You’ve probably heard through various news outlets that last month was one of the warmest Aprils on record. Where it stands in the stats depends on what region you consider: 5th warmest globally, 4th warmest for the US. Land surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere were 1.7°C (3.1°F) above the 20th century average.
(Click on the map to see an enlarged version.)
I like these pictures NOAA does because they give a visual of what goes into creating a statistic like a global average. What’s happening at “your house” might be near that global average, or wildly divergent from it.
Some people who work hard at denying the earth is warming will point out that glaciers in the Himalayas and some parts of Antarctica are growing. Look at the map above and you’ll see blue dots in those areas. Eastern Greenland even has a blue dot. Yes, there are areas that are cooler than average, but talking only about them is cherry-picking data.
There are very few blue dots on the land. Very few. And the land is where we live.
Thirty-seven hours. 10,100 word net gain. Current word count: 52,204.
Wrote the dreaded (by me) torture scene. FMC rescued from kidnapper and
safe in MMC’s condo. MMC now vulnerable to murder (kidnapper is dead)
and kidnapping charges (cops could think him complicit) compounded by
transporting victim = FMC across state lines. Their upcoming lunch
will be award-winning Maryland Crabcakes from MMC’s brother’s
restaurant. Followed potentially by romantic interlude.
I’m happy with that.
[FMC = Female Main Character; MMC = Male Main Character]
The story is chugging along nicely - passed 45K yesterday (45397 at the moment). Near the end of February I removed the ending, which took the story from 52K and 119 pages to just under 38K and 89 pages. It’s back to 104 pages. (I don’t work in official manuscript format. I like to maximize what I see on the screen and I’m balancing that with printing things out for editing, so it’s 1 1/2 spaced with 3/4 inch margins.)
Seven thousand words in about as many weeks is nothing like a NaNo pace, but it’s sustainable through my crazy work schedule and the other interferences that wander by. And those seven thousand words are edited, something that is anathema during NaNo.
Ah, yes, in case you missed it, last Monday I visited Motor Cycle Center and spoke with Geoff. He was very helpful and confirmed my choice of a Triumph for Cait. Very sleek bike, stylish, modern, and an appropriate size for an athletic woman around 5 ft 8 in. And the big surprise of the day for me was the Street Triple comes in purple! *swoon* Now I have to add those details to the novel ...
“This is an animation of ocean surface currents from June 2005 to December 2007 from NASA satellites. Watch how bigger currents like the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic Ocean and the Kuroshio in the Pacific carry warm waters across thousands of miles at speeds greater than four miles per hour (six kilometers per hour); how coastal currents like the Agulhas in the Southern Hemisphere move equatorial waters toward Earth's poles; and how thousands of other ocean currents are confined to particular regions and form slow-moving, circular pools called eddies. Credit: NASA/SVS
“The visualization covers the period June 2005 to December 2007 and is based on a synthesis of a numerical model with observational data, created by a NASA project called Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean, or ECCO for short. ECCO is a joint project between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. ECCO uses advanced mathematical tools to combine observations with the MIT numerical ocean model to obtain realistic descriptions of how ocean circulation evolves over time.
“These model-data syntheses are among the largest computations of their kind ever undertaken. They are made possible by high-end computing resources provided by NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.
“ECCO model-data syntheses are being used to quantify the ocean’s role in the global carbon cycle, to understand the recent evolution of the polar oceans, to monitor time-evolving heat, water, and chemical exchanges within and between different components of the Earth system, and for many other science applications.
“In the particular model-data synthesis used for this visualization, only the larger, ocean basin-wide scales have been adjusted to fit observations. Smaller-scale ocean currents are free to evolve on their own according to the computer model's equations. Due to the limited resolution of this particular model, only the larger eddies are represented, and tend to look more 'perfect' than they are in real life. Despite these model limitations, the visualization offers a realistic study in both the order and the chaos of the circulating waters that populate Earth’s ocean.”
If you've read this far, thank you! Here's a link to a ten minute version
At the NASA site I linked at the beginning, there's information to find a twenty minute version as well.
