Hurricane Sandy's huge size: freak of nature or climate change?
Hurricane Sandy was truly astounding in its size and power. At its peak size, twenty hours before landfall, Sandy had tropical storm-force winds that covered an area nearly one-fifth the area of the contiguous United States. Since detailed records of hurricane size began in 1988, only one tropical storm (Olga of 2001) has had a larger area of tropical storm-force winds, and no hurricanes has. Sandy's area of ocean with twelve-foot seas peaked at 1.4 million square miles--nearly one-half the area of the contiguous United States, or 1% of Earth's total ocean area. Most incredibly, ten hours before landfall (9:30 am EDT October 30), the total energy of Sandy's winds of tropical storm-force and higher peaked at 329 terajoules--the highest value for any Atlantic hurricane since at least 1969. This is 2.7 times higher than Katrina's peak energy, and is equivalent to five Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs. At landfall, Sandy's tropical storm-force winds spanned 943 miles of the the U.S. coast. No hurricane on record has been wider; the previous record holder was Hurricane Igor of 2010, which was 863 miles in diameter. Sandy's huge size prompted high wind warnings to be posted from Chicago to Eastern Maine, and from Michigan's Upper Peninsula to Florida's Lake Okeechobee--an area home to 120 million people. Sandy's winds simultaneously caused damage to buildings on the shores of Lake Michigan at Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, and toppled power lines in Nova Scotia, Canada--locations 1200 miles apart!
Largest Atlantic tropical cyclones for area covered by tropical storm-force winds:
Olga, 2001: 780,000 square miles
Sandy, 2012: 560,000 square miles
Lili, 1996: 550,000 square miles
Igor, 2010: 550,000 square miles
Karl, 2004: 430,000 square miles
Figure 1. Hurricane Sandy’s winds (top), on October 28, 2012, when Sandy was a Category 1 hurricane with top winds of 75 mph (this ocean surface wind data is from a radar scatterometer on the Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) Oceansat-2.) Hurricane Katrina’s winds (bottom) on August 28, 2005, when Katrina was a Category 5 hurricane with top winds of 175 mph (data taken by a radar scatterometer on NASA’s defunct QuickSCAT satellite.) In both maps, wind speeds above 65 kilometers (40 miles) per hour are yellow; above 80 kph (50 mph) are orange; and above 95 kph (60 mph) are dark red. The most noticeable difference is the extent of the strong wind fields. For Katrina, winds over 65 kilometers per hour stretched about 500 kilometers (300 miles) from edge to edge. For Sandy, winds of that intensity spanned an region of ocean three times as great--1,500 kilometers (900 miles). Katrina was able to generate a record-height storm surge over a small area of the Mississippi coast. Sandy generated a lower but highly destructive storm surge over a much larger area, due to the storm's weaker winds but much larger size. Image credit: NASA.
How did Sandy get so big?
We understand fairly well what controls the peak strength of a hurricane's winds, but have a poor understanding of why some hurricanes get large and others stay small. A number of factors probably worked together to create a "prefect storm" situation that allowed Sandy to grow so large, and we also must acknowledge that climate change could have played a role. Here are some possible reasons why Sandy grew so large:
1) Initial size of the disturbance that became Sandy was large
Sandy formed from an African tropical wave that interacted with a large area of low pressure that covered most of the Central Caribbean. Rotunno and Emanuel (1987) found that hurricanes that form from large initial tropical disturbances like Sandy did tend to end up large in size.
Figure 2. The initial disturbance that spawned Sandy, seen here on October 20, 2012, was quite large.
2) High relative humidity in Sandy's genesis region
The amount of moisture in the atmosphere may play an important role in how large a hurricane gets (Hill and Lackmann, 2009.) Sandy was spawned in the Caribbean in a region where the relative humidity was near 70%. This is the highest humidity we saw during 2012 during the formation of any Atlantic hurricane.
3) Passage over Cuba
Sandy struck Cuba as an intensifying Category 2 hurricane with 110 mph winds. While the core of the storm was over Cuba, it was cut off from the warm ocean waters surrounding Cuba. Most of Sandy's large circulation was still over the ocean, though, and the energy the storm was able to extract from the ocean went into intensifying the spiral bands over water. When Sandy's core re-emerged over water, the hurricane now had spiral bands with heavier thunderstorm activity as a result of the extra energy pumped into the outer portion of the storm during the eye's passage over land. This extra energy in the outer portions of Sandy may have enabled it to expand in size later.
