[HN Gopher] A British garden's rainfall data 1988-2022 using cop...
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A British garden's rainfall data 1988-2022 using copper rain gauge,
notepad, pen
Author : DoreenMichele
Score : 129 points
Date : 2022-06-11 09:27 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.weatherbook.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.weatherbook.org)
| eterevsky wrote:
| foobarbecue wrote:
| In some places. In others, drought. A very complicated system
| but I think you're right that there's a net increase in
| precipitation expected overall globally.
| eterevsky wrote:
| Yes. That's true for the temperature as well. In most place
| the average temperature is growing, but some places are
| actually becoming colder.
| fertrevino wrote:
| I do not see that much of an upward trend, how did you notice
| it?
| eterevsky wrote:
| Here you go: https://imgur.com/a/fbt68er. I've removed the
| first and last year since they had incomplete data and did a
| simple linear regression. These are yearly totals from
| https://www.weatherbook.org/dash/3/totals
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Undersampled Linear regressions are pretty sensitive to
| noise points on the ends. Looks like the 90s were lower
| than next 20 years.
| easytiger wrote:
| They had "confirmation bias" affecting their perception
| eterevsky wrote:
| Confirmation of what? The belief that climate change is
| real?
|
| I posted a linear regression in a neighbor comment.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Yes, the UK is becoming wetter and the trend is expected to
| continue.
| easytiger wrote:
| Based on what? The inverse is true in my part of the UK.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Based on stats and forecasts.
|
| " _the UK has been on average 6% wetter over the last 30
| years (1991-2020) than the preceding 30 years (1961-1990).
| Six of the ten wettest years for the UK in a series from
| 1862 have occurred since 1998._ " [1]
|
| [1] https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/press-
| office/news/weat....
| gorgoiler wrote:
| I have a standard rain gauge. It always bothers me that I don't
| have two. Then I'd be able to measure my cumulative error
| properly.
|
| Meteorologists, as I learned the other day, were some of the
| early pioneers of a universal metric system.
| dna_polymerase wrote:
| Are they back to pen after going the classic Excel -> Evernote ->
| Notion -> Roam route or has it been pen & paper all the time? /s
| mseepgood wrote:
| What's the point in doing this? Don't environmental authorities
| and weather services record this already?
| dylan604 wrote:
| What's the point of reading HN, isn't there reddit already?
| ianai wrote:
| This started in 1988, too. Data was way more obscure in those
| days. Probably not really available like now until the 2010s.
| swayvil wrote:
| I've got a yardstick from 1988. You need a PhD to read it.
| It's barely euclidean.
| ellisv wrote:
| Weather is hyper local. In the US precipitation data are
| generally available at 1km grid resolution through combination
| of radar, satellite, and ground truth gauges -- these are good
| areal estimates but pretty much always very bad point
| estimates. There can be problems in data availability, and
| quality due to all sorts of things like bird migrations,
| clouds, and gauge malfunctions. Collecting your own data is
| cheap and easy.
| colechristensen wrote:
| As farmers, my family has always been interested in the
| weather for good reason. We have a few rain gauges about a
| mile apart and the difference between them is significant.
| You might get a tenth of an inch in one place and a half an
| inch a mile away.
|
| The synthetic precipitation data might be useful on a large,
| average scale, but it usually doesn't actually provide a
| particularly accurate measure of what actually happened on
| your land.
| ianai wrote:
| Gardening. You can look up stuff for an area, but you might
| have plants locally with specific needs. Or people with rain
| catchments.
|
| Our local monsoon season was weeks of great thunderstorms
| twenty years ago and is now a period of humidity. Stuff like
| this makes it "real." Aka resistant to gaslighting.
| swayvil wrote:
| I think these people are missing the broader implication.
| ianai wrote:
| Being?
| swayvil wrote:
| Taking a look for yourself is king.
