Monthly Archives: November 2014

The Polar Vortex Is Dead. But that does not mean it isn't cold out

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The term “Polar Vortex” was thrown around a lot last year, in reference to the persistent mass of very cold air that enveloped much of southern Canada and the US. As you will remember, Rush Limbaugh accused climate scientists and librul meteorologists of making up the polar vortex to scare everyone into thinking climate change is real. You may also remember Al Roker pointing out on national TV and on Twitter that the term “polar vortex” has been in meteorology textbooks for decades.

This year, with a new wave of cold air arriving unseasonably in the upper middle part of the US, the term is being used again. I was amused to see the term being used on accuweather such that it was placed on each of several graphics used to show that this year’s cold snap is not actually the polar vortex, unlike last year.

It turns out that while the polar vortex is a real thing, it really is not the correct term to apply to either last year’s cold incursion or the current cold spell. The polar vortex is a thing that gets going in a big way during the norther Winter, and swirls around all vortexy at high altitude over the pole. It can become more or less compact, more or less well defined, and it certainly has a relationship to the weather. But the proper term for a huge bundle of cold air heading south and freezing us out would not be “polar vortex” but rather, something like “cross-polar flow with low-level winds advecting frigid air southward from polar regions” (see this for a great discussion of what the polar vortex is and isn’t). At least in some cases; other descriptions may apply in other cases.

The unseasonable cold air is potentially important, especially if large scale bending of the jet streams that can cause these “troughs” of cold air to move farther south than typical are more common because of global warming (see this).

Anyway, I was wondering exactly how the term was originally introduced into the conversation last winter, so I used google to narrow down its occurrence and found these:

AP, on January 3rd 2014:

Temperature records will likely be broken during the short, yet forceful deep freeze that will begin in many places on Sunday and extend into early next week. That’s thanks to a perfect combination of the jet stream, cold surface temperatures and the polar vortex — a counterclockwise-rotating pool of cold, dense air, said Ryan Maue, of Tallahassee, Fla., a meteorologist for Weather Bell.

“All the ingredients are there for a near-record or historic cold outbreak,” he said. “If you’re under 40 (years old), you’ve not seen this stuff before.”

New York Mag, January 4th, 2014:

… there’s something happening in the country called a “polar vortex” or, as Weather Bell meteorologist Ryan Maue called it, a “frigid air blanket.”

Maue said the cold air system is caused by a “counterclockwise-rotating pool of cold, dense air, once piled up at the North Pole, and pushed down to the U.S.” It’s expected to arrive Sunday.

Huffington Post, January 3rd, 2014:

Temperature records will likely be broken during the short, yet forceful deep freeze that will begin in many places on Sunday and extend into early next week. That’s thanks to a perfect combination of the jet stream, cold surface temperatures and the polar vortex — a counterclockwise-rotating pool of cold, dense air, said Ryan Maue, of Tallahassee, Fla., a meteorologist for Weather Bell.

“All the ingredients are there for a near-record or historic cold outbreak,” he said. “If you’re under 40 (years old), you’ve not seen this stuff before.”

So, the common ingredient in the misuse of the term “polar vortex” is a meteorologist Ryan Maue, of Weather Bell. He’s the one that screwed this up originally and the press kind of took off with it.

You can’t totally blame the press. Given the choice between “polar vortex” and “advecting cross polar flow yadayada” it isn’t a hard choice. If they were both right, and they just didn’t know.

Ryan Maue, by the way, is a climate change science denier. I checked my twitter list of climate change deniers and he is on it. That means he annoyed me on twitter with his climate change science denial yammering. So a science denier came up with this bone headed misuse of a term and the press more or less blindly went along with it.

As my friend Paul Douglas notes, in speaking of the polar vortex problem vis-a-vis our current cold snap “For me the bigger question is will it last? What made last winter’s polar displacement so unusual was its persistence. The bitter blob all but stalled for the better part of 3 months.”

