Slashdot Mirror

• EMSC European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre, here
• GeoNet Geological hazard information for New Zealand here
• CSN Centro SismolÃgico Nacional, Universidad de Chile.here
• INGV Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia here
• IGN Instituto GeogrÃfico Nacional here
• JMA Japan Meteorological Agency here
• Ineter Institution Nicaraguenese de Estudios Territoriales here
• SSN Servicio SismolÃgico Nacional here
• SGC Servicio GeolÃgico Colombiano here
• RSN Red SismolÃgica Nacional here
• Funvisis FundaciÃn Venezolana de Investigaciones SismolÃgicas here
• INPRES INSTITUTO NACIONAL DE PREVENCIÃ"N SÃSMICA here

You can tell I have my own reasons for keeping a list like that, one of which is that the USGS just can't be trusted to be up.

The data is international anyway. It's part of the international network for monitoring compliance with nuclear test ban treaties. So any one of those sites should be able to get you everything you need.

To bad we're not measuring CO2 in other places where volcanoes won't affect them. Oh wait... we are. You can find a list of them here.

I'd say that instead of falsifying data NASA and NOAA need to start being honest.

The difficulty is that once you decide that you can selectively ignore facts because of a huge conspiracy to falsify data, it becomes impossible for any amount of information to ever change your mind. So, the NASA data is falsified? And, the NOAA data, that's falsified too. And the University of East Anglia, of course. And the Berkeley data-- that was done specifically to address the problems people had with the NASA and NOAA data-- http://berkeleyearth.org/ That's faked too.? How about the Japanese data? http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/t... Also faked? The Australians-- fake too?

Once you conclude everything that disagrees with you is fake, your opinion is incontrovertible-- since nobody can confront it.

On topic, I'd like you to look at something:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2... This is the sort of thing that throws up ugly red flags in my mind and tends to make me a bit dubious about AGW in general.

According to the link, this is from "The report by Japan Society of Energy and Resources (JSER) ... the academic society representing scientists from the energy and resource fields".

This is something I've noticed. While climate scientists mostly agree with the physics models, whenever you see a headline about a group of scientists who disagree, when you look at the details, you usually find it's commissioned by the energy industry. There was a headline article in Forbes a year or so back, similar: the headline was "here's a poll of hundreds of scientists who aren't sure about global warming," and when you looked at the details, it was a survey of the people working in the Alberta coal and petroleum extraction industry.

When you look at the details here, nothing seems to be new. People have been looking for a connection between solar activity and climate for a hundred years; this has been studied a lot, and as far as I know, nobody has found a correlation large enough to drive climate. At a top level, the issue is summarized in the IPCC WG-1 report: http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessm... (There's a fifth assessment report out now, but the one I'm familiar with is the fourth, so that's what I link to.) A summary is in section 1.4.3, (Solar Variability and the Total Solar Irradiance); and the more detailed analysis is chapter 2.7, Natural Forcings, section 2.7.1 "Solar Variability."

(I'll also note that solar forcing tends to have a different signature from the greenhouse effect warming. Solar forcing tends to increase day/night temperature differences; the greenhouse effect tends to reduce them).

On the subject of the Japan Society for Energy and Resources critique, this is the page from the Japan Meteorological Agency: http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/t...
So the 2009 criticism by the Japanese Society for Energy and Resources doesn't seem to have made any influence to the actual people in Japan studying climate.

I find you quite arrogant and condescending.

So, basically, you consider it condescending that I insist that you should actually look at data. Real data. Not blog posts.

And you complain that I only gave you a link to one source of data. OK, here are data from four continents:

Berkeley Earth: http://berkeleyearth.org/
Hadley Center Climate Research Unit: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/d...
Goddard Institute for Space Studies: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gist...
Japanese Meteorological Agency: http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/t...
Australian Meteorological Agency: http://www.bom.gov.au/state-of...
NOAA: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/t...

The language was also probably translated from Japanese. So the author looked at the Japanese, considered the corresponding adjectives available (global vs. regional), and picked the one that would attract the most attention while still maintaining some credibility.

And as I said elsewhere: I guarantee you the Japanese Meteorological Agency does not have global records (in Antarctica, Argentina, the Sudan, Sweden, etc.) back to 1891. So in the proper context, the adjective "global" here can only mean comprehensive to their Agency's records for Japan.

You are a clown who does not know how to follow a link.

From the Slate article:

The Japan Meteorological Agency said June 2014 was the warmest June globally since at least 1891, when its dataset begins.

The words "June 2014" are a link: http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/products/gwp/temp/jun_wld.html

If you follow it you find a nice page written in English which explains where the data comes from:

JMA estimates global temperature anomalies using data combined not only over land but also over ocean areas. The land part of the combined data for the period before 2000 consists of GHCN (Global Historical Climatology Network) information provided by NCDC (the U.S.A.'s National Climatic Data Center), while that for the period after 2001 consists of CLIMAT messages archived at JMA. The oceanic part of the combined data consists of JMA's own long-term sea surface temperature analysis data, known as COBE-SST

Idiot.

I have no doubt that the dataset referred to is that collected by the Japanese Agency alone, specifically on Japanese-governed lands and territories. If you want to prove me wrong, then have at it.

Here's your proof. Not that you'll believe it. It took all of 3 clicks from the first article to find it.

"JMA monitors the global climate with CLIMAT and SYNOP reports from NMHSs through the Global Telecommunication System (GTS) of WMO. Quality-checked data on temperature and precipitation are assembled to assess extreme climate events. Weekly, monthly and seasonal monitoring reports on extreme climate events with brief descriptions of disastrous events are available on this page, along with world distribution maps of temperature and precipitation. "

http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/t...

