times reported late Monday, “the White House-appointed director of the United States Geological Survey, James Reilly, a former astronaut and petroleum geologist, has ordered that scientific assessments produced by that office use only computer-generated climate models that project the impact of climate change through 2040, rather than through the end of the century, as had been done previously.”
“A pretty blatant attempt to politicize the science—to push the science in a direction that’s consistent with their politics.”
—Philip Duffy, Woods Hole Research Center
“As a result,” according to the Times, “parts of the federal government will no longer fulfill what scientists say is one of the most urgent jobs of climate science studies: reporting on the future effects of a rapidly warming planet and presenting a picture of what the earth could look like by the end of the century if the global economy continues to emit heat-trapping carbon dioxide pollution from burning fossil fuels.”
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—the United Nations’ leading climate body—warned in a landmark report last October that if carbon emissions are not dramatically and rapidly reduced, catastrophic effects of the climate crisis could be felt across the world as early as 2040.
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But, as the Times reported, scientists say that Trump administration’s attempt to cut off government climate projections at that year “would give a misleading picture because the biggest effects of current emissions will be felt after 2040.”
“Models show that the planet will most likely warm at about the same rate through about 2050,” according to the Times. “From that point until the end of the century, however, the rate of warming differs significantly with an increase or decrease in carbon emissions.”
Philip Duffy, the president of the Woods Hole Research Center, told the Times that the White House’s move to restrict government climate predictions “is a pretty blatant attempt to politicize the science—to push the science in a direction that’s consistent with their politics.”
Critics also expressed alarm on social media.
“The Trump gang is attacking the scientific process itself,” tweeted environmentalist Alex Steffen, “in an attempt to prop up fossil fuel industries, delay inevitable action, and run the carbon bubble as long as it will last.”
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It was a good week to be a Wyomingite. As of Thursday, the 98,000-square-mile rectangle was the only state in the contiguous U.S. to have somehow avoided both heat index warnings and air quality alerts.
If you live anywhere other than Wyoming, well, I sympathize. Summer has only just begun, but America’s topsy-turvy climate season has most definitely arrived.
Plenty of places around the country experienced relatively “normal” conditions this week: Most of Maine and Vermont dodged the heat and smoke, as did large swaths of Colorado, Montana, Idaho, and Washington State. But you were more likely to have experienced extreme weather than not. Roughly 54% of Americans — about 180 million, by Axios’ estimate — were under alerts for either the smoke or extreme heat during the final week of June.
Let’s start with the heat dome, which human-caused climate change made “at least five times more likely,” according to researchers at Climate Central. Some 91 major cities had “dangerous levels of heat” in their forecast as of Thursday, with nearly a third of the U.S. population under alerts that stretched from northern Florida to New Mexico. Dallas, New Orleans, Nashville, and parts of Arkansas, Mississippi, and Alabama could still see heat index readings potentially as high as 120 — when anything over 103 is considered dangerous.
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Although Californians are used to being on the frontlines of climate change, their relatively quiet spring led to some bristling when New Yorkers, being New Yorkers, made the recent wildfire smoke event all about them. But summer is kicking off in the Golden State with a vengeance: Much of the coast is now staring down a heat wave that could push “readings toward record territory,” The Washington Post reports. A separate event from the Southern heat dome, the triple-digit weekend weather in California looks like it will stretch from Los Angeles up through the Central Valley, but at least it won’t come with the humidity that is often the culprit behind heat-related deaths.
Then there is the Canadian wildfire smoke, which continues to drop by unannounced like an overly exuberant neighbor. Though there isn’t likely to be a repeat of the “perfect storm” that ushered in the worst smoke pollution in recorded American history, we are experiencing a “stuck weather pattern” in which air quality relief only comes with “sweltering air from the south,” The Washington Post reports. While it can be tricky to tie wildfires directly to greenhouse gas emissions, we do know that “human-caused climate change causes more situations where weather patterns” such as these “stall.”
More importantly, nowhere is seemingly safe from the smoke. Chicago, Detroit, and Milwaukee had the worst air quality in the world earlier this week. On Thursday, Washington, D.C., replaced them in the top spot. And while the West Coast has enjoyed relatively clean air this spring, its wildfire season doesn’t typically begin until the late summer and early fall. If the Canadian wildfires are finally brought to heel, it might only be in time for the West Coast fires — and smoke events — to begin.
If there is slim good news, it is that El Niños, like the one we’re in now, typically suppress Atlantic hurricane activity. But even that wisdom might be in flux: Warm water, like that in the Atlantic, usually helps storms to intensify. This year has already seen the formation of Tropical Storm Bret, one of the earliest named storms on record, which at one point looked like it might turn into a fully fledged hurricane — even though on average, hurricanes aren’t expected to form in the Atlantic until mid-August. Ultimately, there is too much uncertainty to say whether or not this will be a bad hurricane year, but the worst-case scenarios are frightening.
Even Wyoming might not be able to sit out the excitement for much longer. Climate change is forecasted to bring to the state “harsher summer droughts, longer wildfire seasons, and a whole host of new threats to the Wyoming way of life,” the Casper Star-Tribune warns.
We’re only eight days into summer. What will happen next?
Read more about the wildfire smoke:


New Orleans streets flooded Wednesday ahead of the first tropical storm of the season.
The City of New Orleans urged residents to stay off the road, tweeting out an alert about reported flooding.
In a statement issued to CNN, the city said police, fire and EMS have responded to more than 250 emergency calls related to flooding.
New Orleans City Hall was closed an all non-essential staff were sent home.
A flash flood emergency was declared in the region, with four to six inches of rain reported as of 9:30 a.m., according to Accuweather.
The developing storm in the Gulf of Mexico has caused some oil rigs, including Shell and Chevron, to evacuate non-essential staff, CNN reports.
The storm could also possible turn into a hurricane, CNN reports. Residents in Louisiana and Mississippi will likely see heavy rain, in some cases more than a foot, CNN meteorologist Haley Brink said.
Tweets of the conditions show people boating through the flooded New Orleans streets, and water seeping into public busses.
— Della Hasselle (@dellahasselle) July 10, 2019
— Caitlin Looby, PhD (@caitlooby) July 10, 2019


"Wouldn't it be useful to be able to accurately predict the weather simply by reading the clouds? Well, with this book, you can!
TV forecasts, online predictions and smartphone apps are all based on the same data — a number-crunched overview of how air pressure and temperature affect the weather across a large geographical area. But to get an idea of how the weather will develop for the precise spot where you're standing (or walking, sailing, golfing, fishing, etc) you don't need any equipment or a wifi connection —you just need to look up.
This book will give you a broad understanding of why the clouds are symptoms of weather patterns, not causes. By reading these signs in the sky and referring to the explanatory colour photographs, you will discover exactly what those signs mean.
An at-a-glance guide to the clouds for anyone anywhere in the world, on land or at sea, this book will enable you to predict the weather by recognising cloud types, shapes, colour and behaviour. It will be an invaluable companion for anyone who enjoys outdoor activities."


