Brrr, a short autumn?

Scientists have been coring glacial ice fields for some time now. One objective is to analyze the small atmospheric gas bubbles that got trapped as the ice formed. These gas bubbles contain atmospheric gases from our ancient past. Much of the research is done to address climate change. The Antarctic has proven to be the place where past climate clues can be found and by past, I mean long, long ago.

Up until recently, the oldest complete Antarctica ice core data took the research back some 800,000 years. Recently, research was done on the oldest ice core ever taken in the Antarctic. The research paper, “Two-million-year-old Snapshots of Atmospheric Gases from Antarctic Ice,” was published in “Nature.” Scientists had drilled in an area over 100 miles from the U.S.’s McMurdo Research Station. The core they retrieved during the 2015-16 field research season goes back some 2 million years.

What was discovered with this oldest ice core is that there is a correlation between atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and temperature back some 2 million years. The previous oldest ice core showed similar results.

Ed Brook of Oregon State University said, “One of the important results of this study is to show that carbon dioxide is linked to temperature in this earlier time period.” The core has revealed changes in the frequency of ice ages. The past one million years, cycles of ice ages followed by warm periods occurred about every 100,000 years. Though, from 1.2 million years ago to more than 2 million years ago, ice age cycles were shorter, about every 40,000 years, and less extreme. The research group was led by scientists from Princeton University and the University of Maine.

Time to look at weather data from my home weather station for the month of October. Precipitation was 1.04 inches for the month. We did experience a dash of snowfall on the 28th, though nothing really stuck for long. The all-time maximum precipitation for our area was in 2016 with 3.98 inches. The mean for October is 0.77 inches. Yes, we have had snow in October: in 1971 we had 1.3 inches. The high temperature for the month was 67.9˚F on the 25th. Our low was 18.1˚F on 29th. The mean for October was 44.9˚F. The all-time high was in 1935 at 90˚F, and the all-time low was 10˚F in 1984. The all-time mean for October is 51˚F. Compare the two mean temperatures — this year’s October with the all-time mean — a difference of 6.1˚F cooler.

Looking at our November sky, we will see a full Moon on the 12th of the month. The November full Moon is known as the Beaver Moon or the Frost Moon or the Mourning Moon. Earth had a visit from a small asteroid right around Halloween. It wasn’t big enough to have caused damage if it entered our atmosphere. Its size was between 2 and 7 meters. Interestingly, it came within 3,852 miles at its closest approach to Earth as it passed above Southern Africa. That fly by is the closest of any known near-Earth object found in NASA’s database of such things.