| easytiger wrote:
| I used to help record weather measurements from a "weather
| station" in the UK growing up. It's a cultural thing. Lots of
| cultures _don 't_ have the same long term cooperative
| investments. Their lack of toil evident by their negative
| impact on society
| huhtenberg wrote:
| The "backstory" was on the Reddit post - the data came from
| OP's father who was recording daily rainfall just because,
| probably as an odd-ball hobby or a routine. The OP merely
| packaged it up in a form of a website.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/user/saulhudson80
| dubcanada wrote:
| What is the point in doing anything? Why cook, isn't there
| already cooks that do that? Why program? Isn't there already
| programmers who program? Why do woodworking? Walmart sells
| chairs and other wood products? Why do pottery? I can go to
| Etsy and buy it? Why own a fish tank? There is an ocean with
| plenty of fish in it? Why garden? There are huge farms that do
| that?
|
| What a silly question.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| I do it mainly because it is a tradition of the scientific
| gentry to take measurements and build almanacs. Think Reed's
| (nautical) or Wisden (cricket) but on a much more local scale.
| It's probably why the article references the fact that their
| gauge is made of copper -- taking pride in a sense of tradition
| and solidity by using a brassy looking scientific instrument
| made of metal. My own gauge is plastic but I mounted it on a
| solid oak stave. We try to follow in the footsteps of Kelvin,
| hiking to his waterfall with a hardwood case of glass
| thermometers etc.
|
| I would probably be into steampunk as an aesthetic if it were
| more hard scifi and less makebelieve. Compared to steampunk
| bric-a-brac, a copper rain gauge is steam punk science that is
| actually scientific, as opposed to an iPhone case with brass
| cogs glued to it.
|
| It serves a practical purpose too -- when you have a privet
| hedge and a lawn to care for and your climate provides rainfall
| on an intermittent basis, it's important to know when the soil
| needs some artificial millimetres on it to keep the foliage
| going.
| Nitramp wrote:
| There was some debate three years ago on whether insect
| populations were declining, with the prime suspect being modern
| pesticides.
|
| The most solid data source they found in Germany was a local
| club of enthusiast entomologists who had been collecting bugs
| using the same traps, locations, and methodology over the past
| 80+ years.
|
| The answer btw was yes, there was a marked reduction over that
| time frame.
| swayvil wrote:
| Maybe it's an epistemological issue. Firshand perception is
| realer than secondhand abstraction.
|
| Or maybe he just doesn't trust the government.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Rainfall is very, very site specific. So is temperature.
|
| If I drive 1km down the road, the temp goes up 3C in the
| summer, when it is 35C in the city, and 32C here.
|
| Why? I am close to a river, there are hills around me.
| Terrain makes a difference.
|
| Sometimes, I can see it rain an few km away, but not here.
| And the reverse is true, too.
|
| And beyond that, rain is not consistent. It's not as of
| someone turned on a faucet, and rain is coming from a perfect
| shower head, all perfectly distributed.
|
| It varies, fluctuates, terrain, makes a difference, for
| terrain effects wind patterns, causes air to rise or fall,
| etc etc.
| ianai wrote:
| There's a lot to be said for having less concrete and
| asphalt around.
| [deleted]
| some-human wrote:
| This applies especially in the UK, where it can be pouring
| with rain for an hour where I live, but beautiful sunshine
| 2 miles away where my brother lives. The country is an
| island with hills everywhere and a flat east coast. The Met
| office data doesn't really have the resolution wanted for
| some people.
|
| The adage if you don't like the weather in the UK, wait 5
| minutes, is also perfectly accurate.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| Yes. I live on the South Coast and notice temperature
| changes from driving just a few mile inlands (e.g. in
| winter, the difference between car windscreens icing up
| or not).
|
| > The adage if you don't like the weather in the UK, wait
| 5 minutes, is also perfectly accurate.
|
| I know what you mean, but three or four hours will almost
| certainly guarantee a change (especially when raining) as
| this gives westerly fronts from the Atlantic to pass
| through.
| swayvil wrote:
| We get strange predictions and dissonance regularly where I
| live. We barely trust the forecast anymore.
| t78236787878789 wrote:
| wiz21c wrote:
| They do but sometimes the data are behind walls...
| hestefisk wrote:
| A.k.a. IoH - Internet of Humans
| Yuioup wrote:
| Started gardening 5 years ago. Before that I never realized how
| messed up the climate was. Long period of drought mixed with
| intetmittent torrents. Last year was also a disaster year due to
| unusual temperature fluctuations.
