For now, this is the definitive snap of what we know.
Kevin Trenberth in The Scientist:
Sandy started as an ordinary hurricane, feeding on the warm surface waters of the Atlantic Ocean for fuel. The warm moist air spirals into the storm, and as moisture rains out, it provides the heat needed to drive the storm clouds. By the time Sandy made landfall on Monday evening, it had become an extratropical cyclone with some tropical storm characteristics: a lot of active thunderstorms but no eye. This transformation came about as a winter storm that had dumped snow in Colorado late last week merged with Sandy to form a hybrid storm that was also able to feed on the mid-latitude temperature contrasts. The resulting storm—double the size of a normal hurricane—spread hurricane force winds over a huge area of the United States as it made landfall. Meanwhile an extensive easterly wind fetch had already resulted in piled up sea waters along the Atlantic coast. This, in addition to the high tide, a favorable moon phase, and exceedingly low pressure, brought a record-setting storm surge that reached over 13 feet in lower Manhattan and coastal New Jersey. This perfect combination led to coastal erosion, massive flooding, and extensive wind damage that caused billions in dollars of damage.
In many ways, Sandy resulted from the chance alignment of several factors associated with the weather. A human influence was also present, however. Storms typically reach out and grab available moisture from a region 3 to 5 times the rainfall radius of the storm itself, allowing it to make such prodigious amounts of rain. The sea surface temperatures just before the storm were some 5°F above the 30-year average, or “normal,” for this time of year over a 500 mile swath off the coastline from the Carolinas to Canada, and 1°F of this is very likely a direct result of global warming. With every degree F rise in temperatures, the atmosphere can hold 4 percent more moisture. Thus, Sandy was able to pull in more moisture, fueling a stronger storm and magnifying the amount of rainfall by as much as 5 to 10 percent compared with conditions more than 40 years ago. Heavy rainfall and widespread flooding are a consequence. Climate change has also led to the continual rise in sea levels—currently at a rate of just over a foot per century—as a result of melting land ice (especially glaciers and Greenland) and the expanding warming ocean, providing a higher base level from which the storm surge operates.
These physical factors associated with human influences on climate likely contribute to more intense and possibly slightly bigger storms with heavier rainfalls. But this is very hard to prove because of the naturally large variability among storms. This variability also makes it impossible to prove there is no human influence. Instead, it is important to recognize that we have a “new normal,” whereby the environment in which all storms form is simply different than it was just a few decades ago. Global climate change has contributed to the higher sea surface and sub-surface ocean temperatures, a warmer and moister atmosphere above the ocean, higher water levels around the globe, and perhaps more precipitation in storms.
The super storm Sandy follows on the heels of Isaac earlier this year and Irene last year, both of which also produced widespread flooding as further evidence of the increased water vapor in the atmosphere associated with warmer oceans. Active hurricane seasons in the North Atlantic since 1994 have so far peaked with three category 5 hurricanes in the record breaking 2005 season, one of which was Katrina. As human-induced effects through increases in heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere continue, still warmer oceans and higher sea levels are guaranteed. As Mark Twain said in the late 19th century, “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” Now humans are changing the weather, and nobody does anything about it! As we have seen this year, whether from drought, heat waves and wild fires, or super storms, there is a cost to not taking action to slow climate change, and we are experiencing this now.
From New Zealand, Kevin Trenberth is a distinguished senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). He has been heavily engaged in the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), where he currently chairs the Global Energy and Water Exchanges (GEWEX) program, as well as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for which he shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.
See also:
http://theconversation.edu.au/hurricane-sandy-mixes-super-storm-conditions-with-climate-change-10388
And:
http://climateandcapitalism.com/2012/10/29/frankenstorms-and-climate-change-how-the-1-created-a-monster/
Amazing what Dear Kev can do in hours whilst everybody else needs months to analyze a storm.
Amazing also how this totally bonkers anti-IPCC concept of “new normal” pops up at just the right time. People observing the USA until a few days ago who convinced themselves the “new normal” was “no hurricanes making landfall for years and years”, obviously they were shown wrong in the space of hours.
