Average temperature would be ~236 K (since it is stated -35 degrees F) in the moon craters, whereas the temperature swing would be ~278 K on the surface. Can't you divide by 1.8? And Celsius is just another arbitrary method akin to Fahrenheit, anyways, real men use Kelvin.

The entire thing about "storm chasing saves lives" is complete bunk to give the PhD's moral authority over the amateur chasers who are in it for the thrill. Currently, warning times are around 15 minutes, with a fairly high false alarm rate. The miss rate on a tornado warning is actually quite low, due to the effect of the deployment of WSR-88D's on the national grid. As the WSR-88D's are upgraded to a dual-polarmetric configuration, we should be able to see more development and perhaps improve warning times. Scientists in the field are there to research atmospheric development for an interesting phenomena that we don't know all that much about. These field campaigns get a lot of press because they are neat- "Hey, we chase after tornadoes for a living". However, while they do produce actual science, the "saving lives" stuff gets overblown. Chuck Doswell (one of the original storm chasers) has addressed this topic on his blog: http://cadiiitalk.blogspot.com/2010/05/are-chasers-saving-lives.html If there's not a use for good field work in science, and that's not reason enough to do this field work, then meteorologists are just boned.

Mod this guy up. NASA will release the data in its entire form eventually, and in perpetuity once they get the first paper out of it. This is the same whenever NASA puts up a new satellite - they get the data, analyze it, publish the initial results, and release the entire record, for free, for anyone in the world to download. So there's an embargo period- it's not long, and it's not that significant. They are better at putting out free data (as is NOAA/NWS) then anyone else in the world- the Europeans and Chinese are exceptionally hard at getting data out of without paying for it or knowing someone behind the scenes. Anyone can download a GOES image or MODIS image from NOAA or NASA in the span of minutes to hours. It takes days (or months) to get SEVIRI or MERRA imagery from EUMETSAT.

Aerosols reflect more shortwave energy then they absorb in the longwave, contributing to a net negative forcing in the climate system. With a reduction in aerosol concentration, we'll have additional warming. This is a no-duh scientific principle that has been supported by direct instantaneous observations, versus the projected "future climates" based on model results that are not nearly as reliable, since they still rely on parameterizations of physical processes that we may or may not have a handle on. While the US Clean Air Act has really helped the air around us, with the industrialization of China and India (and lack of pollution controls) the net global effect may be minimal. That's the interesting thing to realize, as our industry gets cleaner, China gets as dirty as Cleveland in the 1920s and Detroit when there used to be industry.

There most likely is no problem. I actually AM a meteorologist (BS, MS, and finishing up my PhD) and these just look like some cumulus lenticularis- the formation mechanism is due to some waveform within the atmosphere that causes regular forms of condensation that appear like this. These are nothing really new, the sceintific basis is pretty good for these clouds to be listed. It's a 2-D wave pattern with a good airmass boundary. It's definitely neat, but it's not like it's earth-shattering cloud formation.

It's certainly possible. We haven't quite quantified it yet. But the short answer is, yes. Here's a link to a paper that studied the effects of a proposed wind farm in Kansas: http://www.atmos.uiuc.edu/~sbroy/publ/jgr2004.pdf They see lots of local effects, but little effects that go on to larger levels. Here's another link to another paper (in PNAS)... http://www.pnas.org/content/101/46/16115.full.pdf+html They say that there would be non-negligible impact in the climate due to wind power, but it would be better then current power generation. The fact of the matter is that there is always some effect. If you put a solar panel out in the middle of the field, you're changing the local albedo, absorbing more energy (especially in a desert, as they are generally white). This will cause some differences in total energy balance and may potentially change the weather patterns and water allocation. There are studies about the changes in albedo that have shown to have large impacts in local weather. Deforestation has the same thing happening in changing local wind patterns, and putting in a shit-ton (scientific term) of wind turbines would definitely have massive local effects on the meteorology. Would it be bad or good? Hard to say. But everything interacts with the system. Hope the papers help.

There are still good scientific applications for good old Fortran. Most research weather models are still written in it (because when you need to calculate seven partial differential equations over 10-second intervals for 48-hours for a grid that's 200x200x50, you need something that runs quick) and it's still relatively easy to understand. Plus, Fortran scales to MPI work pretty well. And when you're running grids like that, you want to be able to assign 40 processors to it so that your 48-hour model run actually completes in less then 48 hours.

You know, a lot of the climate and weather prediction models are open source. You can download the source code if you want, and run it on your own PC if you have certain compilers. Some links for you for your own perusal: Community Climate Model NASA GISS Model Weather Research and Forecasting Model Regional Atmospheric Modeling System As long as you have access to a Linux/Unix machine, you can get these models yourself. If you want to contribute, you can do so. Just know that you probably need to have taken graduate level courses in numerical methods and actually get the physical terms in the model to make changes that mean something. Science in this case is rather open. People can easily download these models and make changes to improve it if they needed to (or to test sensitivity, etc).