The United States is paralyzed...and it's not going to get any better

The United States is paralyzed...and it's not going to get any better The “Lake Effect” phenomenon is currently sweeping across the northeastern United States. The "Lake Effect" has resulted in an exceptional snowstorm, paralyzing part of the country, including Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and New York - all regions bordering the Great Lakes. As reported by 20 Minutes, the “Lake Effect” occurs when cold winds cross the relatively warm waters of the Great Lakes. Air masses are created that capture the moisture in the lakes, which then condenses into snow when they hit the cold lands downstream. The amount of snowfall, mostly concentrated in narrow but intense bands, then increases sharply. Exceptional snowfalls Because temperatures on the Great Lakes are currently higher than the seasonal average, the meteorological phenomenon gains in energy and power, leading to substantial snowfalls. In some regions, snowfalls have reached 90 centimetres, and could even reach 2 metres by the end of the week. The consequences? Freeways are at a standstill, forcing drivers to spend the night in their cars or seek refuge in service stations. Heavy goods vehicles are also banned from certain main roads. What about the future? In the future, climate change could have a major impact on both the frequency and intensity of snowstorms associated with the lake effect. Shorter winters and longer periods of ice could help intensify the phenomenon. In the long term, if temperatures continue to rise, the snow could turn to rain, threatening the regions concerned with major flooding. Until the end of the week, and according to weather forecasts, snowfalls and strong winds are expected to continue to hit this part of the United States.

Motivation: The Scientific Guide on How to Get and Stay Motivated

Motivation is a powerful, yet tricky beast. Sometimes it is really easy to get motivated, and you find yourself wrapped up in a whirlwind of excitement. Other times, it is nearly impossible to figure out how to motivate yourself and you're trapped in a death spiral of procrastination. This page contains the best ideas and most useful research on how to get and stay motivated.

This isn't going to be some rah-rah, pumped-up motivational speech. (That's not my style.) Instead, we're going to break down the science behind how to get motivated in the first place and how to stay motivated for the long-run. Whether you're trying to figure out how to motivate yourself or how to motivate a team, this page should cover everything you need to know.

You can click the links below to jump to a particular section or simply scroll down to read everything. At the end of this page, you'll find a complete list of all the articles I have written on motivation.

What is Motivation?

So what is motivation, exactly? The author Steven Pressfield has a great line in his book, The War of Art, which I think gets at the core of motivation. To paraphrase Pressfield, “At some point, the pain of not doing it becomes greater than the pain of doing it.”

Common Misconceptions About Motivation

One of the most surprising things about motivation is that it often comes after starting a new behavior, not before. We have this common misconception that motivation arrives as a result of passively consuming a motivational video or reading an inspirational book. However, active inspiration can be a far more powerful motivator.

Common Misconceptions About Motivation

One of the most surprising things about motivation is that it often comes after starting a new behavior, not before. We have this common misconception that motivation arrives as a result of passively consuming a motivational video or reading an inspirational book. However, active inspiration can be a far more powerful motivator.

The work of top creatives isn’t dependent upon motivation or inspiration, but rather it follows a consistent pattern and routine. Here are some examples of how you can apply ritual and routine to get motivated:

• Exercise more consistently: Use the same warm up routine in the gym.
• Become more creative: Follow a creative ritual before you start writing or painting or singing.
• Start each day stress-free: Create a five-minute morning meditation ritual.
• Sleep better: Follow a “power down” routine before bed.

Stalled weather patterns will get bigger due to climate change

Street flooding

Climate change will increase the size of stalled high-pressure weather systems called "blocking events" that have already produced some of the 21st century's deadliest heat waves, according to a Rice University study.

Atmospheric blocking events are middle-latitude, high-pressure systems that stay in place for days or even weeks. Depending upon when and where they develop, blocking events can cause droughts or downpours and heat waves or cold spells. Blocking events caused deadly heat waves in France in 2003 and in Russia in 2010.

Using data from two sets of comprehensive climate model simulations, Rice fluid dynamicists Ebrahim Nabizadeh and Pedram Hassanzadeh, and colleagues found that the area of blocking events in the northern hemisphere will increase by as much as 17% due to anthropogenic climate change. The study, which is available online from Geophysical Research Letters, was co-authored by Da Yang of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Davis, and Elizabeth Barnes of Colorado State University.

Hassanzadeh, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and of Earth, environmental and planetary sciences, uses computational, mathematical and statistical models to study atmospheric flows related to a broad range of problems from extreme weather events to wind energy. He said researchers have increasingly been interested in learning how climate change might affect blocking events, but most studies have focused on whether blocking events will become more frequent as the atmosphere warms because of greenhouse gas emissions.

"Studies in the past have looked at whether you get more or less blocking events with climate change," he said. "The question nobody had asked is whether the size of these events will change or not. And the size is very important because the blocking events are more impactful when they are larger. For example, if the high-pressure system becomes bigger, you are going to get bigger heat waves that affect more people, and you are likely going to get stronger heat waves."

Nabizadeh, a mechanical engineering graduate student in Rice's Brown School of Engineering, set out to answer the question two years ago. Using a hierarchical modeling approach, he began with experiments on a model of atmospheric turbulence that's far simpler than the real atmosphere.

The simple model, which captures the fundamental dynamics of blocking events, allowed Nabizadeh to do a great deal of exploration. Making slight changes in one parameter or another, he ran thousands of simulations. Then the data was analyzed using a powerful dimensional analysis technique called the Buckingham-Pi theorem, which is often used in designing large and complex engineering systems that involve fluid flows.

