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The only predictable thing is change. You can live in the past, or you can embrace the future. My take: With few exceptions, what worked in the 1970s probably won’t work in the 2030s. Technology evolves and improves, and policy imperatives shift over time. The climate crisis demands creativity to power the economy without emitting more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Earth is approaching a tipping point — one that requires new and reliable sources of clean energy. A Brief Overview of Energy in the United States In the United States, renewable sources of energy generation are accelerating, accounting for...

AerisWeather’s own PWSweather.com has been providing a beautiful, secure way to monitor, manage, and archive weather station data for over a decade. Over those years, we’ve developed an intimate understanding of the needs and functionality demanded by weather station owners from all walks of life. This information has helped extend our environmental data expertise beyond traditional weather stations to encompass more modern technologies, including Internet of Things (IoT) devices. As part of this mission to source environmental data from a diverse portfolio of devices, the PWSweather Team is excited to announce direct weather data ingestion support for AEM’s Davis Instruments weather stations...

The AerisWeather API makes a plethora of weather data available. Earlier this summer, we introduced minutely precipitation forecasts, one of our latest enhancements to the conditions endpoint. Today, we will look at an easy way to plot minutely precipitation data – which includes snow and rain – using Chart.js. Getting Started We will need to load three javascript libraries. One is the AerisWeather Javascript SDK, and the other two are for our plotting purposes. Note that in order to set up a Time Cartesian Axis in Chart.js, you will need to load a date library. In this example, we will be...

Maps Still Don’t Look Like Late October. NOAA’s GFS model roughly 2 weeks out shows a massive ridge of high pressure over the western US and much of western Canada, which suggests another warming trend by the third of fourth week of October. At this rate I wouldn’t be shocked to see a few more 70s within 2 weeks or so. World Meteorological Organization Sharpens Warnings About Both Too Much and Too Little Water. Inside Climate News reports: “The global supply of fresh water is dropping by almost half an inch annually, the World Meteorological Organization warned in a report...

The leaves are leaving, but not before a brilliant, Technicolor explosion of color! Why do leaves even change color? As the days get shorter in the fall, there is less sunlight for photosynthesis. Plants convert carbon dioxide in the air into sugars (glucose and starch) and oxygen by using energy from the sun through the process of photosynthesis. Chlorophyll is the green pigment necessary for photosynthesis. A decrease in photosynthesis that comes with less daylight means trees stop producing chlorophyll. As the green pigment fades over time other pigments present in the leaf are revealed, producing a veritable explosion of...

“If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water”, wrote Loren Eiseley. As a meteorologist, that quote has stuck with me over the years. But a warmer, more volatile climate is putting Earth’s hydrological cycle on fast-forward. The wets are trending wetter, the dries are drier. We are faced with too much water – or not nearly enough. The western US is enduring a 1200-year “Megadrought”, made worse by climate change. Cities are running out of water; fires and thick palls of smoke have become a daily fixture on local weather maps; all while a 7-8% increase...

As Hurricane Henri approached the Northeastern US this past weekend, I wondered how often a tropical cyclone has come within 50 miles of New York City, Boston, or other cities. How many were hurricanes? To answer these questions, we can use the Tropical Cyclones Archive endpoint within the AerisWeather API. This endpoint provides access to the complete AerisWeather historical archive for tropical systems, with data from the late 1800s for the Atlantic basin and the mid-1900s for the Pacific basin. When using the tropical cyclones archive endpoint, we find that 21 tropical cyclones have tracked within 50 miles of New York...

The tropical season is upon us, with the seasonal peak just a few weeks away. As tropical storms and hurricanes form, our JavaScript SDK’s tropical module is perfect for displaying their track, latest position, and forecast. The Tropical Cyclone Demo displays many of the Tropical Module’s capabilities, showing users how AerisWeather can display tropical cyclones in real time. As we approach the seasonal peak in the Atlantic basin, there are often multiple active systems that may have overlapping tracks and five-day forecasts, such as this weekend, with Tropical Storm Fred and Tropical Storm Grace:   As seen, displaying tropical cyclones on a map can highlight overlapping...

With Tropical Storm Fred threatening the Gulf Coast states and peak hurricane season just around the corner, now is a great time to discuss how to take your hurricane tracking to the next level by adding custom styles to the Tropical Cyclone module on the AerisWeather JavaScript SDK. The AerisWeather JavaScript SDK has a plethora of features. The InteractiveMapApp allows you to plot weather data on an interactive map easily and comes with several built-in modules which can simplify the plotting of weather data. The Tropical Cyclone Module provides users with predefined styling and functionality for plotting various tropical cyclones endpoint-related data layers.  While these default styles may suffice for most...

In March, we introduced the popular Severe Weather Module for use with the AerisWeather Interactive Map App to track storm threats. We’ve since added a new feature that allows you to tap into the power of the AerisWeather Threats endpoint within the Interactive Map App. There’s no need to write code to query the AerisWeather API Threats Endpoint, we’ve taken care of the hard part. All you have to do now is click on the map to display approaching storm threats in the infopanel. Threats Endpoint Background The Threats Endpoint is one of many severe weather endpoints in the AerisWeather API. It’s much more than just National Weather Service warnings, it utilizes a plethora of other meteorological-related parameters as well...