Additionally, they have a completely separate page for climate in Japan. Not that you'll believe that either.

This looks like a temperature map of the WHOLE EARTH to me, found on the source site after about 10 seconds of terribly difficult clicking on a couple of buttons.

Someday maybe the Japanese can figure out how to build a bullet train in an earthquake zone.

All of Japan is an earthquake zone and they already have bullet trains.

Japan's earthquake information site:
http://www.jma.go.jp/en/quake/quake_singendo_index.html

ok guys, why not a link to the excellent japanese metrological agency earthquake information in english?

http://www.jma.go.jp/en/quake/00000000091.html

For near real-time info surrounding the Tsunami impact http://www.jma.go.jp/en/tsunami/

http://www.jma.go.jp/en/tsunami/

"Occurred at 23:32 JST 07 Apr 2011
Region name Miyagi-ken Oki
Depth about 40 km
Magnitude 7.4"

The most accurate information you can get on earthquakes in Japan, listed by time and strength from hundreds (or thousands) of sensor station:

http://www.jma.go.jp/en/quake/

and tsunamis

http://www.jma.go.jp/en/tsunami/

I personally felt (400km away) the shock, two or three aftershocks and the nakano quake in the morning. Over this distance i would only feel a quake > 4 at the center (japanese scale).

at this place the primary shock was categorized to be 4 at my workplace which does not even make me get up from the chair (happens every few month), but i knew immediately that its big; the time between "the monitor shakes" and "the building shakes" gives you a rough estimation of the distance... and with that strength i knew it was > 6-7 (it felt more far away than the 7 nakano shock some time ago, and stronger).

The most accurate information you can get on earthquakes in Japan, listed by time and strength from hundreds (or thousands) of sensor station:

http://www.jma.go.jp/en/quake/

and tsunamis

http://www.jma.go.jp/en/tsunami/

I personally felt (400km away) the shock, two or three aftershocks and the nakano quake in the morning. Over this distance i would only feel a quake > 4 at the center (japanese scale).

at this place the primary shock was categorized to be 4 at my workplace which does not even make me get up from the chair (happens every few month), but i knew immediately that its big; the time between "the monitor shakes" and "the building shakes" gives you a rough estimation of the distance... and with that strength i knew it was > 6-7 (it felt more far away than the 7 nakano shock some time ago, and stronger).

Wouldn't Japan's meteorological agency call it a 7.0 on their 7 point scale?

Not here, where it currently reads:

Occurred at 14:46 JST 11 Mar 2011
Region name Sanriku Oki
Depth about 20km
Magnitude 8.8

Indeed does sound almost exactly the same as Japan's early-warning system, as described here: http://www.jma.go.jp/jma/en/Activities/eew.html

The Japanese system displays an instant warning on Japanese TV stations accompanied by a loud alarm sound; activates alarms in construction sites, offices and homes (although this is not widespread in homes) and a warning on certain domestically produced mobile phones (to those who subscribe).

I remember the system incorrectly activated at least once before, when no earthquake followed, but has worked well on a number of occasions. Of course we promptly soil ourselves whenever it goes off in the office....

If you really want to see what can happen when a plane flies through volcanic ash, click this link. http://www.jma.go.jp/jma/jma-eng/jma-center/vaac/typical%20damage.htm

From what I can tell via google,

- Ash melts at 1100 degrees, below operating temperature of jet engines, and fuses into the engine
- Windshields can be abraded so badly you cannot see out of them
- Ash is dry and doesn't show up on radar, so new sensors are needed so pilots can discover it
- There are no standards for how much ash is allowed or how to test aircraft against it.
- Possibility that propellor planes and helicopters are safer

So my conclusions for now are:
- Need better rules, and government should pay for the experimentation
- Need better intelligence, so we can be sure a route is safe
- Need to examine flying propellor planes slowly at very low altitudes below the ash
- Nobody has thought about ash bothering ground transportation. Does it?
- Need alternative transportation
    o Trains, buses, boats
    o Slower aircraft.. hovercraft or balloons? (they still have engines though)
    o Need a closed engine design. (chemical or hydrogen powered electric closed engine?)
    o This is a common problem, more needs to be done for global transportation security. I even found a volcanic explosion in Japan yesterday at the ash advisory center, though it is not in the news at all.
http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/svd/vaac/data/TextData/20100420_SAKU_0403_Text.html

Links:
http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/412103-ash-clouds-threaten-air-traffic.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/apr/15/volcanic-ash-bad-for-planes
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?threadid=2055888944
http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/VAAC/vaac.html

Since March 30 of this year, Japan's Meteorological Agency has been operating a nationwide system [Japanese] to measure P-waves and estimate the earthquake's strength before the S-waves hit. While they say it's still experimental, it's been brought up in the news several times, and has in fact predicted [Japanese--partial list only] several significant earthquakes successfully, though it's put out a few false alarms as well. (One false alarm is listed as having been caused by a lightning strike, and they wrote that they deliberately accept such false alarms to maximize the pre-earthquake warning time for real earthquakes, rather than wait for additional data to come in that would delay the warning.)

With respect to the Shinkansen, I'm pretty sure they take advantage of this system, as do at least some other railways in the Tokyo area (I don't recall which). The data is also supposedly sent around to places like city halls, schools, etc.

The big problem with systems like these is that you can't just attach them to loudspeakers and whatnot, because whether it's not a false alarm or not, such broadcasts would easily lead to panic and stampedes that could cause more injuries and even deaths than the earthquake itself. So don't go looking for big "Earthquake Warning" boards next time you're in Japan, because you won't find them--the agency is being very careful with who they give the data to, at least for now.