4) Interaction with a trough of low pressure over the Bahamas
As Sandy passed through the Bahamas on October 25, the storm encountered strong upper-level winds associated with a trough of low pressure to the west. These winds created high wind shear that helped weaken Sandy and destroy the eyewall. However, Sandy compensated by spreading out its tropical storm-force winds over a much wider area. Between 15 and 21 UTC on October 25, Sandy's area of tropical storm-force winds increased by more than a factor of two.
5) Leveraging of the Earth's spin
As storms move towards Earth's poles, they acquire more spin, since Earth's rotation works to put more vertical spin into the atmosphere the closer one gets to the pole. This extra spin helps storms grow larger, and we commonly see hurricanes grow in size as they move northwards.
6) Interaction with a trough of low pressure at landfall
As Sandy approached landfall in New Jersey, it encountered an extratropical low pressure system to its west. This extratropical storm began pumping cold air aloft into the hurricane, which converted Sandy into an extratropical low pressure system, or "Nor'easter". The nature of extratropical storms is to have a much larger area with strong winds than a hurricane does, since extratropical storms derive their energy from the atmosphere along a frontal boundary that is typically many hundreds of miles long. Thus, as Sandy made landfall, the hurricane's strongest winds spread out over a larger area, causing damage from Indiana to Nova Scotia.
Are we likely to see more such storms in the future?
Global warming theory (Emanuel, 2005) predicts that a 2°C (3.6°F) increase in ocean temperatures should cause an increase in the peak winds of the strongest hurricanes of about about 10%. Furthermore, warmer ocean temperatures are expected to cause hurricanes to dump 20% more rain in their cores by the year 2100, according to computer modeling studies (Knutson et al., 2010). However, there has been no published work describing how hurricane size may change with warmer oceans in a future climate. We've seen an unusual number of Atlantic hurricanes with large size in recent years, but we currently have no theoretical or computer modeling simulations that can explain why this is so, or if we might see more storms like this in the future. However, we've seen significant and unprecedented changes to our atmosphere in recent decades, due to our emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide. The laws of physics demand that the atmosphere must respond. Atmospheric circulation patterns that control extreme weather events must change, and we should expect extreme storms to change in character, frequency, and intensity as a result--and not always in the ways our computer models may predict. We have pushed our climate system to a fundamentally new, higher-energy state where more heat and moisture is available to power stronger storms, and we should be concerned about the possibility that Hurricane Sandy's freak size and power were partially due to human-caused climate change.
References
Emanuel, K. (2005). Increasing destructiveness of tropical cyclones over the past 30 years. Nature, 436(7051), 686-688.
Hill, Kevin A., and Gary M. Lackmann (2009), "Influence of environmental humidity on tropical cyclone size," Monthly Weather Review 137.10 (2009): 3294-3315.
Knutson, T. R., McBride, J. L., Chan, J., Emanuel, K., Holland, G., Landsea, C., ... & Sugi, M. (2010). Tropical cyclones and climate change. Nature Geoscience, 3(3), 157-163.
Rotunno, R., & Emanuel, K. A. (1987). An air–sea interaction theory for tropical cyclones. Part II: Evolutionary study using a nonhydrostatic axisymmetric numerical model. J. Atmos. Sci, 44(3), 542-561.
The Atlantic is quiet, but a Nor'easter expected next week
The Atlantic is quiet, with no threat areas to discuss. An area of low pressure is predicted to develop just north of Bermuda on Wednesday, and the GFS model predicts that this low could become a subtropical cyclone as moves north-northeastwards out to sea late in the week.
