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Philippe Chantreau at 04:21 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Dale wrote "if this system had've hit a much less populated area, and much less financially and politically important area, would the same media hype have been seen?" That's an interesting statement, really. It could be analyzed at many levels, but let's just consider the physical one. The storm's diameter was about a thousand miles. Where in the US could such a storm hit and not affect any major financial and political center? Forget the West coast. At that kind of dimension it could affect all of California, or everything From Seattle on South. In the South? All of the Golf's oil production, shipping and refinery, everything on the Texas coast, all the way to Florida. Let's hypothesize a storm centered smack on the four corners: it still would have affected Denver, Salt Lake City, Oklahoma City, Dallas/Fort-Worth, Phoenix, etc, etc. It's becoming awefully hard for populated areas to hide away from storms these days... Of course, one could argue that, when such storm piles heaps of bodies somewhere in Central America, the US media barely budges. Just goes to show that the message has to be hammered home to the reality impervious types. Yet, even at that, they still try to wiggle out of the obvious. -
jyushchyshyn at 04:14 AM on 1 November 2012The View from Germany: Tackling the real questions
If Germany were serious about tackling global warming, it would phase out coal rather than nuclear power. Suppose that renewable energy sources could supply all of our energy needs in 50 years. If we phase out coal and continue to use nuclear power we could stop using coal in 25 years. If we phase out nuclear power and continue to use coal, we will be puting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for all 50 years. Until renewable power can supply all of our energy needs, the choice is not between nuclear power and renewable power. Why not use both? The choice is between nuclear power and coal. -
Doug Bostrom at 03:47 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Further to KR's point and distilling to the essential: it's all about energy. Global warming is about retained energy and energy can't be hidden. Expecting atmospheric phenomena to behave identically as they did before despite now being driven by more energy is just silly. Teasing out the precise differences in behavior of given weather phenomena as available energy changes is not easy but the absence of perfect description doesn't mean energy has disappeared or somehow can't manifest itself until it's been reduced to equations. -
Bob Lacatena at 03:24 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
To clarify my comment: 1) I was talking about current food prices that are up and are going to continue to rise, given the bad wheat crop after the bad corn crop, and then the inevitable rise in meat prices that is going to follow this winter (and hasn't hit yet). 2) I was also talking about food prices going up and staying up, above and beyond what the recent drought has brought (given that such droughts will be more frequent and just as bad, and will pile onto the previous droughts). 3) I was also, mostly, talking about the geopolitical ramifications that such changes would have in the developing world, again something we are not actually seeing at the moment (except for the possible causative influence on the Arab Spring), but we will... and that may be one of the scariest implications of all. Imagine riots, rebellions, wars and chaos, rivaling Somalia of the 1990s, but striking across the globe in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and even perhaps weaker developed countries (Greece comes to mind, and maybe Italy, given their position, similar to Texas and Oklahoma, at the edge of the northern Hadley Cell, subjecting them to both their own droughts combined with their own debt crisis). -
Hansen predicted the West Side Highway would be underwater
Curiously enough, here is the West Side Highway as of 10/30/2012:
[Source]
This is due to the "Sandy" storm surge, not a steady-state sea level rise. But both historically unprecedented - and with continued global warming, perhaps something to expect again...
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2012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Dale - "Sandy wasn't even a category 1 when it made landfall. ...Katrina and Yasi sized cyclones/hurricanes eat Sandy size storms for breakfast and don't even flinch. Sandy wasn't even a small hurricane. It was a big storm, that is all." It has been noted elsewhere, however, that:In terms of sheer kinetic energy -- a measure of the windspeed integrated over how wide an area the winds are blowing -- the super-storm also shattered records going back to at least 1969, said [Jeff] Masters, a former "hurricane hunter" with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in a phone call with The Huffington Post Tuesday morning. "That includes Katrina, Andrew, Wilma -- all the Category 5 storms -- Sandy had them beat," Masters said. "If you take the size of it -- it was so vast and it had winds blowing over such a wide area of ocean -- it put a tremendous volume of ocean water in motion and carried it with it as it moved northwards. And guess what? When that water hit land, it had nowhere to go but on the land and generate a record storm surge."
