If you are a teacher looking for a fun back-to-school activity, you should try the Lightning Game. This interactive simulation offers students a chance to learn about the charges in clouds that produce cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-ground lightning. Also included are explanations easy enough for young students to understand. Interestingly, even older students (and maybe adults beginning to learn about the weather) can benefit from seeing this wonderful simulation.

Lightning Lesson Plan originally appeared on About.com Weather on Wednesday, July 28th, 2010 at 16:43:39.

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Supercomputers are powerful. The Pleiades supercomputer at NASA is more powerful than over 80,000 desktop computers. But how can these help forecasters? A recent study completed using the Pleiades has proven successful in helping to advance hurricane warning times...read more

How Supercomputers Help Forecasters originally appeared on About.com Weather on Monday, July 26th, 2010 at 08:08:00.

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1. In a release from NOAA, officials stated that last month's combined global land and ocean surface temperature made it the warmest June on record at 61.1°F (16.2°C) compared to the 20th century average of 59.9°F (15.5°C).
2. June was also the warmest on record any April-June and January-June periods.
3. In the United States, June was also the eighth warmest June on record with higher-than-normal precipitation.

A Triple Whammy of the Warmest Global Temperatures on Record originally appeared on About.com Weather on Friday, July 23rd, 2010 at 14:05:03.

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In 1974, researchers at Harvard University began a study on residents of six U.S. cities to see if some common air pollutants had any effect on the lungs and heart. The study, known as the Six Cities Study, focused on pollutants such as sulfur dioxide and particulate air pollution. The result? Residents living in cities with more smog had a greater risk of heart diseases compared to those living in cities with higher air quality.

The good news? It appears that human behavior (not smoking, getting exercise) and indoor air quality have a far greater impact on your pulmonary and cardiovascular health.

The Link Between Cardiovascular Disease and Air Pollution originally appeared on About.com Weather on Monday, July 19th, 2010 at 08:30:25.

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The seasonal drought outlook for the United States was released this week indicating that drought conditions are expected to persist throughout the summer and into fall. In fact, the Climate Prediction Center says the drought will worsen in Arizona and New Mexico. One of the problems is that the summer monsoon did not provide the yearly relief that it should have this summer. Usually, even though it is expected that these states are dry, there is some summer replenishment with the summer monsoons. This year is different. Also in trouble? Most of Northern Nevada and parts of California. Click on the image for a closer look.

A Dry Heat in Arizona? It Will Only Get Worse... originally appeared on About.com Weather on Sunday, July 18th, 2010 at 07:35:29.

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I read an article recently about a study completed by Stanford University researchers with my mouth agape. The article, which proposes that anyone that doubts climate change and global warming are real, are, (ahem) shall we say...ignorant? The official word is that these global warming doubters are "lacking scientific expertise" and are "less prominent as climate scientists". Translation? Well, let's just say that if I were to reword this, it may offend you. It is like the big kids in school calling all the others "dummies".

What astonished me most was that there had to be a study done to prove this. Are we "studying" ourselves to death? I am no climatologist. I do not even pretend that I would know enough about Earth's complex climate system to draw accurate conclusions about the future of our precious Earth. But the one thing I do know is that global warming is too often confused with climate change. Please, oh please, do not confuse climate change with global warming. The media already does. Don't you do it too. Even the Stanford press release calls it climate change. Even so, this could still, without a doubt, rank as one of my all-time favorite scientific studies.

A Polite Method to Slam the Intelligence of Global Warming Doubters originally appeared on About.com Weather on Tuesday, July 13th, 2010 at 20:48:51.

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Heatwaves can be defined as weather that is excessively hot for an extended period of time. Often accompanied by high humidity, it can be hard to escape the heat without going inside to use the air conditioning. But this reliance on air conditioning to keep us cool could be leading to an acceleration of problems. According to Stanford University, these heat waves may no longer be a short-term problem...They will be the norm with more temperature records broken every year. For those that remember, the temperatures in the summer of 2008 were also very excessive. Based on the last few years, are we already on the path to a warmer planet? If so, when will these heat waves become the norm? Read more from Stanford University.

Northeast Heatwave Just a Preview of the Future originally appeared on About.com Weather on Friday, July 9th, 2010 at 15:36:20.

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