The long-range models are in increasing agreement that a Nor'easter will develop near the North Carolina coast on Sunday, then move north to northeastwards early next week. High winds, heavy rain, and coastal flooding could affect the mid-Atlantic coast and New England coasts next Monday and Tuesday due to this storm, but it appears likely that the Nor'easter will stay farther out to sea than the last Nor'easter and have less of an impact on the region devastated by Sandy. Ocean temperatures off the coast of North Carolina were cooled by about 4°F (2.2°C) due to the churning action of Hurricane Sandy's winds, but are still warm enough at 22 - 24°C to potentially allow the Nor'easter to acquire some subtropical characteristics. I doubt the storm would be able to become a named subtropical storm, but it could have an unusual amount of heavy rain if it does become partially tropical. The Nor'easter is still a long ways in the future, and there is still a lot of uncertainty on where the storm might go.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE WILMINGTON NC
1219 PM EST TUE NOV 13 2012
.SYNOPSIS...
A STRONG COLD FRONT WILL PUSH OFFSHORE THIS AFTERNOON...FOLLOWED BY
CHILLY CANADIAN AIR. HIGH PRESSURE WILL BUILD TO OUR NORTH THIS
WEEK...EXTENDING INTO THE CAROLINAS. A WEAK LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM WILL
DEVELOP OFFSHORE THURSDAY AND MOVE NORTHEAST. ANOTHER LOW WILL
DEVELOP OFFSHORE THIS WEEKEND WITH INCREASING CHANCES FOR RAIN.
&&
.NEAR TERM /THROUGH TONIGHT/...
AS OF 1215 PM TUESDAY...THE COLD FRONT HAS BEEN LOCATED BY RADAR AND
SURFACE OBSERVATIONS ON THE PENDER COUNTY COASTLINE...EXTENDING
SOUTHWEST THROUGH WILMINGTON AND TO ABOUT 5 MILES WEST OF NORTH
MYRTLE BEACH. THE FRONT SHOULD CONTINUE MOVING STEADILY OFF THE
COAST THIS AFTERNOON. A HEALTHY CLUSTER OF SURFACE-BASED CONVECTION
(SHOWERS) WILL MOVE ACROSS WILMINGTON WITHIN THE NEXT HOUR...WITH
LIGHTER SHOWERS FROM ELEVATED INSTABILITY CONTINUING INLAND
ESPECIALLY IN THE LUMBERTON AND DILLON VICINITY. TEMPERATURES HAVE
PEAKED AT ALL LOCATIONS AND STEADY TO SLOWLY FALLING TEMPERATURES
ARE EXPECTED DUE TO COLD ADVECTION THROUGH THE AFTERNOON. PREVIOUS
DISCUSSION FROM 10 AM FOLLOWS...
THE SURFACE COLD FRONT EXTENDS FROM NEAR ELIZABETHTOWN TO
WHITEVILLE...ACROSS THE WESTERN PORTIONS OF HORRY COUNTY TO NEAR
KINGSTREE IN SOUTH CAROLINA. THE 11Z HRRR WAS ABOUT ONE HOUR FAST
WITH THE FRONT BUT OTHERWISE LOOKED TO BE A GOOD FIT FOR THE SHAPE
AND FORWARD SPEED OF THE BOUNDARY...PRESSING IT OFFSHORE BY 18-19Z
IN ALL AREAS.
VISIBLE SATELLITE SHOWS A NARROW ZONE OF MAINLY CLEAR SKIES JUST IN
ADVANCE OF THE FRONT WITH TEMPERATURES RISING INTO THE LOWER 70S
ALONG THE SC COAST. THESE WARMER TEMPERATURES MAY EXTEND INTO
EXTREME SE NORTH CAROLINA IN THE NEXT 1-2 HOURS BEFORE THE FRONT
SWEEPS THROUGH AND MUCH COLDER AIR BUILDS IN. HIGH TEMPERATURES HAVE
ALREADY BEEN RECORDED INLAND AND STEADY TEMPERATURES ARE ANTICIPATED
FOR THE REMAINDER OF THE DAY NEAR AND WEST OF I-95.
