Month: November 2014

Word getting around in the heartland. This is not going to stop any time soon.

Buffalo (NY) News:

While last week’s winter blast appears to be the freak offspring of a typhoon-blasted jet stream and a warm Lake Erie, it’s also part of a long-term pattern that shows no sign of changing.

Meteorologists and geographers say that lake-effect snows have increased as temperatures have warmed in recent decades. That means more bizarre early-season storms, though not necessarily as bad as last week’s, are likely in the future as the warming trend continues.

“The general notion is that, as the climate warms and the lakes hold their warmth longer into the fall, you’re going to see a lot more lake-effect snow until it’s too warm to have much snow,” said Mark Monmonier, distinguished professor of geography at Syracuse University and the author of the 2012 book “Lake Effect: Tales of Large Lakes, Arctic Winds, and Recurrent Snows.”

Keep your shovels handy, though, because that breaking point – when lake-effect snow is replaced by lake-effect rain – likely won’t come until mid-century, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority said in its updated report on climate change in the state earlier this year.

For the next few decades, then, conditions will be increasingly ripe for the creation of winter white-outs, although meteorologists said most won’t be as bad as the one that buried South Buffalo and the Southtowns with snow piles that in some places were taller (or deeper) than many teen-age boys.

CNN:

The Buffalo area waits for the floodwaters to rise.

They’re coming, that’s for certain.

But how high and how widespread, that’s another matter.

Continue reading “Buffalo News: Brace for Floods, Weather Whiplash an Effect of Global Warming”

Cold and wet outside. This might help.
Detroit Jazzman Paul Vornhagen and his hot Afro-Cuban group. Saw these guys last night – Paul is an old friend. They are about as tight and professional group as you’ll find.

Oceans are the focus as warming seems to be in an accelerated phase, at least in terms of surface temperatures. Any claims about “slowdown” or “pause” no longer operative.

CBC:

​Bill Peterson, an oceanographer with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said the warmth along the North Pacific coast is very unusual.

“We’ve never seen this before. It’s beyond anyone’s experience and this is why it’s puzzling,” he said.

To further complicate the picture, Peterson says an El Niño warm water ocean current should arrive in about a month.

“We’ll have what we call a double whammy,” he said. “It’s already very warm up north, up here. If we get an extra push of super warm water from the tropics, we could possibly have a big disaster on our hands, ecologically speaking.”

Science Daily:

“The 2014 global ocean warming is mostly due to the North Pacific, which has warmed far beyond any recorded value and has shifted hurricane tracks, weakened trade winds, and produced coral bleaching in the Hawaiian Islands,” explains Timmermann.

He describes the events leading up to this upswing as follows: Sea-surface temperatures started to rise unusually quickly in the extratropical North Pacific already in January 2014. A few months later, in April and May, westerly winds pushed a huge amount of very warm water usually stored in the western Pacific along the equator to the eastern Pacific. This warm water has spread along the North American Pacific coast, releasing into the atmosphere enormous amounts of heat–heat that had been locked up in the Western tropical Pacific for nearly a decade.

“Record-breaking greenhouse gas concentrations and anomalously weak North Pacific summer trade winds, which usually cool the ocean surface, have contributed further to the rise in sea surface temperatures. The warm temperatures now extend in a wide swath from just north of Papua New Guinea to the Gulf of Alaska,” says Timmermann.

The current record-breaking temperatures indicate that the 14-year-long pause in ocean warming has come to an end.

And, it’s not just the Pacific. Continue reading “North Pacific Warm Spot Worries Scientists.”

I interviewed Marc Morano, one of the country’s most visible climate denial operatives, at the 2012 Heartland Institute Denia Palooza conference in Chicago.

Might be worth reviewing, as Morano was formerly a key operative and associate of Senator James Inhofe, who will be taking control of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in a few weeks.

Morano was amazingly forthcoming in the interview. In fact, I could hardly shut him up.  I’ve heard that there will be some pretty revealing footage of Mr. Morano in the upcoming “Merchants of Doubt”, which will focus on the parallels between fossil funded climate denial, and tobacco science denial. Clip here.

Continue reading “The Weekend Wonk: Marc Morano and the Merchants of Doubt”

Been reading about this all week, someone sent it to me yesterday, and, damn – it’s pretty hypnotic. In a terra-frying sort of way.

Description:

An ultra-high-resolution NASA computer model has given scientists a stunning new look at how carbon dioxide in the atmosphere travels around the globe.

