CLIMATE CHAOS: Author Charles Wohlforth consulted Gerard Roe, a UW associate professor of Earth and Space Sciences, when Wohlforth researched his book on climate change titled The Whale and the Supercomputer: On the Northern Front of Climate Change. When writer Ian Garrick Mason reviewed the book for the San Francisco Chronicle, he mentioned that climate-concerned scientists tend to create generalized models of climate behavior, 鈥渢hose hypercomplicated simulations of the Earth that we see pictured in the newspaper after each climate conference.鈥� This set up a lively quote from Roe, to the effect that the chaos of climate change resists such models: 鈥淧eople don鈥檛 understand the Earth, but they want to, so they build a model, and then they have two things they don鈥檛 understand.鈥�
DUST BOWL THEORY: When a NASA scientist theorized over causes for the Dust Bowl storms and drought of the Depression-era 1930s for a paper to be printed in Science, John Wallace, UW professor of atmospheric sciences, was among those who reviewed the text before it was published.
Siegfried Schubert, a meteorologist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration鈥檚 Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., wrote that the Pacific Ocean being slightly cooler and the Atlantic slightly warmer than usual produced a weakened jet stream, which then supplied less moisture to the Great Plains states. Next, Schubert said, the cause for the oceanic temperature variations needs to be explored.
Wallace told the Associated Press that while Schubert鈥檚 paper didn鈥檛 enable scientists to predict droughts, it helps them 鈥済et a feel for the odds, the probabilities. Anything that can get a leg up on what鈥檚 coming next summer is going to be useful.鈥�
BOEING CHALLENGED: A New York Times article in April about Boeing and Japanese orders for the company鈥檚 upcoming 7E7 Dreamliner mentioned that European airplane manufacturer Airbus passed Boeing in 2003 as the world鈥檚 leading aircraft maker.
鈥淚t鈥檚 absolutely critical for Boeing to maintain momentum,鈥� commented UW business professor Charles Hill in the article. 鈥淭he impression is that Airbus has taken the lead, and it鈥檚 put things squarely in Boeing鈥檚 lap.鈥