95.5 f.m. In Lake George and Hertz all 95.7 f.m. In saliva universe to end Villa Grove and 105.7 f.m. In Canyon City for questions or comments please call 719-473-4801 during regular business hours you can always become a member of k. Or c c by going to k. Or c c dot o r g and making your financial contributions safely on line. Hello I'm right in peace and in a moment it'll be time for the science hour and today I'll be looking at Harken Javi and how the precise forecasting of it gave all 30 some 1st responders critical hours to prepare for the unfolding disaster with the rise in acid attacks in London we ask what the u.k. Can learn from countries like Bangladesh and India which have managed to reduce this kind of violence we had to Italy where the oldest wine in the world has just been discovered we hear about flies record breaking vision the reason they're so hard to Swat and we go you acting with seals and we walked out and saw the seals and then we crept closer and started playing and singing and sure enough SEALs came out of the water to listen they came closer and they even started howling. That's all to come here on the science our own the b.b.c. World Service after the news. This is the b.b.c. News Hello I'm Jonathan Izod President Trump has praised the recovery effort in Texas during a visit to Houston where he's been meeting survivors of Hurricane Harvey he had faced criticism for speaking only to rescue officials during his previous visit on Tuesday our correspondent Barbara assesses how he's being received well I think he's coming across fairly well there were a lot of handshakes and a few hugs the pose for a lot of photos he roughhouse playfully with some of the children he handed out food boxes so you know some of the people at the relief center were skeptical that this was anything more than a photo opportunity but they many seem to appreciate that he showed up as he's meeting with volunteers as well Americans like the sort of thing they like the president to take on a comforting role during and after a disaster in the presidential visit is very much a part of that not very much what the aim of this visit was half a 1000000 households in the affected region of asked for help the president has now travel to neighboring Louisiana which was also badly hit by the storm. Colombia's rebel group says it's killed a Russian hostage who was trying to escape after 6 months in captivity the rebels are holding peace talks with the Colombian government but they say they're unlikely to renounce their kidnapping policy in the near future America's editor Leonardo Russia reports the Yellin said that ason force Canyon a Russian citizen of Armenian origin was shot dead in April he was abducted in November you know remote jungle area where the rebels said he was collecting poisonous frogs to his muggle overseas they said he grabbed a grenade from all of the fighters and tried to run away when he was shot dead the land or National Liberation Army finances its operations mostly with the ransom paid to release hostages that's why the group admits that it will be very difficult for them to give up their kidnapping policy until they reach a peace agreement with the Colombian government the Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto says he wants to continue talks with the United States to agree a border policy but will not accept any proposal that goes against Mexico's dignity as a nation it was his 1st State of the Union address since President Trump came to power promising to build a wall along the southern u.s. Border and to make Mexico pay for it that Alessio whenever we have all this stuff in the last our relations with the new government of the United States as with any other gun tree must be based on fundamental principles sovereignty the defense of national interest and the protection of our fellow citizens I've said before and I will say it again we won't accept anything that goes against our dignity as a nation the opposition leader in Cambodia comes a car has been arrested and accused of treason the government said it had evidence including a video clip pointing to a conspiracy involving comes a car to harm Cambodia comes a car had been expected to be the main challenger to Cambodia's veteran leader one cent and elections next year well news from the b.b.c. . Britain's foreign secretary Boris Johnson has called on the leader of Myanmar own son Suchi to use what he called her remarkable qualities to end violence against the country's Rabindra Muslims he said their treatment was bismuth Xing the reputation of the country nearly 60000 ranges of lead to Bangladesh since man was Army began a campaign against suspected militants in Rakhine state just over a week ago the un h.c.r. Chief spokesperson Melissa Fleming says camps in Bangladesh risk being overwhelmed we are hugely concerned about the humanitarian situation when we are seeing you know growing numbers just in the past 2 weeks almost 60000 people crossing into Bangladesh up 220000 people are massed on the Bangladesh border in a terrible state very many women children elderly with nothing but the clothes on their back nothing to eat the u.s. Justice Department has officially told a court that it has no evidence to support an allegation by President Trump that his predecessor Barack Obama ordered a wiretap of Trump Tower the department made it legal submission in response to a Freedom of Information request in March Mr Trump tweeted that Mr Obama had instructed the Trump Tower in New York be placed under surveillance during last year's presidential election campaign Mr Obama was quick to deny the accusation. The prominent Venezuelan opposition campaign in Tory's says the government of President Nicolas Maduro has banned her from leaving the country she said her family was being unfairly targeted most in Tory is the wife of opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez who is on the house arrest serving a lengthy sentence for allegedly inciting violence in protests 3 years ago. Police in Argentina have shot a carrier pigeon delivering drugs to a jail according to prison authorities the bird was spotted flying into the grounds of the jail in the central city of Santa Rosa officers discovered it was carrying a small gray backpack containing sedative pills marijuana and a u.s.b. Drive b.b.c. News. This is the science hour from the b.b.c. Where we've been closely following Hurricane Harvey's destructive path over Texas Louisiana and into Kentucky tens of thousands more people in Houston in the United States have been ordered to leave their homes as the city grapples with devastating