(Emphasis added) Dale, this "wasn't even a category 1" storm may have done somewhat less damage than the category 5 Katrina - we'll have to see what the costs add up to. It wouldn't have been anywhere nearly as powerful or damaging without the anomalously warm offshore waters feeding it energy, or the off-track jet stream. Both of which are factors known to be affected by global warming, I'll point out. Details matter, Dale. Your dismissal of storm Sandy seems to miss a few. -
vrooomie at 02:51 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Thanks, DSL: I'll read up on it. Tangentially, you must be within 15K feetof me; otherwise, I could not receive DSL...;) (sorry, mods, I *had* to say it...you can snip me, if you want!) -
vrooomie at 02:49 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
My "Frankenstorm(s) moment arrived in the 'noughties,' notably in 2006/07 when Denver had ~7~, count'em, *seven* blizzards in a row (one/week, all on weekends!!). Born and raised here, I had NEVER seen so much snow. I was snowed in for days, diggin' like a mad man to get out (..to get to work: I said I was mad!!). There were drifts around town exceeding 8 feet in depth, and in areas where the snow had lain down flat, some exceeded 4 feet deep. We had an April blizzard this year--not terribly unusual for here, save for the fact of its intensity and depth of accumulation--and with the focus on the *intensity* of these winter storms and fire events, I've prepared accordingly. I'm sure are all aware of our not-quite-past yet fire season which was terrible, here and all over the West: Along with that, and a number of other weather extremes, all since 2001, have made me aware of the patterns changing, and in my mind, it's beginning to approach what I can see as serious climate change. -
ajki at 02:48 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Let's not forget that the City Officials of NY knew about the risks. See for example: New York Is Lagging as Seas and Risks Rise, Critics Warn NYT, September 10, 2012 Some of the comments look quite bizarre - now. -
DSL at 02:48 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
ACE uses storm velocity--essentially a measure of max sustained wind. It does not incorporate storm size/structure. The ACE for Sandy will show it to be a hurricane of weak to average strength--with most of the strength coming from its duration. ACE will not account for strength across volume. There have been other measures proposed, of course, and better instrumentation will allow even more measures to be developed. See Powell & Reinhold (2007) on the subject. -
John Hartz at 02:34 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
“The terrifying truth is that America faces a future full of Frankenstorms,” said Shaye Wolf, Ph.D., the Center’s climate science director. “Climate change raises sea levels and supersizes storms. The threat of killer winds and crushing storm surges will grow by the year unless we get serious about tackling greenhouse gas pollution.” Here’s how scientists say climate change feeds the superstorm triple whammy: 1. Global warming loads storms with more energy and more rainfall. 2. Storm surge rides on higher sea levels, so more coastline floods during storms. 3. Melting sea ice and accelerating Arctic warming are causing changes in the jet stream that are bringing more extreme weather to the United States. Source: Climate Change Feeds Superstorm Triple Whammy , Press Release, Center for Biological Diversity, Oct 30, 2012 -
Doug Bostrom at 02:29 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Can't help but compare Dale's speculative fiction with what the real, non-fiction NYC mayor is confronting. Bloomberg:You did not have ocean water, salt water, breaching the banks the way you’ve had it in Manhattan, you know, in my lifetime….. When you start to fill the subway tunnels with salt water—much of the Con Ed equipment is in the tunnels, is underground—when hot electrical equipment hits cold salt water, that is a bad combination. And that is a design flaw, I believe, for our system now, if you anticipate these extreme weather conditions. Obviously we didn’t when we designed this system. We did not anticipate water coming over the Hudson River, coming over the banks, being five feet deep on the West Side Highway, and filling subway grates and every opening and filling that massive infrastructure we have below ground. Going forward, I think we do have to anticipate these extreme types of weather patterns. And we have to start to think about how do we redesign the system so this doesn’t happen again. After what happened, what has been happening in the last few years, I don’t think anyone can sit back anymore and say “Well, I’m shocked at that weather pattern.” There is no weather pattern that can shock me at this point. And I think that has to be our attitude. And how do we redesign our system and our infrastructure assuming that?”