The sky is considered everything that lies above the surface of the Earth, including the atmosphere and the outer space.
In astronomy, the sky is also known under the term “celestial sphere”. This is an abstract sphere, on which the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars appear to be drifting.
Most commonly, the term sky refers to a perspective from the Earth’s surface. However, the meaning and usage of the term can vary.
An observer on the Earth can only see a small part of the sky, which resembles a dome that appears flatter during the day than at night.
In some cases (such as when discussing the weather), the sky refers to only the lower layers of the atmosphere.


For the Kingdom of God is not just a lot of talk; it is living by God's power.
Uncover the reality of spiritual realm and kingdom living on earth, power to live free!
March 9, 2013
Extreme weather is here to stay: “almost Biblical”
almost biblical weather ; what is going on?
Angry summer Australia
Weather Gone Wild
Excerpt quoted: “Rains that are almost biblical, heat waves that don’t end, tornadoes that strike in savage swarms—there’s been a change in the weather lately. What’s going on?
“What’s going on? Are these extreme events signals of a dangerous, human-made shift in Earth’s climate? Or are we just going through a natural stretch of bad luck?”
(National Geographic, September 2012)
is our weather getting worse?
(The New York Times: Jan 10, 2013) Excerpts Quoted: “Britons may remember 2012 as the year the weather spun off its rails in a chaotic concoction of drought, deluge and flooding, but the unpredictability of it all turns out to have been all too predictable: Around the world, extreme has become the new commonplace.”
“China is enduring its coldest winter in nearly 30 years. Brazil is in the grip of a dreadful heat spell. Eastern Russia is so freezing — minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and counting”
“Bush fires are raging across Australia, fueled by a record-shattering heat wave. Pakistan was inundated by unexpected flooding in September. A vicious storm bringing rain, snow and floods just struck the Middle East. And in the United States, scientists confirmed this week what people could have figured out simply by going outside: last year was the hottest since records began.”
“The heat wave in Australia; the flooding in the U.K., and most recently the flooding and extensive snowstorm in the Middle East — it’s already a big year in terms of extreme weather calamity.”
“in Britain, people are used to thinking of rain as the wallpaper on life’s computer screen — an omnipresent, almost comforting background presence. But even the hardiest citizen was rattled by the near-biblical fierceness of the rains that bucketed down, and the floods that followed, three different times in 2012.”
“The same thing is true in Australia, where bush fires are raging across Tasmania and the current heat wave has come after two of the country’s wettest years ever. On Tuesday, Sydney experienced its fifth-hottest day since records began in 1910, with the temperature climbing to 108.1 degrees. The first eight days of 2013 were among the 20 hottest on record.”
“To the north, the extremes have swung the other way, with a band of cold settling across Russia and Northern Europe, bringing thick snow and howling winds to Stockholm, Helsinki and Moscow. (Incongruously, there were also severe snowstorms in Sicily and southern Italy for the first time since World War II; in December, tornadoes and waterspouts struck the Italian coast.)
“China is enduring its worst winter in recent memory, with frigid temperatures recorded in Harbin, in the northeast. In the western region of Xinjiang, more than 1,000 houses collapsed under a relentless onslaught of snow, while in Inner Mongolia, 180,000 livestock froze to death. The cold has wreaked havoc with crops, sending the price of vegetables soaring.”
“Way down in South America…The summer has been punishingly hot. The temperature in Rio de Janeiro climbed to 109.8 degrees on Dec. 26, the city’s highest temperature since official records began in 1915.”
“At the same time, in the Middle East, Jordan is battling a storm packing torrential rain, snow, hail and floods…”
“Israel and the Palestinian territories are grappling with similar conditions, after a week of intense rain and cold winds ushered in a snowstorm that dumped eight inches in Jerusalem alone.”
“In Beirut on Wednesday night, towering waves crashed against the Corniche, the seaside promenade downtown, flinging water and foam dozens of feet in the air as lightning flickered across the dark sea at multiple points along the horizon. Many roads were flooded as hail pounded the city.
Several people died, including a baby boy in a family of shepherds who was swept out of his mother’s arms by floodwaters…”


Weather Analysis and Forecasting: Applying Satellite Water Vapor Imagery and Potential Vorticity Analysis, Second Edition, is a step-by-step essential training manual for forecasters in meteorological services worldwide, and a valuable text for graduate students in atmospheric physics and satellite meteorology. In this practical guide, P. Santurette, C.G. Georgiev, and K. Maynard show how to interpret water vapor patterns in terms of dynamical processes in the atmosphere and their relation to diagnostics available from numerical weather prediction models. In particular, they concentrate on the close relationship between satellite imagery and the potential vorticity fields in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere. These applications are illustrated with color images based on real meteorological situations over mid-latitudes, subtropical and tropical areas.


