Weather for the AT

Part 1 the Seasons

Most if on all our external skin detailing is geared to the weather, ok the look, and feel is massive, but the weather is all-encompassing, get it wrong and the building will fail.

So in this series of CPD lectures, I want to outline just what the weather is, the power it can muster and just how we can predict some of the weathers force by good observation looking at the past, and understanding some basic weather law.

This first lecture is all about the Solar System, what you ask, why do we have to look at the stars, well its not the stars, just our immediate part of the solar system, our tilt, orbit and the moon. All three form the basis of all-weather.

The first point of interest is the tilt, Earth in its formation was hit by another planet, astronomers call it Theo, and the earth at this point in time Proto Earth. The collision between the two planets pushed the earths axis into a tilt of 23.4 degrees away from the Earths orbital Plane and left enough debris to allow the moon to form giving the second point of interest in our view of the weather. with an axis of 5.4 degrees away from the earth's orbital plane. The spin we can only assume was also a byproduct of the collision.

Our second point of interest is the orbit itself. Most pictures and solar maps show a circular orbit, but this is so far from the truth, with earth having an elliptical orbit the sun centred not at the middle of the orbit. the nearest point is roughly 90 million mines and the farest point 93.4 million miles

Our  next point of interest is the direction of the tilt, the collision between  Proto earth and Theo pushed the tilt into a particular direction. in that its alined along the longer centre line of the ellipse.

The closest point the earth gets to the sun occurs in early January,when the northern hemisphere is pointing away from the sun and the far point happens in early July when the northern hemisphere points towards the sun

The earth's orbit now gives us the fourth point which is a combination of the orbit, the tilt, the direction of the tilt and the sun not being centred on the suns orbital path to give the fourth point, the seasons themselves. As we discussed earlier, at its apex at both ends of the ellipse, the tilt is either pointing towards the sun, the northern hemispheres summer, and away from the sun the southern hemispheres summer. Add to this the distance for the northern hemispheres hight of summer. 

The difference in distance way from the sun ( 94 million miles away from the sun, called to aphelion or just over 90 million miles, the perihelion, is the reason why the north has a mild summer and the southern hemisphere a rather hot summer. it is also the reason for the daylight change, and the often confusing time  changes each country has.

This difference is what  helps drives the weather, our orbit is fixed for the next million or so years, so is the tilt, although both will slowly change, as will the distance between the earth and the sun, and the sun itself will change too, but the time scales for all these events is very large at millions of years.

The moon is also a major driver for our weather, its orbit and mass drive the tides and pulls the earth's oceans around the planet, which has such a huge impact on the weather, when these tides link with the seasons.

The season are not a wandering phenominan, they are fixed, but how the earth interacts with the seasons is part of a wider picture, of circulating air currents, the mass of the planet, the amount of water with its own currents, both local to land mass, and the larger current that seems to flow around the planet in a never ending loop,  the ice coverage and its complicated relation in regulating the earths weather. plus the moons effect on the earths oceans.

I will look at these areas in more detail in future lectures, but for now all I wanted to do was show the basis of the seasons, the difference between the north and south, and the importance of the moon. To understand the rest of the earth weather machine, as its often referred to, this simple basis of the earths relation to the sun and our moon has to be understood, by any AT wanting to detail correctly, 

So this evenings lecture via my nightly blog on stitcher was from the Technology Today podcast, episode 10, re the eight small satellites that cover the globe via the Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System(CYGNSS) aims to improve extreme weather prediction. ... In orbit.

I am going to claim 1 hour for this podcast together with another hour researching the technology. Why you might ask, well it's all about the data, and there's lots of it, all helping to provide assistance in predicting the intensity of any hurricane as it hits land, and in what direction.

Is this important, well yes, after all, it's my job not only to teach students about data but also to help them detail against it. so in my book, this is a straight 2 hours cpd

Weather, Data , & the planet Earth

I have not blogged for a few weeks, its been sort of busy, with end of year, sorting marking and working out how I can lecture at two colleges. So many slides and lecture notes to prepare.

