Month: July 2012

“Welcome to the Rest of Our Lives”

The Washington Post, along with the rest of the mainstream media, has failed us spectacularly on the most important issues of my lifetime, and of the millennium. Better late than never, Eugene Robinson’s piece today was spot on.

Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post:

Still don’t believe in climate change? Then you’re either deep in denial or delirious from the heat.

As I write this, the nation’s capital and its suburbs are in post-apocalypse mode. About one-fourth of all households have no electricity, the legacy of an unprecedented assault by violent thunderstorms Friday night. Things are improving: At the height of the power outage, nearly half the region was dark.

–

Yes, it’s always hot here in the summer — but not this hot. Yes, we always have thunderstorms — but never like these. The cliché is true: It did sound like a freight train.

According to scientists, climate change means not only that we will see higher temperatures but that there will be more extreme weather events like the one we just experienced. Welcome to the rest of our lives.

Continue reading ““Welcome to the Rest of Our Lives””

“This is a view of the Future. So Watch Out!” – Kevin Trenberth on PBS NewsHour

Lack of water, “the great air conditioner”, is causing unusually high temperatures and extreme weather events in the United States, Kevin Trenberth with the National Center for Atmospheric Research tells Judy Woodruff.  Dr. Trenberth knocks it out of the park here.

It’s striking that Judy Woodruff, the interviewer maintains to the end an all-to-characteristic checked-out journalist view from nowhere – “Well, that ought to be something to keep you scientists busy.”  Earth to Judy – Colorado is burning. Trenberth, to his credit does not let is slide.

NewsHour update on the recent rash of storms and heat below.

Continue reading ““This is a view of the Future. So Watch Out!” – Kevin Trenberth on PBS NewsHour”

Greenland Something Less than Snow White

12 August 2005, 8 PM local time, Photo from a helicopter flying over the ice sheet surface at ~1500 feet altitude. This is how much darker the Greenland ablation area is than a fresh snow surface that blankets it in wintertime. Along much of the southwestern ice sheet at the lowest 1000 m in elevation, impurities concentrate near the surface and produce this dark surface. Not all of the ice sheet is this dark, only the lower ~1/3 of the elevation profile of the ice sheet is. However, as melting increases on the ice sheet, so does the area exposed that is this dark.

Meltfactor is the blog of Jason Box, of the Byrd Polar Center at Ohio State U.

Meltfactor:

The following provides detail to a story run by NOAA entitled Greenland Ice Sheet Getting Darker…

Freshly fallen snow under clear skies reflects 84% (albedo= 0.84) of the sunlight falling on it (Konzelmann and Ohmura, 1995). This reflectivity progressively reduces during the sunlit (warm) season as a consequence of ice grain growth, resulting in a self-amplifying albedo decrease, a positive feedback. Another amplifier; the complete melting of the winter snow accumulation on glaciers, sea ice, and the low elevations of ice sheets exposes darker underlying solid ice. The albedo of low-impurity snow-free glacier ice is in the range of 30% to 60% (Cuffey and Paterson, 2010). Where wind-blown-in and microbiological impurities accumulate near the glacier ice surface (Bøggild et al. 2010), the ice sheet albedo may be extremely low (20%) (Cuffey and Paterson, 2010). Thus, summer albedo variability exceeds 50% over parts of the ice sheet where a snow layer ablates by mid-summer, exposing an impurity-rich ice surface (Wientjes and Oerlemans, 2010), resulting in absorbed sunlight being the largest source of energy for melting during summer and explaining most of the inter-annual variability in melt totals (van den Broeke et al. 2008, 2011).

The photo below shows how dark the ice sheet surface can become in the lowest ~1000 m elevation in the “ablation area” after the winter snow melts away and leaves behind an impurity-rich surface. This dark area is where the albedo feedback with melting is strongest.

Dirty ice surrounds a meltwater stream near the margin of the ice sheet. Compared to fresh snow and clean ice, the dark surface absorbs more sunlight, accelerating melting. © Henrik Egede Lassen/Alpha Film, from the Snow, Water, Ice, and Permafrost in the Arctic report from the U.N. Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme.

Satellite observations from the NASA Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)  indicate a significant Greenland ice sheet albedo decline (-5.6±0.7%) in the June-August period over the 12 melt seasons spanning 2000-2011. According to linear regression, the ablation area albedo declined from 71.5% in 2000 to 63.2% in 2011 (time correlation = -0.805, 1-p=0.999). The change (-8.3%) is more than two times the absolute albedo RMS error (3.1%). Over the accumulation area, the highly linear (time correlation = -0.927, 1-p>0.999) decline from 81.7% to 76.6% over the same period also exceeds the absolute albedo RMS error.

