My friends tell me that the leaves in Kyoto are the best for 100 years, and furthermore that some may still be stuck to the trees next week. Perhaps then, at the upcoming PMIP workshop, those studying the climate of the Last Millennium (tree lovers one and all) should better spend their time in gardens than lecture theatres...
These leaves in merely Kamakura.
Help help help help help. WTF is this beast doing munching on camellias in late November? Heard incredibly low buzzing noise. Dismissed it as not possibly a hornet at this time of year - and anyway the noise was too low. Then appeared possibly the largest Vespa mandarinia japonica ever. BBbbuuuUUUUuuuzZZZZZZzzzz...
That's a proper sized camellia not a puny daisy....
Help!
[Taken with 300mm telephoto from far faaaar away]
uh - oh. The leaves are turning in Engakuji (Kamakura), which means they are probably out Kyoto too, a fact confirmed by the national leaf nowcast. So they'll all be fallen off the trees by the PMIP workshop which starts in 11 days... So, just in case any PMIP people do look at this blog - here are some consolation leaves.
The leaf season seems to be different every year. This year all the trees seem to be turning together and the non-momiji are very good. Usually trees like the cherry turn brown and the leaves fall quickly to the ground a few weeks before the gingko and momiji turn brilliant yellow and orange. Here at work the main concern is whether there will be anything left on the trees in Kyoto for the PMIP3 workshop in early December,
This photo was taken around 1000m altitude on a walk in the mountains last weekend with Joel, our super-human friend from Oz. James was kind enough to carry my camera and spare lens most of the time, giving me the chance to not getting too far behind but still take some photos.
To counteract the chaos of yesterday's pic, a more ordered urban environment [Oxfooooord, England].
The area near work is presently even more attractive than usual, as there are some works underway. Round these parts they drill deeply before erecting a structure of any size, because the ground, reclaimed from the ocean, is so soft. On the other hand the houses appear to have no foundations at all, which is not so encouraging come the earthquake...
"journal dedicated to the publication and public discussion of the description, development and evaluation of numerical models of the Earth System and its components."The journal's origins (as people who know the exec eds may guess) lie in the clique of people who worked together within the GENIE project. Jules has always claimed credit for originating the idea, and on checking my old email I see she first suggested it back in 2006. A handful of us agreed it was a good idea, and the EGU bigwigs were also receptive, so after quite a lot of thought about how we could really structure things (white paper), the journal was launched in early 2008. It's been growing steadily since then thanks in particular to Dan Lunt's efforts, and all the recent fuss about "publishing code" obviously has provided some additional momentum, Efforts like the Climate Code Foundation (see here and longer article here) are certainly very complementary (eg letter here), though maybe our goals aren't precisely the same. We have always been more focussed on the discussion and dissemination of the techniques, and scientific reproducibility of the outputs, rather than open source per se (though obviously open source is welcome where possible).
Stoat is feeling blue, because it is so grey outside in his country. So here is some blue to help him feel less blue.
This was a morning of dentists, but I did not photograph them. Instead I photographed the dazzling sights along my journey. Starting in Yokohama at 9am, I then got transferred to the big dental hospital in Tsurumi. Got back to work by 2:30pm. The speed with which these things happen here never ceases to amaze. (I have complicated teeth due to having tried to eat a Harley Davidson motorcycle in 1997.)
"JR Tokai hopes to open the new maglev train line between Tokyo's Shinagawa Station and Nagoya in 2027, and the maglev line between Tokyo and Osaka in 2045."
"As construction will take a long time, building the maglev line should not be adversely affected by worsening economic conditions," a source close to the subcommittee said.
After all the scary buddhas and terrifying spiders, I'd better show something fluffy. Blonde fluffy child and blonde fluffy dog, at a village dog show in middle england, and curiously not in the dog-handler lookalike round, although, of course there was one...
The lotus have been cleared from the large pond at Hachimangu, but curiously they remain on the smaller one, giving this heron one last chance for a discreet bit of fishing.
