tagged w/ stronger storms
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Tornado season is only just beginning, but already this year has seen dozens of destructive twisters from Illinois to Texas, where up to 18 might have touched town on Tuesday alone in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
"We're at just the beginning of a very unusual" tornado season, NBC weather anchor Al Roker said on TODAY.
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The numbers show just how unusual: March saw 223 twisters, up from an average of 80 from 1991-2010, according to the National Weather Service. February saw 63, compared to an average of 29; and January saw 97, compared to an average of 35.
So what's behind the outbreak?
"We've had record heat," weather.com meteorologist Greg Forbes told TODAY, and "that warmth is a big ingredient that provides the instability for the storms."
Last year started off slowly but then saw a record 758 tornadoes in April 2011, noted Roker. "Hopefully we're not on track for that this year."
More at the linkTornado season is only just beginning, but already this year has seen dozens of... more
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Heat waves, droughts, blizzards and the the rest of the year's U.S. record-breaking extreme weather, likely enjoyed a boost from global warming, suggests a climate report.
Hurricane Irene this year pushed the U.S. yearly record for billion-dollar natural disasters to 10, smashing the 2008 record of nine. In the "Current Extreme Weather and Climate Change" report, released today by the Climate Communication scientific group, leading climate scientists outlined how increasing global atmospheric temperatures and other climate change effects -- triggered by industrial emissions of greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide and methane -- are loading the dice for the sort of extreme weather seen this year.
"Greenhouse gases are the steroids of weather," says climate projection expert Jerry Meehl of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, at a briefing held by the report's expert reviewers. "Small increases in temperature set the stage for record breaking extreme temperature events." Overall, says the report, higher temperatures tied to global warming, about a one-degree global average temperature rise in the last century, have widely contributed to recent runs of horrible weather:
•In 1950, U.S. record breaking hot weather days were as likely as cold ones. By 2000, they were twice as likely, and in 2011 they are three times more likely, so far. By the end of the century they will be 50 times more likely, Meehl says.
•With global warming's higher temperatures packing about 4% more water into the atmosphere, total average U.S. snow and rainfall has increased by about 7% in the past century, says the study. The amount of rain falling in the heaviest 1% of cloudbursts has increased 20%, leading to more flooding.
•Early snow melt, and more rain rather than snow, has led to water cycle changes in the western U.S. in river flow, winter air temperature, and snow pack from 1950 to 1999. The effects are up to 60% attributable to human influence.
Rather than totally triggering any extreme event, global warming just makes it worse, says meteorologist Jeff Masters of Weather Underground, a report reviewer. "A warmer atmosphere has more energy," he says, contributing to heat waves, tornadoes and other extremes. Even heavy blizzards come from an atmosphere packed with extra moisture by global warming he adds. "Years like 2011 may be the new normal."
The report notes scientific disagreement exists over the role of global warming in some severe weather events, such as hurricanes, or the frequency of El Nino weather patterns.
"There's really no such thing as natural weather anymore," says climate scientist Donald Wuebbles of the University of Illinois, who was not involved with the report, but said he largely agreed with its conclusions. "Anything that takes place today in the weather system has been affected by the changes we've made to the climate system. That's just the background situation and it's good for people to know that," Wuebbles says. Although scientists cannot immediately tie what percentage of an extreme weather event relies on global warming to make it more severe, he says. "It's always a factor in today's world."
More at the link.Heat waves, droughts, blizzards and the the rest of the year's U.S.... more
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US rescuers battled Tuesday to reach thousands cut off by flooding in towns across Vermont, New Jersey and upstate New York as the death toll from Hurricane Irene climbed towards 50.
Emergency provisions had to be airlifted in to dozens of communities stranded by floodwaters as unprecedented weekend rains dumped by the massive storm system washed away roads and sent rivers cascading over their banks.
President Barack Obama dispatched senior officials to survey some of the worst of the damage as rescuers in boats ferried thousands of people -- including the elderly, small children and babies -- to safety.
