Tag: Global Warming

Meteorologists update their estimate for the 2020 Hurricane season. Hold onto your hat, stormy weather’s a headin’ our way.

It was only three months ago, 27May2020, that I published a post discussing how the 2020 hurricane season was shaping up to be a very active one. The official estimates at that time from both Colorado State University’s Tropical Meteorology Project and the National Oceanographic and Atmospherics Administration (NOAA) were predicting around 15-20 named storms with 8-10 becoming hurricanes and 3-5 turning into major hurricanes.

Beautiful but deadly. Hurricane Florence in 2018 as seen from Earth orbit. (Credit: Spectrum News)

Those predictions have already been proven to be conservative. We are still not through August and there have already been 12 tropical storms, five of which have developed into hurricanes. As I write these words Tropical Storm Marco, downgraded from a Cat1 hurricane, has battering the state of Louisiana while hurricane Laura, just upgraded to Cat3, is headed for almost the exact same area of the gulf coast. And the next month and a half is usually the busiest part of the Atlantic hurricane season.

Even as Marco (upper left) dumps rain on the Gulf States Laura is headed towards the very same region for a one-two punch that’s unprecedented. (Credit: CNN.com)

It’s not surprising therefore that the same institutes that made those predictions three months ago have reevaluated their estimates and are now publishing the most dire forecast in the history of hurricane studies. The meteorological team at Colorado State University now estimates that the 2020 hurricane season will consist of 24 named tropical storms of which 12 are likely to become hurricanes with 5 developing into major hurricanes.

If that forecast turns out to be accurate it would make the 2020 season the second most active in recorded history, surpassed only by the 2005 season which saw 28 named storms, including hurricanes Katrina and Wilma. And since hurricane forecasters only select 21 names for storms each year, the letters Q, U, X, Y and Z are not used to name storms, if there are 24 named storms meteorologists will be forced to use Greek letters to identify the last three instead of names, again something that has only ever happened once back in 2005.

So why is this year already so active, and what conditions are the meteorologists seeing that made them redo their forecasts. Well one factor that often inhibits the formation of hurricanes is a strong El Niño in the eastern Pacific Ocean. The strong winds developed by El Niño can produce wind shear that disperse low pressure systems in the Atlantic before they can even develop into tropical storms. This year however there is absolutely no trace of El Niño, a condition that will allow storms to grow unchecked.

A strong El Nino in the Pacific sends winds into the Atlantic that can break up hurricane’s before they become dangerous. There is no El Nino this year. (Credit: NOAA)

At the same time low-pressure systems moving westward off of North Africa are stronger than usual because of exceptional rainfall amounts in the Sahel region of Africa between the Sahara Desert and the Congo rainforest. This region generates almost 90% of the low-pressure systems that develop into tropical Atlantic storms and this year the excess rainfall is making them particularly intense.

Pressure waves moving west off of the Sahel region of North Africa often grow into Atlantic hurricanes. Sahel waves are especially strong this year. (Credit: The Weather Channel)
Those pressure waves often become the seeds that turn into deadly hurricanes like Laura! (Credit: The Weather Channel)

But of course the biggest factor in generating tropical storms is simply the temperature of the waters of the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico both of which are at or even beyond historic levels. Warm tropical waters evaporate more quickly, putting not only more water but more energy into those low-pressure systems coming from Africa, leading to more, and more powerful storms. 

Surface water temperature in the Gulf of Mexico is becoming higher every year thanks to Global Warming! This increase in energy is reflected in more and more powerful Gulf hurricanes. (Credit: ResearchGate)

And what is it that’s making the waters of the Atlantic and Gulf warmer than ever observed before? Well if you haven’t already guessed Global Warming where have you been the last 20 years? Seriously the conditions caused by our continued, reckless emissions of carbon dioxide have grown beyond the point of causing ‘Slightly Higher Averages’ so that now nearly every year is noticeably hotter they were just 20 years ago.

This increase is occurring both globally and locally. For example, here in Philadelphia this past winter we had a very warm winter with no snow accumulation at all and right now we are enduring our 34nd day of +32ºC (+90º F) temperatures, our average is 22 days. The entire west coast of the US is currently suffering through a heat wave on a scale never seen before, hundreds of all time high records are expected to be broken while the wild fire season is already turning out to be especially destructive. In fact the National Weather Service has for the first time ever issued a warning for ‘Fire-Nadoes’, tornadoes generated by the extreme winds in a massive. Meanwhile the temperature in Death Valley was recently measured at 54.4ºC (130º F), the highest reliably recorded temperature ever in the entire world.

