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Forrest Mims has a new paper in the works at Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society

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Forrest Mims III

Readers may well recall Forrest M. Mims III, one of whose principal interests has always been meteorology and environment, though he received notoriety when he was dumped as a columnist by Scientific American because he was not a Darwinist. His current paper can be read online here:

Abstract: A 30-yr time series (4 February 1990–4 February 2020) of aerosol optical depth (AOD) of the atmosphere, total precipitable water (TPW), and total column ozone has been conducted in central Texas using simple, highly stable instruments. All three parameters in this ongoing measurement series exhibited robust annual cycles. They also responded to many atmospheric events, including the historic volcanic eruption of Mount Pinatubo (1991), a record El Niño (1998), an unprecedented biomass smoke event (1998), and La Niña that caused the driest drought in recorded Texas history (2011). Reduced air pollution caused mean AOD to decline from 0.175 to 0.14. The AOD trend measured for 30 years by a light-emitting diode (LED) sun photometer, the first of its kind, parallels the trend from 20 years of measurements by a modified Microtops II. While TPW responded to El Niño–Southern Oscillation conditions, TPW exhibited no trend over the 30 years. The TPW data compare favorably with 4.5 years of simultaneous measurements by a nearby NOAA GPS (r2 = 0.78). The 30 years of ozone measurements compare favorably with those from a series of NASA ozone satellites (r2 = 0.78). In 2016, 194 comparisons of Microtops II and world standard ozone instrument Dobson 83 at the Mauna Loa Observatory agreed within 1.9% (r2 = 0.81). The paper concludes by observing that students and citizen scientists can collect scientifically useful atmospheric data with simple sun photometers that use one or more LEDs as spectrally selective photodiodes.

Forrest M.Mims III, A 30-Year Climatology (1990–2020) of Aerosol Optical Depth and Total Column Water Vapor and Ozone over Texas, https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-21-0010.1

Note: Here is some more of his work. He was named one of 50 best brains in science by Discover Magazine in 2008, despite the torrent of bigotry over his non-Darwinian approach to nature.

Comments
Columnists fired by SciAm are the real Nobels.polistra
February 22, 2022
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