floods and rain continues to pour down 2000 people so what does the forecast look like well actually for places like Houston the rainfall picture will start to improve things will begin to dry out over the next few days but the rain will continue further east and will increasingly spread further north and of course with wet weather continuing to work its way into the river systems across the southern areas of the USA I suspect the flooding problems will go on for many many weeks to come and. Indeed this storm Hurricane Harvey is the most powerful weather system to affect Texas and Louisiana since that devastating storm 12 years ago which inundated New Orleans of course there had been warnings that there was no way to prevent an explosion at a flooded chemical plant near Houston the factory had lost power they could no longer refrigerators volatile chemicals well within the past 2 hours 2 explosions have been heard at the plant. I'm right in peace unless we record this edition of the science hour at least 30 people have been killed by hurrican Harvey and as the floodwaters recede doubtless more victims will be discovered scientists contribution to reducing casualties includes affected forecasting to give all 30 some 1st responders critical hours to prepare for the storm's arrival I called Florence Rebbie a director of the European Center for medium range weather forecasting e.c.m. W.f. Who went notably accurate in their forecasts we were predicting very intense rainfall as early as Monday the 21st when actually the very intense rainfall started on the 26th on the Saturday so consistent. Plea from the beginning of last week we started predicting very intense rainfall and the trajectory of these hurricane hitting Texas and did you predict the increased intensity because it went very quickly up from being a tropical storm to being a category one for Category 3 to a Category 4 hurricane in the very end we did predict the intensity almost close to Category 4 which is what it reached but this wasn't also consistent throughout the forecast we did predict an intense Eastham but the exact intensity is a bit more tricky is it a question of the amount of energy that goes into a hurricane that makes it I presume quite hard to predict everything about it yes you have to have the interaction with the sea you're right in particular with so they were very warm seas and you have to have these bumping of energy right if you wish so it's not just the atmosphere we really simulates the coupling between the ocean and the atmosphere but also you need to get all the other environment right like the high level jet that cetera so although it's a local I system you need to look at the global picture of how the animosities are distributed et cetera to see whether it will stall or go quickly for instance and in that case it was particularly bad because that hurricane is still hold over Texas although this is an enormous gyrating system of wind and clouds and rain it is actually still working within the bigger picture the bigger structure of high level winds in the stratosphere and the low pressures and other things that are going on in the lower atmosphere Yes absolutely I'm curious eyes 1st especially really became interested in hurricanes in this way in 2005 which was an extraordinary year in terms of hurricanes so many records including Hurrican Katrina how much better are you and your colleagues forecasting hurricanes now than you were 12 years ago I think the improvement in terms of hurricanes is sort of parallel to our improvements in general performance for our. At all which is roughly one day per decade which means that we can now predict the weather accurately 5 days ahead as we were predicting it accurately 4 days ahead a decade ago so we generally improve by about one day per decade and it's not a question of just using bigger computers having a better science a better physics of it all that because the instrumentation the measurements you're making of the atmosphere those are the things that are improving it I think it's a bit of everything of course you know the science improves so our way of simulating the atmosphere improved but mainly our computing power and the resolution we can have in our global models is really crucial so if we can have a fine mesh in our global model representing the atmosphere over the globe then it really makes a difference and recently we've upgraded our model to her 9 kilometer mesh it's easier to represent the science the physics when you have the final mesh and you can really represent the influence of the mountains and how the rain drops etc So that's a very important factor the science as well but definitely the observations are crucial as well and the satellite of savation is in particular this is more than 95 percent of all the observations we use all coming from satellite they are measuring the radiation of the atmosphere and the earth in different wavelength and heat is that yes a lot of temperature but also humidity so all the particles in the air including the humidity content will have a radiation slightly different in different wavelength So yes basically temperature humidity we also have some subtle lights that are measuring the winds at the surface of the ocean they are based on the small waves that are closed by the wind blowing up the surface of the ocean and that's very interesting as well obviously for tropical cyclone measuring the winds over the ocean is important because we can track the clouds and the water vapor features from satellites we can also did you. The wind from that tracking of different cloud systems with the satellite so it gives us plenty of information on the atmosphere which is very very crucial for determining then the state of the atmosphere and then doing a right for cause there must be millions of data go into your computers and then you churn them all through not just once but many times Absolutely and we use about $40000000.00 observations per day in our system we receive maybe 10 times that amount actually but we feel to them to only keep the good quality data and the one that will not redundant but this is already 40000000 of data every day and we regularly ingest them in our system twice a day typically So we run our model and then we readjust it with all the new observations and then we continue to run readjust etc It's a sort of it's received process where we correct the picture we have of the atmosphere by combining a model of the physics of the endless fear together with all the observational data will hurrican hardly be as useful as a teaching tool for you in the years to come will you be