We are two days away from the peak day for hurricane season (with many more days of hurricane season coming, of course). Yet there have been no Atlantic Hurricanes. In just a few days (on September 11th) if we don’t have a hurricane, we’ll break the record for latest over the period of record keeping.
There is a storm forming off the coast of Africa that might become a hurricane before September 11th. Or maybe not. The race is on!
Anyway, Paul Douglas of Weather Nation has a video explaining the current situation:
Joe Kernen is a business finance talking head who co-hosts CNBC’s Squawk Box. I don’t know if he actually knows much about Wall Street, but I can prove he doesn’t know squawk about Climate Science. Have a look (warning: Might make you dizzy):
Something about a low participation rate because people are getting older. But that’s kind of unclear. Obviously, what is needed is a nice clear analogy from …. climate science!
So, the warmest period ever was in the 1930s when there were much lower CO2 levels. I did not know that.
Then the glaciers retreat and there are big forests. Arm wavingly big forests!
Then we realize in the Middle Ages it was warmer than it was now! Why??? WHY????
Why, then, why was the participation rate so low?????? Enquiring climate scientists want to know!!!
Please. Allow me to “put it in the big picture”
First, I have no idea why participation rates in some thing are low. That is not my field of study and I have no idea what they are talking about. Therefore I will not wave my arms around and tell you something about that.
Was the decade of the 1930s the warmest period ever? Let’s look at a graph!
The 1930s was a period during which global warming occurred, ant it was in fact warmer than PREVIOUS decades. But then it got warmer. Like in this graph.
So, no.
Was CO2 lower then? Let’s look at a graph:
CO2 was lower then. And so was temperature. In fact, temperatures and CO2 seem to … correlate! Huh.
What about the glaciers melting. Let’s look at a graph:
Glacial melting is not well measured back as far as the 30s, but we know they weren’t melting back then or al the towns downstream from them would have noticed it then. But they certainly have been melting! It’s a global warming thing.
What about the Giant Arm Waving Forests? Hard to say. Where glaciers have melted away, maybe some day there will be forests there. Many mountain glaciers, though, are up at high altitudes where there are very few arm-waving forests, but rather, stumpy short alpine forests with no arms. In any event, I’m not sure what the point of this is. Perhaps Joe is assuming that after glaciers melt giant arm waving forests grow and eat all the CO2 we are releasing into the atmosphere. Or maybe the trees just wave their arms and blow the greenhouse gasses away. I await clarification.
Finally, there is the Medieval warm period. There was such a thing. It was warm. There are two problems, though, with this. First, it was a regional warming that happened in only some parts of the world enough to notice. But it was important. It was like having your heat on high in the winter time, then you go outside in the cold and it feels colder that it otherwise might because you were used to very warm air. This is because the Medieval warm period was followed by the little ice age. That sort of took people by surprise. The second problem with Joe’s statement is that it was not warmer then than it is now.
Let’s look at a graph:
So, no. Not that either.
Joe, I recommend you stick to your subject. I assume you know something about that. The random unexpected bloviation about how climate change science is wrong makes you look like a clown. Also, whoever produces this show … do try to keep track of these things. In other words, be professional!
Over the last several days the Atlantic has been very active, producing numerous storm systems that had promise to turn into something. Only one did, Gabrielle, and Gabrielle downgraded to a stormy blob (#1 on the above graphic from the National Weather Service). Gabrielle may well be back as a tropical storm, but there is only a small chance of that. If exGabrielle does turn into something it will most likely go straight north in the Atlantic. The second item is something that the NWS hurricane people have been watching since it was over the Sahara, hinting in their regular updates that something is coming. It isn’t that common that a tropical wave gets that much air time while still over West Africa, so I’m thinking this one is for real. The update from the NWS indicates that there is about an 80% chance of this wave (#2 on the graphic) will become a tropical cyclone during the next five days. This storm, as well, would likely track north across the Atlantic.
So, both storms have zero chance of affecting the Gulf of Mexico, and both have a high chance, if they develop into hurricanes, of tracking more or less harmlessly up the Atlantic.
Of course, Sandy tracked up the Atlantic and then made a left turn into New Jersey/New York. I don’t think the steering conditions for that happening with either of these storms is in place at the moment, though.
