J07

Here's a turn up for the books, after Nov-April all coming in above average and with January being the warmest for 10 years and driest in history, we've finally seen a below average month here. These, as I mentioned on another thread, are far more common than in the UK. http://www.niwascience.co.nz/ncc/cs/monthly/mclimsum_08_05 http://www.niwascience.co.nz/__data/assets...194/0805sum.pdf (there are a few daft errors in the PDF file) All the main centres in NZ came out cooler than normal, but also sunnier and drier than normal. Clearly, the cool temperatures of this month have been skewed by clear, cold nights. This matches with increased frost recorded. In terms of the most interesting statistics: Extreme Wind Gust In a month of interesting weather statistics (if not single events), this is one I did not expect. You would not often find such a strong gust in autumn....most likely they would come August-October. It also is noteworthy that this gust was an easterly, as opposed to the westerlies that prevail in that region. The gust was a rather impressive 114mph at Mokohinau, easily overtaking the 96mph recorded in Wellington during ex-cyclone Funa in January. I was quite flabbergasted on seeing this. Cold Nights Some places came out with minima 3C below normal. A few locations (mostly inland and in the south) had maxima a few degrees below normal. In terms of maxima, Wanaka (inland town in the mountains) had its coldest May on record with mean daily highs of only 10C. Taupo (inland town near central plateau, about 800m ASL), in terms of mean daily temperatures had its coldest May ever, with a mean of 8C. Frosts Some inland locations had 24 days of ground frost. Extremely Sunny in the West Sunniest place was Hamilton, coming in with a rather stonking 180 hours of sunshine (this is a record for them). At this time of the year, that is really something, and it wouldn't surprise me if it came out sunnier than much of the UK this month; and given the daylength discrepancy that would be quite an achievement. Extremely Dry in Places Some of the statistics are hard to believe, for an autumn month. Several single digit rainfall totals. The most astonishing of all is 3mm at Motueka (top of the South Island) which accounts for only 3% of its average monthly rainfall! This becomes even more interesting, when we track back 6 months, and what do we find? Motueka, again, recording only 3mm of rainfall. With the dry summer, clearly they will have suffered a fair bit. And Wet in others... In terms of wetness, the east of the North Island, normally fairly dry, suffered a lot of rain with 200% of average recorded in places. Auckland also saw 84mm of rain in one day, with 25mm falling in 75 minutes. So, quite a contrast across the country, which is normally the case given the state of the topography. Where I can, I will try to compare with the UK November 2007 statistics. Last autumn to mid spring is the time of year when there is most difference between the respective UK/NZ climates. Mean temperatures: UK: 7C (1C above average) NZ: 10C (1C below average). Extreme temperatures: UK: Max temperature of 19C, Minimum temperature of -7C NZ: Max temperature of 22C, Minimum temperature of -8C. There is more variation in temperature across NZ, which is normal. Max snowfall in one event: UK: 8cm NZ: 48cm UK's was recorded at Sennybridge, NZ's at Albert Burn. This is 1300m ASL, so maybe that constitutes an unfair advantage! But if you have a station there....you've gotta use it! ---- Conclusions: Plenty of records broken across the board. On the whole, a fairly quiet month for singular events, but consistently very sunny and dry for many. It would have been extremely autumnal in the Waikato and Central Otago, both being sunny and cold, with snow falling in Otago and long periods of calm weather in Waikato to enhance the autumnal colours. :lol: Worth noting that there is a continuation of the trend that NZ is currently experiencing for increased sunshine hours. Every month comes in above average for almost everyone. I see the reverse of this in the UK, which in November seem to be picking out sunshine hours of 50-70 hours BUT with *increasing* temperature. Compared with NZ which is getting sunshine hours of 100-180 across the main cities, BUT with *decreasing* temperature. I believe this ties in well with the belief of many on this forum that British nights seem to be getting cloudier, and this is skewing mean temperatures upwards. Here, all the statistics for May point towards a month dominated by clear conditions allowing nights to cool and frosts to form, skewing mean temperatures downwards. This is all well and good, but during summer we had both increasing sunshine hours and above average temperatures. It seems fair to say that during those months, cool nights contribute less towards mean temperatures than in winter- given the longer daylight hours it is easier for a cool night to turn into a hot day. So it seems our upward trend in sunshine hours continues. I do wonder why this is. Synoptically, it is very hard, if not impossible, to get all of NZ under cloudy skies. Given the distinct mountainous boundaries and significant ranges lying all over the place, you cannot get gloomy low cloud across an entire island. But then it is hard to say whether our synoptic weather patterns are changing. Regardless of what happens, it seems like we always end up with one of the main cities (at least) coming out with record breaking, or top-5, sunshine hours. Can this be pinned on El Nino/La Nina? Well, last year came out sunny for many. Wellington is basically on track to equal last years 2200 sunshine hours, despite us having a La Nina in 2008 and El Nino during half of 2007. Elsewhere, someone mentioned the Antarctic Dipole and how that may have an effect. I have no idea what that is.