Although the much-hyped direct-hit on New York failed to translate into major damage to America's most populous city, heavy rain in places like the Catskill Mountains proved a ticking disaster time-bomb.
Two days after its passage, thousands of marooned families were still waiting anxiously for the national guard and firefighters to bring food and water after their towns were swamped by the floodwaters.
The main highway to Wilmington, Vermont was clogged with mud and Irene had turned other roads into deathtrap chasms after dumping two months worth of rain (8.3 inches, 21 centimeters) in less than a day.
"The problem is inaccessibility," emergency operations supervisor Dave Miller told AFP as teams struggled to pull trucks out of the sludge and remove fallen trees that had perilously dragged down power lines.
The drastic situation was mirrored in parts of New Jersey and upstate New York, where schools and community centers turned into makeshift Red Cross emergency shelters were nearing full capacity.
In Paterson, New Jersey, teams in rubber motorboats rescued and evacuated people non-stop after the Passaic River crested 13 feet (four meters) above flood stage, its highest level since 1903.
"It's over 500 (people rescued) and the amount is climbing," police sergeant Alex Popov told CNN. "We are dealing with elderly people, families, small children, and pets."
Millions of Americans remained without electricity, many farther south in states like Virginia and North Carolina, where Irene's winds were strongest as the storm barreled up the eastern seaboard on Saturday and Sunday.
Vermont, a mountainous state criss-crossed by numerous streams and rivers, saw several towns completely cut off by the floods and other smaller communities reportedly wiped off the map.
"There are currently 13 communities that are unreachable by vehicle due to road damage," said a statement from Vermont Emergency Management.
"There are more than 200 roads that are still impassable statewide and all 500 road workers from the Agency of Transportation are on the street today working on repairs. Much of that staff is working with local road crews to make isolated towns accessible."
Dramatic television pictures from New Jersey, New York and Vermont showed flash floods sweeping through towns and vast oceans of water out in the country where rivers had burst their banks.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack visited Virginia and North Carolina on Tuesday, while top disaster official Craig Fugate went to Burlington, Vermont.
Officials reported at least 43 deaths across 11 states, including eight in New York, seven in New Jersey and six in North Carolina, where Irene made landfall Saturday with winds upwards of 85 miles (140 kilometers) an hour.
The hurricane was already responsible for at least five deaths in the Caribbean before it struck the United States and is being blamed for a 49th fatality in Canada, where the storm finally petered out on Tuesday.
More trouble was on the way though as Tropical Storm Katia formed in the Atlantic, forecast to become a category 3 hurricane by Saturday or Sunday as it nears the Caribbean with winds topping 120 miles per hour.
Also See:
http://www.12newsnow.com/story/15365917/flood-waters-surge-as-states-come-to-grips-with-irenes-damageUS rescuers battled Tuesday to reach thousands cut off by flooding in towns across... more
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In Zhejiang province, China, the worst drought in 50 years has been followed by deadly floods.
China has evacuated more than 500,000 people from deadly floods that are devastating areas in the south of the country following the worst drought in 50 years.
At least 105 people have been swept to their deaths or killed in landslides and another 65 are missing after rivers burst their banks. The authorities have issued the highest level of alarm about dykes and dams under dangerous pressure.
Television channels that were only recently broadcasting images of dried-up lake beds are now carrying footage of flooded homes and boats plying their way through inundated streets. China Daily said 550,000 people have been forced to leave their homes.
The dramatic shift is in line with weather trends identified by the Beijing Climate Centre, which says rain is coming in shorter, fiercer bursts, interspersed by protracted periods of drought.
The worst affected province is Zhejiang, where some stretches of the Qiantang river have risen to their highest level since 1955, according to the Flood Control and Drought Relief Office.
In the Zhuji district, which has had 40.5cm of rain since the start of the month, the Puyang river inundated 88 villages and 13,000 hectares of crops.