Update: That system off the West African coast now has a 90% chance of becoming a named storm. I believe the next name in line is Humberto:
Years ago I knew Richard Dawkins as a fellow evolutionary biologist (met him only once, at a memorial event for WD Hamilton, but we have numerous mutual friends and colleagues). To be frank, and I’m only being frank now because I’d prefer not to use my real name, Dawkins was considered a bit of an enigma. He had great fame (and fortune and privilege) but that was without doing much important research. I always defended him back in those days. His fame came from The Selfish Gene and his subsequent books, and his popularization of science was well done and important. Those who complained,and there were many (but always behind his back) were just jealous.
Then, later, Dawkins got famous in another area, as a spokesperson for atheism. In fact, as a leader of the Atheist movement worldwide. A major milestone in that digression from biology was, of course, his book, The God Delusion. In The God Delusion, he told most people in the world that they were afflicted with a psychiatric disorder that caused them to believe in god. Atheists totally ate this up and for good reason. Also, Dawkins did the whole thing in his quaint British Accent and that took some of the edge off of it, and really, he did it well.
Then Elevatorgate happened, which had absolutely nothing to do with Richard Dawkins, but he chimed in. When he chimed in he said “Ladies, there is no way to get raped in an elevator. All you have to do is push the Stop and Door Open button and leave.” (or words to that effect).
Then just a few weeks later the person of all the people in the world who is closest to me was raped in an elevator.
The rape was interrupted not by her pressing the stop or open button, because they did not work. The rape was interrupted because she decided to kick the rapist’s ass. Then, he was the one pushing the buttons and when the door finally opened he ran. But it certainly did not have to turn out that way. He happened to be unarmed, for example.
Anyway, Richard Dawkins is a dick and that is not just because of his name. He’s a dick because he is utterly unaware of his white, male, British, academic, authory, etc. etc. privilege. Which would be OK, because who really cares, but privilege interferes with activism and being the guy who wrote The God Delusion makes you an activist. Privilege interferes with being a member of a diverse community (diverse as in other people don’t have the same privilege). You can only be an effective leader of a movement if you recognize your membership in the community, even if as a leader.
But you can stay in charge for longer than most, for longer than you deserve, if you corner the market you’ve developed for yourself. My friend and colleague Sarah Moglia overheard Dawkins say something one day that seemed to be an example of his cornering the market. He told someone in charge of major public event that if a particular person was allowed to speak at that event, Dawkins would not go. In other words, he used his huge and unchecked privilege to get another speaker tossed off the podium.
Why? Who did he get tossed? When did this happen? Why are we only hearing about it now?
It all comes down to Elevators, real and metaphorical. And shoes. Dawkins is actually pretty short.
Over the last decade the surface temperatures of the earth have increased. During the previous decades, the surface temperatures of the earth increased at a somewhat higher rate. Meanwhile, over the last decade there seems to be some extra heat gain in the deeper ocean. Also, some of the surface heat is busy melting the planet’s glaciers and the Arctic Sea ice. That heat does not contribute to the surface heat measurement. So, global warming has not slowed down.
This is what we know.
Here is a nice video that explains some of this from the Yale Climate Forum, made by Peter Sinclair.
I love it when controversy develops in climate science. It demonstrates that climate science is a science, not dogma. Also, it is interesting. And, ultimately, it is important because we need to reduce uncertainty and addressing controversy eventually does so.
There is a new controversy in climate science about a vitally important issue. Last year, Hurricane Sandy (aka Superstorm Sandy aka Frankenstorm Sandy) devastated coastal New Jersey and flooded the Battery in Manhattan. This was a highly unlikely event. Estimates of how likely it is for a major hurricane to follow the path Sandy followed – a nearly perfect east to west trajectory from the ocean onto the land – range from once in 400 years to once in 800 years. But there was an explanation. A set of unusual large scale moving masses of air related to the jet stream had formed in such a way to shape Sandy’s storm track into a configuration never before seen for any hurricane for which we have accurate storm tracks. This configuration of air masses is best explained as the outcome of two unusual large scale weather phenomena, changes to the jet stream owing to Arctic Amplification and a negative North Atlantic oscillation. These configurations, in turn, are thought to have been made more likely by the effects of anthropogenic global warming.