"Cleaner air prevents tens of thousands of premature deaths, reduces heart attacks and hospital visits, alleviates hundreds of thousands of child asthma attacks, and prevents millions of lost school and work days."
Both outdoor (ambient) air quality and indoor air quality have far-reaching health impacts, including heart disease, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lower respiratory infections, asthma exacerbations, cancers of the lungs and urinary tract/bladder, preterm birth and more. On this page, we focus on outdoor air quality because indoor air quality issues are discussed in detail on our Built Environment webpage.
Scope of Ambient Air Pollution
In 2014, 92 percent of the world population was living in places that did not meet the World Health Organization (WHO) ambient air quality guidelines levels. WHO also has concluded that in 2012, outdoor air pollution in both city and rural areas accounted for 3 million premature deaths, mostly in low- and middle-income countries and especially in the Western Pacific and South-East Asia regions.2
Types and Sources of Contaminants
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), European Commission and other agencies list these criteria pollutants in ambient air:3
- Particulates: a mixture of solid particles and liquid droplets that come from construction sites, unpaved roads, fields, smokestacks or fires, but with most particles forming in the atmosphere as a result of complex reactions of chemicals emitted from power plants, industries and automobiles. Particulates are generally classified as PM10 (10 microns in diameter or smaller) and PM 2.5 (2.5 micrometers in diameter or smaller).5
- Ground-level ozone: a product of nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) created in the presence of heat and sunlight6
- Lead: sources of lead in ambient air include smelters, ore and metals processing, piston-engine aircraft operating on leaded aviation fuel, waste incinerators, utilities, and lead-acid battery manufacturers7
- Sulfur dioxide: sources include the burning of fossil fuels by power plants and other industrial facilities, and locomotives, ships and other vehicles and heavy equipment that burn fuel with a high sulfur content8
- Carbon monoxide: a gas produced by combustion, with cars, trucks and other vehicles or machinery that burn fossil fuels the greatest sources in outdoor air9
- Nitrogen dioxide: a product of emissions from cars, trucks and buses, power plants, and off-road equipment10
Natural and Human-caused Pollution
Several sources of pollution are natural:
However, the contributions of human activity to air pollution typically overshadow natural sources. The majority of pollutants in air come from combustion:
Other human-influenced sources of pollution:
Human activity can also influence natural sources of pollution. For example, agricultural tillage and unpaved roads can create excessive amounts of dust, and forestry practices and land use can contribute to forest fires.11
We will also include these pollutants in our review:
- Volatile organic compounds (VOCs): compounds released during manufacture or use of everyday products and materials including organic solvents, some pesticides, flame retardants, and PCBs;12 VOCs are also found in environmental tobacco smoke, stored fuels, exhaust from cars and emissions from industrial facilities13
- Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs): a group of chemicals found in coal, crude oil and gasoline and which are produced when coal, oil, gas, wood, garbage or tobacco are burned14
- Methane: the primary component of natural gas and a contributor to climate change15
What about Climate Change?
A changing climate interacts with air quality in several ways:
Other pollutants are often found near specific industries or activities. Some examples:
- Petroleum refining releases BTEX compounds (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene)22
- Waste incineration can release dioxins and/or mercury23
- Paper mills release carbonyls such as formaldehyde and acetaldehyde, particulate metals (including lead and chromium) and total reduced sulfur compounds (TRS)24
- Small-scale gold mining can release large amounts of mercury25
- Electronic waste recycling releases heavy metals including copper, lead, cadmium and chromium, plus brominated flame retardants and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs)26
The classification of "sensitive groups" varies somewhat by pollutant:27
Air pollution is associated with a wide variety of health conditions, from temporary eye, nose and throat irritation to asthma attacks, heart attacks, and respiratory and reproductive issues. This table summarizes evidence regarding health impacts of both air pollution and its components. Data is from CHE's Toxicant and Disease Database unless otherwise noted.
Decreased vision (includes blindness, retinopathy, and optic neuropathy)Seizures
|Cognitive impairment (includes impaired learning, impaired memory, and decreased attention span) / mental retardation / developmental delay
Spasticity / myoclonus
|Abnormal sperm (morphology, motility, and sperm count)
Acute tubular necrosis
Anemia (including hemolytic)
Chronic renal disease
Psychiatric disturbances (disorientation, hallucinations, psychosis, delirium, paranoias, anxiety/depression, emotional lability, mood changes, euphoria)Seizures
|Altered time to sexual maturation (accelerated or delayed puberty)
Porphyria (toxic)Reduced fertility—female (infertility and subfertility)
|At high concentrations, rapid breathing, rapid heart rate, clumsiness, emotional upsets, fatigue, followed by nausea and vomiting, collapse, convulsions, coma and death28
|Fetotoxicity (miscarriage / spontaneous abortion, stillbirth)
COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease)
|Particulate air pollution (soot)
COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease)
Lung cancerMyocardial infarction (heart attack)
|Cerebrovascular disease (stroke) cancer
|Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs)
Porphyria (toxic)Scrotal cancer
Extrinsic skin aging, pigmentation and acneiform eruptions29
Nasopharyngeal / sino-nasal cancer
Renal (kidney) cancer
Skin cancer (non-melanoma)
|Fetotoxicity (miscarriage / spontaneous abortion, stillbirth)
|Volatile organic compounds (VOCs)
Indirect Impacts of Air Pollution
Besides directly impacting human health, air pollution can also contribute to our health indirectly by affecting water, soil and food. Some examples:
Worldwide, the majority of air pollution-related deaths are from air-pollution induced heart disease and stroke, followed by air-pollution related chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lower respiratory infections, and lung cancer.31 In the US, each year some 60,000 people die early because of poor air quality, with costs of air pollution-related illness estimated at $150 billion annually.32
Heart Disease and Stroke
Air pollution: A 2017 review found that short-term increases in air pollution were associated with an increased risk of heart attack, stroke and acute heart failure.33 A separate review that same year found that Increases in stroke incidences and mortalities are seen with air pollution exposure.34
Particulate matter causes sustained oxidative stress and inflammation throughout the body, increasing the rate of cardiovascular deaths. PM2.5 can also increase autonomic nervous system activation.35 Particulate matter can aggravate asthma and is also associated with respiratory symptoms such as increased airway irritation, coughing or difficulty breathing. Children, older adults and anyone with preexisting heart or lung diseases are most vulnerable to the health effects from exposure.36 A 2017 review that pooled epidemiological studies reported that a 10μg/m3 increase in long-term exposure to PM2.5 was associated with an 11 percent increase in cardiovascular mortality.37
Carbon monoxide: High concentrations of carbon monoxide reduce the blood's ability to transport oxygen. People with some types of heart disease, who have reduced ability for getting oxygenated blood to their hearts, are especially vulnerable to the effects of carbon monoxide when exercising or under increased stress, which may result in reduced oxygen to the heart accompanied by chest pain, also known as angina.38 Similar effects are likely from methane.39
Lead: Chronic exposure to lead is associated with cardiovascular effects in adults.40 A review published in 2007 concluded that evidence was sufficient to infer a causal relationship of lead exposure with hypertension, and evidence at the time was suggestive but not sufficient to infer a causal relationship of lead exposure with clinical cardiovascular outcomes.41
Ground-level ozone: The World Health Organization states that in several European studies, daily heart disease mortality rises by 0.4 percent per 10 µg/m3 increase in ground-level ozone exposure.42
Respiratory Disease and Asthma
Air pollution: Both chronic and acute respiratory diseases are associated with air pollution. Strong evidence shows that pollution acts as an asthma irritant, causing asthma episodes, which are sometimes called asthma attacks.4344 Meta-analyses in a 2017 report showed statistically significant associations between prenatal exposures to nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and PM10 and the risk of wheezing and asthma development in childhood.45
Nitrogen dioxide: Brief exposure to nitrogen dioxide can cause inflammation of the airways. Symptoms of bronchitis in asthmatic children increase in association with long-term exposure. Current levels of nitrogen dioxide in major cities in Europe and North America can reduce lung function.46
Ozone exposure can reduce lung function and cause respiratory symptoms. Ozone is a major factor in asthma morbidity and mortality, while nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide contribute to asthma, bronchial symptoms, lung inflammation and reduced lung function.48
A 2017 review concluded that evidence from both animal and human epidemiological studies provide support that air pollutants cause defects during gametogenesis leading to a drop in reproductive capacities in exposed populations.49 A meta-analysis in 2015 found a significantly increased risk of preterm birth per 10 μg/m3 increase in PM10 and PM2.5 exposure throughout pregnancy.50 A 2017 review and meta-analysis found that maternal exposure to fine particulate air pollution (PM2.5) increases the risk of preterm birth and term low birth weight,51 while a 2016 analysis concluded that more than 3.3 percent of preterm births in 2010 in the US were attributable to PM2.5 exposure, with costs estimated at $5.09 billion.52
In 2016, the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified both air pollution and particulate matter in polluted air as Class 1 human carcinogens, concluding that there is sufficient evidence that air pollution and particulate matter each cause lung cancer, and that outdoor air pollution is associated with cancer of the urinary bladder.53
Learning and Developmental Disabilities
Air pollution and particulate matter: Human studies from India, Boston, Cincinnati, New York City, China, Barcelona and Japan indicate that particulate exposure, primarily from vehicle exhaust, is associated with executive function deficits in preschoolers and school-aged children.54 A 2016 review found that air pollution may be associated with the incidence of autism spectrum disorders,55 consistent with a 2015 analysis that found that higher maternal exposures to PM2.5, especially during the third trimester of pregnancy, was associated with greater odds of a child having autism spectrum disorder.56