In neighbouring Jiangxi province, troops have helped 122,400 residents evacuate from vulnerable lowlands, according to the China News Service. Roads have been closed and bridges have collapsed in the floods, which have also affected Hubei, Hunan, Sichuan and Guizhou provinces.
Monitoring stations on 40 rivers have recorded water levels above the safety limit, including Asia's biggest waterway – the Yangtze – which is simultaneously suffering a flood downstream and a drought closer to its source.
Meteorologists warned that the torrential downpours are forecast to move southwards or inland. Li Xiaoquan was quoted on China's weather news website as saying that the rains were expected to affect Sichuan, Chongqing and Guangdong provinces before easing on Sunday.
_________________________________In Zhejiang province, China, the worst drought in 50 years has been followed by deadly... more
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Witnesses to Cyclone Yasi's destructive tear across northeastern Australia described it as a monster for its size and ferocity. It was also an omen.
Climate scientists say global warming is heating up the world's oceans and atmosphere, providing more fuel for tropical cyclones and creating ever greater risks for crops, miners and billion-dollar beachfronts.
The risks from stronger storms flow right through the heart of the global economy, affecting food security and inflation, iron ore and coal production and higher insurance losses.
Particularly vulnerable are Asia's booming coastal megacities from Manila to Karachi, large areas of the U.S. Gulf and east coast, Australia's iron-ore and northern coal mines and tropical Asia's rice-growing river deltas.
Insurers say unrelenting development along coastlines is placing more homes, businesses and infrastructure in the path of destruction that will drive up insurance losses.
United Nations data says 231 million people lived in cities in Asia in 1950. By 2050, that figure is forecast to grow to more than 3 billion.
Climate change and stronger storms are also a growing threat to Asia's rice crop.
Asia grows 90 percent of the world's rice and the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines estimates an additional 8 to 10 million tonnes of rice needs to be produced each year, meaning disruption from droughts, floods and storms can hurt supplies and cause price spikes.
FOOD SECURITY
Munich Re said there were 950 natural catastrophes recorded last year, 90 percent of which were weather-related events such as storms and floods, making it the year with the second-highest number of natural catastrophes since 1980.
A major climate study in 2010 based on the results of a range of computer models concluded there was likely to be a substantial increase in the number of storms in the severe category range of 3 to 5, with 5 being the maximum.
Overall, storms would be between 2 and 11 percent more intense by 2100 and rainfall would increase about 20 percent near the center, it predicted.
The study also found that, with the exception of the Atlantic, there might be a drop in the number of storms in the Pacific and around Australia, but the storms that did form would tend to be more dangerous.
"Since the early 1990s, we have seen a significant increase in the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic," said Peter Hoeppe of reinsurer Munich Re, pointing to a natural cycle in which hurricane numbers vary over several decades.
"We think now we have a mixture of two phenomena, one is the natural oscillation and the other is the steady increase in sea surface temperatures due to global warming. And this adds up to increased risks," said Hoeppe, head of Geo Risk Research and Munich Re's Climate Center.
Hurricane Katrina, Rita and Wilma in 2005 highlighted that risk, as did Hurricane Andrew that struck Florida in 1992. According to the U.S. National Hurricane Center, Katrina killed 1,500 people and caused $81 billion in damage while Andrew caused $26.5 billion in losses, not adjusted for inflation.
In Asia, there was a danger in assuming nothing needs to be done if storm numbers don't increase, said climate scientist Johnny Chan, one of the authors of the 2010 review.
"It is a grim picture. Even if the number of storms is not increasing, the amount of rain that comes out of these storms is increasing," said Chan, director of the Guy Carpenter Asia-Pacific Climate Impact Center at City University of Hong Kong.
Fellow climate scientist John McBride said there was little doubt storms would become stronger as seas warm. Oceans soak up much of the excess heat and carbon dioxide caused by burning fossil fuels and the oceans have already warmed on average about 0.5 degrees Celsius.