RADAR SHOWS ONE BATCH OF SHOWERS NEAR AND EAST OF CAPE FEAR
ASSOCIATED WITH UNSTABLE AIR ADVECTING NORTH FROM THE WESTERN EDGE
OF THE GULF STREAM. SHOWERS ACROSS THE CENTRAL CAROLINAS APPEAR TO
BE LINKED TO SMALL ELEVATED INSTABILITY IN THE 900-700 MB LAYER
ASSISTED BY SYNOPTIC-SCALE LIFT FROM THE RIGHT-ENTRANCE REGION OF A
FAVORABLY POSITIONED 300 MB JET ACROSS THE MID-ATLANTIC AND EASTERN
GREAT LAKES. THIS REGION OF ENHANCED SHOWER ACTIVITY SHOULD ADVECT
SLOWLY NORTHEASTWARD THROUGH THE AFTERNOON.
&&
Not at all. There are all sorts of parameters out there, such as the regular occurance of 100 year events, more warm records than cold records set annually by a huge margin, never seen before weather events, etc etc, that, taken together from a meta-analytic perspective, absolutely insist on an interpretation that includes the concept of climate change. The alternative hypothesis, that it is some vast left wing conspiracy to make you like bad art, drink flouride, and teach your children communism, is patently insupportable: Lefties are well known to be as un-herdable as cats. Cats in season, even.
Kudos for your actions, but the main reason lots of people favor the suburban/exurban lifestyle is that it is heavily subsidized by the government! We allow farmland to be turned into car-dependent tract housing and strip malls, and then when traffic on the rural roads gets bad, we use enormous amounts of tax dollars to widen them. And we use enormous amounts of tax dollars to facilitate car commuting from these suburban/exurban areas to urban areas, often cutting highway through established neighborhoods and semi-urban areas to their detriment. Dang socialist road builders! If we only taxed suburbanites for their own roads, and put tolls on suburban commuter highways in proportion to the externalities they cause -- including CO2 as well as neighborhood destruction in urban and near-urban areas -- there would be a lot less suburban and exurban development in the first place. Those developments are currently free riding on our future.
This is just some neo-cons over reacting.
Secession of a state would cause an unbelievable uprising, not to mention border crossing issues, interstate highway disputes, riots, probably at least 2 or 3 way civil war, who knows what else.
Who gets control of the nukes and air bases and other military installations and research facilities in each state? You think the Federal Government would just hand all that over?
Even if Louisiana was stupid enough to leave the U.S. I'd leave here and go somewhere else.
Please re-read Dr. Masters' post. Those that have read and absorbed it can see that although the main discussion point is a single storm, the connection of that single storm to climate is not made very strong. In fact, Dr. Masters even pointed out the lack of evidence at present to suggest an increase in storm size due to climate, by the following statement:
"However, there has been no published work describing how hurricane size may change with warmer oceans in a future climate. We've seen an unusual number of Atlantic hurricanes with large size in recent years, but we currently have no theoretical or computer modeling simulations that can explain why this is so, or if we might see more storms like this in the future."
After that statement, he talked in generalities about strong storms (as you might recall, that would be climate, not weather), by saying "[we] should expect extreme storms to change in character, frequency, and intensity as a result--and not always in the ways our computer models may predict."
As has been stated by numerous scientists numerous times, it is virtually impossible to show that any one event is caused by climate change, although current weather events can be consistent with observed climatic changes. The intensity or frequency of events may also change when averaged over climatic timescales (hint, this is not a single event or weather). Dr. Masters summed up this consensus of climate science nicely:
"we should be concerned about the possibility that Hurricane Sandy's freak size and power were partially due to human-caused climate change."
Reason to be concerned for a partial influence, but we are not certain at this time.
There really isn't much point in discussing this topic with you further if you are not actual going to fully read the topic we are discussing.
Very true, I am just wondering what they think they are accomplishing. Just making their voices heard, I suppose.
local New York-area forecast from the National Weather Service Saturday morning:
2 TO 3 FT ABOVE ASTRONOMICAL TIDES MONDAY MORNING INTO TUESDAY MORNING...WITH POSSIBLE HIGHER DEPARTURES DEPENDENT UPON THE TRACK OF SANDY.
Wow! This was the local forecast for Sandy???
TROPICAL WEATHER OUTLOOK
NWS NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL
100 PM EST TUE NOV 13 2012
FOR THE NORTH ATLANTIC...CARIBBEAN SEA AND THE GULF OF MEXICO...