We had a prolonged strawberry season here but it's just come to an end. Doesn't feel right eating them in winter anyway.

Are those really blunders? They never get thunderstorms right? And you're not whining? Can we be sure that what the Met Office provides on the website is the extent of their radar network? Remember that they were reluctant for sometime to put up radar online before the BBC started doing it, and then there was no point withholding it any longer. Even if the network were to be upgraded, weather radars are extremely expensive. I think we forget that forecasters have deadlines. They don't have the luxury of "waiting for the next run" before putting out a definitive forecast, they have to act when they have to act.

Think positive....before you know it, high pressure will be all over the model outputs with no end in sight, and many will be saying (where did this come from?).

Having read that, it's quite an achievement. I like how it doesn't shy away from technicalities to a great extent, yet also remaining readable. Brought back a lot of stuff from university- I found his "second term" to the uncertainty equation very interesting. It's obviously not meant for the general public but I still think most people with an interest in the subject could follow pretty well. The exception being when he introduces equations! Most people are not going to know what a Lagrangian is and even if they try to eyeball the algebra it won't make any sense due to unfamiliarities - primarily tensor notation (though it seems to me that he does not actually use Einstein notation). However, I don't think the article suffers for it, and I agree with Zee- brief but authorative! In fact, that's the most illuminating string theory text I can remember reading. He briefly mentions renormalisation, this is a very interesting subject in itself, even more so considering it's collapse in the face of gravity.

I'm not saying he's just about anybody, I'm saying his views may not reflect the consensus of opinion. This does not necessaily make him wrong, but it does have the effect of the public believing that these ideas are quite generally accepted and further along the road than they really are. I think I read Hyperspace when it came out. I don't tend to read popular science anymore, it's expensive and lacking depth. A textbook will last for years and years, a popular science book maybe only a week. I did find the Elegant Universe great fun to read though, it was pretty gripping and intriuging. Added an attachment quickly to show an external mention of string theory. I do not know if Zee is a follower of String Theory, but given what he says here I suspect not ("thought by some to be the theory of everything"). It is interesting though, it's a 500 page book on QFT and string theory gets a mention. That in itself does say that it has gained some sort of acceptance. However, it only takes up about 5 pages of the book, in other words about 1%. This I would take as a reflection of its relative *in-importance* compared with QFT, but also that it is a very large and advanced subject (the text is meant to be a graduate level book on QFT). The footnote says to refer to E. Witten's "Reflections on the Fate of Spacetime" for a brief but authorative introduction to string theory. If you could dig it up, might be worth reading. Finally, here's a book that might be worth picking up. Roger Penrose's Road to Reality. 1000 pages! It seems that it's not a standard text book and not a standard pop sci book. I remember flicking through a copy once, it is bloody big! It would be nice if he's got a good balance between depth and readability. If you ever get the chance, best check it out. Amazon hopefully do a "look inside". It's one of those that I suspect will last a long time- value for money! And cover a lot of interesting topics without being utterly inaccessible (I think it is meant for the general public).

Phew! British houses do have a tendency to be very stuffy I agree.

Puts me off too, that's why I only do it a few weeks before harvest :lol: And I mean pee around them, not on them directly...not that it matters. I've heard of people (I stress the "heard of"!) who use human turds in their compost. Not keen on that myself, seems an ideal way to transmit disease. And the yuk factor would be even more overwhelming! Graupels, just don't plant seeds like tomatoes, peppers, watermelons, cucumbers or chilis now as you certainly won't get a crop this season. Someone mentioned sweetcorn, I might be wrong but I think it may be a touch late for that also (from seed).

Remember to pee around your cabbages, that should keep fertiliser costs marginally down. And seaweed is always free

You have Aircon in Tonyrefail?! In your car or your house?

I think Lemons don't mind frost all that much. At least, they can handle ground frost, not sure about air frost. However, given your location I would imagine that neither is all that common. I had never heard of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archontophoenix before you mentioned it. :o I also never knew there were quite so many hardy palms in the world. True that pineapples can survive, but they won't fruit. Though you can get "red pineapples" now, which is some sort of infertile variety that is grown commercially in Northland. A plant which would do well for you is the Pineapple Guava (Feijoa). It's the Southern Hemisphere season for them (just coming to an end) so they may pop up in small quantities at specialist food stores. It's from the South American highlands and would do fine in the UK I think. Lovely looking tree also.