PAHs: A 2006 study of nonsmoking African-American and Dominican mothers and children in New York City concluded that high prenatal exposure to PAHs was associated with lower mental development index at age three and higher risk of cognitive developmental delay.58
A 2012 study found that children and young adults with a genetic predisposition to developing Alzheimer’s disease (APOE allele ∊4) who were exposed to significant air pollution developed a greater number of protein markers known to increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease (tau proteins and Aβ plaques). This finding suggests that genetic factors could make a significant number of children exposed to air pollution more prone to developing Alzheimer’s disease later in life.59 A review published in 2015 found associations of air pollution with global cognitive function, verbal and nonverbal learning and memory, and activities of daily living.60 A 2017 review further revealed that both children and older adults exposed to air pollution exhibited signs of cognitive dysfunction, and that air pollution was associated with exacerbations of neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases.61
Some evidence ties air pollution to a in increased risk of a variety of mental health conditions. A 2017 review found an association between air pollution, especially particulates, and suicidality.62 A separate 2017 review concluded that constituents of air pollution such as particulate matter and nitrogen and sulfur oxides could be component causes for schizophrenia.63 A review published in 2015 found associations of air pollution with depressive symptoms and elevated anxiety.64
Risks to Children
Prenatal Exposures and Child Health
Environmental pollution is believed to cause inflammation and oxidative stress in a mother’s body that subsequently alters the placenta, impairs the transport of oxygen and nutrients to the developing child and may disrupt epigenetic mechanisms important for development. These effects may cause changes in the child's birth weight, immune system and lung function. Exposure to air pollution may cause the development of asthma in the child, and impaired lung development contributes to infant mortality.65
image from lunar caustic at Creative Commons
Children are especially vulnerable to air pollution for several reasons:66
- Children have a higher breathing rate than adults relative to their body size.
- Children in some cultures and societies spend more time outdoors than adults.
- The body’s natural barriers, such as the epithelium and the blood-brain barrier, are not fully developed, and thus can not prevent the passage of airborne pollutants into the body and brain as effectively as adult bodies can.
Air pollution, and specifically particulate matter, can increase immune activity and cell neuroinflammation. This inflammation then leads to cell damage and loss in the developing brain in areas such as the prefrontal cortex, olfactory bulb and hippocampus, all areas critical to cognitive function.67
Because lung development starts within the first two months of gestation and extends possibly into adulthood, the effects of air pollution on developing lungs can proceed over much of a child's life. Developing lungs don’t have full capacity for self-repair, and so the effects of exposure to pollution can be lifelong. Prenatal exposure to air pollution is associated with reduced lung function and reduced respiratory health in infancy. Exposure also increases the risk for prematurity and low birth weight, both of which are risk factors for impaired respiratory health later in life. Increased exposure to outdoor air pollution soon after birth is associated with smaller lungs and respiratory impairment. In a study of 3.5 million births across 96 countries, the highest levels of air pollution were associated with a higher risk for infant death from respiratory complications.68
Several studies provide good evidence for an association between air pollution exposure during pregnancy and infant mortality.69
Indoor Air Quality
In addition to the particulates, lead, carbon monoxide, VOCs and PAHs discussed above, indoor air can also contain these pollutants, often in higher concentrations—and sometimes substantially higher concentrations—than outdoor air:
- Flame retardants
Indoor air contaminants typically come from these sources:
- Indoor wood or gas heating
- Tobacco use
- Candles or incense
- Aerosols and cleaning products
- Building materials
- Paints and finishes
- Air fresheners
The World Health Organization estimates that 4.3 million premature deaths were attributable to household air pollution in 2012. Almost all of that burden was in low- and middle-income countries, with indoor smoke the primary contributor.70
Indoor air quality and health impacts are discussed in greater detail on our Built Environment webpage.
Prevention and Regulation
Some prevention of exposures is under individual control—such as addressing sources of carbon monoxide or radon exposure in buildings—but individual action cannot address pollution in whole neighborhoods, regions and countries. Local, state and federal government oversight is needed to promote clean air and protect residents from widespread air contamination. This oversight generally comes through setting air quality standards enforced through regulation of polluters and of the production or use of polluting materials.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has established air quality guidelines (AQGs) designed to support and guide countries in developing their own national air quality standards. In addition to the ultimate guideline values, interim targets are given for each pollutant. Very few countries' standards currently meet all the WHO AQGs; Australia is an exception, with all criteria pollutant standards meeting or exceeding WHO's AQGs.71 This does not mean that Australia's air always meets these standards, but that the target levels of air pollutants complies with the WHO AQGs.
image from Hamed Saber at Creative Commons
WHO has concluded that policies and investments supporting these goals would reduce key sources of urban ambient air pollution:
- Cleaner transportation
- Energy-efficient housing
- Cleaner power generation and industry
- Better municipal waste management
In addition, reducing emissions from these sources would reduce key rural and peri-urban air pollution sources in developing regions:
image from Gerry at Creative Commons
- Household coal burning and biomass energy systems
- Agricultural waste incineration
- Forest fires
- Agro-forestry activities such as charcoal production
WHO estimates that reducing the concentration of PM10 from 70 micrograms per cubic meter to 20 micrograms per cubic meter would reduce air pollution-related death by about 15 percent.72
Key US federal laws and regulations regarding air quality:73
1970 Clean Air Act (CAA), amended in 1990, with these requirements:
- Major stationary sources of pollutants must install pollution-control equipment and meet specific emissions limitations.
- Major stationary sources must obtain operating permits.
- The EPA must set National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for the six criteria air pollutants.
- EPA administers programs that protect the stratospheric ozone layer.
- EPA regulates emissions of toxic air pollutants from a published list of industrial sources referred to as "source categories." Toxic air pollutants include mercury, PCBs, benzene and volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
Cross-State Air Pollution Rule requires certain states in the eastern US to improve air quality by reducing power plant emissions that cross state lines and contribute to smog and soot pollution in downwind states.
2015 Clean Power Plan, which in 2017 is under Executive Order for review, and thus its implementation and enforcement are uncertain.
Canada established national ambient air quality objectives (NAAQOs) from1989 to 1996. In 2013, updated air quality standards were established by the federal government, bringing standards for PM2.5 and ozone into compliance (or very close) with the WHO AQGs.74
In 1998, the National Environment Protection Council (NEPC) created Australia's first national ambient air quality standards as part of the National Environment Protection Measure for Ambient Air Quality (the 'Air NEPM'). This measure set standards for the six criteria pollutants. In 2004, NEPC made the National Environment Protection (Air Toxics) Measure (known as the 'Air Toxics NEPM'), establishing "monitoring investigation levels" for five air toxics: benzene, formaldehyde, benzo(a)pyrene as a marker for PAHs, toluene and xylenes. Australia does not have national air quality emissions standards, as these are set by environment protection authorities in individual states and territories.76
Most Asian countries have adopted National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for the criteria pollutants except for PM2.5. However, a 2010 assessment reported that standards of most countries lag behind WHO air quality guidelines.77
Several countries in Latin America have established air quality standards, although many lag far behind the WHO air quality guidelines. Five countries have no established guidelines, and no information was available from two countries in a 2012 report from the Clean Air Institute.78
The scarcity of data and information on air quality in Africa prevents an informed analysis. Although the majority of countries have established national air quality standards, only a quarter of countries have advanced fuels and vehicles standards.79
Benefits from Regulation
As a result of EPA's regulatory efforts to remove lead from motor vehicle gasoline, levels of lead in the air decreased by 89 percent between 1980 and 2010.81 Other reductions in air pollutants, providing substantial improvements for the health of residents, shown in the graph at right:82
- 77 percent of 8-hour carbon monoxide
- 99 percent of 3-month average of lead
- 54 percent of annual nitrogen dioxide
- 47 percent of 1-hour nitrogen dioxide
- 22 percent of 8-hour ozone
- 39 percent of 24-hour PM10
- 37 percent of annual PM2.5
- 37 percent of 24-hour PM2.5
- 81 percent of 1-hour sulfur dioxide
From 2000 to 2015, the number of days in which the combined ozone and PM2.5 Air Quality Index (AQI) reached unhealthy levels for sensitive populations has trended downward (graph at right).85
The 2011 version of the EPA's analysis of the benefits and costs of the Clean Air Act concluded that in in 2010, the Clean Air Act Amendments prevented 160,000 premature deaths, with health benefits worth $1.247 trillion ($1,247,000,000,000). EPA's central benefits estimate of the CAA exceeds its costs by a factor of more than 30 to one, as shown in the graph at right.86
EPA projected that in 2020 the benefit will increase to preventing more than 230,000 premature deaths. About 85 percent of the economic benefits are from reductions in premature mortality associated with reductions in ambient particulate matter.87
Although US national air quality has improved significantly since the passage of the 1970 Clean Air Act and the 1990 Amendments, some communities are still exposed to unsafe levels of air pollution.88 For example, in 2015, 127 million US residents lived in counties where ground-level ozone exceeded the national standards.89
See more about air quality in the list of CHE publications and Dig Deeper resources in the right sidebar.
This page's content was created by Lorelei Walker, PhD, and Nancy Hepp and last revised in October 2017.
CHE invites our partners to submit corrections and clarifications to this page. Please include links to research to support your submissions through the comment form on our Contact page.
* header image from V.T.Polywoda at Creative Commons