"You should expect a shift toward more intense cyclones. That's coming across as a stronger prediction," said McBride, of the Center for Australian Weather and Climate Research.Witnesses to Cyclone Yasi's destructive tear across northeastern Australia... more
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I think it is time for Australia and other countries to give more attention to climate policy.I think it is time for Australia and other countries to give more attention to climate... more
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This is not something that we can continue to talk about as happening in the future as if planning for it can be put off. The world has already seen close to half a million people affected by climate change in ways that have made them have to move from their homes and homelands due to sea level rise, drought, and water scarcity which has also effected agriculture. With events becoming more severe and pronouced as the fires In Russia, the flooding in Pakistan and now Australia and severe droughts as we now see in much of Asia, Africa and the Middle East, what does happen when a land is so devastated by continuing climate change that its inhabitants can no longer live there? Where do they go?How does it effect their culture?
This particular video is from a documentary called King Tide and deals with the people of Tuvalu, a small island nation that is already seeing the effects of rising sea levels. In climate conference after climate conference however, the effects of climate change on water have been continually ignored. This even though much of these effects revolve around water and the hydrologic cycle being interfered with by the human actions of fossil fuel use, deforestation, unsustainable agricultural practices (irrigation), dams, water waste, privitization and pollution resulting in sea level rise, glacier melt affecting water scarcity, floods, drought, stronger storms, erratic rainfall, etc.
I don't think it can be stressed enough based on what we are now seeing taking place globally that planning for the future regarding climate refugees is of paramount importance. We can no longer afford to act as though this is going to go away. It isn't. The socio-economic impacts alone of millions of refugees with no place to call home and no where that wants them aside from the inability to provide for them in a world where potable water and available land is shrinking are huge and cannot wait until the floods completely wash out a country or drought dries it into desert. Lives will be lost. This goes beyond politics. This truly is the moral challenge of our generation.This is not something that we can continue to talk about as happening in the future as... more
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Emergency crews were on standby Sunday as the Philippines braced for a typhoon that could trigger flooding and landslides.
Typhoon Megi, also known as Typhoon Juan, is expected to make landfall midday Monday at or near super-typhoon strength, with winds possibly in excess of 200 kph (124 mph), according to Mario Montejo, secretary of the Philippines' science and technology.
On Sunday, Megi carried sustained winds of about 269 kph as it headed toward the Philippines, CNN meteorologist Ivan Cabrera said.
"This is a monster storm," Cabrera said. "It continues to show signs of intensification."
As of 4 p.m. (4 a.m. ET) Sunday, the typhoon was about 390 kilometers east of Aparri, Cagayan, according to the state-run Philippines News Agency. It was moving west at about 22 kph.
Montejo said the government is alarmed by the speed and strength of the typhoon. He warned of potentially devastating effects the storm may wreak on the northern island of Luzon.
Residents in low-lying and coastal areas are advised to head for safer locations, and authorities are discussing the possibility of forced evacuations.
As the storm moves across the rugged terrain of Luzon, it is expected to decrease in intensity before moving out over the South China Sea. Megi is expected to dump large amounts of rainfall over the mountains, which could potentially trigger mudslides and localized flooding.
The typhoon could also damage large amounts of agricultural land along its path.
"Thousands of hectares are in danger of being ruined," Cabrera said.
On Sunday, Philippine navy spokesman Lt. Col. Edgard Arevalo said in a statement that disaster response personnel equipped with rubber boats and other life-saving equipment are on standby in several areas.Emergency crews were on standby Sunday as the Philippines braced for a typhoon that... more
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http:/wwwp.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/2010/07/locking-in-our-future
Today's emissions decisions will drive the planet's weather for generations, panel concludes. The question for policymakers: How much change do we want to dial in?
Welcome to the Anthropocene.
Decisions made today about planet-warming emissions will influence climate impacts not just for decades but for centuries and perhaps even millennia, a panel from the National Academy of Sciences warned Friday.
