Moore, OK Tornado: Lightning in the Storm

A massive F5 tornado ripped through Moore, Oklahoma, yesterday, leveling entire neighborhoods and left a path of destruction in its wake.

Tornadoes are both fascinating and fearsome. While we know much about tornadoes from decades of research by top scientists, much remains to be learned about how tornadoes form and intensify. One possible clue could be lightning.

Our Total Lightning Network – the largest in the world for detecting both cloud-to-ground strikes and the lightning that stays in the clouds – lets us “see” into severe weather, including the Moore tornado, as never before. While we typically see severe thunderstorms produce about 25 -75 lightning flashes per minute, this monster storm produced over 140 flashes per minute.

You can see a timelapse video of the lightning captured by our Total Lightning Network during the Moore tornado:

Carbon Dioxide Level Climbs to New Milestone

On May 9, the daily mean concentration of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere of Mauna Loa, Hawaii, surpassed 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time since measurements began in 1958. Mauna Loa is the oldest continuous carbon dioxide measurement site in the world and serves as the primary global benchmark site.

Back in 1958, Charles David (Dave) Keeling, a world-leading authority on atmospheric greenhouse gas accumulation and Scripps climate science pioneer of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography  began measuring carbon dioxide at the observatory near the summit of Mauna Loa. At an altitude of 3400 m, the location is well situated to measure air masses that are representative of very large areas. The record of CO₂ measured at Hawaii’s Mauna Loa became known as the “Keeling Curve.”

The observatory near the summit of Mauna Loa has measured carbon dioxide concentrations since 1958.

These iconic measurements comprise the longest continuous record of CO₂ in the world, starting from 316 ppm in March 1958 and approaching 400 ppm today. For the past 800,000 years, CO₂ levels never exceeded 300 parts per million. Each year, the concentration of CO₂ at Mauna Loa rises and falls in a sawtooth fashion, with the next year higher than the year before.

Carbon dioxide is the most significant heat-trapping greenhouse gas contributing to climate change. Its concentration has increased every year since scientists started making measurements on the slopes of Mauna Loa more than five decades ago.

The rate of increase has accelerated since the measurements started, from about 0.7 ppm per year in the late 1950s to 2.1 ppm per year during the last 10 years.Before the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, global average CO₂ was about 280 ppm. During the last 800,000 years, CO₂ fluctuated between about 180 ppm during ice ages and 280 ppm during interglacial warm periods. Today’s rate of increase is more than 100 times faster than the increase that occurred when the last ice age ended.

The website keelingcurve.ucsd.edu offers background information about how CO2 is measured, the history of the Keeling Curve, and resources from other organizations on the current state of climate. On Twitter, @keeling_curve, also provides followers with the most recent Keeling Curve CO₂ reading in a daily tweet.

The Scripps CO₂ measurements at Mauna Loa have been supported for many years by the U.S. Department of Energy, and have more recently been supplemented by Earth Networks, Inc., which is partnering with Scripps to expand the global GHG monitoring network.

Read More:

• NOAA carbon dioxide data: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/weekly.html
• Scripps Institution of Oceanography carbon dioxide data: http://www.keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/
• NOAA’s Maua Loa Observatory: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/obop/mlo/
• ANIMATION (carbon dioxide levels over 800,000 years): http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/history.html
• IMAGES: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/Photo_Gallery/Field_Sites/MLO/

Earth Networks at Clinton Global Initiative

Representatives from Earth Networks, the parent company of WeatherBug, are in New York City taking part in the Clinton Global Initiative Mid-Year Meeting.

Earth Networks’ CMO Amena Ali took this photo of NYC prior to attending the CGI Mid-Year Meeting.

This year’s theme, Mobilizing for Impact, addresses the world’s most complex challenges by building cooperative solutions, driven by resources, partner organizations, and individuals who work together to enable transformative and sustainable change.

Established in 2005 by President Bill Clinton, the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), an initiative of the Clinton Foundation, convenes global leaders to create and implement innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges.

In the session “Mobilizing Investment in Resilient Cities,” President Clinton joined leaders from across numerous organizations to discuss how cities and the private sector can work together to promote climate adaptation in urban environments.

Public-private partnerships, which bring together government and industries, are key to advancing investment in green infrastructure and urban resilience. These steps will help us as a nation as we prepare for major and distructive weather events like Hurricane Sandy.

Earth Networks – WeatherBug’s parent company – is no stranger to public-private partnerships.

Last fall, during the CGI Annual Meeting, the company made a Commitment to Action to deploy $1.5 million in state-of-the-art weather alerting infrastructure, including hardware and weather tracking technology, in Haiti – an island nation vulnerable to the impacts of weather and climate-related events.

What commitments are you making of your own to prepare your home, family and your community for severe weather?