Essays on Pollution Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into an environment which causes harmful effects on life in that natural surrounding environment. Not surprisingly, it is one of the greatest threats to public health and the preservation of wildlife worldwide.
Pollution can be classified into two sections, visible air pollution and invisible air pollution. Here are the causes and effects on pollution. Burning of fossil fuels like coal, petroleum and other factory combustibles is one major cause of air pollution, also vehicles like cars, trains and airplanes cause a big amount of air pollution.
All types of pollution such as air pollution, noise pollution, water pollution, light pollution, soil pollution, thermal pollution, radioactive pollution and others come under the broader category of environmental pollution. How this pollution affects us and how it is caused has been a matter of study for years.Essays on Air Pollution In Egypt Causes And Effects Essay What Is Cause And Effect? Process describes how something happens; cause and effect analyzes why something happens. Cause-and-effect essays examine causes, describe effects, or do both. In.Causes of Pollution Pollution is being caused by effluents from factories. These include contaminated water, dust, soot, chemicals, poisonous gases released into the atmosphere by burning of carbon and sulphur. Lead, aluminium, zinc, acids, bases, etc. also cause pollution.
During the recent years, air pollution has been the main cause of health problems in this society. Air pollution has caused so many health related sickness to the life we live in now. Air pollution has brought in high increases of poisonous gases that impact the weather by global warming, and the air we breathe.
Noise Pollution: Cause and Effect Sound is a beautiful thing. From the whimper of a new born baby to the waves rolling in from the ocean, sound is everywhere and enjoyed in some form by everyone, but at what point does sound become noise? What is noise? Webster defines noise as “a sound, especially one that is loud or unpleasant or that causes disturbance”. Is sounding unpleasant the only.
Industrial smoke: In mills and factories, large amount of carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, organic compounds, and chemicals is emitted that causes air pollution. It is true that mills and factories can be found at every corner of the world that cause a huge amount of harmful gases that are the major causes of air pollution. 4.
Pollution Essay 300 Words. Addition of harmful substances to nature is called pollution. Pollution is of different types. The smoke coming out from the chimneys of industries and the silencers of vehicles cause air pollution.
In Search Of A Top-Quality Cause And Effect Essay About Pollution. The problem of pollution is something that people all over the world are concerned about. However, not everybody understands the serious effects of increasing pollution. You can research this topic by composing a cause and effect essay. This type of academic papers has a structure that differs from the standard five-paragraph.
Some of the long term affects caused by exposure to smog pollution are problems breathing, coughing, wheezing, pneumonia, bronchitis, inflammation of the pulmonary’s, lung cancer, heart problems, asthma like symptoms, pre mature aging of lungs, and last, but not least, death (Oblack).
Causes and Effects of Air Pollution-Essay. When air gets polluted with dust, smoke, motor vehicles, mills and factories etc. Is called air pollution. We know that air is an important element of our environment. But it is a matter of great regret that it is being polluted day by day in different reasons. Write An Essay On Air Pollution Write An Essay On Air Pollution. Causes of Air pollution.
Ill-effects of Air Pollution. Air pollution causes depletion of the protective ozone layer. It also has dire health effects on the individuals living on earth; it may cause respiratory problems, asthma, lungs and heart diseases, etc. Air pollution also affects the cardiovascular system, but the effects depend on the individual’s exposure to the pollutants. How to prevent Air Pollution. Since.
Effects of environmental pollution: The effect of environmental pollution depends widely on the type of pollution that is causing it. The effect of air pollution: Ozone layer depletion and harm to human health. The effect of water pollution: Acidification and end of aquatic life. The effect of soil pollution: Hinders growth of plants.
A cause and effect essay is a type of writing that describes the causes or effects (or both) that happen as a result of a certain event. It is about the analysis of connections between conditions, events, or actions in order to better understand it. The approach that will be used during the writing will depend on what perspective the author will concentrate: causes, effects, or both. There are.
The causes and effect of air pollution in our environment cannot be abolish if only the people abuse and neglect the significance of environment and the community. So, I therefore conclude that the cause and effect of air pollution to our environment can avoided if we make proper used in the environment in the importance and cleanliness of this and needed of human life.


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It is really cold.
Not just a little cold. It is inches of snow, wind cutting through the coat, fingers numb on the bike cold. And it just drags on, sub-zero day after slippery day. Dutch snow on Sunday, Sheffield snow today: More snow everywhere by Easter.
It seems like more than just a cold snap, a ‘northwester, or series of fronts. And there is an answer.
This is the Arctic Oscillation (AO), a measure of air pressure over the Arctic. When it is negative, the low pressure trough centered over the north pole is weaker than normal. This, in turn, leads to weaker westerly winds across the North Atlantic from Canada towards Europe and allows cold Arctic air to slide farther south than usual. Cold.
Allied with this is the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), a complementary pair of balanced pressure centers over Iceland and the Azores. Negative value indicate a weakening of the center over Iceland and slackening of the jet stream, letting cold air slide undisturbed even further south. It also drives precipitation patterns and storms. Snow.
These are big, climatic air masses which determine the air circulation that drives the daily weather. At he moment, the graph and projections indicate that the cold weather will continue well into April.
There are lots of places to read more, but this presentation is a pretty good start.


A year ago I said that this solar cycle (Solar Cycle 24) would be the weakest in 100 years. It seems even I under predicted out big of a drop it would be. Now it now appears to be one of the weakest solar cycle in almost 200 years. So far NASA has not yet revised the predicted # of sunspots. But look at that graph right now it’s clearly FAR below expectations (red line is “current expectations” which has been revised lower several times), NASA is currently predicting a solar cycle at about 70% as active as our last solar cycle, but even that was not low enough.
Every major period of solar minimums has coincided with a “lower then average” global temperature. Including the Maunder Minimum and Spörer Minimum, and the Dalton Minimum. During the Dalton Minimum there was a drop in temperature of about 1°C. One extreme example of this was “The year Without a Summer” in 1816 (also caused in part by volcanic Mount Tambora eruption) was in the middle of the Dalton minimum, in which New York’s upper bay froze from Brooklyn to governors island, the total dead from starvation and other related issues was over 200,000 in just Europe alone.
This is very important because I believe one large missing piece of global climate predictions is the influence of the sun. As most scientists know the direct solar visible radiation doesn’t change all that much (a little bit, but not a lot), as such that cannot cause very large climate changes. But there are other effects that the sun’s activity causes, the important one is the solar wind. This solar wind is highly charged and acts as a kind of shield which prevents galactic cosmic rays from getting to earth. These galactic cosmic rays create charged particles in the air which lead to cloud formation increasing the Earth’s albedo. When cosmic rays increase because the solar activity goes down, more clouds form and more light is reflected decreasing the temperature.
Now this all might be just a temporary effect, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Even NASA doesn’t think so, they say the next Solar Cycle 25 is “off the bottom of the charts”. They are predicting a massive drop in solar activity based on 3 separate independent tests of different future predictors of solar activity that all show a massive drop in Solar Cycle 25 even lower then our current Solar Cycle 24.