Long term predictions for this winter suggest an average winter, but for many parts of the US a bit warmer than average. So far the weather is not cooperating with the prediction. I predict that the prediction will be wrong because I suspect the models used to make these predictions don’t properly account for the increased frequency of formerly rare phenomena related to the jet streams. But, on the other hand, eventually there is supposed to be a shift to official El Nino conditions. (The Pacific is already El Nino warm, just not acting El Nino-ish in other ways). So, really, I’m predicting a warmer than average winter in the Northern Hemisphere but with the 5% or so of that hemisphere occupied by the largest concentration of climate science deniers, Americans, colder than average. It is like Climate Change doesn’t want to be believed in by Americans. It wears an invisibility cloak.

Publishers Remove Climate Change Denialism From Texas Schoolbooks

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I just got this press release for the Texas Freedom Nettwork, passing the good news on to you:

PUBLISHERS REMOVE CLIMATE CHANGE DENIALISM FROM TEXAS TEXTBOOKS; PUT EDUCATION AHEAD OF POLITICS

Texas State Board of Education must still vote on adopting the revised textbooks

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 17, 2014

Publishers have agreed to correct or remove inaccurate passages promoting climate change denialism from new social studies textbooks proposed for Texas public schools, a coalition of science and education groups announced this afternoon. This news comes as the State Board of Education prepares for a second public hearing on the proposed textbooks and a final vote on which texts to approve for Texas schools. The textbooks will likely be sold in other states as well.

Publishers Pearson Education, WorldView Software and Studies Weekly Publications had already submitted to Texas education officials revisions to textbook passages that included inaccurate information about climate change. The original passages cast doubt on the overwhelming consensus among climate scientists that climate change is a real and growing threat and that human activity is the primary driver of the problem. Today publisher McGraw-Hill confirmed to the Texas Freedom Network (TFN) that it will remove a deeply problematic lesson that equated unsupported arguments from a special interest-funded political advocacy group, the Heartland Institute, with data-backed material from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a Nobel-winning organization of scientists from around the world.

“We applaud these publishers for responsibly listening to scholars and the tens of thousands of people from across the country who have signed petitions insisting that the textbooks put education and facts ahead of politics,” TFN President Kathy Miller said today. “We hope they will stand firm in their decision and resist pressure from politicians on the state board to lie to students about one of the biggest challenges facing our planet.”

Petitions calling on publishers to correct their textbooks collected more than 116,000 signatures. The petitions were sponsored by the Texas Freedom Network, National Center for Science Education (NCSE), Climate Parents, Daily Kos and CREDO Mobilize.

Josh Rosenau, programs and policy director at NCSE, also praised the publishers’ decisions to remove the scientifically inaccurate information from their textbooks.

“Pearson, McGraw-Hill, and other publishers did the right thing by making these changes,” Rosenau said. “They listened to us and the nation’s leading scientific and educational societies, ensuring that students will learn the truth about the greatest challenge they’ll confront as citizens of the 21st century. These publishers should be proud.”

Lisa Hoyos, director of the national organization Climate Parents, noted the importance of telling students the truth about climate change at a time when the science is under political attack across the country.

“There is a dangerous attack on climate science in our country, from Congress to the classroom,” Hoyos said. “We are thrilled that Pearson and McGraw Hill chose to stand with students, and to remove misinformation about the causes of climate change from their texts. These publishers need to resist any pushback from climate deniers on the the Texas State Board of Education and to commit to tell nothing but the truth in the materials they produce for our kids.”

The State Board of Education will hold its second public hearing and take a preliminary vote on the proposed textbooks on Tuesday (November 18). The board is set to take a final vote on Friday. The textbooks will go into classrooms beginning in the 2015-16 school year.

Maybe We Should Have Elected a White President After All

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I originally wrote this in August 2009. It still pertains, though I’d probably write it a bit differently today. Slightly edited:

There is no doubt that this country is not ready for a Black President.

Nor would this country ever be ready for any non-white or non-male president until we actually went ahead and elected one–ready or not–and then made the necessary adjustments. And that could have been what would have happened with the historic election of Barack Obama.

Except it didn’t.

Join me, if you will, in a moment of utter, deep cynicism. That would mean you thinking, for just a moment, exactly like I think every second of the day. This will be painful for you, unless you are already where I am. In my world, I see almost every nationally elected Republican, almost every one of the teabaggers at the town hall meetings, and almost every one of the strutting libertarians with their strap-ons (because they don’t have real ones) as a racist. I also see half the liberals that I know as racists. I see almost every white person who lives in the suburbs and who has a job and an income with benefits as a racist. I probably think you are a racist. You may think I’m over doing it, you may think I’m being unfair, you may think I’ve oversimplified, and you may think I’ve got it wrong.

