IMAGE OF THE WEEK
This is Geographic Awareness Week: The theme is “The Geography of Civil Rights Movements” Several events are happening:
November 14 Penn State GIS Day —many events at the University Libraries
November 15 Central PA GIS Day—Harrisburg. Contact Jodi Vender if interested
November 16 Mapathon for Puerto Rico, 6 p.m. in 229 Walker Building
GOOD NEWS
• Guido Cervone was appointed to the NCAR non-MSF proposal review panel.
• Welcome to our new department work-study, Taylor Mills. She starts on November 15 and will be in 302 Walker Building.
NEWS
Coffee Hour updates
There is no Coffee Hour lecture this week or next, due to the impending Thanksgiving break. The next Coffee Hour will be December 1. The final Coffee Hour for the fall semester will be December 8. The December 8 Coffee Hour will feature short talks by Undergraduate Research Opportunities Connection (UROC) students about their projects. If you missed Richard Mbih’s talk on November 3, you can view the recording here: http://live-geog.psu.edu/Mediasite/Play/47c7c5f5378e407fa244fda4a9b98bc61d
‘Visualize the World’ program to be held at University Libraries on Nov. 14
Penn State University Libraries will celebrate GIS Day on Tuesday, Nov. 14, at an event aimed to the broad audience of the Penn State community — students, staff, faculty and community members — with interests in learning about how geospatial information is being used on campus and beyond.
From AAG
Profiles of Geographers Working in Civil Rights & Social Justice
Joshua Inwood and Melissa Wright are featured
The theme for Geography Awareness Week (GeoWeek) 2017 is “The Geography of Civil Rights Movements.” To commemorate this theme, the AAG has compiled this list of geographers who have been recognized by the AAG for their work in anti-racism, diversity, or social justice.
PUBLISHED RECENTLY/PRESENTLY
A comparison of daily temperature averaging methods: Spatial variability and recent change for the CONUS [Continental United States]
By Jase Bernhardt, Andrew M. Carleton, and Chris LaMagna
In Journal of Climate (in press)
Access http://journals.ametsoc.org/toc/clim/current
Traditionally, the daily average air temperature at a weather station is computed by taking the mean of two values, the maximum temperature (Tmax) and the minimum temperature (Tmin) over a 24-hour period. These values form the basis for numerous studies of long-term climatologies (e.g., 30-year normals) and recent temperature trends and changes. However, many first-order weather stations– such as those at airports– also record hourly temperature data. Using an average of the 24 hourly temperature readings to compute daily average temperature has been shown to provide a more precise and representative estimate of a given day’s temperature. This study assesses the spatial variability of the differences in these two methods of daily temperature averaging (i.e., [Tmax + Tmin]/2, average of 24 hourly temperature values) for 215 first-order weather stations across the conterminous United States (CONUS) the 30-year period 1981-2010. A statistically significant difference is shown between the two methods, as well as consistent overestimation of temperature by the traditional method ([Tmax + Tmin]/2), particularly in southern and coastal portions of the CONUS. The explanation for the long-term difference between the two methods is the underlying assumption for the twice- daily method that the diurnal curve of temperature is symmetrical. Moreover, this paper demonstrates a spatially-coherent pattern in the difference compared to the most recent part of the temperature record (2001-2015). The spatial and temporal differences shown have implications for assessments of the physical factors influencing the diurnal temperature curve, as well as the exact magnitude of contemporary climate change.