If I knew that every pound of cheesecake that I ate would give me a pound that could never be lost, I think I would eat a lot less cheesecake. - Susan Solomon, NOAAGiven the longevity of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, these scientists said, these decisions effectively lock humanity in for a range of impacts, some of which can be "very severe."
"Emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels have ushered in a new epoch where human activities will largely determine the evolution of Earth's climate," the scientists wrote.
"Actions taken during this century will determine whether the Anthropocene climate anomaly will be a relatively short term and minor deviation from the Holocene climate, or an extreme deviation extending over many thousands of years."
The 242-page report was sponsored by the Energy Foundation - a partnership of major foundations interested in clean energy - and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and was chaired by Susan Solomon, a senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
It attempts to quantify the impacts of various emissions targets, estimating changes in precipitation, stream flow, wildfires, crop yields and sea-level rise that can be expected with different degrees of warming. It also quantifies the average temperature increases expected if carbon dioxide were stabilized in the atmosphere at different levels.
Per one degree Celsius rise in temperature (or 1.8ºF), the report found:
Five percent to 10 percent less rainfall in the Mediterranean, southern Africa and southwest North America.
Five percent to 10 percent less stream flow in major river basins, including the Arkansas River and the Rio Grande.
Five to 15 percent lower yields of some crops, including corn and wheat in the United States and Africa.
Three percent to 10 percent increase in heavy rain storms across most land areas
A two-fold to four-fold increase in area burned by wildfire in parts of western North America.
"There are a lot of lags in the climate system," Solomon said Friday during a press briefing. "Not only are we committing to future impact, but we're committing to impacts that are bigger than we anticipated at the time we emitted them."
The report highlights recent scientific progress in the understanding how global warming affects precipitation patterns, heat waves, stream flow, sea ice retreat, crop yields, coral bleaching, and sea level rise. "This increased confidence provides direct scientific support for evaluating the implications of different stabilization targets," the authors noted.
What's notable, however, is the permanence of the change. Carbon dioxide hangs in the air for centuries. "It gives new weight to decisions we make," said Katherine Hayhoe, a climate researcher at Texas Tech University, who was also an author of the report.
"I know it could affect my health and that it could even affect my children. But what we don't consider is that it could affect our great-great-great-great grandchildren for generations to come."
Widespread coastal inundation would be expected if anthropogenic warming of several degrees is sustained for millennia; while these slow changes allow time for adaptation, they are essentially irreversible. - Committee on Stabilization Targets, NRCSolomon compared it to diet: "If I knew that every pound of cheesecake that I ate would give me a pound that could never be lost, I think I would eat a lot less cheesecake."
Average temperatures across the globe have risen about 1.6ºC, or 0.9ºF, since the 1880s and today are rising about half a degree Celsius per decade, or 0.3ºF, according to various assessments. The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide stands today at about 390 parts per million, the highest in 800,000 years and about 35 percent higher than pre-industrial levels.
Depending on emissions rates, today's level could double or nearly triple by the end of this century, greatly amplifying human impacts on climate, the report said.
And while that carbon is leading to impacts that are, in some instances, already being felt, scientists warn that the more pernicious - and significant - impact comes from the lag time associated with pumping that carbon skyward.
Higher cumulative carbon emissions result in both a higher peak warming and a longer duration of warming. The duration is particularly critical, the report said, because an extended warming period offers more time for Earth systems that respond very slowly - such as the deep oceans and the great ice sheets - to assert themselves, even very long after anthropogenic emissions have ceased.
Once the Greenland ice sheets and the Arctic summer ice cap go, in other words, humanity may not see them again for thousands of years, no matter how radically industrial emissions are cut, the scientists warned.
continued:
dailyclimate.org.http:/wwwp.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/2010/07/locking-in-our-future
Today's... more
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A violent storm ripped through the Amazon forest in 2005 and single-handedly killed half a billion trees, a new study reveals.
