I interviewed Ted Scambos PhD, of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, at the AGU meeting in 2012. His sea ice prediction is at :25 in.
Compare to climate denier Joe Bastardi’s prognostications from 2010. These people forget that a video record of lies, inaccuracies and distortions will be their legacy.
It appears that arctic sea ice will not set a new low record extent this season,(2012 was the low mark) barring unforseen events, but the trend remains clear, with most of the ice in such a state of chewed-up, ragged disarray.
We don’t know when the first arctic open-water summer will be, but this is how the ice is going to increasingly look on the way there.
Hermine still developing. Predictions are for it to hold in place off the East Coast for several days, due to a blocking pattern known as a “Rex Block”. This and many gems from Eric Holthaus’ update, excerpted here.
Unusually placed, for a weather/climate piece, at election/polling guru Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight.com.
Eric Holthaus at FiveThirtyEight:
Based on the current forecasts, Post-Tropical Cyclone Hermine is a storm without a good historical comparison. Hermine was once a tropical cyclone that made landfall in Florida, but that seems like ages ago. It has now transitioned to its post-tropical stage after moving northeast across land, off the coast of North Carolina, where it’s partially drawing energy from the jet stream. Hermine is forecast to affect the Mid-Atlantic over the next several days as a hurricane-strength storm, with a potentially historic coastal flood.
Of the 10 or so meteorologists I’ve talked to in the last day or so, none can recall Hermine’s rare combination: a hurricane that has transitioned to a post-tropical cyclone, one that is forecast to transition back into a hurricane and one that will stall just off the East Coast for most of a week. It probably hasn’t happened before, at least going back several decades.
But before we get to how weird and rare of a storm Hermine is, let’s highlight its forecast. Hermine won’t be as big or as powerful as 2012’s Hurricane Sandy, but its impact might be worse for some communities for a simple reason: It’s supposed to spend most of a week in roughly the same spot, just off the Mid-Atlantic coast.
https://twitter.com/RyanMaue/status/771928567731085312
Wind farm development in the south has been slow. At one time, the sauntering southern breezes seemed too sluggish to harness for wind farm development. Research, meteorology and advanced wind turbine technology have finally enabled economic wind farm development in the south. Two southern cultural references, mixed with some new science, help explain why wind power is suddenly a smart strategy.
If you’re a Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR) fan, you know their bread and butter is all things southern. Bayous, catfish jumpin’, hurricanes a blowin’ and a bad moon rising…well, you get the gist. But think about this CCR song for a spell: Have you ever seen the rain?
Lyrics:Someone told me long ago
There’s a calm before the storm,
I know; it’s been comin’ for some time.
When it’s over, so they say,
It’ll rain a sunny day,
I know; shinin’ down like water.
I want to know, have you ever seen the rain?
I want to know, have you ever seen the rain
Comin’ down on a sunny day?If you take the song literally, have you ever seen it rain when it’s sunny outside? If you’ve lived in the south much, chances are pretty good that you have. But it’s a less frequent phenomenon in other parts of the country. For the majority of Americans, they have no special term for when the rain falls and the sun is shining. Here in the south, that phenomenon is frequently referred to as the “devil beating his wife.” The origin may be from a French phrase, and as the French Acadians (Cajuns) settled in Louisiana, the southernism spread through the south following the rivers and bayous. As a more politically correct alternative, the phenomenon may also be called a “sun shower.”
Continue reading “Creedence on Why the South Needs more Wind Turbines”
More coming on this. Next week’s “This is Not Cool” vid will feature more from Nielsen-Gammon, Hayhoe, Trenberth, and TV Meteorologists on the difference between “weather” and “climate change”.
Downpours throughout Texas this month have boosted August 2016 into the record books, tying a more than century old record for rainfall.
Preliminary totals put the rainfall average at 5.69 inches statewide, tying a rainiest August record set in 1914, according to the state climatologist’s office at Texas A&M University.
The wet month was due to an atmospheric wind pattern that pumped a lot of deep, moist tropical air into the state, state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon said in a prepared statement.
The heaviest rain has been in East, Central and Southeast Texas, with parts of the latter getting more than 15 inches in August, he said.
But Dallas-Fort Worth saw only its 14th greatest amount of August rainfall, with 4.42 inches recorded at DFW International Airport, said meteorologist Dennis Cain with the National Weather Service.
Texas also experienced the wettest 24-month consecutive period in its history, averaging 75.25 inches of rain in the past two years, Nielsen-Gammon said.
“September and October are historically among the wettest months of the year in Texas, so if normal conditions continue, we will see several more inches of rain,” he said.
The previous record of 74.85 inches was set in 1942.
Dr. Hayhoe knows how to tell the story in simple language. More from this interview coming in new “This is Not Cool” video next week.
As a warmer atmosphere becomes wetter, good to remember that water, not wind, is the biggest cause of storm damage. One more reason why, in a climate changed world, “minor” storms can do major damage – witness Louisiana.
According to the latest National Hurricane Center public advisory, the storm famously and formerly known as “Invest 99L” has the potential to produce
storm total rainfall accumulations of 5 to 10 inches over portions of northwest Florida and southern Georgia through Friday, with possible isolated maximum amounts of 20 inches. On Friday and Saturday, Hermine is expected to produce totals of 4 to 8 inches with local amounts of 10 inches possible across portions of eastern Georgia, South Carolina, and eastern North Carolina through Saturday. These rains may cause life-threatening flash flooding.
In a 2014 Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society paper Ed Rappaport reported that over the past 50 years or so, there were approximately 2500 “direct” deaths from tropical cyclones. Roughly 90% of them were from excessive storm water (that is, about 50% from storm surge and almost 25% from flood events). His 2000 study analyzed tropical systems from 1970 to 1999 and found that approximately 50% of the deaths from Atlantic tropical cyclones or their remnants were related to rain-induced flooding. The 2014 paper is a more lengthy analysis and reveals that we must get out of the habit of saying inland freshwater flooding is the most deadly aspect of a hurricane. A more accurate statement is,
Most people die from excessive storm water
Even with Hermine the National Hurricane Center warns
There is a danger of life-threatening inundation (from storm surge) within the next 36 hours along the Gulf coast of Florida from Aripeka to Indian Pass.
Continue reading “In Cyclones, Water, not Wind, is the Killer”
