NOAA Reports 8th-Warmest January-March on Record
Earth News: The combined surface average temperature for land and ocean from January to March was the eighth-warmest on record since tracking began in 1880, NOAA said in an analysis released today, April 17, 2009.Temperature for the quarter: about 55 degrees Fahrenheit, nearly a degree above the 20th-century average.
The average combined temperature for March was 55.9 degrees Fahrenheit, nearly a degree above the 20th-century average for that month, the report says.
The average global land surface temperature for March was 42.5 degrees Fahrenheit, about 1.7 degrees above the 20th-century average. The average global ocean surface temperature for the month was 61.4 degrees Fahrenheit, about 0.7 degree above the 20th-century average.
Snow cover in March remained near the 1967-2009 average for North America but sank below averages for Europe and Asia.
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North America’s Tree Dilemma
If you happen to live in an area of North America that has wide ranges of standing lodgepole pines, you know what the mountain pine beetle is. Its effects are starkly visible all throughout natural regions with ever-growing swaths of reddish-orange trees — trees already showing the fiery signs of death.
The mountain pine beetle dilemma has been labeled a symptom of climate change when overly warm winters have allowed the beetle to thrive and populate. Usually long-sustained winters and deep freezes help control the numbers, but those types of cold seasons have been lacking enough to allow the population explosion to take place. Other factors believed to be contributing to the problem are suppression of forest fires (allowing the majority of standing pines across America to mature, which are more susceptible to beetle infestation), and weakened immune systems due to long periods of drought.
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Study Aims to Identify IED Detection Experts
J.D. Leipold, Army News Service: Some Soldiers seem to have a sixth sense at being able to spot improvised explosive devices, researchers found, while others were unable to see the deadly weapons hidden in brush or buried in the middle of a road.
How and why only certain Soldiers could see IEDs was something the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization decided needed to be studied. So for the last 18 months a joint group of researchers has been striving to identify what particular skills, abilities and characteristics are needed to detect IEDs.
The study’s director, Jennifer Murphy, Ph.D., said JIEDDO leadership was hearing stories from the field every now and then that there would be a Soldier who just happened to be exceptional in his ability to identify IEDs, so she and the Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences came into the picture.
“Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way we could identify people who have this skill before they deploy because it would save so many lives,” she said, “because right now the way it is, we have to wait for the tour to unfold to see who is good and who’s not.”
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