The goal was finding a scaling law, a mathematical formula that described the size of a blocking event using variables that climate scientists already study and understand. Nabizadeh started with scaling laws that have been developed to predict the size of day-to-day weather patterns, but he found that none of the variables were predictive for blocking events.

His persistence eventually paid off with a simple formula that relates the area of blocking events to the width, latitude and strength of the jet stream, all of which are well-studied and measured.

"I gave a talk about this recently, and one of the people came up after and said, 'This is magical, that these powers add up and suddenly you get the right answer.' But it took a lot of work by Ebrahim to get this elegantly simple result," he said.

At a one point, Nabizadeh had analyzed the data from many simulations and produced a comparison that included page upon page of figures, and Hassanzadeh said the scaling law discovery was encouraged by an unlikely agency: the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).

"Ebrahim went to the DMV one weekend, and I went to the DMV the week after, and at the DMV you have to sit and you don't have anything to do," he said. "So after staring at these numbers for hours, we realized this is the right scaling."

They also compared the simple-model results with the output of increasingly complex models of the Earth's weather and climate. Nabizadeh said the scaling law predicted changes in the size of future winter blocking events in comprehensive climate model simulations with remarkable accuracy.

"It performs better for winter events than summer events for reasons we don't yet understand," Nabizadeh said. "Our results suggest future studies should focus on better understanding summer blocks and also how larger blocking events might affect the size, magnitude and persistence of extreme-weather events like heat waves."

The research was supported by NASA (80NSSC17K0266), the National Academies' Gulf Research Program, the Department of Energy (DE-AC02-05CH11231) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) (AGS-1545675). Computing resources were provided by the NSF-supported XSEDE project (ATM170020) and Rice's Center for Research Computing in partnership with Rice's Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology.

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Story Source:

Materials provided by Rice University. Original written by Jade Boyd. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Stalled weather patterns will get bigger due to climate change

Street flooding

Climate change will increase the size of stalled high-pressure weather systems called "blocking events" that have already produced some of the 21st century's deadliest heat waves, according to a Rice University study.

Atmospheric blocking events are middle-latitude, high-pressure systems that stay in place for days or even weeks. Depending upon when and where they develop, blocking events can cause droughts or downpours and heat waves or cold spells. Blocking events caused deadly heat waves in France in 2003 and in Russia in 2010.

Using data from two sets of comprehensive climate model simulations, Rice fluid dynamicists Ebrahim Nabizadeh and Pedram Hassanzadeh, and colleagues found that the area of blocking events in the northern hemisphere will increase by as much as 17% due to anthropogenic climate change. The study, which is available online from Geophysical Research Letters, was co-authored by Da Yang of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Davis, and Elizabeth Barnes of Colorado State University.

Hassanzadeh, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and of Earth, environmental and planetary sciences, uses computational, mathematical and statistical models to study atmospheric flows related to a broad range of problems from extreme weather events to wind energy. He said researchers have increasingly been interested in learning how climate change might affect blocking events, but most studies have focused on whether blocking events will become more frequent as the atmosphere warms because of greenhouse gas emissions.

"Studies in the past have looked at whether you get more or less blocking events with climate change," he said. "The question nobody had asked is whether the size of these events will change or not. And the size is very important because the blocking events are more impactful when they are larger. For example, if the high-pressure system becomes bigger, you are going to get bigger heat waves that affect more people, and you are likely going to get stronger heat waves."

Nabizadeh, a mechanical engineering graduate student in Rice's Brown School of Engineering, set out to answer the question two years ago. Using a hierarchical modeling approach, he began with experiments on a model of atmospheric turbulence that's far simpler than the real atmosphere.

The simple model, which captures the fundamental dynamics of blocking events, allowed Nabizadeh to do a great deal of exploration. Making slight changes in one parameter or another, he ran thousands of simulations. Then the data was analyzed using a powerful dimensional analysis technique called the Buckingham-Pi theorem, which is often used in designing large and complex engineering systems that involve fluid flows.

The goal was finding a scaling law, a mathematical formula that described the size of a blocking event using variables that climate scientists already study and understand. Nabizadeh started with scaling laws that have been developed to predict the size of day-to-day weather patterns, but he found that none of the variables were predictive for blocking events.

His persistence eventually paid off with a simple formula that relates the area of blocking events to the width, latitude and strength of the jet stream, all of which are well-studied and measured.

"I gave a talk about this recently, and one of the people came up after and said, 'This is magical, that these powers add up and suddenly you get the right answer.' But it took a lot of work by Ebrahim to get this elegantly simple result," he said.

At a one point, Nabizadeh had analyzed the data from many simulations and produced a comparison that included page upon page of figures, and Hassanzadeh said the scaling law discovery was encouraged by an unlikely agency: the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).

"Ebrahim went to the DMV one weekend, and I went to the DMV the week after, and at the DMV you have to sit and you don't have anything to do," he said. "So after staring at these numbers for hours, we realized this is the right scaling."

They also compared the simple-model results with the output of increasingly complex models of the Earth's weather and climate. Nabizadeh said the scaling law predicted changes in the size of future winter blocking events in comprehensive climate model simulations with remarkable accuracy.

"It performs better for winter events than summer events for reasons we don't yet understand," Nabizadeh said. "Our results suggest future studies should focus on better understanding summer blocks and also how larger blocking events might affect the size, magnitude and persistence of extreme-weather events like heat waves."

The research was supported by NASA (80NSSC17K0266), the National Academies' Gulf Research Program, the Department of Energy (DE-AC02-05CH11231) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) (AGS-1545675). Computing resources were provided by the NSF-supported XSEDE project (ATM170020) and Rice's Center for Research Computing in partnership with Rice's Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology.