Thursday, April 13, 2006

Denver Water restriction for 2006 Denver Water approved their watering restriction yesterday, according to the Rocky Mountain News. Customers cannot water between 10:00AM and 6:00PM but after the rules are pretty open. The 3 day watering rule, of course, is not enforceable. From the article, "Denver, like other communities, is benefiting from a year in which deep mountain snows have been plentiful and the spring snowmelt is likely to fill its system. Snowpack accounts for roughly 85 percent of Colorado's annual drinking water supplies. Denver's water storage system is about 82 percent full, even before runoff hits its peak later this spring. Lake Dillon, the agency's largest storage pond, is so full already that Denver is considering letting some of its waters spill into the Blue River to help manage any potential flood flows that may come later." Here's the coverage from the Denver Post. They write, "Any three days of watering, of customers' choosing, each week; No watering between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m; No broken or leaking sprinklers left unrepaired for 10 days; No water should puddle or flow into ditches or drains, or that spills onto streets, sidewalks, driveways or other impervious surfaces; No watering during rain or high wind." Category: Colorado Water 8:19:02 AM     COSMIC Project to launch Here's a story form Space.com about the new satellite constellation to be used to help with climate research and weather prediction. From the article, "A novel constellation of satellites will be lofted into Earth orbit this week, the first to provide atmospheric data daily in real time over thousands of points on Earth for both research and operational weather forecasting. How they will accomplish the task is innovative too: by measuring the bending of radio signals from the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS) as the signals punch through Earth's atmosphere. The technique can be used to track hurricanes, climate change, as well as monitor space weather conditions. This unique probing of Earth's atmosphere is the product of an agreement between the American Institute in Taiwan and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States. The $100 million satellite network is tagged the Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere and Climate - or COSMIC for short - in the United States and FORMOSAT-3 in Taiwan... "Once in Earth orbit the COSMIC microsatellites will track radio signals from the GPS satellites as they cut through Earth's atmosphere. GPS signals undergo changes in frequency and amplitude when they encounter water vapor or other physical components of the atmosphere. Those changes can be measured using a process called radio occultation. That is, molecules in the air bend GPS radio signals as they pass through (are occulted by) the atmosphere. By measuring the amount of the bending, research scientists can determine underlying atmospheric conditions, such as air density, temperature, and moisture, and electron density. COSMIC satellites will take approximately 2,500 measurements every 24 hours in a nearly uniform distribution around the globe. Because the satellites' radio signals pierce thick cloud cover and precipitation, weather conditions will not interfere with data gathering... "The altered signals are to be turned into valuable views of humidity and temperature throughout the lower atmosphere. Information about the electrical structure of the upper atmosphere, Earth's gravitational field, and other data will also be extracted. Researchers and forecasters around the world will have access to the data via the Internet. Temperature and water vapor profiles derived from the GPS data should prove helpful to meteorologists that observe, research, and forecast hurricanes, typhoons, and other storm patterns over the oceans, as well as improve many areas of weather prediction. The stability, consistency, and accuracy of the measurements should be a boon to scientists quantifying long-term climate change trends, according to COSMIC experts at UCAR. Additionally, COSMIC measurements of electron density in the ionosphere are expected to enhance analysis and forecasting of space weather, including geomagnetic storms that can disrupt sensitive satellite and communications systems and even impact power grids on the ground. The COSMIC system is a gap-filler of sorts. It will yield data over vast stretches of the oceans where there are no weather balloon observations. And the data's high vertical resolution will complement the high horizontal resolution measurements of several now-on-duty weather satellites." Category: Cosmic Water 8:01:04 AM

© Copyright 2006 John Orr. Last update: 12/29/06; 11:27:50 AM.