With regard to "if" early on, it seems that's only relevant to your initial paragraph. If hundreds of particles are being found in string theory that's not especially important either. You can superimpose particles on top of each other in many different proportions. No one knows what ones exist and what don't. For example, there is a postulated particle called the Neutralino, the most stable superparticle. There are hundreds of papers around which give varying compositions of it; it's built on 4 different particles, I can't remember what in total but two of them are Winos and Binos. Every assumption that the particle has a certain make-up is built upon many, many other assumptions. People don't even know the exact values of the parameters in mSugra. String Theory is just a typical example of barging through exotic physics, and getting away with it for so long because the theory is often untestable and the mathematics so tenuous in places. "If you combine Einstein's equations (gravity), with Maxwell's (electromagnetic) and Yang-Mills (weak and strong nuclear), you can unify almost all forces, particles, sub-atomic particles, quantum particles etc etc in a Riemann tensor." And exactly how do you "combine" them? You cannot go about "combining" general relativistic equations with any nuclear force without making some pretty enormous assumptions and assertions. Tensors are a mathematical entity, and do not necessarily bare resemblance to reality. In fact they have the potential to be quite esoteric and divorced from the real world in the hands of pure mathematicians (not that they care). Michio Kaku's book is another that is not taken as gospel truth. Honestly, scientific books that are held above all others and seldom argued with are not common. In this field, the "phone book" by Kip Thorne, John Wheeler and someone else is one of those. Hyperspace and the Elegant Universe would be considered science fiction by many (though I admit very entertaining bedtime reading). Can I find a theory that comes close to string theory? No, to research adequately on this topic is pushing impossible. Without a PhD in physics I would just be subjecting myself to little more than propaganda. I know what little I know about particle physics by dragging my I have a problem through the groundwork for years without ever getting into the true depth of the mathematics. I then read Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell, despaired and basically gave up. It's too hard. We really are at the mercy of scientists, and there's a lot to be said for the Science of Self-Promotion. And certain people involved in String Theory have mastered it. Go to Arxiv.org and search for some exotic physics, have a look at a paper and then you will see the depth of theories that are around, the variations within the theories, the problems and so on. It's just not as simple as we've been told, and we'll never really understand the nuances and complexities.

You're making a lot of claims which are not backed up by the reality, and I think your enthusiasm is carrying you away slightly! We're certainly not discovereing hundreds of anything, especially not forces- of which there are only 4. You claim that string theory is better than any other. Why is this? On what evidence? The problem is that String Theory has big issues. It has never made verifiable predictions, it has never been tested and come out trumps. Apparently, it is mathematically elegant. How can I argue with this...other people know better than me. I personally could not penetrate QFT to any extent when at university so I don't see the beauty in it. Compare this with the unification of the electro-weak force, which came out trumps. Only when String Theory has done something like this can it be lorded over all others. Until then, it may well just be a beautiful, mathematical theory which is little more than a toy, and which has no relevance to the real world. I don't like the way that popular science has jumped on it so quickly. It seems the buzzwords like "extra dimensions" are such good money makers that why wait until the theory has been verified before flogging the book? The sad result is that the theory has a much stronger reputation amongst the general public than it does in science. That is a bit worrying. There are many hurdles which need to be overcome before we start worrying about heaps of dimensions that may not be needed. Example, the fundamental forces: We haven't unified the strong force with any other yet. We haven't even found the strong force boson yet. The issue with unifying the strong force is that it behaves so oddly compared to the others; like an elastic band it is stronger with increasing separation. That's an issue. Furthermore, we don't yet even have a quantum field theory for gravity. The Standard Model, expanded with one of the less exotic theories out there becomes a variant Supersymmetry, or mSUGRA (minimal supergravity). Like all other SUSY theories this creates lots more particles to discover to begin with (thank God for the LHC ). However, SUSY models themselves create something in the region of 100 additional parameters. mSUGRA cuts this down to about 5 additional (various superparticle coupling constants and the like) and that's the *minimal* one! And, again, SUSY is not loved by all.... The point is there are far too many theories out there for anyone other than a particle physics researcher to decide what is best and what is not. String Theory is a huge, huge leap when there are other problems to solve beforehand. Frankly, it could still take us decades to unify the bloody strong force with anything. Sadly, popular science book publishers don't see it this way at all.