Wonder if everything’ll go back to sleep until next hurricane shows up? How are tornadoes doing of late, btw?
I often wonder if there is a brain in any way connected to the fingers that strike your keyboard.
Your empty comments bear no relationship with any topic at hand and make Martin Lack’s sound profound and interesting. Am sure you don’t need my encouragement to keep saying nothing at all really.
Your entirely vacuous consciousness (cf.: unconsciousness) bears no relationship with reality. You make kindergarteners who know the difference between a turnip and a deep-fried turkey sound omniscient and not as boringly devoid of intellect as your GIGO-put. Sadly, you are more Archie than arch. You make snoring seem interesting. With encouragement like yours, stromatalites would have refused to oxygenate the planet.
And you still have contributed zero original thinking. Congratulations.
And every item you post here is a stillbirth.
Omnologos. Hello. I think I can predict with 100% certainty this will make no difference, but having spent some time on this blog with you, and having read e.g. your ‘why AGW is logically impossible’ page, I think you need to sit down and take a broad view of what you’re doing here. Objectively, you’re trolling.
I mean, that’s obvious to most of us but I think it might not be to you. That ‘AGW is logically impossible’ thing is clearly a little odd, but I sent it to some postgrad philosophers I know. One said: “Goodness grief. This is not for real? I am … flabbergasted. It has to be a joke.” The other: “Dear me, that is bad. That is hilariously bad. I enjoyed it immensely.”
There are two things: you take up the time of people like me who initially think it’s possible to reason with you. It isn’t. You use reason in cargo cult fashion. It takes a while to work that out. Secondly, you’re just embarrassing yourself. As I say, anyone who actually knows something about the uses of logic is just bemused by you. Please for all that’s good and holy, don’t try and say “that’s because they can’t understand the depth of my genius.” Or do – and then we’ll know to stick you firmly into Duning Kruger territory.
Maybe there needs to be some sort of automatic wordpress labelling of your posts to help others avoid my fate (wasted hours) and to keep these threads sensible, presuming Peter doesn’t want to actually block you.
Or maybe there’s some chance of you actually facing up to what you don’t know and starting to learn something – the honorable thing to do – but I very much doubt it.
Dan – yes, the list is a joke. Some people are too slow to get it, send it around to other people, and then fall in the usual rubbish pontificating about a Dun[n]ing Kruger Effect they cannot possibly have any idea about.
Thank you for confirming all of that.
danolner,
I see this was linked to my comment. Hopefully our troll will see it was actually addressed to him.
Our troll is a repugnant fellow. But not quite as notorious as this oafish jackass:
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2012/10/spreader-false-storm-rumors-gets-outed-shamed-internet/58511/
Thanks for the compliment, MM. What you dislike about me is that I can see through your obfuscation; and every time I nail your ideological prejudice you just disappear…. Stop wasting your life and decide to be part of the solution before your own insurance premiums and food costs prove that your wait and see approach was utterly stupid.
Global warming transmogrifying into MY insurance premiums. Yeah, right.
With what kind of ludicrous egomania are you afflicted, MM? This is not about you… Have you not noticed the inexorable rise in your own insurance premiums? We are all reaping the harvest of what we have sown by not tackling this problem sooner.
A few hours? It takes a long time to become an overnight sensation and Trenberth was a lead author for the IPCC going back to ’95.
Added heat will accelerate and exacerbate weird weather – that’s been spoken about for a long time.
A lot of it won’t be easy to predict; in fact it may become difficult than ever.
But with the decline of Arctic sea ice, the changes in the Jet Stream, the fact that most of the continental expanse is in the Northern Hemisphere as well as so much of the population and arable land, means that as the average temp rises and the weather gets wilder, we’ll be in for a very, very rough ride.
Get your beauty sleep while you can.
Most of what Trenberth said has been discussed for the last 4 or 5 days, not just in the hours since the storm made landfall.
“Isaac earlier this year and Irene last year” – you translate into “no hurricanes making landfal for years and years” ?
Extreme weather events are increasing all over the world. It’s not just about hurricanes, or one hurricane.
Climate scientists do not claim to know how climate change effects tornadoes.