The Mayor of New York City understands the concept of longitudinal change, a good thing because what Bloomberg sees and understands today will shape the lives of future New Yorkers for better or worse. Bloomberg's job is in part to create a better New York in days to come. If he chose to pretend nothing unusual happened in the past few days he would miss the opportunity to have a positive benefit on the New York of tomorrow. Why people like Dale are so invested in throwing sand in the wheels of progress is deeply mysterious. -
M Tucker at 02:26 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Albatross, @49, I think we should also add the influence of changes to the NAO caused by the unprecedented melting of the Arctic during the summer months. "Here’s where climate change comes in. The atmospheric pattern that sent the Jet Stream south is colloquially known as a “blocking high”—a big pressure center stuck over the very northern Atlantic Ocean and southern Arctic Ocean. And what led to that? A climate phenomenon called the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO)—essentially, the state of atmospheric pressure in that region. This state can be positive or negative, and it had changed from positive to negative two weeks before Sandy arrived. The climate kicker? Recent research by Charles Greene at Cornell University and other climate scientists has shown that as more Arctic sea ice melts in the summer—because of global warming—the NAO is more likely to be negative during the autumn and winter. A negative NAO makes the Jet Stream more likely to move in a big, wavy pattern across the U.S., Canada and the Atlantic, causing the kind of big southward dip that occurred during Sandy." "The arctic climate system is changing so dynamically that the rules of the game are changing," Greene says. "This is not the same Arctic Ocean we've known. The Arctic and North Atlantic oscillations are changing in ways we hadn't anticipated." The interplay, which has always been fairly consistent, he says, has now become "a wild card" affecting our weather." (from a couple of articles on the Scientific American web site) Favorite denialist tactics: downplay every extreme weather event and the relentless summer Arctic melting. -
Doug Bostrom at 02:10 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
BTW, Dale has still not replied to Dikran Marsupial's significant earlier question asking for Dale's opinion of the IPCC's remarks on hurricanes. -
Jim Eager at 02:09 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Dale wrote: And finally don't forget Dr Ryan Maue's graphs, showing no increasing trend in global tropical storms or hurricanes/cyclones since 1970. Wrong metric, Dale, try looking at the Accumulated Cyclone Energy index time series. Why you can even find it graphed on Maue's own site: http://policlimate.com/tropical/north_atlantic_ace.png Oh look, it's not the total number of storms that is increasing, but rather the number of intense storms and therefore average storm intensity that are increasing. Did you think no one here would call you on such a transparently straw man argument? -
Son of Krypton at 01:58 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Dale - But I don't apologise for sounding "sceptical" of the climate change claims affecting Sandy While it's impossible to say for certain, there is the distinct possibility that global warming-caused decline in sea ice contributed the course Sandy took. Taken from a presentation from Dr. Jennifer Francis: Arctic sea ice loss may significantly affect the upper-level atmospheric circulation, slowing its winds and increasing its tendency to make contorted high-amplitude loops. High-amplitude loops in the upper level wind pattern (and associated jet stream) increases the probability of persistent weather patterns in the Northern Hemisphere, potentially leading to extreme weather [Source] This wavy, blocking pattern is exactly what we expect from decreased sea ice, so it’s very possible that this block may have been boosted in intensity and/or duration by the record-breaking ice loss this summer. Further, as Master's pointed out, the waters off the Northeast coast are a full 5°F above average, adding to the amount of energy and water vapour available. You also brought up the devestation caused by Katrina; yet look at the factors that contributed to the real extent: Failing levies, in some cases due to a lack of upkeep Sections of New Orleans are below sea level, a result of the Mississippi not being able to replenish sediment for a few hundred years, needed to counteract subsidence. Mangroves and natural buffers to storm surge have been severely depleated surrounded New Orleans -
Doug Bostrom at 01:50 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Yeah Vroomie. The effect of being wrong on something so easy to discover is terribly corrosive to credibility and naturally leads us to wonder what else is incorrect or wildly exaggerated. -
vrooomie at 01:44 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
DSL@40, you state: "ACE is simplistic and doesn't directly account for a storm's energy or destructive power via precipitation/movement of mass." Given that I'm completely clueless about this ACE stuff, could you elaborate upon your assertion? Asking as a skeptical..scientist, natch! If (when) the denialati are going to come after "us" with the alleged nonsense, I'd like to be schooled in why it *is* nonsense. -
vrooomie at 01:36 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
There you go again, bostrom, with FACTS and DATA.... [;-/ -
DSL at 01:36 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Vrooomie -- Accumulated Cyclone Energy -
John Hartz at 01:32 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Climate scientists warn that global warming is likely to increase the incidence of serious events like Hurricane Sandy. Warming water and rising sea levels may be contributing to what New York politicians are calling their 'new reality.' For details see: Did global warming cause superstorm Sandy? (+video) by Seth Borenstein, Associated Press (AP), The Christian Science Monitor, Oct 30, 2012 -
Doug Bostrom at 01:29 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Dale on the '38 storm: 14-25 foot storm surge (also during a full moon) which if occurred today has been estimated would cause $40 billion in damage to New York. NOAA:Storm surges of 10 to 12 ft inundated portions of the coast from Long Island and Connecticut eastward to southeastern Massachusetts, with the most notable surges in Narragansett Bay and Buzzards Bay. Heavy rains before and during the hurricane produced river flooding, most notably along the Connecticut River.