NOAA’s collection of over a century and a half of Atlantic Hurricane tracks. Note that big storms go from east to west while in the tropics, then if they make it far enough north, go west to east. Storms that affect the Atlantic Coast of the US tend to move north along the coast, grazing the continent and thus weakening. A storm that goes up the Atlantic staying over warm waters such as the Gulf Stream, then moves east to west against the coast in non-weakened form, is a monster.For this reason it has been suggested that increased global warming due to the release of carbon into the atmosphere by widespread and intensive burning of fossil fuels will increase the likelihood of Sandy-like events in the future. A handful of research projects have supported this idea. But, now there is a new paper that suggests the opposite. Elizabeth Barnes, Lorenzo Polvani and Adam Sobel have a paper in PNAS (“Model projections of atmospheric steering of Sandy-like superstorms”) that concludes that future storm tracks in the North Atlantic, under global warming, will be more likely to push hurricanes (or their downgraded senescent forms) to the east rather than to the west ala Sandy. The authors identified the specific atmospheric features that steered Sandy into New Jersey. They then ran a number of very sophisticated climate models into the future to see if these phenomena would be more or less likely, and found that they would be less likely.
This finding, if correct, would be good news for New York and New Jersey and other states along the east coast of the United States north of Florida. (The Sandy-like track could actually happen along a wide stretch of the coast north of the sub-tropics.) This finding (and other research) would be bad news for Western Europe because this new finding also predicts a higher chance of hurricanes, or more likely their downgraded but still significant versions, making landfall there.
Jeff Masters, on his blog at Wunderground, has summarized some of the counter arguments to this finding. He notes that models of future climate change are limited when it comes to the sort of phenomena being addressed in this study. He notes that the current climate models predicted Arctic Sea ice reduction, but were far off the mark in the rapidity of that catastrophe. He cites a personal communication with climatologist Jennifer Francis who notes that the zone in which west to east movement of storms would likely be enhanced is far to the north of where Sandy struck land, while the strongest decreases in west to east steering may be where the steering systems that affected Sandy were, suggesting that the same models could predict an increase in Sandy-like tracks.
Superstorm Hurricane Sandy’s track was unique. First it went, as usual, from east to west in the tropics. Then it went north, then instead of heading north-northeast into the North Atlantic’s hurricane graveyard, it turned abruptly to the west and hit the US Coast as a very strong storm. At the last moment, before “landfall” Sandy was downgraded from its hurricane status, but not because it grew weaker. Rather, it ate a nearby storm and gained strength, and in so doing lost its hurricane-typical organization, much like Bill Bixby lost his humanoid form by turning into the Incredible Hulk.There is another way to look at this controversy. Sandy’s track was nearly impossible. It was not quite as unlikely as all of the oxygen molecules moving, by random chance, to one corner of a room full of people causing everyone to suffocate, but it was unlikely. Imagine that I showed you a device that I claimed would cause all of the oxygen molecules to move to one corner of a room. You would not believe me because that is pretty much impossible. But if I deployed the device and it worked, you would think that my device worked. There is an alternative possibility; it is possible that my device is bogus but I deployed it at the exact moment that the oxygen molecules happen to move to one corner of the room on their own. But you would never conclude that as an explanation because it just can’t be true. Now, if my device had a less unlikely claim, such as that pressing a button on it would cause a certain stock on the New York Stock Exchange to go up instead of down, then your suspicions that my device only seemed to work by chance would be reasonable. If stocks from day to day are more or less random in their price change, my device would appear to work nearly half the time. If I showed this device independently to a dozen people, I could have a couple of them thinking that my stock price mover machine worked, but most likely they would hold on to their money until they saw more proof. But if I had a device that did something we all know has a one in a zillion chance of happening, and I press the button and the thing happens, it would be very hard for anyone to dismiss it.
Sandy’s track was highly unlikely. But it happened. It happened because of the configuration of air masses extant at the time. The air masses were configured as they were, most likely, because of changes in atmospheric circulation owing to the warming Arctic. This happened during the one year in which the Arctic Sea ice melted more than we have ever seen it melt. If I told you that the next time the Arctic Sea ice melted as much, and as quickly, as it did in 2012 that any hurricanes that headed up the Atlantic would have an enhanced chance of following an east to west track before landfall in on the Eastern Seaboard, you’d find that a lot easier to believe than my claim about a device that moves all the Oxygen molecules to one corner of the room.