President Clinton speaks at the CGI Mid-Year Meeting in New York.

Bill and Hillary Clinton onstage at the CGI Mid-Year Meeting in New York City.

WeatherBug for Android Launches

With severe weather season right around the corner, we’re excited to be introducing our completely redesigned WeatherBug app for Android phones.

WeatherBug 3.0 for Android includes a host of new features. In addition to the most up-to-the-minute forecasts and the fastest alerts from the largest real-time weather network, WeatherBug now includes Spark™ — the only mobile tool that delivers minute-by-minute, mile-by-mile lightning strike information for “total” lightning (which includes cloud-to-ground and in-cloud lightning).

If you’ve got an iPhone, don’t worry… you’ll find the newly refreshed WeatherBug with Spark in iTunes.

But don’t take our word for it: Early reviews on Google Play call the new version “Fantastic,” “The Best I’ve Seen” and “The Best Weather App.”

Watch our overview video and check out the new look for WeatherBug: 

 

Earth Networks CEO Honored

Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley congratulates Earth Networks – WeatherBug CEO Bob Marshall.

Earth Networks – WeatherBug CEO Bob Marshall was one of a select group of individuals honored at today’s International Business Leadership Awards in Baltimore, Maryland.

The awards, now in its 17th year, intend to “define and celebrate vision, international success, and excellence in leadership” in the state of Maryland. 

Bob Marshall receive the award for his visionary global leadership in weather monitoring and early warning technology. Congratulations Bob!

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WeatherBug Debuts on Google Chrome’s New Platform

We’re excited to announce that WeatherBug is the first weather app debuting on the new Google Chrome packaged app platform. Starting today, you can be the first to experience WeatherBug on the Developer Channel (v.28 of the Chrome browser). If you’re using the current version of Chrome, you can still check out the browser-based version of WeatherBug, which can be downloaded at no charge in the Chrome Web Store.

WeatherBug for Google Chrome

What’s a packaged app? According to Google: “Packaged apps deliver an experience as capable as a native app, but as safe as a web page. Just like web apps, packaged apps are written in HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS. But packaged apps look and behave like native apps, and they have native-like capabilities that are much more powerful than those available to web apps.”

Want to learn more? Read our announcement.

 

 

Infographic: March Severe Weather

What were the Top 5 days for severe severe weather in the U.S. in March? Our infographic sheds light on where, when and what severe weather made an appearance last month.

March 2013 Severe Weather in the U.S.

2013 U.S. Summer Season Forecast

The WeatherBug Meteorology Team at Earth Networks is forecasting a summer season similar to 2012 for much of the continental U.S. For summer 2013, we see distinct threat for above-normal temperatures from west Texas across the Great Plains into the central and Southern Rockies, and across the Mid-South. Areas around the Great Lakes and the Southeast coast will favor near-normal seasonal temperatures. Only one small pocket of slightly cooler-than-normal conditions is expected along the coast of the Pacific Northwest.

“Last year, the mercury soared – making 2012 the third-hottest summer on record in the continental U.S.,” says Senior Meteorologist James Aman of the WeatherBug Meteorology team at Earth Networks. “After examining all available data, we expect to see a summer that is somewhat similar to 2012. But one of the biggest stories weather-wise we will be watching is the drought across Texas into the Southern Rockies. When you factor in extreme weather, including severe storms with lightning and tornadoes that are already making their appearance across the country, we will likely be in for an interesting season.”

Read more in our press release.

Weather Watching the Final Four

Are you ready for the big dance? We are proud to be supporting the Atlanta-Fulton County Emergency Management Agency with weather information and breaking updates during the NCAA^® Men’s Final Four^® basketball championship at the Georgia Dome, Fan Fest events at the Georgia World Congress Center and the free outdoor concerts featuring top entertainers at Centennial Olympic Park. Read more about the news in our recent press release. 

@WeatherBug Thank you for providing support during the #FinalFour in #Atlanta You guys ROCK!!!!! @GWCC_ATL @FinalFour—
Atlanta Fulton EMA (@AFCEMA) April 02, 2013

 

 

WeatherBug Wins 2013 Appy

It’s official…WeatherBug for Android won the 2013 Appy Award in the Best Weather App category. According to the Appy jury, WeatherBug for Android “presents just about everything one could want or need to know about current and forecasted weather” while allowing users to “glide easily from a look at the temperature, wind speed and a five-day forecast to a map showing precipitation and on to a deeper dive into what’s to come.”

We’re simply thrilled that more than 125,000 of you have rated WeatherBug 5 out of 5 stars on Google Play, and over 50,000 have given our app a four-star rating.

Thank you for turning to WeatherBug as your trusted source of neighborhood-level weather and the fastest weather alerts so you can Know Before.

WeatherBug for Android won the 2013 Appy Award in the Best Weather App category.