Even if Dale is truly desperate to sway opinions it's still better to stick to an accepted standard of facts. Otherwise we're likely to forever hear about the famous '38 storm and its ever-growing surge, always bigger than the biggest surge yet. -
vrooomie at 01:23 AM on 1 November 2012Climate of Doubt Strategy #1: Deny the Consensus
I ran across this comment, by Bernard J, from a few months back: it bears repeating in this thread. "On the matter of denialism itsef, as embodied by Minchin, Palmer and so many others, it's like this... ...There's a corspe, formerly known as Ms Ecosystem, lying on the ground, and the corpse has a CO2 bullet in its head - a bullet fired at point-blank range from a Coalington-Oilchester rifle. There's a medico autopsying the corpse, a Dr Climatologist, and she concludes that the cause of death was an AGW brain injury resulting from the impact of the dissected CO2 bullet, now lying in the bloody kidney bowl. Watching the autopsy is a member of the NRA, a Mr W.A.S.P. Warming-Denier Snr, who (although he has no experience in medicine) variously asserts that: 1) there is still a scientific debate about the capacity of CO2 bullets to inflict serious damage to brains 2) well, OK, bullets might cause small bumps, but something else caused the corpse to actually die even though the autopsy showed no other plausible factors 3) that the corpse isn't really dead anyway 4) that CO2 bullets are good for the brain 5) alright, so maybe the bullet did kill Ms AGW, but if you control firearms, my life will fall apart, it just will. Nothing that Mr W.A.S.P. Warming-Denier Snr asserts has any objective relationship to the science that determined the cause of death. Several are ideological knee-jerks in response to the implications of the investigation, but these knee-jerks do not alter the fact of cause and effect. The debate isn't about the cause of death, no matter how strenuously Mr W.A.S.P. Warming-Denier Snr attempts to make it so. The debate is simply about Mr W.A.S.P. Warming-Denier Snr's unfettered ability to continue to do what he's always done, no matter that control of this activity would result in less harm in the future. If Mr W.A.S.P. Warming-Denier Snr wanted a genuinely honest discussion, he'd openly admit that CO2 bullets will kill most, if not all, of Ms AGW's family if they are all thusly shot, and he would argue that his right to shoot those CO2 bullets at these folk outweighs the rights of Ms AGW's family not to be shot at. Of course, that is a much harder argument to win, so Mr W.A.S.P. Warming-Denier Snr is going to avoid it at all costs, even if he can never admit it even to himself..." Indeed.Moderator Response: [Sph] Sorry, vrooomie. That was a bit too loud, I think. I toned it down (one strong tag, not two). -
Albatross at 01:18 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) does not spawn weather events/systems per se. So people arguing about whether or not Sandy was caused by global warming are missing the point, and that includes some of the media. With that said, AGW can (and does) influence the background setting in which the storms develop and does affect the odds of the storms/events being more intense/extreme than they would otherwise have been. Analysis of observations has demonstrated that fact repeatedly. Recent research has suggested that in a warming world we could see fewer tropical storms but those storms that do develop will likely be more intense (and as noted by gws @28 wind is not the only metric for quantifying the severity). Also, those arguing that Sandy was "only" a category one storm fail to take into account: 1) The enormity of this storm, it was huge 2) The fact that it passed over waters that were as much as 3 C warmer than average 3) That the atmosphere is now capable of holding more water vapour than it was in the past (which translates into more precipitation) 4) That because of the longer growing season, more trees were likely in leaf than would have been decades ago. 5) Last but not least, the system develop atop a rising ocean (again mostly because of AGW) So of course Trenberth is not going to say that AGW caused Sandy. Eric's interpretation or paraphrasing of Trenberth is wrong and misrepresents his position and the science on this issue-- it is essentially a strawman argument. Here is a Nature article that, IMHO, provides a balanced look at the situation. More to come on this matter from SkS soon. -
vrooomie at 01:11 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