reanalyzing everything you've done so far comparing it with the real data we have made huge progress in predicting the track of tropical cyclones but in terms of intensity it's a bit more tricky and we might need to go to finer and finer resolution models to actually get it better and this is maybe where we would need to see if the sort of improvements we make in the futures would apply to Harvey in particular Flora's Rebbie a director of the e.c.m. W.f. In reading u.k. With me in the studio is Jonathan a more science correspondent for the b.b.c. John you've been watching these things the bit that really interests me there was she said 95 percent of the data come from satellite Yeah I mean she has at her disposal now an extraordinary collection of satellites feeding her data and she's about to get a new super duper one which the scientists at the c m w f are going. To lead This is called Eolus And you heard Dr Robbie mention how they get wind data currently which is they look at the waves on the surface of the sea and from that they infer what you know what the winds are doing we don't actually have a 3 dimensional map of wind on planet Earth and this new satellite will have a laser it's going to go around the planet and it is going to probe the atmosphere and build 3 dimensional maps of the wind and then they will feed that into her computer so you'll know not just what the wind is at the base of the hurricane but also kilometers up in the Atlas Absolutely so you can you can get some height information you know you can send balloons up you can use some of the big satellites to track the clouds as they move across the surface of the planet but it doesn't tell you what's going on every bit of altitude and this satellite will do that and they're talking about it having a transformative effect on weather forecasts e.c.m. W.f. Are regarded as top notch now when they get this new satellite it could push them on even further the winds are going to be launched it'll be launched probably around the end of the year we're not quite sure it's been quite delayed because they've had some technical problems but when it comes online I think it's going to be one of those satellites they're going to say when we put the next one up. The other satellite which actually is still I think under commissioning which is produced at least in very spectacular pictures is an American satellite called goes 16 which is I think sort of sitting over and sending back itself amazing imagery of the weather systems so one of the collection of stationary weather satellites they sit up there and it's stares down at the United States big advance on the versions that have gone before beautiful pictures very finessed data the Europeans have the same as well and we share it all a lot of it comes down into the model Iran based on that data now before we leave the hurricane the other thing we've. Really See I think is that it's not just the wind in the rain that's causing problems but the human infrastructure no more I think in the case of this factory that blew up this chemical factory that blew up in Crosby near Houston where they actually had to evacuate people before it happened you know there was a plant producing chemicals that are that are involved in the production of plastics and it's you know it's a classic example yeah a bit like the big tsunami with Focus Shima you think you know you've got over the earthquake or there's the the tsunami and oh and then it's hit our generators and now we're in trouble exactly the same thing here get inundated with floods the generators that are supposed to back up the power they file and then of course these rather unstable chemicals that they have in this plant they start to ignite and they've had some explosions although from what I'm gathering from the American media it's not causing too much of a problem at the moment they do seem to be on top of it but at the very least it highlights the kind of problem of security in depth that people have to consider in a changing climate it's a cascade you know and you need clean water and you need power and quite often some of these bits of infrastructure are the 1st things to go down in a in a situation like this where we have a major hurricane and lastly a lot of media comments have been don't forget what's happening in Bangladesh northern India now we did talk about that on science hour last week but that's still moving on yeah I mean the that the death count in Texas is is what it's around 3040 something like that the the monsoon rains that they've had in Asia we're talking about over $1200.00 now of course the the big thing about America is you you have all of the the property damage which they don't they don't have it isn't worth as much in you know in dollar terms in Asia so that's why you see these figures of multi 1000000000 dollar damage in the United States but yes the people they are import. And we mustn't forget what's going on in Asia Jonathan a Moss thank you Crosby Texas near the arcade a plant is not the only place where the public have been evacuated because of a chemical threat in the u.k. Last weekend holiday makers abandoned their beach in southern England where a plume of chemical haze swept the shoreline 150 needed hospital treatment for straining eyes sore throats and north. Sleuths were quickly blaming chemical spillage from shipping in the English Channel a local eye spike in ozone levels even algae in the ocean waters and then there was this satellite image revealing some kind of mysterious smeary trail Gareth Mitchell turned to Simon boxall of the u.k. National Oceanography Center for some expert advice which lean towards blaming the Allegheny the conditions are right at the moment for algal blooms to occur and we've seen a lot of ankle blooms this summer we've had sort of odd weather we've seen a lot of rainfall and that produces lots of runoff water going into the oceans and that runoff is full of nutrients the sort of the the food for these plants and these plankton then thrive on that food when we get the conditions we had on Sunday so really strong sunlight competitions they can come to the surface and they can thrive if we get what's called a bloom and these algal blooms can sometimes be harmful they contain Donna flagellates they contain bacteria sometimes which can produce toxins but these toxins can also work their way up into the atmosphere as aerosols we get sort of water coming off the surface it's not just water droplets is bringing these contaminants into the atmosphere but doesn't really explain this very distinctive chlorine smell because these gases tend to be odorless co