Month: November 2012

NASA Earth Observatory:

On October 29, 2012, lives were changed forever along the shores of New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and in the two dozen United States affected by what meteorologists are calling Superstorm Sandy. The landscape of the East Coast was also changed, though no geologist would ever use the word “forever” when referring to the shape of a barrier island.

The two aerial photographs above show a portion of the New Jersey coastal town of Mantoloking, just north of where Hurricane Sandy made landfall. The top photograph was taken by the Remote Sensing Division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on October 31, 2012; the lower image was acquired by the same group on March 18, 2007. The images were acquired from an altitude of roughly 7,500 feet, using a Trimble Digital Sensor System.

The Mantoloking Bridge cost roughly $25 million when it was opened in 2005 to replace a bridge built in 1938. After Sandy passed through on October 29, 2012, the bridge was covered in water, sand, and debris from houses; county officials closed it because they considered it unstable.

On the barrier island, entire blocks of houses along Route 35 (also called Ocean Boulevard) were damaged or completely washed away by the storm surge and wind. Fires raged in the town from natural gas lines that had ruptured and ignited. A new inlet was cut across the island, connected the Atlantic Ocean and the Jones Tide Pond.

Rapidly going viral.

Description:

At a campaign event today in Etna, Ohio, Governor Romney was asked, “Do you still think the rising of the seas is funny?” Romney responded, “I never imagined such a thing is funny,” despite using rising sea levels as a punchline in his speech to the Republican National Convention.

Did Romney ever joke about rising seas? You Decide.

 

This morning, people in the northeast US, while still recovering from Superstorm Sandy, an unusual, late season hurricane – are being pounded by an unusual, early season Nor’Easter snow storm.

This is a further discussion related to the sea ice/jet stream issues discussed by Dr. Jeff Masters in a nearby posting.

Cornell University News:

The dramatic melt-off of Arctic sea ice due to climate change is hitting closer to home than millions of Americans might think. That’s because melting Arctic sea ice can trigger a domino effect leading to increased odds of severe winter weather outbreaks in the Northern Hemisphere’s middle latitudes — think the “Snowmageddon” storm that hamstrung Washington, D.C., during February 2010.

Cornell’s Charles H. Greene, professor of earth and atmospheric sciences, and Bruce C. Monger, senior research associate in the same department, detail this phenomenon in a paper published in the June issue of the journal Oceanography.

“Everyone thinks of Arctic climate change as this remote phenomenon that has little effect on our everyday lives,” Greene said. “But what goes on in the Arctic remotely forces our weather patterns here.”

A warmer Earth increases the melting of sea ice during summer, exposing more dark ocean water to incoming sunlight. This causes increased absorption of solar radiation and excess summertime heating of the ocean — further accelerating the ice melt. The excess heat is released to the atmosphere, especially during the autumn, decreasing the temperature and atmospheric pressure gradients between the Arctic and middle latitudes.

A diminished latitudinal pressure gradient is linked to a weakening of the winds associated with the polar vortex and jet stream. Since the polar vortex normally retains the cold Arctic air masses up above the Arctic Circle, its weakening allows the cold air to invade lower latitudes.

The recent observations present a new twist to the Arctic Oscillation (AO) — a natural pattern of climate variability in the Northern Hemisphere. Before humans began warming the planet, the Arctic’s climate system naturally oscillated between conditions favorable and those unfavorable for invasions of cold Arctic air.

Continue reading “Is Sandy Just the Beginning? Are We Setting up for (another) Winter of Extremes?”

A harrowing, brutally stated TED presentation by Grist’s Dave Roberts at Evergreen State – powerfully set to music and video by Ryan Cooper. Great job.

Reminds us all of why we are here and what we have to do.

Huffington Post:

A new poll reveals the majority of registered Republican voters believe that demonic possession is a real phenomenon.

The “Halloween-centric” poll, conducted by Public Policy Polling showed that 68 percent of Republican voters think it’s possible to be possessed by demons.

Meanwhile, as news website AlterNet notes, only 48 percent of Republicans polled in an earlier survey conducted by the Pew Research Center survey said they believe in climate change.

As the election looms ever closer, the topic of climate change and global warming has been in the air — with some experts and politicians calling the recent devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy a reality check.

However, while 88 percent of Obama supporters believe that there is “solid evidence that the earth is warming,” only 42 percent of Romney supporters said that this is true, according to the Pew survey.

The best mass transit experience I’ve had was in Amsterdam, and no, I hadn’t visited a coffee shop. There, street level, human scale trolleys whisk you around the city center in a jiffy – and are as quiet, convenient, and readily available as elevators in a New York high rise. You never lose touch with the experience of the city and being on the street, along the canals.

Not long ago, I took a ride from Ann Arbor to Detroit Metro on a brand new hybrid bus. The seats were comfortable, the ceiling was high, the windows were big and bright – it had wi-fi.  It gave me hope that we could do something near term in the US that might get us on the road to real, comfortable, desirable mass transit. Certainly if I could catch a bus like that to Chicago, I’d do so in a heartbeat.

I don’t know if the bus Jay Leno features above has wi-fi, but for most American cities, in the near term – mass transit if going to rely heavily on making buses more efficient, more attractive, and more available. This is one solution that could go a long way.

America’s Radio News Network reaches a lot of relatively conservative listeners on a nationwide broadcast originating in Washington.

Scott Mandia, one of the founders of the Climate Science Rapid Response team,  took the opportunity to plug in some vital climate change information.