Month: May 2024
Singapore Airline’s Deadly Turbulence Just another Climate Change Impact
Severe turbulence on a Singapore Airlines flight from London to Singapore has left a 73-year-old man dead and injured more than 70 people. The incident, although rare, is raising questions about what caused such a serious disruption to the flight — and whether climate change will make the strength and frequency of turbulence on planes worse.
The plane, which departed on 20 May, experienced a sudden drop of around more than 1,800 metres that launched people and objects towards the cabin roof. It is the airline’s first fatal incident in 24 years.
“Severe turbulence is the one that turns you into a projectile,” says atmospheric researcher Paul Williams at Reading University, UK. “For anyone not wearing a seatbelt it would have been a bit like being on a rollercoaster without any restraint in place — it would have been terrifying,” he says.
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Climate change is making turbulence more frequent and severe, says atmospheric researcher Jung-Hoon Kim at Seoul National University.
In a study published last year1, Williams and his colleagues found large increases in clear-air turbulence between 1979 and 2020. Over the North Atlantic, severe clear-air turbulence — which is stronger than Earth’s gravity — became 55% more frequent. There were similar increases in turbulence all over the world, he says. The increase is almost certainly the result of climate change, which is strengthening the jet streams that cause turbulence, says Williams. “We already know it’s having an impact,” he says.
In another study2, Williams and his colleagues used a climate model to predict that clear-air turbulence would become more severe and frequent as the climate warms. The researchers estimated that severe turbulence would increase in frequency more than light or moderate levels of turbulence. In line with this, Kim and his colleagues found that clear-air turbulence around clouds and mountains would become more frequent with climate change, in a study published last year.
Despite the probable rise in turbulence, most flights will carry on as they do now — with light or mild turbulence, says Williams. “It is not that we’ll have to stop flying, or planes will start falling out of the sky,” says Williams. “I’m just saying that for every 10 minutes, you’ve spent in severe turbulence in the past, it could be 20 or 30 minutes in the future,” says Williams.
Like, What is Up with the Tornadoes, Dude?
Another huge tornado today, pretty gnarly video above.
It’s not your imagination, they seem to be coming in bigger bunches.
Tornadoes are tricky.
They are too small and short lived to be properly resolved in Climate models – and we still don’t have a long enough record of the best quality Doppler Radar observations to make a clear connection to climate change.
But something is going on.
And even as the number of tornadoes has stayed relatively consistent in the last few years, experts say there have been key changes in their behavior over time that could have major consequences.
More tornadoes are now concentrated in fewer days, meaning they are less spread out and there’s a higher number occurring on the same day, according to a 2019 study published in Theoretical and Applied Climatology. A growing number of tornadoes are also occurring in the southeastern part of the US in addition to the Great Plains, where they have been historically most common.
There’s still a lot experts don’t know about why both these trends are occurring and it’s not clear if climate change is playing a role. What is more certain is that these shifts mean people will have to prepare for these natural disasters in new ways, with some communities enduring more severe storms in rapid succession and others being forced to build infrastructure for tornadoes they had rarely experienced before.
Anti-Clean Energy NIMBY’s Inflict Hardship on Rural Communities
As you read this, rapidly advancing renewable energy technology is transforming how we power the U.S. economy in the 21st century, bringing with it new economic opportunities and social and environmental benefits. Yet the communities that have enacted or are considering anti-renewable energy ordinances may be left watching as the better jobs, cheaper electricity, and cleaner environment that come with this transition pass them by.
Many of these communities already face high unemployment and poverty rates, among other economic and social challenges, making the consequences of their legislation even more tragic.
The press and energy policy researchers have focused on these policies’ potential impact on achieving our nation’s broader decarbonization goals, but to date they’ve overlooked these broader consequences of anti-renewable energy ordinances.
It’s crucial that we closely watch how the benefits and costs of the clean energy transition are distributed, because previous technology-driven economic revolutions — such as those brought about by steam engines, electrification, and digital computers — have tended to reinforce preexisting socioeconomic inequities. The clean energy transition offers a critical opportunity not just to break this pattern, but to reverse it.
Can we imagine the clean energy transition unfolding in a way that reduces inequality?
