The greenhouse effects not working or what?

18. april 2011... Looking out of my bedroom window... snow outside in late April and my woolen socks in the foreground

I somehow thought spring was coming couple of weeks ago - but I was wrong - terribly wrong.

Yesterday I actually was out on my racer bike but this morning we had some brand new snow in the city!

My new watch

Just to help me following the deadlines for all my projects!

..............

On a lecture in meteorology last Monday the Meteorologis Einar Sveinbjörnsson made diagram shoving the average wind in Reykjavik from year to year since 1940 something. And it showed how much it have decreased since then. He said the reason was all the new city building in Reykjavik. For comparison he was talking about the two airplanes. One in the middle of Reykjavik and the other in Keflavik where there are not so many big buildings as is in Reykjavik. He suggested we would look at some real data for this.

In Iceland all weather data is very reachable since it is all on the web page of the Icelandic Meteorologic Office so I checked it out. I will not describe why but I used the data for Reykjavik (not the airport) and for a small town, called Stykkishólmur.



Ég svindlaði örlítið og tók ekki flugvellina, heldur Reykjavík og síðan Stykkishólm til samanburðar. Hvor það er alveg eins og flugvellirnir er reyndar ekki alveg ljóst en niðurstaðan er merkileg samt.

Rauða línan er meðaltalsvinur fyrir 5 ára meðaltalsvind í Reykjavík og sú bláa er fyrir Stykkishólm. Það er greinilegt að línan fellur verulega fyrir Reykjavík og mun meira en fyrir Stykkishólm. En það sem er kannski undarlegast í þessu samhengi er hvað línan fyrir síðustu 15 árin er lík fyrir Stykkishólm og Reykjavík en þá minnkar vindurinn verulega á báðum stöðum. Það sem sker Reykjavík helst úr er e.t.v. það hvað meðalvindurinn minnkar mikið á áttunda áratugnum í Reykjavík á sama tíma og hann er að aukast lítið eitt í Stykkishólmi.

Skiing with my rescue team

I have been long enough in the rescue team with out going skiing with the people there. Finally I managed to go skiing with some of the newbies there in Blafjoll area where we went almost 20km. Great day in variable weather. The weather was not always bad in the beginning when Sigþóra came smiling but still complaining over my continuous photography.



And then again the weather was not so good and people were falling down all over the place.

Not doing so badly

Igla... the monster worm eating my trees!

I'm perhaps not doing so badly. There are weekly exams or so in two of the courses. I have not yet got any result from one of those courses but I have got test results from the other one. And I can say I'm not doing so badly there at all!

In the environmental course I'm working on a project about the climate change regime with 5 other people. Before I started this study I had no idea what those International regimes really were but now I'm reading the UNFCCC document and tht Kyoto Protocol to find out the norms of the regime. I hope I have some success in that.

The photo above is related to the climat change. That insect is coming more and more common in my forestry in Myrdalur. That worm will change to a butterfly or some kind of an ugly moth but not before it has eaten some leafs or one tree of the tree is small. Since it is really getting warmer in Iceland those creatures are becoming more and more common in the south part of the country and even they are beginning to spread over the whole seashore of the country.

What did you learn in school today

Anthropocene

What have you done?

I have some doubt about if the courses I'm attending make any integrated knowledge base I can use in the future but two of them connected surprisingly this morning.

One is about history of the Earth and the professor holding the lecture began telling us about a new article he is writing about the newest period he think has begun some decades ago and he wanted to call it "Anthropocene". That is the age of the human being and began when the man started to have serious effect on the Earth, effect that will never go back.

Later I was reading an article in the environmental course and there was talked about this Anthropocene as some kommon knowledge!

Better now

The illness in first week of the year was really very bad. I got high fever, almost 40°C and had this debate with the illness for the first week of the year.

And now I'm the schoolboy. I'm not sure what on Earth I'm doing there but I hope it will be OK. I'm now in four classes and they are all somehow different and the people in them as well. Two of them are geology courses and one is geology. The fourth is from the Environment and natural resources line. That is the line I' going for. The difficult thing is that I think I have to quit one of the courses and at least until yesterday I liked least the environmental course. That course is teach in English and it is very different from the other courses and in that course I Have to think a little bit different than in the other courses. But perhaps that is the best. I don't know exactly. This blog in English is moreover at the moment some playground for me to practice my English writing. I just hope I'm not totally hopeless in that!

Last Friday I went with some of the students from the environmental line to a science trip to the Icelandic electric power company Landsvirkjun. It was strange to be there a guest since I used to work for them as a consultant. The people I met there didn't know me at this time. I got to know some of the other students. They are a little bit strange as myself so that's perhaps not so bad.

