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Alpinist at 12:52 PM on 1 November 2012Hurricane Sandy and the Climate Connection
Thanks Dana, this is a nice summary. It reminds of something Aaron Lewis posted a bit ago at Tamino's site: The composition of the atmosphere affects the weather. All of the weather, all the time. We have changed the composition of the atmosphere. We are affecting the weather, all of the weather, all the time. -
P.T. Goodman at 12:52 PM on 1 November 2012Hurricane Sandy and the Climate Connection
Excellent article. Some of it puts into focus what I've been trying to tell a denier acquaintance. Mainly that the total energy of a storm says more than just wind speed, so storm size matters. But there is plenty of other information here. In far Western New York State, we got high winds and lots of rain, but not the type of destruction that the coastal regions received. -
Bob Lacatena at 12:39 PM on 1 November 2012Hurricane Sandy and the Climate Connection
ranyl,1:300 year event at least?
Less, if you're talking pre-1950. Post-2010? I shudder to think, but we'll sadly find out. Well-known Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times." -
Jim Eager at 12:02 PM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Dale wrote: All we hear is "this may happen in this range". It's all probabilities on assumptions on how things may work in a hypothetical world. Science is fact, not mumbo-jumbo. With that you demonstrate that you don't even understand what science is. -
ranyl at 11:37 AM on 1 November 2012Hurricane Sandy and the Climate Connection
Thanks Dana. Huge diameter storm ~1000miles. All the ocean to turn, and it was highly wind sheared on the approach to New Jersey, incredible how far it maintained hurricanes winds and a very low pressure, some of that accumulated deep water heat coming to the surface?? As everyone knows global warming didn't cause Sandy and the high lunar tide was very unfortuneate, but global warming as you said does seems to have been a helping hand in the impact path she took and does seem to have amplified her magnitude. For the end of October she was an unprecented storm in a long record of severe storms. 1:300 year event at least? Following the USA drought and several other record rainfall events this year. Global warming does seem to happening and some and in ways only now being fully recognised. The diagnosis is serious extremes and new weather patterns. And there is still another 0.6C warming to come, if not more considering the total lack of effective global action and the permafrost melting situation. What is the next El Nino year going to bring!!!? All natural factors have been tending to cooling recently, but we now entering a potential El nino period with a peak of sunspots combination next year. Intersting times. ?? -
Albatross at 11:21 AM on 1 November 2012Hurricane Sandy and the Climate Connection
That quote from Roberts is very appropriate and accurate. In a couple of sentences it captures what many of us have being struggling to articulate clearly to the public. Hopefully he doesn't mind people borrowing it (with credit of course). The blog post titled "Hurricane Sandy and the Climate Hens" by The Way Things Break is also worth a read. -
Eric (skeptic) at 10:36 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Some people are correctly attributing sea level and some Gulf Stream warming to global warming and from those factors to a stronger hurricane Sandy. However, Arctic heat release (presumably from refreezing) causing jet stream wobbling does not fit into that same clear cut category. I am not ready to accept causation because there are too many other factors. I did however find some support for it. I plotted NAO for April and October for the period of Arctic ice decline (79-present) although October 2012 is missing from the plot, it is negative, probably about -1.25. April seemed like a good pick due to close to maximum ice with the start of melting causing cooling:
Whereas the month of October with heat release from refreezing shows a downward trend in NAO
Data came from CPC at NOAA -
Dale at 10:04 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Dikran: I don't see the point of answering the question, but in the interest of humoring the point: "Results from embedded high-resolution models and global models, ranging in grid spacing from 100 km to 9 km, project a likely increase of peak wind intensities and notably, where analysed, increased near-storm precipitation in future tropical cyclones. Most recent published modelling studies investigating tropical storm frequency simulate a decrease in the overall number of storms, though there is less confidence in these projections and in the projected decrease of relatively weak storms in most basins, with an increase in the numbers of the most intense tropical cyclones." -
scaddenp at 09:59 AM on 1 November 2012Climate of Doubt and Escalator Updates
Dikran - the real question is what would generator look like if they had 100% oxygen intake. sincam - it is not clear at all to me how a boiler running on 100% O2 would be significantly more efficient. It's not like a coal plant has lot a lot of energy in CO emissions or that they could get the steam much hotter. -