I have oversimplified, but I’m not overdoing it, I’m not being unfair, and I don’t have it wrong. It is you that has it wrong and that is the problem. Standing by and letting what we are seeing happening on the national stage and doing nothing about it is plain and pure complicity.

I’m thinking about the response to health care reform. The most active of them all, the teabaggers and the Republicans in office, each and every one, are reacting not to anything about health care, but rather to the fact that our president is a black man, and they are reacting to little else. Proposals that the Republicans have made themselves over the last decade are being touted as attempts to kill grandma or take away our freedoms or introduce socialism. There is nothing rational in what the teabaggers and Republicans are saying. Not. One. Thing.

Does any of this mean that we have prematurely elected our first black president? No, of course not. That is all to be expected. That would all be part of the transformation our country will go through to make the election of non-white-male presidents (in some combination) plausible rather than jaw-dropping remarkable.

The problem is not that the crazy right wing is upset and screaming at us from the back of the room telling us to shut up. The problem is that the rest of the country, or at least a significant number of individuals, especially in elected office and in the media, are not calling this what it is. Yes, there have been hints, here and there, of racist undertones and overtones, but the spade is not being called a spade. As it were.

And the reason is disgusting. The reason that the mainstream press and numerous elected officials are not identifying the town hall teabaggers and the anti-health care Republicans as racists is because the ground has been prepared to make sure that when someone does call someone else out on racism in the mainstream public square, that act…the act of identifying racism…is considered just as bad as the racism itself. It is called “playing the race card.” The whole “Oh, now you’re going to play the race card, aren’t you!” gambit was developed, prepared, and inculcated into society over the last 15 years (really, 14 years…since the OJ Simpson trial), so now racism has a place at the table. Where it does not belong.

Over the last 24 hours (as I write this on Monday) the public option part of health care reform has been taken off the table. I can hope, tell myself, guess, fantasize, that this is just a strategy, and that the public option will be back. I can figure that this is just to give some time for the famous Obama grassroots organizing to get up to speed, and that the public option will be in the health care bill and will be voted into place. But I doubt it. I strongly suspect that the golden opportunity, which comes around very 12 to 20 years, has been lost once more.

I will die before there is a good health care system. My daughter will reach middle age or even old age before there is a good health care system.

The outcome, years later, as we enter the last two years of President Obama’s second term, is this: The Democrats can not nominate another black president, ever. The Republicans have succeeded in their strategy. Keeping the White in the White House.

And the Democrats let that happen.

Global Warming Means More Lightning

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A new study just out in Science suggests that we will have an increase in lightning strikes of about 12 percent for every degree C of global warming. That could add up. From the abstract:

Lightning plays an important role in atmospheric chemistry and in the initiation of wildfires, but the impact of global warming on lightning rates is poorly constrained. Here we propose that the lightning flash rate is proportional to the convective available potential energy (CAPE) times the precipitation rate. Using observations, the product of CAPE and precipitation explains 77% of the variance in the time series of total cloud-to-ground lightning flashes over the contiguous United States (CONUS). Storms convert CAPE times precipitated water mass to discharged lightning energy with an efficiency of 1%. When this proxy is applied to 11 climate models, CONUS lightning strikes are predicted to increase 12 ± 5% per degree Celsius of global warming and about 50% over this century.

This is the paper:
Projected increase in lightning strikes in the United States due to global warming. David M. Romps, Jacob T. Seeley, David Vollaro, and John Molinari. Science 14 November 2014: 346 (6211), 851-854. [DOI:10.1126/science.1259100]

Warmest October On Record GISS NASA

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The data for October has just been added to the NOAA GISS instrument record, which runs from 1880 to the present.

October was the warmest on record, just beating out 2005.

Overall, it is looking increasingly likely that 2014 will tie or beat the record for warmest year in the instrumental record, in terms of surface temperature. This does not count the ocean warming which is substantial. But we tend to look at the surface record as an approximation of global warming.

