My apologies for the lateness of the report, its been a really busy week and I was going to write it up last night but my buddy talked me into a metal concert. We got backstage passes and the works it was pretty cool
surprisingly accurate
Anywho on to last weekend. The win over Boston College I believe has given a lot of us a pretty hype feeling. I for one forced all of my friends to sit through the entire game before we went to chick fil a. That coupled with the absolute collapse UVA had at the end of their game and I can only imagine my entire attitude was something like this on Saturday
Seriously we took Boston College to the woodshed and aside from the #38-0bro game I cant remember a more complete and utter annihilation of a legitimate FBS opponent since....well since I've started watching hokie football 8 years ago. This game had it all and I for one am totally on board the fuente hype train
Now for my science fill, and disclaimer I dont want this to become political at all I want this to stick to facts. I'm going to discuss global warming and the theory behind it, and I think this is a really good month to discuss it because the average high temperature is 15 degrees above normal. (THATS REALLY HOT) seriously Wisconsin hasn't been under 40 degrees in an almost record 140 straight days, and im paying the consequences for it. Its damn mosquito haven up here.
my average walk to work
This may be a multi-part discussion because there is a hell of a lot to talk about from greenhouse gases, to a little chemistry behind it, to the impacts that we may be causing, to the future of our climate. For starters lets get this bad boy started! As a lot of you have noticed its been warm this September...like REALLY warm, unusually so. For Virginia in particular the entire global warming talk is really bad news. As a lot of you are familiar (and I'll get into the details shortly) global warming leads to higher sea levels which will submerge a good portion of one of the most important regions in the state. On top of that impacts also include more severe storms, changing weather patterns (the jets get really screwed up) and even more droughts.
A lot of climate change's impacts currently comes from several gases that you've all probably heard of. There's Carbon Dioxide (CO2), Methane (CH4), Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs which we used to use for EVERYTHING), and N2O. All of these...we'll call them the big 4 have huge impacts and i'll gloss over them this week and give you the how next week. Carbon Dioxide is the one I'm sure you've all heard of.
looks to me like we're throwing a lot of that into the atmosphere
To first understand CO2s impacts one must understand basic radiation terms. Basically radiation comes into our atmosphere and is absorbed, shortwave radiation (Ultraviolet and stuff) is absorbed by the ozone, long wave radiation (visible light and stuff) gets through our ozone and hits the surface. Some of it is absorbed and some ricochets off back up into space.
realllllly important graphic right here
The important concept surrounding CO2 is, as you increase the levels of Carbon dioxide the outgoing longwave radiation (you can think of it as heat) cant leave the atmosphere and instead of bouncing out of the earth, attempts to leave the atmosphere and gets bounced right back into us. Eventually as you increase CO2 more and more energy is going to get reflected back into us, thus driving up temperatures. THIS IS BAD. our poles cant handle increased temperatures and as a result will melt. Melted poles and warmer poles = bad news for weather patterns as the jets depend on temperature gradients. As the poles melt water will rise which is really bad news for coastal cities like Miami, Hampton, or NYC.
the next gas I mentioned is methane. Methane is one driven by our farming techniques, natural gases, and landfills/wetlands. Methane works in really similar ways to CO2 but is MUCH more potent, like 85% better at trapping heat in our atmosphere. Luckily for us methane levels (while still rising) are only a fraction as high as CO2 levels. Definitely another gas that we have to keep an eye on though, by trapping heat in it too rises temperature levels.
Another one that was HUGE in the 90s were CFCs or chlorofluorocarbons. These bad boys react with the atmosphere in much different ways than CO2 or methane and were basically directly responsible for our first climate change scare in the 90s. For whatever reason everybody thought these aerosols were absolutely perfect, we could spray them into the air and since they didn't bond with water vapor they would drift into space.
This was before we discovered that the atmosphere is much more complex than just the tropopsphere and the ozone basically keeps us alive. CFCs were absolute cancer to the ozone, and were really good at killing the ozone and lingering around the middle atmosphere for a really long time. We quickly put a restriction on these and only now is the ozone starting to recover (no its not fully recovered yet)
thank you CFCs
moral of the story is make sure you understand the things you're messing with before you throw stuff into them.
Finally the last one, and frankly the weirdest one are the NOx gasses. NOx is a term for nitrogen oxides and can be written a number of different ways but the two bigguns (correct me if im wrong chemists) are NO and NO2. These bad boys are released via combustion, and while aren't as available as say CO2 still react really badly and produce bad air. NOx bonds with sunlight to perform a hazy toxic gas aka Ozone. While ozone is absolutely amazing in the middle atmosphere for blocking bad sunlight. Its absolutely terrible to breathe, puts holes in your organs, and gives you cancer. Interestingly however, NOx gases also bond with methane to actually cool the Earth...so its not all bad I suppose? But still certainly not good its a fine line we've gotta learn to walk a fine line.
Now for the weather write-up. You guys are in for an absolutely beautiful day on saturday. With an upper level ridge blowing in it seems as if a high is going to be dropping down and giving us another beautiful day of sunshine. Seriously there will be no clouds and little to no breeze (bring your sunblock) I expect highs to climb into the mid 80s (we'll venture up to 86) with a low around 62. It might be a little bit of a chilly tailgating morning with temperatures around 70 in the morning but will warm up quickly around and after kickoff. Later that night temperatures will drop down due to the lack of cloud cover resulting in a low of 62. Check out this little weather graphic maker I found online, not the best but its quick and easy and I'll probably make more of these weekly
...For some reason the image wouldnt post but you can find it here
I dont expect weather to have any real impact on the game, aside from maybe it being hot as hell if either defense is on the field to long. I expect both teams to be able to run their offenses to full effect and as such I expect some points to be put up. But I also expect Foster's boys to get the job done this week
Tune in next week for a better understanding and write-up of climate change's impacts on the jet, and a better write-up of how this all goes on chemically.
Final Predictions
High 86
Low 62
Little to no cloud cover
Little to no Wind
No precip
GO HOKIES!!!!
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