scaddenp at 09:42 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Eric, the significance of Grinsted, is that other measures of whether storm-intensity correlated with warmer temperatures are plagued by observational bias. Grinsted's tidal gauge method would indicate the temperature does indeed load the dice. -
Brian Purdue at 09:02 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Dale, I am an Australian too and I have been fighting global warming ignorance amongst my countrymen for years – with some success. We may call a spade a spade but our character has nothing to do with scientific reality. Your character is misplaced in this case. -
Dikran Marsupial at 08:59 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Dale, if you want to "call climate science out", then it is incumbent on you to at least demonstrate that you actually know what climate science actually says. So how about answering the question? -
Dale at 08:25 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
vrooomie @ 79: I find it funny how you believe WUWT to be my "home turf". I'm Australian, my "home turf" (if you want to call it that) is Jo Nova. ;) WUWT, like SkS, is a minor interest site to me, not a daily visit. michael @ 75: I was not being deliberately offensive. I was calling climate science out. All we hear is "this may happen in this range". It's all probabilities on assumptions on how things may work in a hypothetical world. Science is fact, not mumbo-jumbo. Sorry if that offends you, probably the Australian way of calling a spade a spade coming out in me. -
ranyl at 08:04 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
It seems that we can all see what we want as the truth when we don't want to see the actual truth. If somone doesn't want to see the truth then nothing anyone else says will make them see it, for the only way to see the truth is to look, and firstly to want to look, without any self orientated motivations or preconceptions. However giving the false truths credence in agruement lets them spread to a wider audience and thus challenging every denial claim (when most are clearly irrational now) just gives them unwanted air time, unwarranted credence, creates unecessary doubt and is distracting away from the real issues as is the intent of those in denial. At present there is already a real and very alarming change in the weather arround the world, (everywhere extremes are already the norms) and this is just the start, just the start! Therefore maybe instead of trying to convince someone in denial of their denial state of mind, to get them out of it somehow (which is an impossible task), we should be discussing more urgent things? Like how on earth is NYC going to adapt its infra-strcutre for future norms and extremes, sea level rise and water security whilst also not having the luxury of any fossil fuels? For the truth of the current situation is that burning any more fossil fuels than essential for adaptation and transformation is really just too dangerous. -
Dikran Marsupial at 07:53 AM on 1 November 2012Climate of Doubt and Escalator Updates
sincam wrote: "What would they look like on a planet that had a 100% O2 atmosphere?" Non-existent I should think. In a 100% O2 atmosphere more or less everything carbon-based would be so flamable that we wouldn't have evolved enough to make them. -
sincam at 07:48 AM on 1 November 2012Climate of Doubt and Escalator Updates
Re: "pure" O2 in an engine, I'll stand by my statement: There is *NO* internal combustion engine that will run on pure O2, nor benefit appreciably by the use of O2. I agree. It would take a new design, not a jury rig. Check patents 8176884, 7543577, and others. The original post pointed out POSIBILITIES because of a NEW efficient, economical way to produce pure O2 and allow carbon capture. All present methods to produce O2 are about 14% efficient compared to the theoretical energy it should require (exergy). This means it takes about 8 times the energy and lots of equipment. Coal power plants, fuel cells, industrial furnaces, and cars and everything else, are designed to operate in our 21% O2 atmosphere. What would they look like on a planet that had a 100% O2 atmosphere? -
jyushchyshyn at 07:21 AM on 1 November 2012The View from Germany: Tackling the real questions
will Germany does need conventional power, but it does not need new coal power. All Germany has to do is retain its nuclear power plants and build new ones. By mid century, assuming that they would be including hydro under renewable, all of the conventional power could be nuclear. -
tksoft at 07:15 AM on 1 November 2012The Big Picture (2010 version)
I think you nailed it. Thanks! -
DSL at 07:06 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Quite so, Dikran. I'm all ears. -
vrooomie at 07:03 AM on 1 November 2012Climate of Doubt Strategy #1: Deny the Consensus
W'OK! I was following--I thought!--the instructions at the bottom of the page...they are not clear, to a newbie-to-HTML as I am. Please tone it down, and I apologize. -
vrooomie at 06:47 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Alpinist@77: Even Dale's home turf, WUWT, isn't exactly safe for a rational person to point out what you've pointed out, in your last sentence. Even there, it's considered in pretty bad taste to minimize a storm that has, to date, killed over 50 people, and looks like it will easily top the damage from a "real" hurricane, Isaac. They're eating their own. -