The new study is internally consistent and uses good methods, so the conclusion is reasonably strong: global warming will not cause events like Hurricane Sandy to happen at increased frequency. Hurricane Sandy did something that was highly unlikely but did so because of conditions attributable to global warming: global warming did cause a Hurricane Sandy like event.
Perhaps the future of hurricanes in the North Atlantic is a bit like divorces and tornadoes in Arkansas. When we consider the East Coast of the US and the West Coast of Western Europe, we’re not sure what is going to happen, but either way, somebody’s going to lose themselves a coastline.
Barnes, Elizabeth, Polvani, Lorenzo, & Sobel, Adam (2013). Model projections of atmospheric steering of Sandy-like superstorms PNAS DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1308732110
In this Labor Day message, Robert Reich, the former Secretary of Labor and subject of the upcoming documentary “Inequality for All,” breaks down what it’ll take for workers to get a fair share in this economy — including big, profitable corporations like McDonald’s and Walmart to pony up and finally pay fair wages.
At the culminating event on the 66 mile Energy Exodus march, over 150 ralliers will call for the Town of Barnstable to withdraw its lawsuit against the Cape Wind offshore wind farm and begin negotiating in good faith with Cape Wind and federal and state agencies. They will demand that the Town stop taking money from local oil billionaire Bill Koch, who has put over $1.5 million into efforts to delay the wind farm.
Rally speakers will also highlight upcoming opportunities in New England for the marchers to continue advancing the global and regional transition to clean energy. A combination of speakers and performers will end the 66 mile march on a high and hopeful note.
Where: Aselton Memorial Park, Hyannis, MA (corner of South and Ocean Streets)
When: Monday, Sept 2, 1-3:30PM
Who: Speakers will include:
<li>Barbara Hill,former Executive Director of Clean Power Now</li>
<li>Craig Altemose, Executive Director of Better Future Project</li>
<li>Emily Edgerly, member of Students for a Just and Stable Future</li>
<li>Ben Thompson, member of Students for a Just and Stable Future and Energy Exodus co-lead organizer</li>
The band Melodeego will be performing.
Background: The Cape Wind Project will be the nation’s first offshore wind farm, built on Horseshoe Shoal in Nantucket Sound. With 130 wind turbines, the project is expected to produce about 75% of the average electricity demand for the region. It could offset close to a million tons of carbon dioxide every year, and produce 1000 jobs for local residents during construction. However, those climate, health, and economic benefits have been held up by oil billionaire Bill Koch, who owns a vacation home on the Cape and has spent over $1.5 million on various efforts to delay the construction of the wind farm.
About Energy Exodus March: For six days across 66 miles, starting August 28th, dozens of citizens from all over New England have marched from the Brayton Point coal and gas plant outside Fall River to the future site of Cape Wind, the nation’s first offshore wind project.
Organized by Better Future Project and Students for a Just and Stable Future, the march highlights the need to transition from fossil fuel energy to clean renewable power like that the Cape Wind project will soon provide. Energy Exodus marchers aim to build political momentum to hasten the transition to renewable energy in Massachusetts, promoting healthier communities and a stable climate.
Below is the relative percentage of operating system use by the readers of this blog from a four month longs sample form the middle of the year last year compared to the most recent six months this year. There is not a lot of change, but notice the nearly five percent drop i nWindows use, which seems to be taken up mainly by an increase in the use of iOS.
In addition, Linux use has dropped a worrying two percent.
However, really, OSX and Android etc. are all based on Unix-like operating systems, so the numbers for this year can be recalculated to look like this:
But really, Linux use is actually close to 100% among the readers of this blog. You are using Linux right now, since this web page is being served up on a Linux server. Also, Android. Adding this to the other Unix-flavor OS use, we get this:
I suspect Scienceblogs.com is under attack. Why? Because the site is going really really slow, and the spam coming in is different … huge spamy comments with a zillion links which I think send the server into conniptions. I’ve closed comments on all posts over five days in age on this blog, for the time being. Sorry for the inconvenience.
