The Barometer

Red Sky at Night, Shepherd's Delight. Red Sky in the Morning, Shepherd's Warning.

Is this weather folklore true, or just another "myth" to be busted? And what could it mean? Listen to this mythbusting session to find out!

As Sam points out in the episode, red skies get a mention in the Bible and also by Shakespeare! So could there be some truth to it?

“Like a red morn that ever yet betokened, Wreck to the seaman, tempest to the field, Sorrow to the shepherds, woe unto the birds, Gusts and foul flaws to herdmen and to herds.” Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare.

In the Bible, Jesus said, “When in evening, ye say, it will be fair weather: For the sky is red. And in the morning, it will be foul weather today; for the sky is red and lowering.” (Matthew XVI: 2-3,)

Mythbuster: Sam Illingworth

Chat & production: Jennifer Muller

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In our fifth and (sadly) final audio diary of the European Geosciences Union General Assembly, Sam I and Will reflect on an excellent week of science, social media and the beautiful city of Vienna.

Hopefully you've enjoyed our series of podcasts this week. We hope that we've added an insight into an academic conference for those who thought 'this means nothing to me' , while also bringing together some of the highlights from the ever evolving world of atmospheric science.

Thanks for listening.

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In our fourth audio diary of the European Geosciences Union General Assembly, Sam I and Will chat over the highlights of day 4. Hear them discuss getting value from old methods, more satellite measurements (surprise surprise) and fires across the globe. They also discuss Will's presentation on a biomass burning project in Brazil - you can find some more background here.

Thanks for listening and we'll be back for our final wrap up episode tomorrow LIVE from EGU.

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In our third audio diary of the European Geosciences Union General Assembly, Sam I and Will chat over their highlights from day 3. They are joined by Jon Tennant to discuss the 'Great Debate' that the EGU hosted on Shale Gas: to frack or not to frack.

Jon mentioned some excellent resources from the Geological Society regarding shale gas in the UK, which are available here.

Thanks for listening and we'll be back tomorrow with another episode LIVE from EGU.

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In our second audio diary of the European Geosciences Union General Assembly, Sam I and Will chat to Aoife Grant and James Grayson about some exciting new scientific research from the wonderful world of atmospheric science. Sam I also brings you his personal thoughts on his favourite EGU ever!

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Welcome to our first audio diary of the European Geosciences Union General Assembly that is taking place in Vienna this week. Join Sam Illingworth as he wanders the poster halls pouncing on unsuspecting atmospheric scientists to find out their highlights from the first day of the meeting. Topics include the Mars Curiosity Rover, pollution in the largest cities in the world and the cost of the Elgin gas leak to the UK economy.

Thanks to Roland Leigh and Rosie Graves from the University of Leicester for talking to us.

Tune in tomorrow for our next episode.

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Between 19-22 March 2013 over 850 pupils from local schools visited The University of Manchester as part of the National Science and Engineering Week (NSEW). The aim of the event was to enthuse the pupils from years 5-9 about studying science and engineering through a variety of stalls showcasing how science, engineering, technology and maths impacts on our everyday lives, and shapes our daily decisions. The pupils had the opportunity to get up close with some of the cutting-edge research going on at The University of Manchester, and take part in a range of activities designed to inspire them to becoming the scientists of the future.

The Barometer Podcast had a stall at the event with a few demonstrations of the type of research we do at the Centre for Atmospheric Science. The pupils were able to look at some real ice crystals through a microscope, learning how they are formed and what they are called, e.g. columns, dendrites and plates. The ingredients and processes for making a cloud were discussed and followed by a great demonstration, aptly named ‘Cloud in Bottle’ emphasising the importance of needing aerosols as a surface for the water to condense on to. Aerosols were introduced including how they range in size, chemical composition and other properties such as whether they like to take on water and therefore if they are likely to make clouds. A demonstration on the size and number of aerosols in a fixed volume was given, which included a baseball bat, 9 table tennis balls, 3000 raisins, and 3 million grains of sugar (not individually counted, obviously)! A particle counter further demonstrated how size and number of aerosols are related; there are a great number of smaller particles. Various household items including talcum powder, air freshener and a toaster were used and the pupils found there were more aerosols from a toaster than talcum powder because they were smaller and so were not visible. The demonstrations were wrapped up with explanations on how we have to study these tiny, invisible particles to better understand cloud formation, the weather and even climate. So if the weatherman doesn’t always get the forecast right they now understood why.

In this episode we find out what the pupils thought of our stall, what other exciting scientific things they had seen and learnt, and how many budding scientists we had inspired.

Vox-popping interviewers: Sam Illingworth and Sam Hardy

Production: Nicky Young

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Have you heard the of the weather folklore that cows lie down when it's going to rain? We're going to investigate what's behind this statement in our new mythbusting feature! This one is presented by a new member of the podcast team, Sam, who went as far as interviewing a cow called Ermintrude to find out the truth. Enjoy!!

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Extreme cases of precipitation and temperature can lead to extreme events such as e.g. flooding drought and fires, which have the potential to cause large damage as well as disrupt and threaten lives.

In this episode we are "Going to Extremes" and discuss extreme rainfall and flooding events in the UK, as well take a look at extreme events elsewhere on the globe, such as drought and fires in the Americas and Australia and we also touch on the extreme cases of smog in Beijing, China.

As record breaking events are now reported quite often, we delve into the question what role climate change plays in the kind of extreme events we observe and whether they are becoming more frequent.

Finally we reflect on responding and adapting to extreme events and look towards the challenges a changing climate brings.

We mention a lot of different studies and sources of information, please find links to some of them below. Hope you find them useful!

The Great Flood of 1953

UK rainfall and flooding, which has been a big deal over the last years: the New York Times reckons that the combined insurance payout for 2007, 2009 and 2012 floods in the UK was $6.5 billion!

Coverage by the BBC - The science behind Britain's wild weather in 2012

MetOffice weather summary for 2012 , Infographic by MetOffice, MetOffice Blog on rainfall

England and Wales Precipitation record started in 1766, find out about it here.

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) also provides an annual State of the Climate summary, including Anomalies & Events.

Number of Hurricanes in the Atlantic

Warmer, wetter world study - summary & paper

Historical heat waves analysis - Summary & paper

The 2005 Amazon drought was equivalent to more than 80 times the size of Wales in terms of area affected. Second mega-drought was in 2010 with a smaller drought in between 2007. Find the details here:

NASA mega drought study (and coverage in the Guardian)

Australia heatwave & wildfires

Interesting paper looking at the challenges society faces: summary and full paper

***Correction for Hurricanes Episode*** We said the storm naming was done by the German Weather Service, but it is actually the University of Berlin. Apologies for the error. Find out all about it here on their website

Also apologies for some minor dodgy recording this time round, some syllables and even full words didn't record properly.

Panel: Hugo Ricketts, Grant Allen, Will Morgan, Nicky Young and Jennifer Muller

Production: Jennifer Muller

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In the final Audio Diary from the AGU 2012 fall meeting in San Francisco, Jennifer and Will reflect on the the past week as a whole, and also talk about ecohydrology, bags of aerosols, clones and climate science communication.

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