idunno at 06:37 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Climate Central has had some excellent coverage of the build up, the arrival and the linkages of the storm to Global Warming. Also the Jeff Masters wunderground blog. It's really none of my business, as I am not a US citizen, but I think that those of you who do not wholly support Governor Romney's programme should be thanking Dale and his ilk, and encouraging him to continue posting these comments as much as possible and as widely as possible for the coming 5 days. -
Alpinist at 06:37 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Dale: I'd recommend you have a look at Jeff Maser's Wunderblog regarding Sandy. Jeff has a very detailed history there and determined very early that Sandy had no escape route and could be extremely damaging. Jeff also has an excellent discussion of the Greenland blocking ridge and its effect and potential relationship to the loss of Arctic sea ice. As for your initial comment downplaying the severity of Sandy...this is probably the wrong site for that sort of comment as you've figured out by now... -
Michael.M at 06:17 AM on 1 November 2012It's the sun
New Research for the topic: Evidence of recent causal decoupling between solar radiation and global temperature "We have shown that there is an evident causal decoupling between total solar irradiance and global temperature in recent periods. Our work permits us to fix the 1960s as the time of the loss of importance of solar influence on temperature. At the same time greenhouse gases total radiative forcing has shown a strong Granger causal link with temperature since the 1940s up to the present day. ..." Well, eyeballing MarkIII the TSI/Temperature Graph gives a similar impression, but scientific proof of it gives a way better argument. -
wili at 06:14 AM on 1 November 2012New research from last week 43/2012
Last full abstract posted-- "Increasing seabed temperatures make gas hydrate unstable in shallow Norwegian-Svalbard margin regions Ocean temperature variability for the past 60 years on the Norwegian-Svalbard margin influences gas hydrate stability on human time scales" --seems pretty darn important to me. It seems to contradict what Archer and others have been saying--that these hydrates would take a very long time to destabilize, so they don't pose an immediate risk. Also, if the methane can be released faster than it breaks down into CO2, we could see significant (perhaps catastrophic?) increases in atmospheric methane from this source. (I'm hoping that someone will show me how I am--or this article is--wrong. 'Cause if I'm right, we are in a world of even deeper hurt than most imagine.) -
Dikran Marsupial at 06:12 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Dale I am not asking you to accept what the IPCC says, I am asking whether you know what it actually says on this matter. So please, rather than further evasion, please can you summarise what you believe the IPCC has to say on the subject of historical and projected trends in tropical and mid-latitude storms. -
michael sweet at 05:55 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Dale, You are being deliberatly offensive. You said: "Have you wondered why meteorologists were able to call this storm a week out, say its path, its force and what impact it would have? Yet climate scientists were caught surprised with their pants down? " Climate scientists do not attempt to predict individual hurricanes. You statement is deliberately offensive and hopefully your post will be deleted by the moderators. You deserve to be banned if you continue with such trash talk. You contribute nothing to the discussion. You provide no data to support your wild claims. At least you provide an clear example of what absurd claims deniers are willing to say. -
Dale at 05:34 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Jim @ 57: Yes, Atlantic hurricane intensity has risen, offset by a reduction in Pacific cyclone intensity. Which results in a global trend of nothing. I thought only deniers cherry-picked? @Dikran: I've learnt over the last few years to take the IPCC reports with a pinch of salt. It's been years since AR4 and a lot of research has shown the IPCC not correct on a number of things. Recent research into cyclones shows no trend change in major storm activity. Individual basins change, but globally there's none. Yet you want me to take the word of a single paper over the many. (-snip-) (-snip-). Have you wondered why meteorologists were able to call this storm a week out, say its path, its force and what impact it would have? Yet (-snip-).Moderator Response: [DB] Note that you have previously been given a final warning for sloganeering (snipped above) and other things. Reverting to type will assure corrective action. FYI. -
wili at 05:34 AM on 1 November 2012The View from Germany: Tackling the real questions