| lettergram wrote:
| "Naturally occurring fluctuations" != "messed up climate"
|
| There's a reason prior to irrigation (and Hunter gathering)
| only a few regions in the world supported long-term human
| habitation.
| LoveGracePeace wrote:
| The Earth, who knew. Family moves from temperate climate to
| the desert, wonders why it's always so hot, must be climate
| change. The seas are rising, man checks web cams for sea side
| resorts around the world and photos from the past several
| decades, no change in sea levels, doesn't fit the narrative,
| must be wrong.
| ChrisClark wrote:
| I am completely baffled why we still have global warming
| deniers like this guy here. Just completely convinced by
| propaganda?
| grogenaut wrote:
| his statement isnt denying climate change, its just
| saying short term freaky weather happens. And people
| often use short term weather within statistical bounds as
| evidence of climate change when it is mor of a long term
| thing that is statistical to measure.
|
| Read his statement with the missing nod to consensus
| "while climate change is real" at the beginning.
| hammock wrote:
| What does it mean when dialogue can't be had without
| first incensing the air with the quasi-religious rites of
| "jabs are safe and effective," "climate change is real
| and manmade," "there is no evidence of widespread voter
| fraud," "peace be upon him" etc?
| whythre wrote:
| It does seem to be a weirdly ritualistic way of quickly
| signifying that 'I am on your team, I am not one of the
| crazy ones; however, I would still like to talk about
| [touchy subject] without you making baseless
| assumptions.'
| bscphil wrote:
| Your speculative explanation is incorrect, as is clear
| from this user's other comments:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30450710
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31559512
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31559404
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31559481
|
| This appears to be a bugbear for them.
| bragr wrote:
| Never discount disordered thinking.
| gspr wrote:
| It's exhausting. His thinking is literally a direct
| threat to human survival as we know it. Yet somehow, we
| accept this shit as part of the discourse. I don't see
| why we don't treat them like flat earthers or cultists.
| seabird wrote:
| koheripbal wrote:
| I am completely baffled why we still have people who
| confuse normal weather for indicators of climate change.
|
| Climate change is real, but it did not invent bad
| weather.
| flaviut wrote:
| These sorts of measurements aren't done on the basis of one
| person eyeballing some pictures or making observations
| about the weather around them.
|
| If you're serious about trying to understand the world
| around you, but don't trust others' data analysis, you can
| download the raw data & do the calculations yourself.
|
| Historical tide gauge data:
| https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/hazard/tide.shtml
|
| You likely want the CO-OPS 1-minute water level data.
|
| Historical daily weather station data:
| https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/land-based-
| station/global...
| lostlogin wrote:
| I think the second link is broken.
| maybelsyrup wrote:
| This is a great reply but these people aren't here
| because they want to learn; they're here the announce
| that they're better than you, and know The Truth. So, a
| person like this will take your tide data and just tell
| you it's false, or flawed, or ask with a wink whether you
| really can trust it, etc etc. They're not here for
| conversation, they're here for a monologue.
| kqr wrote:
| That's also the reason back in the 19th century you'd find
| hydrologists on every important project, no matter what it
| was about. Hydrologists just had to be really good (and among
| the first) statisticians.
| coffeeblack wrote:
| That's called weather, not climate.
| [deleted]
| easytiger wrote:
| And so it has been for 5000 years of recorded history
| rvba wrote:
| Why there isnt some "not sexy" statup that provides technology to
| build artificial lakes / water reservoirs? Just patch them in
| random places to collect water, plant some trees and it should
| help. Make it in a way that it just requires a small plot of
| land, so a group of people can acquire the plot, or even better -
| force the muncipiality to provide one.
|
| I am nit sure if such small reservoirs can help much, but it is
| always something.
|
| Last statup I heard was some company that put rubber balls on big
| water reservoirs in California (?) to try to limit evaporation. I
| wonder if this helped and if the decaying plastic didnt polute
| the water.
| vesinisa wrote:
| Help with what? This data is from the UK. They traditionally
| have to deal mostly with too _much_ rain as far as I know.
| seanhandley wrote:
| Yes... But think about, say, farming. Too much rain (or not
| enough) at the wrong time of year can devastate crops. Seeing
| variations on rainfall month by month show how seasonal
| patterns in the UK are changing.