This summer in Philadelphia has been excessively hot, with stronger than normal storms added in. (Credit: 6ABC)
Meanwhile the western US is suffering under an historic heat wave. (Credit: CBS News)

Globally last year, 2019 was the second hottest ever recorded, coming in only slightly below 2016. In fact according to NOAA 9 out of the ten hottest years ever recorded have come in the last 15 years. A team of climatologists working in Greenland have recently announced that, in their opinion the glaciers there are beyond the point of no return. 

Greenland is melting while we watch, and all of that water is rising sea levels! (Credit: YouTube)

So I guess the question is how much more destruction is the environment going to have to cause before we’ll finally start to pay attention. Personally I’m beginning to fear that even a disaster on the scale of the sinking of Miami might not be enough, after all Katrina and New Orleans in 2005 weren’t. Currently millions of Americans are doing everything they can to ignore the worst epidemic to hit this country in 100 years. I’m almost certain they can find excuses to keep on ignoring climate change even as it’s blowing down their homes!

Hurricanes are growing stronger because of Global Warming.

Hurricane season in the Atlantic doesn’t even start until the first of June but already we have had our first named tropical storm of the year. Over the past week Tropical Storm Arthur formed just south of the Florida Keys and then moved north paralleling the US east coast before brushing Cape Hatteras and finally turning east into the mid-Atlantic. It seems that Arthur is just a preview of what is expected to be a rather active hurricane season.

When viewed from space a hurricane can be a thing of beauty. They’re not so nice up close! (Credit: Houston Chronicle)

This year’s official hurricane forecast, published by the Colorado State University’s Tropical Meteorology Project calls for 16 named storms of which eight are expected to develop into hurricanes with four of those becoming major hurricanes, category 3 or higher. This prediction is about 33% higher than the average number of storms over the last thirty years but slightly below the actual number of Atlantic storms that occurred last year in 2019.

They’ve already got the names selected for this year’s tropical storms and hurricanes. And we’ve already had Arthur! (Credit: The Weather Channel)

And that’s only the Atlantic Ocean. The Pacific Ocean has already seen one massive Typhoon that caused considerable damage to the Philippines while in the Indian Ocean a large cyclone named Amphan has struck near the Indian city of Calcutta with winds of over 160 kph causing major damage and the loss of close to 100 lives.

By the way Hurricanes, Typhoons and Cyclones are all the same general phenomenon, although many of the details of where they normally form and usually go may vary greatly. The only real difference is the ocean they form in and cause their damage.

Hurricanes spin because of the Coriolis Effect and high pressure systems, nice weather, spin in the opposite direction of low pressure systems, storms! (Credit: InCarto)

Now a new study from the National Oceanographic and Atmospherics Administration (NOAA) is providing more evidence for the hypothesis that hurricanes and the other kinds tropical storms are slowly getting stronger because global warming. Not each individual storm, they can vary up and down considerably but the average strength of all the storms each year is growing with time.

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration NOAA operates a fleet of aircraft designed to study Hurricanes and other kinds of weather. (Credit: Slate.com)

(I’d like to take a minute here to discuss the controversy over the terms of Global Warming / Climate Change. There are even some deniers out there have even gone so far as to assert that the fact that scientists use two names is proof that it’s all just a hoax. Well I use both terms but not interchangeably, and here is the reasoning behind my choice of which term I will use in a given circumstance. Greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere are raising the temperature of the Earth’s surface, its oceans as well as its atmosphere. That is a direct effect of the greenhouse gasses that I will refer to as Global Warming. Indirect effects such as stronger storms, droughts and floods I refer to as Climate Change that are caused by Global Warming! Got it, the direct effects of greenhouse gasses are Global Warming while the effects of Global Warming, therefore the indirect effects of greenhouse gasses I call Climate Change!)

Whether you call it Global Warming or Climate Change the pollution we are dumping into our atmosphere is melting the sea ice and generating stronger storms! (Credit: NASA)

The University of Colorado study was based on data obtained from every Atlantic hurricane over the past 40 years including wind speeds, barometric pressures and storm sizes. Much of the data used in the study, storm size in particular, was obtained from satellite images. According to study lead author James Kossin of NOAA, “our results show that these storms have become stronger on global and regional levels, which is consistent with expectations of how hurricanes respond to a warming world.”

NOAA’s Dr. James Kossin, author of the report on the effect of global warming on hurricanes. (Credit: U-W Madison)

In fact the study details an 8% rise in average storm strength with each decade that has passed. “In other words,” Kossin continued, “during its lifetime a hurricane is 8% more likely to be a major hurricane in this decade compared to the last decade.”

It’s easy to understand how global warming could lead to stronger hurricanes. Warmer air blows at a greater velocity; warmer water evaporates more quickly putting more moisture into those faster winds. In essence warmth is energy and by putting more energy into Earth’s surface global warming is also putting more energy into the storms in Earth’s atmosphere.