CBD@47: Given I live in the middle of ~30K acres (which a small fraction of total farmland here) of some of the most productive farmland on the plains (Weld County, CO is something like 3rd nationwide, in grain production) I see this going on: We weren't hit as hard as the Midwest wrt drought, and last year's winter wheat crop was *OK*. I've seen (literally, out my windows!) the crop yields from this year's production, for corn, beets, pinto beans, and sunflowers quite a bit lower than in years past. We just got a decent snow cover, which the winter wheat loved, but it will require lots more, and more persistent. snow cover till late April for the yields to be decent. Give the happs of the states to our east, farmers her are on pins and needles; the inputs have ALL gone up, and I watch my well like a hawk, givn a great deal of farmgn around me is center-pivot irrigation, which draws on the same aquifer as I am on. In short, I see food prices remaining high from now on. And let me say this unequivocally: Fuel-from-food is an asinine, stupid, idiotic idea. As you say, the primary and most hurtful effect of that is on the world's poor. -
CBDunkerson at 00:38 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Composer99, while there has been an increase in food prices over the past few years I suspect Sphaerica was referring to what is expected to happen next year as the impact of abysmal US crop production this past Summer starts to hit the global marketplace. The 'midwest' of the United States produces a significant portion of the world's food supply. Mandates that some of that food be converted into ethanol have already been hitting prices, but the sharp drop in available supplies will cause a more significant rise. If poor farming conditions continue in many years this will become a 'new normal' which will have a devastating impact on poor areas around the world. -
Composer99 at 00:32 AM on 1 November 2012Tom Harris' Carleton University Climate Misinformation Class
Well, I can definitely state that the misinformation spread by Mr Harris has had the desired effect, based on a discussion just a few minutes ago regarding the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy here at the office with a Carleton alum who, it transpires, took the course. -
Composer99 at 00:27 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Sphaerica: As far as "food prices go up and stay up" goes, I suspect we have reached that point already. -
vrooomie at 00:08 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
DSL....."ACE?" -
DOOMDAYS at 00:07 AM on 1 November 2012Global Dimming in the Hottest Decade
@Rob Painting Thenquiu Very Much for you answer ROB. Is true that in short timeframes (less than a decade or so) ENSO dominates the other forcings like GHGs or Aerosols, so if not misunderstood your words, it is misleading to take this decade as a real trend of what would happen in a dimming world ..Iam right ??? ...Questions? As we would expect that the aerosol forcing is seen reflected in the surface temperatures of the HS??? 15 to 20 Years ? -
vrooomie at 00:07 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Dikran@41: ...OK. I'll also await an answer and avoid any more responses to Dale till we get that answer. -
Bob Lacatena at 23:53 PM on 31 October 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Deniers annoy me, but I have always known that the day would come when deniers would literally make me sick, when they would cross the line as the effects of their denial began to really, really demonstrate itself by directly impacting and hurting people -- lots and lots of people. We have Sandy, soon we'll have food prices whose effects will ripple through the developing world, we have more than that and it's getting worse with every passing day. People are getting hurt now. I also knew that when this day came, their denial would only get stronger and more aggressive, much as a little child will more and more adamantly claim he "didn't do it." They scream so loudly that they convince themselves of their innocence. And I also know that the day is going to come when this stuff is no longer remotely arguable, when we've seen four or five Sandy's, and Texas and Oklahoma farmers are abandoning their farm land for good, and food prices go up and stay up. And on and on and on. And when that day comes, some people are going to have to live with themselves (even though, so far, they've demonstrated an uncannily unwavering ability to spin lies into gold, to stand the facts and the physics on their heads to create a bizarre world where they are right and everyone else is wrong). The day is going to come when their complete idiocy is laid bare to all, including themselves. I hope they'll at least have the courage to do as Myron Ebell already did (denier-style quote mining purposefully executed here):"I’m sorry and I wish we could speed up our efforts to reverse the policies that we have supported here at CEI."