Greenland ice sheet average reflectivity or albedo (multiply by 100 to get % units) for 12 summer (June-August) periods.

NOAA Climate Watch:

According to Jason Box, the lead author of the Greenland chapter of the 2011 Arctic Report Card and the analyst of the reflectiveness data, the darkening in the interior is just as remarkable than the changes at the margins. The interior is the high-point of the dome-shaped ice sheet, rising to nearly two miles above sea level. There is no visible melting there in the summer, so why is the area becoming darker?

Map of changes in the percent of light reflected by the Greenland Ice Sheet in summer (June-July-August) 2011 compared to the average from 2000-2006. Virtually the entire surface has grown darker due to surface melting, dust and soot on the surface, and temperature-driven changes in the size and shape of snow grains. Map by NOAA’s climate.gov team, based on NASA satellite data processed by Jason Box, Byrd Polar Research Center, the Ohio State University.

The darkening in the non-melting areas, says Dr. Box, is due to changes in the shape and size of the ice crystals in the snowpack as its temperature rises. Snow grains clump together, and they reflect less light than the many-faceted, smaller crystals. Additional heat rounds the sharp edges of the crystals. Round particles absorb more sunlight than jagged ones do.

A freshly fallen snow crystal has numerous facets to reflect sunlight (left). Warming causes the grains to round at the edges and clump together (right). Scanning electron microscope photos courtesy the Electron and Confocal Microscopy Laboratory, USDA Agricultural Research Service.

Millions Swelter Without Power. In a Renewable World, it Need Not Be.

Just 2 weeks ago I noted this little discussed feature of a renewable economy – resilience:

Here’s a little secret that Fox News does not get about renewable energy.

The image climate deniers would like to promote of the typical electric car/solar roof customer is that of the sandal wearing, tofu eating, lefty, socialist, green weenie. In fact, a good part of the early adopters are going to be from precisely the opposite end of the political spectrum. One of the major appeals of distributed generation, and the idea of producing one’s own energy, is the deeply embedded dislike and distrust Americans have for  big business,  big government, and big energy.

Tell the most hard core, right wing Tea Party member that there’s a way he or she can make their household more energy independent – more able to weather storms, blackouts, brownouts, or even terrorist attacks in a world of asymmetrical warfare, and they want to know more. This demographic is actually larger than the stereotypical green consumer.

Nissan is going to prove this with a new product rollout.

One more reason, now that the technology is  here – renewable energy is unstoppable. With every new event like this, determination grows to build a  grid that allows greater security, resilience, safety, and independence.  Smart Grids and Renewables will rule, not because green is better, (tho it is) not because low carbon is better (tho it is), but because BETTER is better.

Greenbiz

As the electricity grid becomes increasingly vulnerable to faults from equipment failure or willful attack, the risk of a major national scale grid failure is rising. Physicist Amory Lovins has said that following hundreds of blackouts in 2005, Cuba reorganized its electricity transmission system into networked microgrids and cut the occurrence of blackouts to zero within two years, limiting damage even after two hurricanes.[11] Networked island-able microgrids describes Lovins’ vision where energy is generated locally from solar power, wind power and other resources and used by super-efficient buildings. When each building, or neighborhood, is generating its own power, with links to other “islands” of power, the security of the entire network is greatly enhanced.[11]

Word of the Day: “Derecho”

Why do I suspect that in 10 years, a lot more people will know how to pronounce “derecho”?

 Examiner.com:

Derechos (long-lived violent windstorms) defined as having to travel at least 240 miles with wind speeds of at least 58 mph, easily made that mark yesterday creating a swath of wind damage of nearly 800 miles long and 500 miles wide with peak winds speeds between 80 and 100 mph.

The storm was birthed around the Chicagoland area Thursday morning with winds between 70 and 90 mph, but then really began to take shape in Indiana.

The destrcuctive windstorm traveled through as many as 9 states (Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, and New Jersey).

The violent windstorm left at least three injured in Virginia, one injured both in Indiana and Ohio, and at least one dead in both Kentucky and Virginia. Approximately 3.5 million from Indiana to the East Coast lost power including about 1.5 million in Maryland and Virginia.

The derecho has been characterized as being worst than Hurricane Irene of 2011 in southern New Jersey. Statewide Emergency Declarations in have been ordered in West Virginia, and also for parts of New Jersey.