So it’s a fair bet that this year’s hurricane season will turn out to be a fraction above average, as will many of the years to come. Then as the decades go by the average will increase until what we now consider an active hurricane season becomes average. And of course when combined with sea level rise, another effect of global warming, those stronger storms can be expected to cause much more damage.

Hurricane season starts soon. Are you ready? (Credit: Daily Express)

Just one more way in which global warming is making our future look uncertain and bleak.

P.S. I barely managed to publish this post when I saw a weather report that tropical storm Bertha has formed off of the South Carolina coast. That’s two named storms and it’s still another four days BEFORE hurricane season ‘officially’ starts!

Scientists around the world are hard at work doing research on removing CO2from our Atmosphere.

The evidence is mounting that the millions of tons of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses that we’re pouring into the Earth’s atmosphere is causing an ever increasing amount of damage to the environment in which we all live. Of course if we’re going to avert the worst consequences of our behaviour the first thing we’re going to have to do is reduce those CO2 emissions as much as possible. The Paris climate accords are the promises that the nations of the World have made to cut back on CO2 but so far few nations are keeping those promises even as the problem grows worse every day.

Can anybody seriously believe that all this crap isn’t destroying our planet somehow! (Credit: NPR)

Let’s be honest, politics being what it is the World’s governments aren’t going to really enforce any CO2 cutbacks until they are forced to by some real disasters occurring, and even then their response will be slow. By the time humanity does finally does start reducing the amount of CO2 we put into the atmosphere there will already be so much up there that the harmful effects on the environment will only continue unless we start taking some of it out.

Worldwide CO2 emissions. (Credit: NRDC)

We need proven, efficient, large scale and most importantly cheap methods for removing CO2 from the air. Because the need is so great you can probably guess that there are many scientists hard at work all over the world on that very problem. Today I’d like to discuss the efforts of just a few.

A lot of the research is taking place at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) by Ph.D. candidate Sahag Voskian and his graduate advisor Professor T. Alan Hatton. Together the pair have developed a technique that closely resembles an ordinary battery in construction and application. The device consists of a stack of electrodes that are coated with a chemical compound known as polyanthraquinone that is composed of carbon nanotubes.

It is while the “battery” is being charged that the carbon nanotubes will grab CO2 from an air stream blown across them. Then, as the battery is discharged the CO2 is released by the nanotubes. So what you need is two batteries working in tandem to make the whole system work. One battery will absorb the CO2 as it is being charged, the other does the charging, releasing its CO2 not back into the air but into a containment vessel. Once the two batteries are charged / discharged they can then be flipped, starting the process all over again.

The CO2 removal ‘battery’ developed at MIT. CO2 enters the left side of the lower battery and is captured as that battery is charged. Then as the upper battery is discharged it releases the CO2, upper battery. (Credit: CNet)

Now the cycle is not 100% efficient, and more energy is usually needed to produce the air flow. Nevertheless Voskian and Hatton estimate that the operating costs will be rather small. Right now the most expensive part of the whole proposition would probably be the carbon nanotubes, which are in fact quite costly to produce. However in large-scale production the costs could come down considerably and remember the carbon nanotubes can be used over and over again so you only have to pay for them once. We’ll just have to wait a see if Voskian and Hatton do have a viable solution for removing some of the CO2 already in our Atmosphere.

Artists impression of a large scale CO2 removal system. (Credit: MIT News)

Other scientists are taking a more natural approach, developing what they call an ‘artificial leaf’. Led by engineering professor Yimin Wu of the University of Waterloo the team also contains scientists from the California State University, Northridge, and the City University of Hong Kong along with the Argonne National Labouratory in Illinois.

With such an impressive team you’d expect some impressive results and what Professor Wu’s team seems to have delivered.  According to Wu. “We call it an artificial leaf because it mimics real leaves and the process of photosynthesis. A leaf produces glucose and oxygen. We produce methanol and oxygen.”

Instead of Chlorophyll the artificial leaf uses a chemical compound called cuprous oxide (Cu2O), which is ground into a powder and mixed into water. When CO2 is blown into the water the cuprous oxide serves as a catalysis separating the carbon and oxygen, releasing the oxygen and producing methanol. The methanol can then be collected and used as a fuel.

The Artificial Leaf in action. (Credit: The Independent)

One drawback to the artificial leaf is that, unlike the MIT battery, it requires a high concentration of CO2 in order to work efficiently. This would restrict the usage of the artificial leaf to such places as power plant smoke stacks and car exhausts but once the carbon is collected it is already in a useful form.

There’s still more work to be done. Professor Wu and his team now want to increase the methanol yield while packaging the reaction in a more commercial form, one ready to be used in the fight against the greenhouse gasses causing climate change.