Plumes of carbon dioxide in the simulation swirl and shift as winds disperse the greenhouse gas away from its sources. The simulation also illustrates differences in carbon dioxide levels in the northern and southern hemispheres and distinct swings in global carbon dioxide concentrations as the growth cycle of plants and trees changes with the seasons.

The carbon dioxide visualization was produced by a computer model called GEOS-5, created by scientists at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office.

The visualization is a product of a simulation called a “Nature Run.” The Nature Run ingests real data on atmospheric conditions and the emission of greenhouse gases and both natural and man-made particulates. The model is then left to run on its own and simulate the natural behavior of the Earth’s atmosphere. This Nature Run simulates January 2006 through December 2006.

While Goddard scientists worked with a “beta” version of the Nature Run internally for several years, they released this updated, improved version to the scientific community for the first time in the fall of 2014.

This video is public domain and can be downloaded at: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/goto?11719

Meanwhile, progress being made on climate modeling as well.

Gizmag:

High-resolution simulations of the global climate can now perform much closer to actual observations, and they perform far better at reproducing extreme weather events, a new Berkeley Lab study has found. Lead author Michael Wehner heralds this news as evidence of a golden age in climate modeling, as not only did the simulation closer match reality but it also took a fraction as long to complete as it would have in recent history – just three months compared to several years.

“These kinds of calculations have gone from basically intractable to heroic to now doable,” Wehner said. “I’ve literally waited my entire career to be able to do these simulations.”

Continue reading “Supercomputer Update: Climate Models and a CO2 Snapshot”

Taking advantage of a teachable moment.

Climate Nexus:

While global temperatures are shaping up to make 2014 the hottest year on record, the U.S. has endured over a week of unseasonably wintry conditions due to atmospheric blocking – a large scale pressure pattern with little or no movement – that has led to a sustained outbreak of record cold mid-November Arctic air. The most eye-opening consequence of the cold streak has been the extreme amount of snowfall – made worse by lake-effect snow – in Buffalo, New York. According to the U.S. National Climate Assessment, climate change has already led to heavier-than-normal snowfalls in the Northeast with indications that wintertime atmospheric patterns are increasingly prone to blocking, or stagnation that locks in wintry conditions.

So how might the current Arctic outbreak and extreme lake-effect snowfall in Buffalo be connected to broader climate change trends?

• Warm ocean waters strengthened Super Typhoon Nuri, which kicked off this event
• Nuri, traveling further north than normal thanks to those warm waters, pushed the jet stream south into the U.S.
• The jet stream may have slowed due to a warmed Arctic, making it easier for Nuri to drive the jet stream southward, bringing frigid sub-Arctic conditions with it
• The unseasonably cold air intensified the lake-effect snowfall in Buffalo due to the extreme difference between water and air temperatures, which increased the amount of snowfall produced as cold winds moved across the warmer lake water

Unusual Atmospheric Patterns and Possible Climate Connections

Like the polar vortex of winter 2013-2014, the current Arctic air outbreak and extreme amount of lake-effect snowfall in Buffalo was triggered by a high-pressure system in the Pacific Ocean and western U.S. that has led to an extreme, southward sinking jet stream and atmospheric blocking. While the sinking of the jet stream this past week was fueled in part by the strong extra-tropical remnant of Typhoon Nuri, scientists have observed an unusual number of extreme jet stream patterns like this in recent years and are advancing two main theories that might help to explain why. One prominent theory links the unusual jet stream behavior to Arctic amplification, or enhanced warming in high northern latitudes relative to the northern hemisphere. The second leading theory suggests unusual atmospheric patterns may be tied to increased water temperatures in the Pacific Ocean. This latter theory, in addition to helping to explain unusual jet stream patterns, may also explain Typhoon Nuri’s intensity.

The next two sections highlight these theories in more depth before discussing how unusual jet stream patterns are linked to extreme lake-effect snowfall.

Continue reading “More on Lake Effect Snow and Climate”

Accuweather:

The start of the workweek will leave many in the Northern states swapping their snow boots and parkas for their ponchos and rain boots as springlike warmth and drenching rains will work into the region.

People from New York City to Boston will have to shed those extra layers, as temperatures climb well into the 60s on Monday. Temperatures may top 70 in Washington, D.C., on Monday.

Cities where extensive lake-effect snows fell, like Buffalo, New York, may experience urban flooding issues from rapid snow melt as temperatures rise and steady rain falls across the area early next week.

 

University of Maine Climate Re-Analyzer here.