If you were hoping for warmer weather this summer, you’re probably in luck.
Environment Canada’s latest update includes above-average temperatures for the remainder of the season, as well as early fall as well.
But if you’re wondering exactly how hot it will be — or what the rest of the year will look like — that prediction is less clear.
Environment Canada meteorologist Bobby Sekhon says the signal for the next few weeks shows “above average” temperatures for Metro Vancouver, which includes the first month of dip (September).
However, an above-average temperature signal does not specify the nuances of a seasonal forecast. Although it shows a warmer-than-usual overall trend, it does not include significant weather events, such as heat warnings.
“And that signal tends to weaken as we go into October,” Sekhon said. Vancouver is awesome in a telephone interview. “[But] next month or month and a half includes the likelihood of above average temperatures.”
Starting next week, another ridge of high pressure could bring warm temperatures back to the region, although the meteorologist notes that it’s not possible to say how temperatures will be “well above the mean”. In other words, Environment Canada will only issue a heat warning closer to the date when the signal is clearer.
Does La Nińa impact Metro Vancouver weather forecasts in the summer and early fall?
La Niña, Spanish for “girl,” refers to the “appearance of cooler-than-normal water” in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, according to the Canadian government; it is the opposite of an El Niño weather event.
While the weather phenomenon has been occurring for centuries, the WHO points out that “all natural climatic events now occur in the context of human-induced climate change, which is increasing global temperatures, exacerbating extreme weather and climate , and impacts seasonal precipitation and temperature patterns.”
But the weather phenomena are currently not having much of an impact on the weather in Metro Vancouver.
“The Nińa doesn’t have too much of a factor until later in the fall or early winter,” says Sekhon. “So I don’t think we can necessarily bring it into La Nińa at this point.
“What we are seeing are warmer sea surface temperatures off the coast of British Columbia. With that influence of warmer water, it could sometimes mean that we have warmer weather here as well. since we have such a coastal influence from the ocean.
Sekhon notes, however, that signals predict another La Nińa winter in British Columbia this year. That said, he warns that the forecast could change ahead of the winter season as there are still several months to go.
If the La Nińa forecast is correct, Metro Vancouver will generally have below average temperatures for the season. Find out why the Nińa forecast is called a “triple dip” and if it will cause serious local impacts.


Weather affects every sector of the economy, so there's a lot to be gained from getting the forecasts right
Craft, Erik. "An Economic History of Weather Forecasting." In Economic History Association EH.net Encyclopedia, February 2010.
Lazo, Jeffrey, Megan Lawson, Peter Larsen, and Donald Waldman. "U.S. Economic Sensitivity to Weather Variability." Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, June 2011, vol. 92, no. 6, pp. 709-720.
Order single copies of or subscribe to Econ Focus (formerly Region Focus) and other publications from the Federal Reserve System.


They swirl. They dance. They ripple. They pulsate. Sometimes they look like curtains, other times like long, ghostly trails in the sky. Mostly they're green, but on rare occassions they can be tinged in red or purple. No wonder people in ancient times thought the northern lights were myth or magic.
So what causes this amazing natural phenomenon?
The northern lights (aurora borealis) occur when solar flares release charged particles into space that collide with atoms in the earth’s atmosphere near the magnetic poles. The results of these collisions are glowing emissions that are visible only on clear winter nights at high northern latitudes, especially around the Arctic Circle, making the Nordic region a prime viewing area.
Depending on factors like the type of atoms involved and the pull of earth’s magnetic forces, the lights can take on various shapes and colours — the more intense the solar activity, the brighter the lights will be. Each short-lived display is one of a kind with ripples, flashes or steady glows of green (most common), violet or reddish hues.
Even with the rational scientific explanation for what’s going on, the northern lights never cease to amaze us — no matter how many times we've seen them.
Pro tip: The best months for viewing the northern lights are October through late March, and peak visibility is usually December through February. Oh, and remember that since these lights are naturally occurring, they don't always appear during your tour.


The National Weather Service has issued a tornado watch until 11 p.m. Sunday for Charleston, Berkeley and Dorchester counties following a deadly storm system that moved through Alabama earlier.
Earlier Sunday, the service tweeted that there was a possible tornado moving through Columbia. The service later told The Post and Courier they don’t have confirmation of tornado touchdown. They sent out tweets because they saw rotational activity on radar.
At least 14 people were killed by a possible tornado in Alabama on Sunday as severe storms destroyed mobile homes, snapped trees and left a trail of destruction amid weather warnings extending into Georgia, Florida and South Carolina, authorities said.
Lee County Sheriff Jay Jones told WRBL-TV on Sunday that damage in his community followed a path several miles long and appeared up to a fourth of a mile wide.
Jones said: “I can say that at this time we have 14 confirmed fatalities. And again, the search continues. We still have some people that are reported missing.”
He adds that several people have been taken to hospitals, “some of them with very serious injuries.”
“We’ve got about 150 first responders out there,” Rita Smith, spokeswoman for the Lee County Emergency Management Agency, told the Associated Press earlier Sunday. “They are doing a phenomenal job. Sadly, we know that we have two known confirmed fatalities and many, many injuries.”
Multiple homes were destroyed or damaged in Beauregard, about 60 miles (95 kilometers) east of Montgomery, Smith said.
Radar and video evidence showed what looked like a large tornado crossing the area near Beauregard shortly after 2 p.m. Sunday, said meteorologist Meredith Wyatt with the Birmingham, Alabama, office of the National Weather Service.
Numerous tornado warnings were posted across parts of Alabama, Georgia, Florida and South Carolina on Sunday afternoon as the powerful storm system raced across the region.
Buy Now A tornado watch has been issued Sunday for parts of Georgia and South Carolina until 11 p.m., according to the National Weather Service.
In rural Talbotton, Georgia, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) south of Atlanta, a handful of people were injured by either powerful straight-line winds or a tornado that destroyed several mobile homes and damaged other buildings, said Leigh Ann Erenheim, director of the Talbot County Emergency Management Agency.
Televised broadcast news footage showed smashed buildings with rooftops blown away, cars overturned and debris everywhere. Trees all around had been snapped bare of branches.
“The last check I had was between six and eight injuries,” Ereheim said in a phone interview. “From what I understand it was minor injuries, though one fellow did say his leg might be broken.”
She said searches of damaged homes and structures had turned up no serious injuries or deaths.
Henry Wilson of the Peach County Emergency Management Agency near Macon in central Georgia said a barn had been destroyed and trees and power poles had been snapped, leaving many in the area without power.
Authorities said a tornado was confirmed by radar in the Florida Panhandle late Sunday afternoon.
A portion of Interstate 10 on the Florida Panhandle was blocked in one direction in Walton County in the aftermath, said Don Harrigan, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Tallahassee.
“There’s a squall line moving through the area,” Harrigan told AP. “And when you have a mature line of storms moving into an area where low level winds are very strong, you tend to have tornadoes developing. It’s a favorable environment for tornados.”
The threat of severe weather was expected to continue until late Sunday. A tornado watch was also in effect for much of eastern Georgia, including Athens, Augusta and Savannah.
Associated Press writers Kim Chandler in Montgomery, Alabama, Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia, Bill Cormier in Atlanta, and Ryan Kryska in New York contributed to this report.


