[LINK] Depiction of wind at various altitudes, other weather pages

[Kim Holburn]

That wind earth site is awesome Robin.  I can see two cyclones in the Indian Ocean.  Apparently the one closer to Australia is Cyclone Bruce.  

On 2013/Dec/19, at 12:42 PM, Robin Whittle wrote:

> Here is a new addition to my collection of weather URLs:
> 
>  http://earth.nullschool.net/
> 
> I read about it at http://www.universetoday.com.  It is a
> javascript-driven, apparently very fluid, display of wind direction
> anywhere on Earth, with data updated from various models every 3 hours.
> There is also the ability to look back in time and to look forwards by
> up to 24 hours.
> 
> The "earth" thingo at the bottom opens up a menu from which various
> settings can be selected, with the "about" link providing an
> explanation.  Settings can be stored in a URL:
> 
> 
> http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/1000hPa/orthographic=-225.44,-36.35,416
> 
> It is evident that the jetstream at about 10km (250hPa) is very
> different from winds at the surface.  I don't understand how the
> jetstream makes sense in terms of what I understand about Hadley cells:
> 
>  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadley_cell
> 
> On a day like today in Melbourne, at the western edge of a high pressure
> system, I understand a significant amount of the heat we feel (predicted
> maximum 40C) is due to hotter than normal, very dry, air piling up in
> the troposphere after being transported there from the tropics.  This is
> in addition to air arriving from the inland north.  This somehow
> displaces air on the ground with dryer, hotter, air.  If that's the
> case, I am not sure how it works with the jetstream winds doing
> something apparently unrelated (to my eyes) with the anticlockwise winds
> at ground level which result from the high pressure system.
> 
> My other weather links are:
> 
>  http://www.bom.gov.au/australia/charts/synoptic_bw.shtml
>  http://www.bom.gov.au/vic/forecasts/melbourne.shtml
>  http://www.bom.gov.au/vic/observations/melbourne.shtml
> 
> http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDR023.loop.shtml?looping=1&reloaded=0&topography=true&locations=true&range=true#skip
>  http://www.bom.gov.au/australia/satellite/
>  http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/watl/weather/obs.jsp?graph=all_obs&station=86068
> 
> The last one is for the nearby Viewbank weather station.  This shows the
> last few days of temperature and other measurements, including the dew
> point.  The dew point is a measure of the moisture content of the air.
> When this drops suddenly, as it did a few hours ago, I understand (from
> an explanation by a meteorologist) this is the dry Hadley cycle air
> descending to ground level and somehow (I have no idea how) displacing
> the more moist air which was previously at ground level.
> 
> A final link, which is only for the Melbourne area is:
> 
>  http://www.baywx.com.au/melbtemp.html
> 
> This page, one of several, shows the predicted minimum and maximum
> temperatures with the observations filled in as the day progresses.
> There's an archive of the graphs, which enabled me to generate
> temperature graphs of the heatwave associated with the 2009 bushfires:
> 
>  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Saturday_bushfires
> 
>  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Melbourne-temp-2009-02-10.png
> 
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Melbourne-temp-2009-02-10-compact.png
> 
> 
> I understand those dramatic peaks in temperature are driven largely by
> Hadley cells.
> 
> - Robin
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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Kim Holburn
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