But I do remember over 230 of them in one month not very long ago.
It usually takes months for a proper scientific analysis of weather events. That’s a fact of life.
To claim “extreme weather events are increasing” goes against mainstream science. Even the definition of “extreme” is up in the air.
When we were in the midst of a one-season increase in number of tornadoes the usual suspects were ready to declare those a sign of “extreme weather events”.
Climate would be naturally changing anyway and sea levels rising. The IPCC doesn’t expect the AGW signal to be discernible for decades to come.
The ocean isn’t more acidic and never will be.
I think you need to re-read Hansen et al (2012) as well.
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_17/
This is probably a good time to start listening to the real experts in the field of climate science. Could save your life.
Save your your life? Save your retirement fund, perhaps.
Let’s see if the deniers put their money where their mouths are. There’ll be some real estate going cheap in many NE barrier islands. If they really believe what they say in the on-line world, they’d jump at the chance for a profitable investment in the feet on the ground world.
Perhaps we’ll see all those institutes with funds available for investment move in for good returns where the rest of us “lily-livered” types dare not go.
Trenberth’s daughter has been living for some time in a flat at the ground floor somewhere in Manhattan. “Listen to the experts” and “real estate going cheap” are ironical and sad debating points at the moment!!
Really…and your point is?… Father fails to control daughter’s decisions, so can’t know much about climate science?
Dear Kev brought his daughter’s plight into the picture, not me. And it’s hard to listen to somebody’s suggestions when even his daughter does the absolute opposite.
We need to understand what “systemic causation” is. Sandy occurred in a climate that we humans have changed, and therefore it is a result of climate change.
The ocean level is higher than it was before we started burning lots of fossil fuel etc., due to climate changes, as Mr Trenberth mentions. The ocean and atmospheric temperatures are higher than they were before we began the Industrial Revolution. There is now more water vapor in the atmosphere than there was in the period prior to us burning fossil fuel.
We have seen bigger storms, much heavier rains, and also bigger droughts, and more fires, melting Arctic ice, melting “permafrost”, the ocean is more acidic — you should know the list of tangible results of anthropogenic climate change.
The future holds more and more of these bad effects, and we ignore them at our peril.
Neil
http://www.npr.org/2012/10/31/164043372/sandy-raises-questions-about-climate-and-the-future
Monologous and his ilk, The William Joyce gang of useful idiots will not be silenced by the facts. I expect a rebound from these dingbats in the coming weeks, a herculean effort in fact to muddy the water, shoot the messengers. Don’t make the mistake of thinking Sandy will achieve what scientific fact hasn’t with these clowns.
omongolos :
Perhaps Dr Trenberth’s daughter took her fathers advice, weighed it against the other options she had for apartments she could afford and the likelihood of flooding vs other issues like crime and transportation and decided that flooding, being unlikely, was not going to be her primary concern when apartment hunting. This is similar to the strawman that use to show that CO2 is not driving climate and temperature. There can be more than one variable in an equation.
There is more than one variable? Who would have thought? Well then, all this talk about the Greatest Threat to Civilization can be shelved then
Ps I do hope yours was a typo
Yes, you’re the expert let’s all listen to you.
His daughter’s choice of apartment is neither here nor there. It has no bearing on the man, his conclusions or the science.
I accidentally a word.
contrarians
This is similar to the strawman that ^ use to show that CO2 is not driving climate and temperature. There can be more than one variable in an equation.
Greatest Threat != Only Threat
Arguing that CO2 is the primary driver of AGW does not mean it is the only such influence.
Occupy Wall St. and 350.org team up for the Hurricane Sandy relief effort:
http://www.occupybendor.org/news.php?1333
Here’s a sobering video from the Queens neighborhood that was devastated by a major fire during the hurricane:
Sandy wasn’t a hurricane at landfall http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/01/hurricane-deductibles-new-york-new-jersey_n_2057529.html
Good news for the insured, bad news for the insurances, terrible news for Bloomberg, and evidence Trenberth spoke too soon.
I think you need to reed that Bloomberg headline again, you clearly missed the important bit.