I have taken Google wholesale into my work pattern, Apple just does not cut it, they are so private, I understand why, but I need to share, so google it is. But this brings me onto a new web page, I so like Sites.Google.com the new version is so easy to use, it still lacks some function, but I can easily use it to create a new site I have made. To this end I purchased Scays.co.uk from the Domains.google.com site, its so easy, and linking it to the new web page just some simple copying of the URL and within about a minute I was up and running. The site is being developed, I want to allow better access to my lectures and slide, it is a work in progress, but it may change.

So what else, I have a major research project trying to understand the weather, how we can look at weather patterns and use the data to help buildings project, weather the weather !, Again its still early day's but open up a lot of different routs from storing building data, to something so simple as, can I give a building an email address. I had to think long and hard on this, but eventually I ground it down to a simple need, if my building needs to communicate with other buildings in a simple mesh to hear about incoming weather patterns how does it do it, and how can other building know were my building is located, and what relationship does it have in it's actual position to all the other buildings.

I wondered about using its actual easting and northing, that might work, or perhaps a simple address, the first line of any address plus the post code, that puts it in common with the postal service and its position. but its a tad long, perhaps easting & northing is simpler.

Storing all this data is the first big hurdle, I have no idea on the actual amount and given building might want to store, I am in talks with several people but as yet the life of a building might be 60 years or more, thats 60x365 or 21915 day or 31536000 hours say we store 5000 separate bits of data every minute, thats 5000x60 or 300,000 bits of sensor data over the 60 years, thats 31536000x300,000 or a staggering 90,000,000,000 data bits over its life time 90bn bits, thats just one building. magnify that by a smart city.

To that extent I am now researching methods of storage, Google is looking very good, with a service called IOT CORE, it's still in beta but it looks very good.

Heritage is also featuring very high in all of this, looking at the way older materials differ to new materials in their performance.

Todays picture is a sketch I made to understand an eaves detail on an old building, and how to water proof it.

Time Lapse Video - So much to see

I am a massive fan of Time Lapse video, I think its an excellent way to teach construction, the number of site videos out there is well worth trawling. But this video is all about weather, and shadow, its effect on a building and how the building deals with it, although the last part is so up the the lecturer to explain, I take my students on a walk though the old Birmingham to show this.
But for the mean time, take a look at how the weather creeps in, and brightens up, plus the shadows.

Weather seasons and Shadow Length

I am reversing things today, normally I add my little bit on todays photo last, but todays photo is the main theme of todays notes. It was, whilst I was driving back from Tenbury Wells, or ir it just Tenbury, that I noticed that the hop fields are being planted and restrung, so what I here you ask, well its all part of the weather, and the natural cycle of things, and my natural love of all thing beer related.

I have mentioned the use of weather as part of detailing so many times, but driving along I just saw the fields and the long rows of poles with the long strings that the plants climb up, that in its self was so worth stopping for.

I have a moleskin full of things to mention, but I just liked the idea of the season changing, plants waking up, and a change in Temperature, although It's probably short lived and we will get freezing weather before the weekend, strange weather is afoot, but one thing thats not going to change is the length and angle of shadows I say not change but as we know each day brings a predictable alteration something we still fail to predict in the weather !, believe it or not I saw the poles first thing in the morning on the way out and the shadows were long and thin, but on the way back the shadows had moved and shortened. I thought of so many things in that instant, my lecture on the Earth spinning and moving about the sun, and lat and long, and the long shadows we now see on so many buildings.

Shadow is a fundamental part of Architecture, yet so often it a part of design thats short lived, we thing about it early on and thats it, but its something that will be with a building to the last seconds of its life, and will change as new buildings are added to neighboring plots, and the effect on its appearance and performance will change, so will the feel or what I call the sole of the building.

I want my students to take time at some point in the year to sit and watch shadows and their effect on a building, I doubt they will have time, but one can hope.

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