TROPICAL CYCLONE FORMATION IS NOT EXPECTED DURING THE NEXT 48 HOURS.
$$
FORECASTER BRENNAN
This year's elections were unreal to watch. Romney was actually stunned that he didn't win as his privately designed polls were showing him the winner. He felt that all the other indicators that showed Obama with slight leads here and there were simply the liberal bias of the press and pollsters. I understand Newt and Karl were equally shocked. I truly think as humans we have an amazing capacity for self-delusion and it doesn't even occur to us that we might be wrong. No fact can change our mind or get past that shield we put in place to protect our views and our egos. I'm not saying its only them who think that way. I think all of us have little walls and castles we defend quite vigoously when our views are cdhallenged. A good example is Trump and the birth certificate. There is literally nothing that would convince him of the legitimacy of the President's birth in Hawaii. (I figure if anything were there, Hillary would have found it). Now put the competing armys at work on opinions on climate science. Whoah! We are not going to cross those bridges and consider their positions - not until New Yorkers are using gondolas instead of cars are some folks going to think global warming and sea level rise is real. It's just not in their bank of options. Enough already! Hope for the best and buy some boats.
Actually, Texas has a gaurenteed right to secede at its pleasure, or divide into up to four separate states if remaining in the union... concession won from the US as a condition of joining the Union. So, unlike the other 49 states, legally, and with just so much paper pushing, they are entirely within their right to do so.
you are correct it is premature to make such a statement.....so why start a debate before you have the facts????.....
I was taught that in Texas history a while back, but according to Factcheck...
Link
...
"There is a striking relationship between how well climate models simulate relative humidity in key areas and how much warming they show in response to increasing carbon dioxide," said NCAR scientist John Fasullo, one of the authors of the study, quoted in a press release.
...
"Given how fundamental these processes are to clouds and the overall global climate," Fasullo said, "our findings indicate that warming is likely to be on the high side of current projections."
http://news.discovery.com/earth/wanted-global-war ming-alarmists-121113.html
Even if:
Sandy is a rallying point for legislative action against CO2 emissions. You might claim otherwise, but Dr. Masters is attempting to push that meme here, as are many posters. Sandy is being made into a poster child for AGW.
What does it have to do with:
Yet when someone tries to show that there was a probably much worse storm on the same calandar day in the same region over 300 years ago, all of a sudden it's irrational to use a single storm to challenge the notion of Sandy being a product of AGW.
You're using a storm way before the industrial revolution to challenge the notion of Sandy being a product of AGW today?
What does having a more powerful storm in the past, before CO2 was pumped into the atmosphere, have to do with Sandy not being affected by AGW?
For your point to be valid, wouldn't you have to choose a storm today, and prove that AGW hasn't affected it?
MUST change? Based upon what science? And to what extent? Change could be barely within measurement error or highly significant - but the implication here is that the change will be significant, and for the worse.
This is as much proselytizing as it is a scientific viewpoint.
Really? What law guarantees them this right? In Texas vs. White (1869) the Supreme Court ruled "the Constitution did not permit states to unilaterally secede from the United States, and that the ordinances of secession, and all the acts of the legislatures within seceding states intended to give effect to such ordinances, were "absolutely null"."
There is no legal means of secession. These internet petitions may be cathartic for people who aren't happy about the election, but they are absolutely impotent - states cannot secede.
I hope there aren't too many citizens wasting their life energy trying to figure out ways to further divide us. Cooperation has proven over and over to be far more effective.
Meanwhile, in our largest state:
High Wind Warning remains in effect until 6 PM this
evening east of Kiska...
* wind... west wind 50 to 65 mph with gusts to 80 mph.
The problem I have with subject matter like this regarding climate change, is that it's equivalent to saying "X amount of people in the United States are Republicans because (insert arbitrary statement)". The problem with something like that is, even after doing large amounts of research and finding some truth in that statement, it's still exactly that, some truth.
What is being done is a generalization, which may be partially true, but one cannot claim that is the reason for sure because there will always be many reasons for why a hurricane like Sandy could develop, just as there are many reasons for why people come to a certain political view.
I could also make just as much of an argument though, that one cannot also say that climate change for sure was not responsible for the event. Because there is no way to prove that it is not.