In our recently published report, my co-author and I explored these issues by creating a new tool called the Risk of Missing Out Index, which scores each county in the continental United States based on the extent of harm its residents are likely to face because of local restrictions on renewable energy. The ROMO Index takes into account county-level data on employment and income, the amount of money that households spend on energy costs (their “energy burden”), and the presence of anti-renewable energy ordinances and other indicators of local opposition to renewable energy.
Continue reading “Anti-Clean Energy NIMBY’s Inflict Hardship on Rural Communities”Derecho Tracking Across Midwest
Midwest continues to get pummeled in unusual spring extremes.
The Weekend Wonk: Flight of the Black Swans as Hurricane Season Winds Up
All the major hurricane forecasts are now in, and all are projecting record numbers of named storms and hurricanes.
Below, Storm names line up for the coming year. Meteorologists expect to use up all the names on this list and then some.
Until the 2021 season, forecasters moved to their backup plan of naming storms after letters of the Greek alphabet when the year’s list of names had been exhausted. That only happened twice – 2005 and 2020.
In 2005, the year of Hurricane Katrina, there were 28 named storms. That forced the use of six letters of the Greek alphabet as names: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon and Zeta.
The record-setting Atlantic hurricane season of 2020 saw 30 named storms. That forced the use of nine letters of the Greek alphabet as storm names: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, Zeta, Eta, Theta and Iota.
After 2022’s extremely active season, meteorologists decided to reevaluate the use of the Greek alphabet for storm names.
A meeting of forecasters at the World Meteorological Organization, which is responsible for developing lists of storm names, determined the continued use of the Greek alphabet could cause confusion, especially for people in the storm’s path. For example, Zeta, Eta and Theta, which sound similar, were used within weeks of each other in 2020.
In 2021, the WMO developed the following list of 21 supplemental names to be used in the event the Atlantic’s seasonal list of 21 names is depleted. So far, meteorologists have not yet had to use this list.
Most Americans still being poorly served by weather forecasters, the two reports below manage to have extended discussions of anomalous ocean heat without mentioning the word ‘climate”.
Continue reading “The Weekend Wonk: Flight of the Black Swans as Hurricane Season Winds Up”Gavin Schmidt on Geo-Engineering
Unified Reich: The Promise of a Climate Denial Regime
No coincidence that fascism and climate denial go hand in hand.
Former President Donald Trump posted a video on Monday showing images of a fake newspaper article that references a “unified Reich” if he’s reelected in 2024.
The video details “what happens after Donald Trump wins” with a narrator reading hypothetical headlines like “Economy Booms!” and “Border is closed,” styled as World War I-era newspaper clippings. Under one headline that reads “What’s next for America?” is a reference to the “creation of a unified Reich.”
Another headline in the video states “15 Million Illegal Aliens Deported” next to the start and end days of World War I.
The term “reich” is often associated Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler, who designated Germany a “Third Reich” from 1933 to 1945.
The video was removed from Trump’s Truth Social account Tuesday morning.
Karoline Leavitt, a Trump campaign spokesperson, said in a statement that the video was not created by the campaign and was “reposted by a staffer who clearly did not see the word, while the President was in court.”
How Laser Beam Geothermal Tech Works
Good explainer video on one of my favorite advanced energy techs – Quaise Energy’s microwave laser device, designed for no-drill drilling, potentially a game changer to open up geothermal heat riches anywhere on the planet.
TV’s Climate Classroom: How Accurate Have Climate Models Been?
Pretty damn accurate it turns out.
Jeff Berardelli, Chief Meteorologist of WFLA Tampa and MVP climate communicator, applying good communication practice here – primarily a recognition that repetition is king.
Saying something a thousand times and knowing that the next time you say it someone out there will hear for the very first time, and wake up.
Below, data from Berkeley Earth shows comparison between actual measured global temperatures and climate models since 1970.
Yes, scientists are good at this.
Beradelli is the rare TV meteorologist willing to speak out directly and often about the impact climate change is having on hurricanes and our weather in general. Hurricanes are more intense and more frequent because of human-caused climate change, he said. And this season is shaping up to be particularly intense.
Beradelli has been a TV meteorologist for 25 years–including stints in Miami, West Palm Beach, and Buffalo, New York. This is his second stint in the Tampa Bay area, returning here after working for CBS News in New York City. Jeff has a degree in atmospheric sciences from Cornell University and a masters degree in Climate and Society from Columbia University. Welcome to WaveMakers Jeff.