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DSL at 23:36 PM on 31 October 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Dale, you can dump Maue. He's an ACE fanatic who does what the WeatherBell people tell him to do. ACE is simplistic and doesn't directly account for a storm's energy or destructive power via precipitation/movement of mass. -
Dikran Marsupial at 22:59 PM on 31 October 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
To keep the discussion fixed purely on the science, can I suggest that Dale answers a question that demonstrates that he has a good grasp of the science of which he appears to be skeptical, namely: What does the IPCC say about trends in tropical cyclones (hurricanes and typhoons) and mid-latitude storms, both in terms of the historical records and projections of future climate? And perhaps not respond to his posts until he has demonstrated that he knows what mainstream science says on this issue by giving a direct and unambiguous answer to this question. -
idunno at 22:50 PM on 31 October 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
This article from 2011 is not, strictly speaking, about Sandy. Still, it looks fairly on-topic... http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/16/climate-change-report-new-york-city?CMP=twt_gu -
bill4344 at 22:19 PM on 31 October 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Dale, I suggest you're angry and aggressive because you feel your world being torn out of your grasp by the very winds whose strength your denying. And rightly so - in the world outside your fanatical cast of mind virtually no-one swallows the 'this is all just a coincidence' line after decades of predictions of just such events as this, along with record melting sea-ice, record melting glaciers, egregious sets of broken temperature records, unprecedented event after event after event. We've even had McCain's daughter tweeting 'So, are still going to go with climate change not being real, fellow republicans?' It's that bloody obvious. The strategy of desperate cherry-picking, nit-picking, and general obfuscationist pedantry is falling apart. This was supposed to be a Type 1 error thing so you could sneer about a bit of water sloshing over the breakwaters, ha ha, stupid alarmists fussing over nothing, now let's all elect Mitt, wasn't it? And instead it turns out your Type 2 errors are coming home to roost, and it's blatantly obvious, even at the level of a Fox News audience, just what pollyannaish BS the whole 'isn't happening and anyway even if it is we'll adapt' thing is! Turns out reality really does have a strong liberal bias... And, Christ, man, how did this not really-impressive-at-all, barely-even-merits-the-name storm manage to do so much harm? Where did those barometric records come from? What's going to happen when some satisfactorily-higher-category proper full-on hurricane does hit? Shall we wait until then, and then we can all wring our hands with crystal conviction knowing that we should have done something thirty years ago, shall we? You don't know anything about risk. Get it? At all! The bulwark of your arrogance has been breached along with the sea-walls. You want to take up the whole trends thing? Go see Tamino discussing Grinsted. He'll thrash you, but you won't know it. And, as I said, do keep up the tone-deaf 'it was nothing I tell you' zealotry - it ain't our cause you're harming with it...Moderator Response: [DB] Passion for science and accuracy is appreciated, but let us not lose control of how we pitch our comments. The discussion is veering into comments policy adherence territory. Let us remain respectful without losing that passion for the science and the dialogue will benefit accordingly. Thanks! -
Dikran Marsupial at 21:55 PM on 31 October 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
@Dale, yes, a reference to a peer-reviewed paper is a big improvement, which was the point I was making. Now if you want your argument to be really convincing, you should explain where these papers sit in the context of other studies. Do more modern studies agree with those conclusions? What about the severity, rather than the frequency of storms? What does the IPCC WG1 report say about this (which is a reasonable assessment of the mainstream scientific position). Does the IPCC cite reports that contradict the ones you cite? By the way, the first paper seems to me to overstate the conclusions, where they write "The hypothesis that hurricane strike frequencies are increasing in time is also statistically rejected.", which is not supported by the analysis as far as I can see. Not being able to reject the null hypothesis does not entitle you to reject the alternative hypothesis. To be clear, I was pointing out that your argument was flawed, not necessarily the conclusion. However strong claims (such as that mainstream climatology is wrong) requires similarly strong evidence. The ball is in your court. -
CBDunkerson at 21:44 PM on 31 October 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Dale wrote: "if this system had've hit a much less populated area, and much less financially and politically important area, would the same media hype have been seen?" Tell me. Why do you suppose this particular area is so financially important? Could it be on account of the deep water ports and major rivers that are rarely hit by natural disasters? Earthquakes, tornadoes, wild fires, and (until recently) major storms all generally give the northeastern US a pass. Now we've seen widespread power outages lasting several days three times in the past year. You think turning the biggest financial center in the world back to third world conditions is not a news worthy event? As to the actual storm... you seem not to comprehend the difference between 'hurricane strength' on the Saffir - Simpson scale, which measures top wind speed, and the total energy of the storm. Sandy's top wind speed was nowhere near as high as Katrina's, but it was a