NPR:

— “A derecho (pronounced similar to “deh-REY-cho” in English… ) is a widespread, long-lived wind storm that is associated with a band of rapidly moving showers or thunderstorms. Although a derecho can produce destruction similar to that of tornadoes, the damage typically is directed in one direction along a relatively straight swath. As a result, the term ‘straight-line wind damage’ sometimes is used to describe derecho damage. By definition, if the wind damage swath extends more than 240 miles … and includes wind gusts of at least 58 mph … or greater along most of its length, then the event may be classified as a derecho. ”

— “The word ‘derecho’ was coined by Dr. Gustavus Hinrichs, a physics professor at the University of Iowa, in a paper published in the American Meteorological Journal in 1888.”

— “Derechos are associated with bands of showers or thunderstorms (collectively referred to as ‘convection’) that assume a curved or bowed shape. The bow-shaped storms are called bow echoes. … Derecho winds are the product of what meteorologists call ‘downbursts.’ A downburst is a concentrated area of strong wind produced by a convective downdraft. Downbursts have horizontal dimensions of about 4 to 6 miles (8 to 10 kilometers), and may last for several minutes.”

— “Derechos in the United States are most common in the late spring and summer (May through August), with more than 75% occurring between April and August. … [They] most commonly occur along two axes. One extends along the ‘Corn Belt’ from the upper Mississippi Valley southeast into the Ohio Valley, and the other from the southern Plains northeast into the mid Mississippi Valley.”

As for the term itself, according to a paper written by retired National Weather Service forecaster Robert Johns, the University of Iowa’s Hinrichs “decided to use the term derecho (Spanish for ‘direct or straight ahead’) to define these non-tornadic events since this term could be considered as an analog to the term tornado which is also of Spanish origin.”

Detroit Free Press:

When a hurricane is lumbering their way, state officials have time to get extra personnel in place so they can immediately start on cleanup. That wasn’t the case with this storm, known as a “derecho” — a straight-line windstorm that sweeps over a large area at high speed.

“Unlike a polite hurricane that gives you three days of warning, this storm gave us all the impact of a hurricane without any of the warning of a hurricane,” Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley said.

Storm, Power Outages, Heat Weigh Heavy on East Coast

A reliable observer writes me what sounds like a postcard from the future:

I’m In WV. It’s desperate. No food water gas. Post email help!!!!!! If near WV bring food and water. Oxygen patients flooding hospitals. Many people with no phone service or gas to get help, water or supplies.

Post this to our Facebook. If you can come into wv with food water and check on people  I have not seen 1 emergency vehicle. People in hollers with no way to get help or leave. No one going house to house to check. 79 50 all clear no traffic. Come with aid

Where the fuck is the national guard.  Cars and people are stranded at closed gas stations. No gas or lights from Parkersburg to Clarksburg. Then none in Braxton Upshur or Lewis Co.  Apocalyptic.

Really people must call friends a d family to check on them. Go there if possible if they cannot contact them. People in falls mills to get relief from almost 100% heat. Creeks dry.

Newsday: 

Millions across the mid-Atlantic region sweltered Saturday in the aftermath of violent storms that pummeled the eastern U.S. with high winds and downed trees, killing at least 13 people and leaving 3 million without power during a heat wave.

Power officials said the outages wouldn’t be repaired for several days to a week, likening the damage to a serious hurricane. Emergencies were declared in Maryland, West Virginia, Ohio, theDistrict of Columbia and Virginia, where Gov. Bob McDonnell said the state had its largest non-hurricane outage in history, as more storms threatened. “This is a very dangerous situation,” the governor said.

Mashable:

Maybe you’re wondering how a storm on the East Coast killed access to your favorite photo sharing app, which is based in San Francisco. That’s because Instagram, like many major web companies, uses an even bigger web company — Amazon — to host its traffic and data.

An enterprise cloud-computing product called Amazon Web Services (AWS) powers businesses in 190 countries worldwide — “hundreds of thousands” of startups and mature companies, all told, according to Amazon’s website. Pinterest, Netflix and Heroku are among the notable sites and services you may be familiar with — in addition to, of course, “your Instagram.”

Some call AWS the Coke of the web hosting industry, so that gives even more of an idea of just how prevalent it is.

AWS operates out of Oregon and northern California in addition to northern Virginia, but only the Virginia facilities were affected in Friday’s storm. Still, that’s enough to have people wondering how they’ll see filtered Saturday brunch photos, as well as enough to make “My Instagram” trend worldwide on Twitter for several hours. (Pinterest and Netflix were back up by Saturday morning.)