Unlike testing a 7 day weather forecast for a given area, it takes a long while to test computer modeling for how climate change will impact weather events. By the time it can be tested in 30 to 50 years. There will be new methods, new technology, and new modeling data, and thus new solutions.
Er, no.
To reiterate: the 1693 storm wasn't necessarily tropical in origin; it came up from the southwest after affecting North Carolina and Virginia, not from the southeast against the norm as Sandy did; there's absolutely no evidence how wide it was compared to Sandy. And so on. In fact, all we have are scattered anecdotal reports that such an event actually happened at all. It's disingenuous at best, then, for people to use a 319-year-old storm about which we know next to nothing to make the case that global warming had no effect on Sandy. It's actually mind-bogglingly illogical that anyone would even try.
Anyway, again, Dr. Masters never said Sandy was "a product of global warming," so I'm not sure why you insist on pushing that line. As Scott so aptly put it, "There really isn't much point in discussing this topic with you further if you are not actual going to fully read the topic we are discussing."
Maybe I will do that actually <('o'<)
Very wise statement, if only many understood this.
how far back are we allowed to use data 15-20 yrs what is the timeframe??? trying to learn all the rules you use....so we can have a proper debate that you seem to fear to engage with me....
I fully agree, one cannot claim.
But it is easy to suggest if one uses common sense and reason.
The atmosphere's temperature, its composition, and its water vapor content have all been proven to have changed.
So, with common sense in mind, so have patterns and storms.
In the long-term, for the worse?
For the better?
Who knows for sure?
The atmosphere is like the center stage, and the storms its actors... If you change the composition of the stage the actors would behave differently.
Aren't you trying to be too cynical?
The timeframe is in a state of flux to suit the line of propaganda of the day.
If any of you folks are interested in viewing science that this site will never provide you, have a peek at this unprecedented event taking place tomorrow.
These folks are not afraid to debate climate science based on facts, observations, and the inability of the climate models to even model today's climate in retrospect.
Climate models are the root source of virtually everything that is claimed as CAGW caused, and yet the models can't even remotely reproduce today's climate.
Counter programming to Al Gore’s ‘Dirty Weather Report’ will be on WUWT-TV Live starting Wednesday Nov. 14 at 8PM EST
Update: Impact map added to news story about potential Thanksgiving week nor'easter. http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/east-co ast-noreaster-thanksgiv/1499934
thanks for the info...
But wait wise one...they also can use historical data when it benefits them..ie. ice cores and anciet mariner reports...but you, and I may not
To put this is very simple scientific terms. The null hypothesis of climate change would be "There is no change in observed atmospheric effects with increased Co2 levels". We can clearly see there is an observed change in atmospheric effects from Co2 that can't be related to any other natural phenomenon we are aware of at the moment. Increased warming over land and oceans and increased water vapor levels, therefore, we reject the null hypothesis.
Very interesting discussion on size..
I'm in a hurry this am so will write more later as I digest the info..
Thanks again
**Afternoon all..made it back..
I checked on the research by Rotunno and Emanuel (1987)Numerical simulation of tropical cyclones by an axisymmetric nonhydrostatic model and they were using mathematics to simulate the overall expansion.
Their conclusions were repetitive and so they were able to duplicate their findings.
I agree with them..I tried(in my own clumsy way) to follow along and soon it made sense that the math/time frame/RH/SST/and other factors (too much to include here) fell into place as to an expansion of the "mathematical storm" would behave..
Dr.Emanuel
Thanks again Dr. Masters for the blog info and Sandy's expansion explanation..
You don't have to believe anything the models spew out to believe that the Earth is warming due to man made greenhouse gases.
I take model predictions with a barrel load of salt. There are too many imponderables to have any faith in them. Moreover, any predictions they make are more likely to be underestimates than overestimates because the scientists who run them are conservative and they err on the cautious side when factoring in positive feedbacks that are incompletely understood.
Belief that the Earth is warming due to greenhouse gases is not dependent on, or driven by, computer models.