Here’s the graph:

Screen Shot 2014-11-14 at 12.16.17 PM

Just looking at the daily values (but from a different database) for November, this is turning out to be a pretty warm month as well, though here in Minnesota at the moment, it doesn’t feel like it.

Ironically, it was a large tropical storm slamming into the northern regions that ultimately pushed this cold air down over the US.

Keep in mind that there are numerous different data bases of surface temperatures, and they may not all show October as the warmest ever. Some may be lower than the GISS database, some may be higher. ADDED: Japan Meteorological Agency has also come out with October data. Look here.

The image at the top of the post is from Climate Reanalyzer, and shows the anomaly of temperature over part of the globe. Notice the blob of anomalously cold air over the US, causing Americans to stop “believing in” global warming.

The Comet. It Sings!

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Have you heard the comet singing? From the Rosetta Blog this press release:

Rosetta’s Plasma Consortium (RPC) has uncovered a mysterious ‘song’ that Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is singing into space. RPC principal investigator Karl-Heinz Glaßmeier, head of Space Physics and Space Sensorics at the Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany, tells us more.

Sound_comet2
Artist’s impression of the ‘singing comet’ 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Credit: ESA/Rosetta/NavCam
RPC consists of five instruments on the Rosetta orbiter that provide a wide variety of complementary information about the plasma environment surrounding Comet 67P/C-G. (Reminder: Plasma is the fourth state of matter, an electrically conductive gas that can carry magnetic fields and electrical currents.)

The instruments are designed to study a number of phenomena, including: the interaction of 67P/C-G with the solar wind, a continuous stream of plasma emitted by the Sun; changes of activity on the comet; the structure and dynamics of the comet’s tenuous plasma ‘atmosphere’, known as the coma; and the physical properties of the cometary nucleus and surface.

But one observation has taken the RPC scientists somewhat by surprise. The comet seems to be emitting a ‘song’ in the form of oscillations in the magnetic field in the comet’s environment. It is being sung at 40-50 millihertz, far below human hearing, which typically picks up sound between 20 Hz and 20 kHz. To make the music audible to the human ear, the frequencies have been increased by a factor of about 10,000.

The music was heard clearly by the magnetometer experiment (RPC-Mag) for the first time in August, when Rosetta drew to within 100 km of 67P/C-G. The scientists think it must be produced in some way by the activity of the comet, as it releases neutral particles into space where they become electrically charged due to a process called ionisation. But the precise physical mechanism behind the oscillations remains a mystery.

“This is exciting because it is completely new to us. We did not expect this and we are still working to understand the physics of what is happening,” says Karl-Heinz.

RPC may also be able to help in tracking Philae’s descent to the surface of 67P/C-G on 12 November, in tandem with the lander’s on-board magnetometer, ROMAP .

The contributing institutions to these instruments are:
RPC: Institutet för rymdfysik (IRF), Uppsala, Sweden; Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), USA; Institut für Geophysik und Extraterrestrische Physik, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany; Laboratoire de physique et chimie de l’environnement et de l’espace (LPC2E), Université d’Orléans, France, and Imperial College London, United Kingdom.
RPC-Mag: Institut für Geophysik und Extraterrestrische Physik, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany; Imperial College London, United Kingdom; Space Research Institute Graz, Austria

And here is the song:

https://soundcloud.com/esaops/a-singing-comet

And here is the alternatepredator-4 hypothesis for what is making this sound:

Saline Church Uses Solar For The Majority Of Electric Needs

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Saline is a small town in Michigan, just under 9,000 people. As the name might suggest, it is the site of a natural salt source used by Native Americans, later explorers and traders. Today the big industry there is auto parts, but the University of Michigan provides many jobs there as well.

The First Presbyterian Church of Saline has covered much of their roof with a big solar array capable of covering well over half of their electricity needs.

From the Saline Reporter:

In early August, a 15 kilowatt, 56-panel system was installed… Officials recently received their first utility bill from DTE, which showed more than a 70 percent savings, said Chip Manchester, founding member of the church’s Environmental Stewardship group.

During the September billing period, the panels generated 2,160 kilowatt hours, which is more than 70 percent of the energy needed to power the 2,800 square-foot building for the month. The electricity bill at the church went from $350 to $75, he said.