massively more powerful storm. Katrina had a devastating impact on one city and did significant damage in a couple of states. Sandy hit the east coast of North America. See the difference? On the ground report: Partial power has been restored in NYC, Newark, and other major cities. Oddly, traffic lights are still out in many places even where the surrounding buildings have power. Most water pumping stations and communications are back up, but electricity is another story. They seem to be concentrating on getting the cities restored before the surrounding areas. Which means that a lot of people (me included) now have power at their workplaces, but not at home. Only damage at my place was a 35 year old Magnolia tree which got crushed by a huge limb coming off a much older Oak in the neighbor's yard. Trees are down all over the area. They had done a lot of work after the prior outages to clear branches away from power lines and I didn't see any downed lines this time, but obviously it didn't solve the problem. Projections are that many areas could remain without power for a couple of weeks. -
Dale at 21:37 PM on 31 October 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Dikran @ 31: You mean like this statistical analysis from 1900-2006 finding no increasing trend in US Atlantic basin hurricane strikes? http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2007JCLI1772.1 Or this one (which includes the Pacific basin) from 1851 to 2009 also showing no trend in US hurricane strikes. http://moe.met.fsu.edu/~jcossuth/others/ And finally don't forget Dr Ryan Maue's graphs, showing no increasing trend in global tropical storms or hurricanes/cyclones since 1970. http://policlimate.com/tropical/frequency_12months.png So yeah, let's look at trends.Moderator Response:[DB] As commenter bill notes below, you need to evaluate Grinsted et al 2012:
"We demonstrate that the major events in our surge index record can be attributed to landfalling tropical cyclones; these events also correspond with the most economically damaging Atlantic cyclones. We find that warm years in general were more active in all cyclone size ranges than cold years. The largest cyclones are most affected by warmer conditions and we detect a statistically significant trend in the frequency of large surge events (roughly corresponding to tropical storm size) since 1923. In particular, we estimate that Katrina-magnitude events have been twice as frequent in warm years compared with cold years (P < 0.02)."
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/10/10/1209542109
Add in the warmest 17 years in the instrumental record are all the most recent 17 years...
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Dikran Marsupial at 20:47 PM on 31 October 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Eric (skeptic), you are not correct in thinking that the analogy require the die to be rolled more often due to climate change. The die has a "one" on one face that corresponds to the absence of a storm worth recording. Loading the die could mean that there was a change in the probability of rolling a one corresponding to a change in the frequency of reported storms. As happens quite often when using analogies in the climate debate, you are over-complicating a simple analogy and hence missing the point. Loading a die means to change the distributions of the outcomes away from being equiprobable. Loading a die says nothing about how often the die is rolled, so there was no reason to introduce that complication. -
Eric (skeptic) at 20:36 PM on 31 October 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Dikran, it seems we are talking about two things: the rolls of the dice and how often the dice is rolled. Science does not know if the dice will be rolled more or less often. I was simply assuming the same number of rolls. When the event happens (a roll), the dice are weighted to a more severe outcome. -
Dikran Marsupial at 20:24 PM on 31 October 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Eric (skeptic) You don't understand the analogy then. Loading the dice alters the distribution of values that you get when you repeatedly roll the dice. You will still roll ones and twos sometimes, but you will see more fives and sixes than you would if the die were not loaded. If you look at a single roll of the die, it is partly a matter of chance whether you get a one or a six, but also partly a matter of how heavily the die is loaded. Similarly, it takes a combination of "random factors" coming together to make a storm in the first place, but climate change alters the distribution of those "random factors" and hence has an effect on the intensity of storms (IIRC current thinking is that it is intensity that is affected more than frequency, but I not read a great deal on this particular issue). Just as you can't attribute rolling a six on a particular occasion purely on the loading of the die, you can't attribute the severity of a particular storm purely on climate change. However common sense should tell you that loading the die made that six more likely, and similarly a decent grasp of the physics should tell you that warmer oceans makes a strong storm/hurricane more likely. -
Eric (skeptic) at 20:15 PM on 31 October 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Dikran, it depends on the meaning of the dice analogy. If the dice has an outcome with "rainfalls could be 5 to 10 percent higher" then the analogy works. Storm surge could be another side of the dice with another few inches added to the surge. But I do not believe that a Sandy "event" is a valid dice roll outcome. The Sandy "event" as a whole was part of the pattern. As an example, had Sandy not appeared at the right time but instead a nor'easter spun up off the coast, but instead of moving inland the nor'easter lingered off of New Jersey pushing water into NYC for multiple high tides, it could have caused the same surge that Sandy did. A stalled front in fall could (and has) yielded more rainfall than Sandy did and that rain could be 5 to 10 percent higher due to climate change. -