More things to tell about... on the photo in the beginning of this blog entry is me and Anna Maria when we went on out bikes along the shoreline in Reykjavik yesterday. Below is a photo from my current knitting project. A new brown sweater that is supposed to have a hood. I will be a renewal of my favorite sweater that has become teared down on the sleeves.

A new year beginning with illness

I have been busy for the last couple of days or more.

Christmas time was just great. I was at my sister's home on Christmas eve (24th of December) and on Christmas day my people including Anna Maria came to my home and had some icelandic traditional smoked lamb meat for dinner - called hangikjöt.

On Second Christmas day I was with Anna Maria at her house with her boys and her mother. All went very well. The days that followed I was very busy selling fireworks for moneymaking for the rescue team I participate in.

On New Year's Eve I in a great party with Anna Maria's family and now I have my first illness of the year. I'm not very often ill but I began feeling something not so good in my stomach yesterday when visiting my brother. I had to leave very early to go home and throw up and lie in my bed with fever as well as the throw ups.

Since it was coming out of both ends it is something we call Gullfoss and Geysir here in icealnd. Geysir going uppwards but Gullfoss (The Golden Waterfalls) is going downwards.

What is the matter with Christmas lights that can't be turned on after hours of preparation

All the Christmas lights in the living room at my apartment

Some days ago I was trying really hard to make my home more Christmas like. In the morning I went to a shop in Reykjavik and bought some indoor Christmas lights on a sale with a 30% discount. I thought the discount was because there were only few days to Christmas and most people put those lights up in beginning of December. I just thought it was a bargain but I didn't know it was just some junk lights not working at all!

I put plastic suckers to the window and fixed the lights with them. Before I started I tried the light series and yes it was working just great. All colors of lights. Then after one hour work I could just finish half of the lights since I didn't have enough suckers for fixing them to the window. Before I went to the shop again I wanted to see how marvelous the lights would be so I turned them on and... nothing happened. Nothing at all did happen. I just had some ugly dark bulbs made of glass and plastic in my window. Not Christmas like at all.

I was not sure if I wanted to go to the shop just crazy and claim for new lights or if I should just throw this garbage out of the window and just use old fashioned candle lights not depending on Electric at all. But before I could do either of this I had to take down those stupid lights as I did. And of course... when I was in a bad mood scraping down the last lights the whole series turned on. I'm not sure if I was more disappointed or surprised. Since the suckers were more or less still on the window I just threw all the lights up again and afterwards I bought some more suckers. I also found from last year the very beautiful lights made of full wool from my sister and with some candle lights and the christmas houses I also have I just think it is not so bad at all.

Lunar Eclipse

When the Moon was almost orange on 21st of December 2010.

It was cold... terribly cold. I got this great idea (or was it bad idea) yesterday. I should take some photos of the Lunar Eclipse since I'm unemployed at the moment so I have all the time in the world.

I read the main shadow would start making The Moon dark at 6:30 in the morning so I had to wake up very early. I went to sleep shortly after 10 o'clock and I woke up at 5AM. I made hot water for Swizs Miss chocolate drink since I knew it would be very cold. I had some worries about the long waiting time for the eclipse to finish so I took some wool with me so I could just do some knitting while waiting. I went off from my home at 6 AM and I had to stop and return home again after just 200m drive since I both forgot my down jacket (absolute must because of the cold weather) and my forehead light (also a must because of the darkness).

I drove outside of Reykjavik the road toward Krisuvik. I was almost to late because the eclipse was starting when I stopped the car on a place I thought would be preferable for my astronomical observation. In the beginning it was preferable but after one hour or so a couple of strong lights appeared not far a way and was in a nearby mine I had forgot. Well, the lights were in opposite direction from The Moon so it was not a total catastrophe.

I put my camera with my longest lens on the tripod. 300mm with 1.4 teleconverter so I had 420mm telescope lens. When the shadow appeared on the moon I also put my Celestron astronomical telescope in use and unfortunately the cold began to bite my hands, my feet and my face and finally my body. I was drinking my hot cocoa but nevertheless I was colder and colder. Finally I decided to have the engine running and also in dawn the temperature rose for couple of Celsius degrees I think. I did finsh the photography project but it was far to cold to do any knitting! My hands were freezing most of the time. I also was more busy doing the photography work than I had expected.

I just hope I can do something of the photos but the photo above is just one of them. I do not regret doing this and I'm pretty sure I would be devastated if I had not gone. In that case I would be thinking of all the wonderful photos I did not take!

In all I was watching The Moon (and also The Venus) for more than three and a half hour so it was quite a job I did there.

About Venus, I think I saw it was not full as the moon. It was about half at that time. I could clearly see that in my astronomical telescope.

Below is one photo that shows how the moon was disappearing during the Eclipse.