Positive thinking Will be good to see how the lemon tree goes that's for sure. I remain unconvinced that it can fruit successfully in most of the UK. Though I did once think otherwise (think I mentioned this another time). They are very common in back gardens over here, but they don't like the South Island, except for the northern parts (which is NZ's sunniest area). Christchurch is about the southern limit and you just don't see them around Dunedin or Invercargill in general. And those locations have a similar climate to NW England (Summer highs about 20C, winter highs about 10C, approx 1500 sunshine hours per year and rainfall from 800-1100mm). I don't know why people don't grow them down there. I don't know what the limiting factor is. Certainly, pot planting and greenhousing is workable just like many other plants. Europe has many lemon trees in pots and they fruit fine. But I'm not sure it's the best way. The reason is that the roots tend to extend out as far as the drip-line of the leaves. This is generally much wider than most pots. It could be that lemons (like peppers) are a specimen that likes having their roots restricted but I must say it's not what I've heard, and I've always had to be very careful digging around lemon trees since their roots can be quite sensitive and shallow. I wish you good luck and if you succeed, I'll be on the bandwagon trying to get everyone back home to have a lemon tree Don't know much about olives, just they need several months of consistent high temperatures to fruit successfully and they can handle a good old cold blast fairly easily. Not sure how they manage months of grey skies and cool conditions though.

For God's sake man, everytime you say something is "pure conjecture" we can be sure you're spouting from the wrong orifice. Do some proper research before making such claims!

Almost everything in small scale physics does this. If Newtonian mechanics is found to be utterly wrong at quantum levels, why on earth would a philosophical meandering from some medieaval monk have any relevance? If quantum mechanics contradicts our notions of common sense (and it does) then it throws a lot of philosophy AND intuition out of the window. Uncharted waters, how do we know what old notions we can trust anymore? For the record, I think string theory is not very good at all. However, we really are just paddling in the pool here- there's only so far that popular science can take people in understanding this stuff. There comes a point where you *have* to get stuck into the mathematics because we can no longer explain things to the "layman" since there are no physical analogues that you can link the theories to. eg, simple example is electrons orbiting a nucleus. How do you explain this to the man on the street? The old model of the planets going around the earth? Well, we can't do that because it simply isn't right, it's not the same thing and it distracts from the truth. The problem is that we can't explain electrons orbiting a nucleus because it isn't anything like what we see in our day-to-day lives. The theory is only of any use once you understand the maths. Sad, but true. I mean, the idea of electrons floating around in a "cloud of probability", or something along those lines....it's useless on an intuitive sense. Quantum physics has the fortunate situation of being very "sexy" but the unfortunate situation of being so out of this world, so alien to our standard existence that it descends very rapidly into abstract mathematics contained in a theory which (to quote Feynmann) "no one understands". Frankly, in this wierd world I think Mr Occam has long outlived his use.

I would fail all the UK beaches on account of the water being too cold! B) B) (It could be argued that I am a sissy)

Service Temporarily Unavailable The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later. --- Bloody computers....and I was only trying to recreate the big bang!

Of course anti-matter does exist. It was postulated by Dirac and discovered a few years later. Originally treated as "electron holes", they turned out to be "positrons". Now it turns out, by the standard model, that every particle has its own antiparticle. In some cases, a particle is its own antiparticle. On Feynmann diagrams (an intuitive scribble of particle interactions), antiparticles are marked as going backwards in time. Though really you don't have to think of it like that. For the most part, when it comes to charged particles, their antiparticle just has opposite electrical charge. Nothing terribly crazy about that. If you claim that anti-particles don't exist and that they are "pure conjecture", why would anyone put faith in your opinions on the big bang?

Good luck with the Brandywines, well worth persevering with....they can be classics

Yup, I heard that in northern France there were tomatoes rotting on the vine, bit of a disaster there in places too. People often say that tomatoes need 8-10 hours of sunshine per day to ripen properly. It's pretty hard to get that in the UK over a sustained period, but I'll bet modern varieties would be OK. You can get hold of heirloom tomatoes specifically bred for cold nights, I think they are Russian. There's also the Tigarella (spelling?!) I tend to stick with heirlooms where I can, even though some of them are pushing it a bit (Brandywines are a classic B) ).

I reckon salads will handle that sort of stuff OK. Tomatoes though, it could knock them back significantly. Not really what you want at this time of the year. I am curious as to how they went last year? Sunshine would have been pretty low and I'd be surprised if they ever ripened properly.

I personally would fleece them up for sure. Do you have fruit on the tomatoes? If so, I'd be pretty concerned about getting several cold nights in a row.

Regardless, these fairly remote islands...and they can have broadband!

I'm well impressed that you guys (presumably) have broadband internet. There's still plenty of people over here in cities stuck on dial-up.