Dikran Marsupial at 20:10 PM on 31 October 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Dale anecdotal evidence is not the same a statistics. Noting that there have been hurricanes worse than Sandy in the past is essentially a cherry pick as what really matters is the trends. There are proper statistical procedures for analysing such trends, so if you really want to make a scientific argument, then I'm afraid you will need to use the proper scientific procedures. Alternatively you could argue the physics, can you explain why warmer oceans does not affect hurricane intensity as Prof. Trenberth suggests? -
Dale at 20:05 PM on 31 October 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
chriskoz @ 21 I was in Innisfail for tropical cyclone Larry (cat 4 - Saffir Simpson). I know how destructive these things are. Larry had sustained 1 min winds of 205+ kmh at landfall, Sandy had 140 kmh at landfall (NOAA advisory 7-8pm Mon 29th). I apologise if I sound "sceptical" of the beat-up of Sandy. But I don't apologise for sounding "sceptical" of the climate change claims affecting Sandy. @ those talking about "loaded dice". I invite you guys to read the Wiki entries on north-east Atlantic hurricanes. You'll find a number of hurricanes worse than Sandy. Frequency is not getting higher as you claim. You will probably also enjoy reading about the 1938 hurricane (often called the Long Island Express) with its 260 kmh winds and 14-25 foot storm surge (also during a full moon) which if occurred today has been estimated would cause $40 billion in damage to New York. Or if you like, try the 1821 Norfolk and Long Island hurricane, which had 215 kmh winds which caused a 13 foot storm surge flooding Manhattan back to Canal Street. -
Dikran Marsupial at 20:03 PM on 31 October 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Eric It is hard to reconcile your interpretation of what Trenberth said with the particular quote that you actually gave. That quote describes the deterministic effect that climate change has had that should be expected to affect the formation and intensity of storms. Of course there is also an element of chance involved, but as far as I can see the quote you gave suggests that climate change is loading the dice, which is essentially the mainstream position on this. -
gws at 19:52 PM on 31 October 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Dale and others, The category of a storm says little about its impact. While it is still widely used in the media and for historical reasons, hurricane researchers have moved on and discuss more aspects of a storm. Particularly the hurricane severity index (follow the external links) is more useful for storm comparisons. I addition, impact upon landfall is not only affected by the external factors listed here, but also by i) infrastructure preparedness (e.g. construction locations; are power lines above-ground? and trees trimmed away from them?) ii) disaster preparedness (e.g. construction types; disaster kits) iii) previous weather in area (e.g. is the ground soaked already?) And there are likely some more. One of the reasons the east coast is not as prepared as the Gulf Coast, is storm frequency in the area. If conditions are "right", even a "minor" storm can do a lot of damage (e.g. TS Allison, Fay). Comments like Dale's are short-sighted, as they focus on one or a few aspects, as one would expect a denialist do. Meaning, without going to a denialist page, I predict with certainty ;-) that is what they are doing. Informed people consider many aspects, and although this storm is not going to be shown to have been caused by Global Warming, informed people that its impact would likely have been lower had Global Warming been addressed early on. -
adelady at 19:36 PM on 31 October 2012Hurricane Sandy: Neither weather nor tide nor sea level can be legislated
I can't remember his name but I heard a person from the USA on car radio today with a catchy take on starting the process. We don't 'rebuild', we must 'reposition'. I doubt it will be enforced by too many governments this time round, but I rather fancy the insurance companies might have a few things to say to guide people's future decisions. Insisting that insurance payments will be forthcoming only if people build elsewhere and that elsewhere must be further away from sea level could be one wake-up call. -
shoyemore at 19:24 PM on 31 October 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
A wind map of this time yesterday shows how unique Sandy was/ is ... it affected every state from Florida to Maine, and from New York to Illinois. A "Superstorm" indeed.
The "Only a Category 1" meme is pretty anaemic in the face of that.
One joker pointed out that the Candadian border guards prevented it entering their country!! But it also affected all the Canadian states along the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence.
An animated map here: Animated Wind Map
Thanks to coby A Few things Ill Considered
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Eric (skeptic) at 19:24 PM on 31 October 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Scaddenp, I disagree and so does Trenberth: at Slate.com He said: "The thing that the climate is doing is that the sea temperatures are higher. There is more moisture feeding into the storm. That adds to the rainfalls. The rainfalls could be 5 to 10 percent higher as a consequence of climate change. The sea level is running a little bit higher. Sea level is going up a foot a century at the current rate." He basically said the hybrid storm was a chance event. In particular I would add that the upper level pattern would have caused a "normal" nor'easter had Sandy not been in a particular location at a particular time. The models could not agree at first (particularly GFS) because timing was everything.
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