|
| Droughts and floods are the real issue here.
| smcl wrote:
| You'd think so, but parts of England institute a "hosepipe
| ban" in dryer summers to reduce water usage - effectively
| saying "you can't water your garden or clean your car for 1
| month" or something. I imagine they're just being overly
| cautious though because, as you said, it does rain pretty
| frequently in the UK overall.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| The issue here is not really 'droughts' it's that the UK
| relies on constant rainfall and hasn't much storage
| infrastructure or, say, mountains producing melt water in
| summer.
|
| The UK is quite wet and becoming wetter so I think it will
| be down to adapting to more rain but perhaps less constant.
|
| The water distribution infrastructure is also notorious for
| being outdated and full of leaks...
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| It's cheaper for water companies to institute bans than to
| fix leaks and build capacity. Why waste potential profit!
| So what if lawns die, farms/gardens lose produce, it's not
| like the water companies need to care -- what you going to
| do harvest your own (you're not allowed!).
|
| Same with sewage, they don't bother building the capacity,
| just pay off the Tories and they allow it to be pumped raw
| into rivers and onto shores.
| rowanajmarshall wrote:
| > what you going to do harvest your own (you're not
| allowed!).
|
| It's absolutely legal to harvest rainwater in the UK for
| private use. Some councils even encourage it!
|
| Source: https://www.anchorpumps.com/blog/rules-
| harvesting-rainwater/....
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Some bounds on this
|
| 1) yes you can have a small 100l tank catching rain water
| for your garden, but you can not drink it. If it became a
| big tank it would become subject to planning and building
| control. 2) you need a permit to harvest ground water by
| digging a well or borehole. 3) you need a permit to
| entrap water in a pond and to build a dam for this
| purpose
| tobylane wrote:
| Too much for an area is often more to do with excess tarmac
| or compacted soil.
|
| https://metofficenews.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/uk-
| rainfal... White is 40-45 inches. That or greater is rare,
| the only dark blue in England is a national park famous for
| its lakes and rain. The third element of too much rain is
| that we like to complain about trivialities.
| trhway wrote:
| You can't do this today. Laws. The private ponds that you see
| are grandfathered.
| kevinbowman wrote:
| "Shade balls", there are 96M of them in (on?) a big Los Angeles
| reservoir : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shade_balls
|
| They are made from HDPE, with an additive to prevent UV-
| accelerated breakdown into bromates (which is what they are
| there to stop forming in the water, as well as to stop
| evaporation).
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| > Why there isnt some "not sexy" statup that provides
| technology to build artificial lakes / water reservoirs?
|
| The technology already exists. Bulldozer, excavator, concrete,
| explosives. Not not-sexy enough for you?
|
| > Just patch them in random places to collect water,
|
| Not sure what "patch" means here, but water is becoming
| increasingly regulated, and in a lot of places you can't just
| randomly build lakes and dam water even on property you own.
|
| > plant some trees and it should help. Make it in a way that it
| just requires a small plot of land, so a group of people can
| acquire the plot, or even better - force the muncipiality to
| provide one.
|
| Should help with what? I feel I'm missing the context you're
| replying to.
| bell-cot wrote:
| THIS. And it's regulated (though often under-regulated) for
| damn good reasons. Properly designing even a "little" dam is
| far more difficult that most people appreciate. And both
| construction and upkeep (which is necessary, _forever_ ) are
| really expensive. Maybe start reading here:
| https://practical.engineering/blog/2021/10/14/what-really-
| ha...
| kzrdude wrote:
| Is there a data download? Not saying there has to be, but if
| there is I'm sure it's fun.
|
| Anyone browsing (if there are multiple datasets eventually)
| probably wants to have some metadata about approximate location
| and climate of the location.
| 2b3a51 wrote:
| The first thing I looked for on the link was a download.
| Apparently not provided. I may (politely) email the author and
| ask if one is planned in the future.
| w0mbat wrote:
| If you like this, I have a great episode of Ripping Yarns for
| you, starring Michael Palin.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYpsz2eAKOs
| dorfsmay wrote:
| The person who created the site, whose father is the one who
| collected the data, posted and answers question on Reddit:
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/v92fu6/my_...
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