More updates as they come in.
UPDATE:
NOLA now literally in the cross hairs.
Houston, You have a Problem
Month: August 2020
The Jogger and the WildFire
Arctic Melt Update
May not be a record low year, but impressive melt nonetheless.
Stay tuned.
Q-Tips with Bill Maher
We may not have enough Q-tips for Corona Testing, but we’ve got a primer here from Bill Maher with plenty of them.
Reminder of what comes in the door when science goes out the window.
Two Hurricanes Walk into a Bar..
Must be 2020.
Actually, the situation is not that rare, and has a name.
According to Jeff Berardelli, below, it’s never happened in the Gulf of Mexico…
If the two storms headed toward the Gulf of Mexico track closely enough, it could set off a rare moment involving an “intense dance around their common center.”
A National Weather Service post described the phenomenon — known as the Fujiwhara Effect — in those terms after two instances in 2017.
“Their circulations sort of detect each other,” said Lance Wood, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Houston/Galveston office, “and they can start to move around a common point between them.”
Forecasters are keeping an eye on this as Tropical Depression 14 (expected to be named Marco once it strengthens) and Tropical Storm Laura head toward the Gulf of Mexico. As of Friday, Laura was expected to move toward Florida and the northeastern Gulf, while Tropical Depression 14 was headed toward the coast of Texas and/or Louisiana. Both are expected to be in the Gulf of Mexico early next week.
The Fujiwhara Effect is a possibility, Wood said, but it also may not happen. It’s too soon to know.
When two hurricanes spinning in the same direction pass close enough to each other, they begin an intense dance around their common center, the National Weather Service said.
The effect is thought to occur when storms get about 900 miles apart.
Storms involved in the Fujiwhara effect are rotating around one another as if they had locked arms and were square dancing. Rather than each storm spinning about the other, they are actually moving about a central point between them, as if both were tied to the same post and each swung around it separately of the other.
The Chicks: Star Spangled Banner
Hurricane Season Hits High Gear
The average Atlantic hurricane season creates 12 named storms. But this year, 2020, is anything but average.
There have already been 11 named storms at the (almost) half-way point, and three “disturbances” are currently being tracked. One of these might be headed toward Texas, though it’s too early to know for sure.
With mid-August through October being the historical peak for storms, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently upped its forecast to as many as 25 named storms before the 2020 season ends Nov. 30.
“We’re looking already at a very, very active season so far,” said Isha Renta, a National Weather Service forecaster. “And as we head into the peak of the hurricane season, which is upcoming in the next month, we can definitely expect more activity.”
Continue reading “Hurricane Season Hits High Gear”In May, NOAA had forecast up to 19 named storms.
There are several factors contributing to this especially active season, Renta said. First, there’s a possible La Niña developing in the next couple of months. La Niña condition occurs when surface water in the equatorial regions of the eastern Pacific Ocean becomes cooler than normal. La Niña can enhance hurricane activity in the Atlantic, whereas the opposite condition, El Niño, helps to suppress hurricane activity.
New Video: Is Corona Virus Killing Fossil Fuels?
First of two vids, after a lot of interviews with some well informed people.
Is Corona Virus going to expedite the inevitable end of fossil fuels?
Booms and bust cycles are very much a part of investing in the fossil fuel sector. In previous energy downturns, prices frequently experienced serious slumps, but oil and gas companies mostly kept faith in their biggest asset: Oil and gas reserves buried deep in the ground. But things are markedly different this time around.
Faced with pandemic-driven demand destruction and a relentless call for climate-conscious and ethical investing, oil executives are resigning themselves to the uncomfortable fact that a significant amount of their vast oil and gas reserves will end up totally worthless.
So much so, that’s it may hardly be worth it to entertain new exploration at this point. And “discovery” news these days doesn’t tempt investors like it once did.
You know things have truly gone to the dogs when the likes of BP Plc.(NYSE:BP)– a company that doubled down on its aggressive drilling right after the historic 2015 UN Climate Change Agreement--finally gave in saying “..concerns about carbon emissions and climate change mean that it is increasingly unlikely that the world’s reserves of oil will ever be exhausted.” BP has announced one of the largest asset writedowns of any oil major this year after slashing up to $17.5 billion off the value of its assets and conceded that it “expects the pandemic to hasten the shift away from fossil fuels.”
Trailer: “The Postman” – 1997
Greenland’s Demise – Some Clarification
A new paper about Greenland has been released with headlines about “Greenland’s point of no return”.
We are definitely in trouble, but…don’t wave the white flag just yet.
Paleo Climate expert Stefan Rahmstorf and NASA’s Gavin Schmidt have a number of useful qualifiers – a lot to digest here, so I’m going to bookmark this one and keep as a reference:
News about the death of the Greenland Ice Sheet is greatly exaggerated. What the new paper shows is an observed increase in solid ice discharge into the ocean, which has been at a higher rate than before during the past 15 years. The authors basically say: if this continues, ……then the Greenland Ice Sheet will continue to lose mass.
But due to that, the ice front retreats from the ocean, as nicely shown e.g. in Andy Aschwanden’s detailed simulations (Above).And when the ice loses contact with the ocean, the ice discharge stops.
The tipping point for losing the Greenland Ice Sheet altogether therefore depends on surface melt permanently exceeding snowfall and does not involve solid ice discharge. Whether this real tipping point of Greenland has been crossed, we do not know.
Thus, Greenland ice loss is a real concern – already today it contributes a lot to sea level rise. And Greenland does have a tipping point where the ice sheet becomes doomed to total loss. But the new paper by King et al. does not say anything about whether this has been crossed.