It is hard to interpret this as meaning anything other than the crisis of Arctic Sea ice melting too much and too fast is over. This is an important thing, because the rapid and widespread melting of sea ice in the Arctic seems to be causing a thing called Arctic Amplification, which means in normal human terms that the Arctic is warmer (amplified) than normal. This causes a decrease in the differential between equatorial heat and polar heat in the Northern Hemisphere which seems to change the way the Jet Streams operate which in turn causes Weather Whiplash, where we have days and days of warm air being drawn north into “ridges” under the Jet Stream or colder air being drawn south into “troughs” in the Jet Stream. Our Minnesota Snowy April, the current midwest Heat Wave, severe cold in Siberia a while back, flooding in Central Europe, etc. etc. all are effects of the warped and slow moving waves in the Jet Stream. Climate math seams to explain the warping and stalling of the Jet Stream as a function of Arctic Amplification, and Arctic Amplification is clearly the result of a warmer northern sea which is caused by exposure of the sea to more energy from the sun because the ice is reduced. The ice is reduced because of global warming, and this is positive feedback effect.
If the Arctic Sea ice melt is “on a decent track” than this might mean a) global warming isn’t really happening and/or b) the Arctic Sea ice to amplification to jet stream warping and stalling to weather whiplash connection isn’t valid. So, that would be important. So let’s see if Andy is Revkin the Right or Revkin the Wrong on this one.
Here is a graph of the track of Arctic Sea ice melt for a period of ten years for the first years in which good measurements are available, from the National Snow & Ice Date Center. Since the recent changes in the Arctic post date this time period, we can take this to be more or less “normal.”
The black, thicker line along the bottom of these other lines is the average ice track from 1981-2010. Note that the sea ice for this ten year baseline period is almost never below that line. The baseline for “on track” is the average of these ten years, and I’ll leave it to you to imagine a line running along the midpoint of the observed ice tracks from 1979 to 1988.
Now, here is the same graph but for the ten year period prior to 2012:
For this later time period, the nature of Arctic Sea ice is fundamentally different than before. This is the period of time that the Arctic Sea has been warming. This is the period of time that Arctic Amplification has becoming more severe. This is the period of time that the weather has been changing. This is the period of time that has been affected by anthropogenic global warming. Sea ice tracks that are within this range are not “on track.” They are probably better characterized as “messed up.”
The following is the same data showing the ice track from 2012 and the present year to date.
The year 2012 was exceptional. It was the most melty of the measured years. This year, is in fact, “on track” but not “on track” to be normal. It is “on track” to be one of the years in which the melting is excessive, and it is “on track” to contribute to Arctic Amplification. It could be worse. It could look like 2012, or even worse, I suppose. But it is not good.
I know it is hard to see all the lines in these graphs when many are selected for display on the Charctic Interactive Sea Ice Graphing Tool, but the years that are not as melty as the present year are all the years prior to the shift documented above, and 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006 from after the shift. So, one way of looking at this year is that it is more or less average for the “new normal.” It is “on track” for more weather whiplash.
It is actually good news that the Arctic Sea Ice melting is not worse this year than last year, or even as bad this year as some previous years. But it takes a bit of imagination, or perhaps serves some intent that I find difficult to fathom, to suggest that this year things in the Arctic are on a decent track. Arctic Sea ice melt this year is not decent.
And, all this is about sea ice coverage. There is a more severe problem happening that these graphs don’t show; the melting of old ice, ice that is thicker, with multiple years all jammed up into thicker ice, has been severe over recent years. This ice is important because it forms the foundation on which new sea ice forms every year. Even if the climate went back to “normal” because some technology was invented that sucked all the extra Carbon Dioxide out of the atmosphere to return us to pre-industrial levels was implemented, the lack of old ice would mean that regeneration of sea ice in the Arctic each year would be difficult, and it would probably take several year get the Arctic Sea back to a decent track. For a change.
Here’s Mike Mann’s tweet response to Revkin’s tweet, which says the same thing I say in this blog post but in fewer than 140 characters:
(Professor Mann’s link is to the same data source I use above.)