Clean Air Month 2023
Supported by the American Lung Association, Clean Air Month educates people about the impact clean air can have on their lives.
This observance also encourages people to take positive steps to help improve air quality.
What exactly is clean air?
Clean air, is air which has a natural balance of gases such as oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide. Clean air does not contain pollutants or allergens.
Clean air does not harm the environment, nor is it a cause or trigger of health problems.
Consequences of poor quality air
Poor quality air can harm the environment and can affect us all.
Toxic air pollution is linked to serious conditions such as cancer and chronic bronchitis. Air pollution can exacerbate pre-existing conditions such as asthma.
Air pollution can also harm the environment. The burning of fossil fuels (often for transport or electricity generation) releases high levels of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide into the atmosphere. These gases react with other gases and water to create rain which is acidic.
Acid rain raises the acid levels of water and disrupts the natural balance of life in lakes and rivers; acid rain can also damage plants and trees.
Pollutants Which Can Affect Clean Air & The Environment Include:
- Acid Rain
- Toxic Air Pollution
- Sulfur Dioxide
- Particulate Soot
- Carbon Monoxide
Clean Air Month: Taking Positive Steps
The Clean Air Act came into force in 1970. This Act has been successful in reducing air quality related health conditions and premature death.
Clean Air Month is a time for many states to celebrate the impact the Clean Air Act has had on the way people think about the environment and on the overall health of its people. For example, in Wisconsin during 1986, the Clean Air Act influenced legislation which was passed to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions from state power stations; by 1990 sulfur dioxide emissions had fallen by 46 percent.
Clean Air Month is recognized in many states across America. Events are held throughout the month of May to promote awareness. These have included 'Bike To Work Days' and 'Share A Car Days'. Some states offer Air Management Programs and timely reporting on state and federal air quality issues.
We can all make positive steps to improve the quality of our air. Ways we can improve air quality are often based around reducing our use of electricity and using transport more efficiently. We can also support legislation which improves air quality.


By NS Desk | Health News | Posted on : 13-Feb-2021
New Delhi, Feb 13 (IANS) : The air quality of the national capital mounted to 'very poor' category, with the hourly average air quality index at 332 micrograms per cubic meter on Saturday due to low wind speed.
According to Ministry of Earth Sciences's System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting And Research, "Surface winds are low. The ventilation is likely to stay in the same range and no significant change in AQI is expected for the next couple of days."
AQI , likely to marginally improve to lower end of very poor to poor category, is forecasted for February 15 and 16, the forecast further stated. AQI within the limit of 0-5 is regarded as good, 51-100 satisfactory, 101-200 moderate, 201-300 very poor and 401-500 is considered severe.
System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting And Research (SAFAR) officials have advised sensitive groups to avoid physical outdoor activities. Other people have been advised to avoid prolonged exertion and keep windows closed.
"Stop any activity level if you experience any unusual coughing, chest discomfort, wheezing, breathing difficulty, or fatigue. Keep the room clean - do not vacuum. Masks known as N-95 or P-100 respirators may only help if you go out," stated SAFAR.
Delhi's neighbouring regions - Faridabad, Noida, Greater Noida, and Gurugram also logged very poor quality of air. The air quality of Ghaziabad is, however, the worst at 401 micrograms per cubic meter.
Earlier today, a thick layer of fog engulfing parts of the city and affecting the visibility. Delhi Airport in a statement said that due to fog, low visibility procedures were in progress, however, all flight operations are normal.
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From sweaty hot to shivering cold - in just three days
Ever stepped out of a steam bath and walked into a freezer?
That's what we're about to do over the next three days, here in South Florida.
Temperatures are forecast to climb into the 90s this afternoon and plummet into the upper 40s (particularly in Palm Beach County) and low 50s by Wednesday morning.
Far inland areas, near the Everglades, might see the mercury nose dive into the low to mid 40s on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, the National Weather Service in Miami now says.
"Pretty unusual for this time of year," meteorologist Kim Brabander of the National Weather Service in Miami observed.
Potentially, heat records could be broken today and cold records fall on Wednesday.
The high temperature records for April 6, today's date: 89 degrees for West Palm Beach, set in 1969, and 91 for Miami and Fort Lauderdale, both set in 1982.
The cold temperature record for April 8, Wednesday’s date: 45 degrees for West Palm Beach, 42 for Fort Lauderdale and 46 in Miami, all set in 1971.
Even if no records are broken, it's certainly an interesting start to the month.


By Giorgio Panetta
CBS2 Chief Meteorologist/Weather Producer
Hope you’re off to a good day. It’s not a terribly cold start, but we still have one too many 30-degree readings on the board for my liking.
There will likely be some snow and rain showers making their way into town this afternoon. I wouldn’t expect any accumulation. Even the rainfall amounts are light expect south and west of NYC, where we could see some bigger downpours.
We have a nice and quiet Wednesday in store around 50 degrees. Thursday is the pick of the week with temps near 60 and sunshine! A few showers are possible late, but Friday is a good bet for more widespread showers.
Check back in soon for the latest.


Air pollution in Central Asia is a peace and security issue because it negatively impacts the health and well-being of the people in the region, the environment, and the economy. The problem is particularly severe in cities and industrial areas, where high levels of pollutants can significantly impact the population’s health. The region must prioritize regional cooperation to respond more effectively and sustainably to these challenges. While individual countries can take steps to address air pollution and its contribution to climate change, Central Asian countries must prioritize regional cooperation to achieve a more effective and sustainable response to these challenges. With joint efforts, the states in the region could leave the top positions in the anti-air quality ranking.
Central Asia’s Hazardous Air. How to Solve the Air Pollution Problem?
Created 05/24/2023 Type: Blog, Briefing Paper, Case Studies, Report, Strategy Region: Asia Location: Kyrgyzstan Language: English Theme: Climate Change & Conflict