“It (the bill) was definitely a pleasant surprise, it’s one thing to have it promised but it’s another thing to have it realized,” said Kurt Leutheuser, finance elder with the church.

The $45,000 system is projected to fund about two thirds of the church’s electrical use throughout the year, last 25 years and pay for itself in 13 years. It was financed by the nearly 300-person congregation with the average contribution being close to $1,000, Manchester said.

Small town getting a good way off the carbon-based grid

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Geneseo, Illinois is a small town with fewer than 7,000 people. They plan to meet about half their electricity needs, on a good day (windy, sunny) with clean energy, after the installation of some new cool technology.

From the Dispatch Argus:

City officials have been notified of a $1 million grant for a one-megawatt solar energy array from the Illinois Clean Energy Foundation.

Total cost of the project is expected to be $2 to $2.5 million. Under the project, renewable energy would provide about half the city’s daily nine-megawatt appetite for power — enough for about 220 homes — between the one-megawatt solar system and the three megawatts from the city’s two wind turbines on an ideal day.

The council voted unanimously Tuesday to authorize Mayor Nadine Palmgren to sign an agreement with the foundation for the grant. Ald. Howard Beck, 3rd Ward, was absent.

Council approval also will be needed for funding, seeking bids and awarding the project, according to electric superintendent Lewis Opsal.

Geneseo’s solar array would be located on five acres now a soybean field at the foot of the city’s wind turbines, where it would connect to an existing substation.

“It would be great for reducing our transmission costs,” said Mr. Opsal. “There is a long line of people very interested in that grant. It’s a perfect project for Geneseo.”

Kathy Allen, of Geneseo, questioned if the project would lower power bills in the city. Mr. Opsal said, hopefully, the city would be able to hold costs steady. He noted a large utility recently raised rates 23 percent and U.S. power rates could double in the future because of the closure of high-emission plants.

Giant Batteries in Chicago

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An example of Clean Energy marching forward:

Renewable Energy Systems Americas Inc., better known as RES Americas, said Tuesday it will build two of the largest commercial-sized energy storage projects in North America.

RES, a wind farm developer based in Broomfield, Colorado, said the two projects will be built outside of Chicago, and once completed in 2015, will be capable of storing a total of 19.8 megawatts of power to support the local Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) electricity grid.

These batteries will be on line, or should I say, inserted into the back of Chicago behind a giant plastic plate held in by a huge screw (I assume). by August 2015, and they will operate for ten years.

Details here.

Build a solar power plant to help run a water treatment plant!

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RMU Announces Solar Plant Completion

Rochelle Municipal Utilities, in Rochelle, Illinois, has. started operation of a large Photovoltaic Solar Plant providing power to their water treatment facility. This is a great example of a project that should be done in more places.

In the Spring of 2014, RMU was awarded a $500,000 grant from the Illinois Clean Energy Community Foundation to fund construction of the Solar Plant. ICECF provides grants for up to $2/watt or 60% of the system and its installation costs, whichever is less. As a result of the competitive bidding process, Eagle Point Solar was awarded the project.

“Rochelle’s 312 kW Solar Photovoltaic plant is one of the larger Public Power Utility owned plants in Illinois. This plant will provide renewable energy to the water treatment plant” stated Business & Financial Analyst Dan Westin. “Treatment plants require a lot of energy to make clean water. Rochelle will continue to explore financially sound projects in the area of renewable energy.”

As a result of this project, Rochelle Municipal Utilities has been selected as a recipient of this year’s Northern Illinois Renewable Energy Summit & Expo’s “Leadership by Example” award.

You can view the plant’s output real time here.

The water treatment plant has a peak energy demand of about 420 kW and the PV system can cover over half of that. During summer months, when the Sun’s energy is maximally available, the sun will provide about 45% of the plant’s energy requirements. It helps that the plant operates mainly during daylight hours, so this is a good fit for a solar installation.

According to Dan Westin, of Rochelle Municipal Utilities, “the unique part of Rochelle is that as a Muni owned utility it can include the grid capacity cost savings in the business case as well the solar energy credits marketed in the Pennsylvania market. The payback is less than five years that way. So 15 years of free solar energy. The cost of producing clean water goes down.”

Dan also told me that there are similar projects in Galena and Rockford Illinois.