Don't believe every Fox (aka Faux) News blurb you read or hear. "Opponents of renewables in North America are pouncing on the news of a new coal plant in Germany, especially because German Environmental Minister Peter Altmaier cut the ribbon, so to speak. Altmaier said Germany will need the conventional fossil power plants for "decades to come," though he did not say it was, as Fox Business put it, to "complement unreliable and intermittent renewable energies such as wind and solar power." In fact, he stated that "fossil energy and renewables should not be played as cards against each other" and that we have to move beyond "making enemies of the two." It took six years to build the plant, meaning that the process started in 2006. It is by no means a reaction to the nuclear phaseout of 2011. And as Altmaier himself points out, the new plant can ramp up and down by 150 megawatts within five minutes and by 500 megawatts within 15, making it a flexible complement to intermittant renewables. In the area, 12 coal plants more than 40 years old have been decommissioned, and the new 2,200 megawatt plant is to directly replace 16 older 150 megawatts blocks by the end of this year, so 2,200 megawatts of new, more flexible, somewhat cleaner capacity (the new plant has an efficiency of 43 percent, whereas 35 percent would be considered ambitious for most old coal plants) is directly replacing 2,400 old megawatts. Germany has a target of 35 percent renewable power by 2020, rising to 85 percent by 2050 – meaning that 65 percent of its power supply will be conventional in 2020, and the country will still have 15 percent conventional power by mid-century. Obviously, Germany needs to build some new conventional power plants to reach even that ambitious goal for renewables." http://www.renewablesinternational.net/is-germany-switching-to-coal/150/537/56081/ -
Chris G at 05:32 AM on 1 November 2012The View from Germany: Tackling the real questions
I'd be pleased if there were more general acknowledgement in the U.S. that a problem exists; dealing with reality in other words. It's hard to have a discussion about how best to handle a problem if half the people won't acknowledge that a problem exists. I wonder if part of the problem is that nothing really bad has happened to the U.S. for too many generations for the general populace to realise that bad things can happen. Universally, no one wants to believe that bad things will happen to them as individuals; and if the cultural memory of past events has grown dim, maybe there is a cultural reluctance to believe what is happening. I mean, for example, WWII was not a good time for anyone, but the U.S. never experienced substantial bombing or foreign troops on its soil, and a lot of countries did. Most of our wars that anyone can remember have been fought on television in some remote place. You have to go back to the 1930s to find large impacts felt at home, and there isn't much living memory of that time. -
wili at 05:17 AM on 1 November 2012Hurricane Sandy: Neither weather nor tide nor sea level can be legislated
Adelady, was it Edward Blakely, by any chance? : http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2012/s3622437.htm?site=tropic "You see these major floods - these floods wouldn't be there if they hadn't filled in all the swamplands and lowlands and given permits to build in areas where the so-called 100-year flood occurs, and this is the 100-year flood that is now coming every five years. This is a time to reposition, and not say, "We will rebuild". The smart thing to say is, "We will reposition"." -
Dikran Marsupial at 05:16 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Dale - no problem, I look forward to your answer. -
Dale at 05:15 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
doug @ 58: Not sure if you're aware, but due to the spherical nature of our planet, and my location in relation to yours, that whilst you are awake, I am asleep. So I apologise for finding it difficult to address the IPCC question whilst I was in sleep mode. -
wili at 05:12 AM on 1 November 2012Hurricane Sandy: Neither weather nor tide nor sea level can be legislated
Good point, adelady. As usual, $$$ is likely to be the only reality that significantly changes habits and habitats. IIRC, last week SwissRe increased it's rates for insurance companies doing business in North America because the rate of pay outs for disasters was going up so quickly. They also made it very clear that the kinds of disasters that were increasing so dramatically were specifically weather, heat and drought--the ones most closely linked to GW. -
vrooomie at 05:05 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Sorry: this was the link I messed up, in 53. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOjfxEejS2Y -
Jim Eager at 04:43 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
The media speculation about how long it will take for subway service to resume in the flooded tunnel sections are laughable. Salt water and electrical equipment are incompatible. The entire train detection system, signal system, Automatic Train Stop system, switch motor control system and all switch motors in the flooded tunnels will need to be completely replaced, not to mention any substations and main bus junctions for the power third rail. In short, we're talking months before through service can resume in the tunnels that were flooded. When was the last time that happened again, Dale? -
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.
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