CO2 a heat-trapping gas. NO DEBATE
More heat in a system increases entropy, aka chaos. NO DEBATE
For 200 years the burning of fossil fuels has increased the levels of CO2. NO DEBATE
Oceans are rising. NO DEBATE
A warming climate raises oceans levels. NO DEBATE
Extreme weather has increased over the last 10 years. NO DEBATE
2001-2010 was hottest decade worldwide since records have been kept. NO DEBATE
The Arctic Ocean is rapidly losing its summer ice, and will likely be mostly ice free in the summer in the next decade. NO DEBATE
An ice-free Arctic Ocean absorbs and retains more heat, thus accelerating the heating of the Northern Hemisphere, and eventually entire globe. NO DEBATE
Now, remind me again why we are debating that Sandy is NOT a warning shot fired across the bow?
Anyone with logic and foresight looks at Sandy and says, "We can either invest in measures to prevent this, which will be expensive now, but save money over the long run. Or, do little to nothing and let future generations pay the tab for future Sandys. A cost that over time will far exceed in costs what we spend now, not to mention the lost lives."
And as we focus on Sandy now, look back at the US Midwest and what they (and Canada) went through last Spring. Go back and read the comments from the climate scientists and meteorologists. Their language about that warming was stark and foreboding.
At this point of the AGW/Climate Change discussion, anyone that is debating whether or not this is happening is either trolling or lacks the capacity for critical thinking.
The only thing to debate now is how bad it will get and how much we spend now to save lives and reduce future costs. This is not just my point of view. The insurance industry, the Pentagon and almost every major scientific organization have agreed with this for nearly 5 years now.
Interesting. I don't know that I now trust factlink or the professor it quotes.... there is so much disinformation out there these days. I don't live in Texas, nor anywhere near it, and would prefer to avoid it, for the record.
Apparently, a helluva lot of Texans believe it, though, including its governor. Contrarians are likely to perceived as carpetbaggers of some stripe or other.
just in case anyone reads the pluses, I hit the wrong opinion button. I usually do not respond, especially in the blog it seems to be somewhat nanny-ish, but that was a nasty swipe at a respected and truthful blogger.
At least it is a viewpoint based on science. You sound like a paid shill from a PR disinfo firm. Your willful ignorance is atrocious.
For those that would like some insight into willful ignorance, there is an excellent book out.... called Willful Blindness Link. It addresses all sorts of instances of willful blindness (which I myself tend to refer to as GDF ignorance) in an extremely readable manner. It as alone an excellent example of what expository writing OUGHT to look like. If you ever wondered how every one could overlook the obviously ped priest, the too good to be true business deal, building 7 and global warming, this book is going to be a path of insight for you.
you forgot the part after the 2005 season majors would hitt the USA more often...it was the new norm... when was the last time a major hitt the USA????
*facepalm*
Based on the entire field of fluid dynamics. Heck, you don't even have to get that complicated on it -- based on a sketchy understanding of PV=nRT -- as in, you should have learned that in physics 1a -- you can see at least on a conceptual level how huge changes to pressure systems are unavoidable with a changing temp. The reality is way more complicated here, but you don't need that much to get to the basic ideas.
Do you have any idea how much total molecular kinetic energy is represented by 2 degrees C averaged across the planet?
A nor'easter may slow Thanksgiving travel in the Northeast, while a West Coast storm may also hit. http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/thanksg iving-travel-weather-fo/1461642
Funny, we don't call it USA warming, do we?
Destabilizing global weather systems wouldn't be expected to be, um, stable, right?
It's like some of y'all seem to think that by "global warming," scientists mean "your town will have unending heat waves!"
No. It's about larger scale patterns, and it's about trying to make some predictions about what will happen to the circulations, moisture levels, so on in the Earth's atmosphere as an absolutely staggering amount of heat energy is added _unevenly_ to it.
If you add a bunch of energy to this sort of a system, every other part of the system "feels" that. Every part. There is no storm on earth that will ever be _unaffected_ by global warming.
What changes that means for any individual storm will remain very difficult to even begin to guess, since we don't have an alternate-universe "that storm with exactly the same conditions but in the absence of a warmer atmosphere" against which to compare data.
Just like how we can't take some huge storm from 1690-whatever and figure out how it might have gone now. For all any of you know, it would have been even more monstrous. We don't know.
Caution! Clicking on the following link may expose the viewer to observation, scientifically structured observation, and fact, leading potentially to scientific ideation, which may or may not be legal in your state!
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