The study is the first to produce an actual tree body count after an Amazon storm.
An estimated 441 million to 663 million trees were destroyed across the whole Amazon basin during the 2005 storm, a much greater number than previously suspected.
In some areas of the forest, up to 80 percent of the trees were killed by the storm. A severe drought was previously blamed for the region's tree loss in 2005.
"We can't attribute [the increased] mortality to just drought in certain parts of the basin — we have solid evidence that there was a strong storm that killed a lot of trees over a large part of the Amazon," said forest ecologist and study researcher Jeffrey Chambers of Tulane University in New Orleans, La.
From Jan. 16 to Jan. 18, 2005, a squall line — a long line of severe thunderstorms — 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) long and 124 miles (200 km) wide crossed the whole Amazon basin. The storm's strong winds, with speeds of up to 90 mph (145 kph), uprooted or snapped trees in half.
When trees die, they release their stored carbon into the atmosphere, which contributes to climate change. In a vicious cycle, these storms could become more frequent in the future due to climate change.
To calculate the number of trees killed by the storm, the researchers used satellite images, field studies and computer models. They looked for patches of wind-toppled trees, which allowed them to distinguish from trees killed by the drought.
"If a tree dies from a drought, it generally dies standing. It looks very different from trees that die snapped by a storm," Chambers said.
The storm wiped out between 300,000 and 500,000 trees in the area of Manaus, Brazil, alone. The number of trees killed by the 2005 storm was equal to 30 percent of the total human-caused deforestation in that same year for the Manaus region. The researchers used the tree loss in Manaus to estimate the tree loss across the entire Amazon basin.
"It's very important that when we collect data in the field we do forensics on tree mortality," Chambers said. "Under a changing climate, some forecasts say that storms will increase in intensity. If we start seeing increases in tree mortality, we need to be able to say what's killing the trees."
The study, funded by NASA and Tulane University, will be detailed in a future edition of the journal Geophysical Research Letters.A violent storm ripped through the Amazon forest in 2005 and single-handedly killed... more
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As the globe continues to warm, the rainiest parts of the world are very likely to get wetter, according to a new study in Science. Desert dwellers, however, are likely to see what little rain they receive dry up, as the rain becomes even more concentrated in high-precipitation areas.
Atmospheric scientists Richard Allan of the University of Reading in England and Brian Soden of the University of Miami looked at satellite records of daily rainfall stretching back to 1987 to see how warmer temperatures had affected precipitation. That's one of the key climate changes expected from rising greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere. The researchers specifically focused on El Niño, the warming of the waters of the tropical Pacific that raises air pressure, changes winds, and recurs every few years.
The weather pattern causes floods in some areas and droughts in others while changing climate across the globe over time—and thus is a pretty good stand-in for global warming.
"For the period we examined, 1987 to 2004, there was a clear relationship between warm El Niño events and increased occurrence of heavy precipitation," Soden says. Such "events will certainly become more frequent in a warmer climate."
For example, other research has shown that monsoon storms that dump six inches (150 millimeters) or more of rain on India have become more common since the 1950s.
The satellite observations agree with the predictions of various computer models. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change expects that such changes will wreak havoc on agriculture, human health and the natural environment.
But the Science study also reveals that the computer projections may be underestimating how severe such downpours may become. Warmer seas resulted in three times as many heavy rainstorms as the models would have predicted—and other studies have shown that such models fail to account for the rapid increase in water vapor in the atmosphere.
"It is very likely that heavy rainfall will become more common and more intense in a warming world," Allan says. "It is too early to say by how much real world changes in rainfall will surpass projections from the climate models."
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The effects of this will have devastating effects on agriculture in areas that need rain but do not receive it, and areas that will receive heavier rains. This will also bring with it health risks such as disease carrying insects and waterborne diseases as well as many more displaced people. It is studies like this that must be taken into account in any new global climate treaty.
As the globe continues to warm, the rainiest parts of the world are very likely to get... more
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