But you know, the artificial leaf got me thinking about the one technology that we could all be using right now to take some of the CO2 out of the air we breath. Real leaves, as in those on real trees. There are now a number of local and world wide organizations promoting the planting of trees as something anyone can do to help fight climate change. In urban locations the trees have the added advantages that they can absorb water during heavy rainfalls to help reduce flooding while even helping to cool entire cities by providing shade instead of just getting hot like concrete and asphalt. So if you want to do you part to help fight greenhouse gasses just take a look around your yard or block. Do you see any places where a nice tree could go?

Here’s something we can all do right now to help reduce CO2 in the air! (Credit: Armenian National Committee of America)

Is Global Warming Responsible for the Increased Number and Strength of Hurricanes?

The hurricane season for 2017 is just past its half way point and already this year has proven to be abnormally deadly and destructive. Hurricane Harvey inundated southeast Texas with over a meter of rain while Hurricane Irma wrecked several Caribbean Islands before causing a trail of destruction the length of the Florida peninsula. By some measurements Irma was the strongest Atlantic storm ever seen, remaining a category five storm longer than any on record with the second highest wind speed ever measured. For a short time both Irma and Jose were cat 5, the first time ever two such powerful storms have existed at once. Plus, I just heard on the news that Jose has now been officially a hurricane longer than any storm on record.

Even now there are three powerful storms in the Atlantic. Jose has been downgraded to a cat 1 but is still a possible threat to the US east coast. Maria has strengthened to a cat 5 and is expected to strike Puerto Rico today and then perhaps hit the Carolina coast. Finally there is tropical storm Lee, so far out in the Atlantic we don’t yet know what it’s going to do. And hurricane season still has two months to go! The picture below is Irma taken from space and while beautiful you can still feel something of its power in the image. By the way, the small brown object to the left of the storm is Puerto Rico giving an idea of just how big this storm was.

Hurricane Irma from the Space Station (Credit: NASA)

The number and destructive power of these storms force us to ask the question, could global warming be responsible? Has all the carbon dioxide and methane we’ve been pouring into the atmosphere increased storm activity in the Atlantic?

First of all there is simply no doubt that carbon dioxide and methane are greenhouse gasses. Any college freshman chemistry lab is capable of making the necessary measurements. I know that because I did it way back in the 1970s!

Secondly, we know with great accuracy the amount of those gasses that are produced by our burning fossil fuels in our vehicles and power plants. Yes, I know the Earth’s atmosphere is huge but over 30 trillion kilograms of pollution every year is also an enormous amount, many cities throughout the world have smog problems and air pollution is a major health concern.

Thirdly, we can measure the rise in temperature over the last 50 years of the atmosphere, 0.6 degrees Celsius, and the oceans, 0.32 degrees. While these may seem like at small changes when you consider the world’s oceans it is simply an enormous amount of energy. The graph below from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shows the increase in the amount of energy in the Oceans due to global warming. The total amount is about 15×1022 joules but to give you an idea just how much energy that is it’s more than the energy in 35 million one megaton nuclear bombs. That’s right, the increase in energy is more than 35 million nuclear bombs!!!

Increase in Oceanic Heat Content (Credit: NOAA)

So even if only a small fraction of that energy increase gets into the storms that form over the oceans it would certainly be enough to significantly amplify the number and power of those storms. So, what are the numbers? Has there been an increase in the number of tropical storms and hurricanes in the Atlantic?

The table below shows the average number of both tropical storms and hurricanes as a function of decade for the 1970s, 80s, 90s, 2000s along with 2010 to 2016. The obvious increase is between the 1990s and 2000s, a more than 40% increase but the increase from the 80s to the 90s is not insignificant. Now, climatologists like to look at long term trends, to them even a decade is a short period of time. Nevertheless over the last 16-17 years there has been an undeniable increase in both the number and strength of Atlantic storms.

Yearly Average of Tropical Storms in decades (Credit: R. A. Lawler)

Now I’ve only been talking about tropical storms in the Atlantic. The Pacific Ocean has also seen an uptick in activity along with an increase in tornadoes across North America and just an increase in rainfall in general throughout the world. All this is a strong indication that global warming is causing more powerful, more violent weather everywhere.

The time is past for debates, the effects of climate change are already upon us. There’s much worse to come unless we seriously reduce the amount of polluting gasses we generate. Sea level rise combined with increased hurricane activity could soon lead to much greater destruction than we’ve seen so far. Quick and decisive action is required before it’s too late.

Donald Trump on Climate Change, “a dumb brute that simply smote thee from blindest instinct.”

As everyone now knows, this week Donald Trump decided to pull the United States out of the Paris accord on fighting global warming. This disastrous decision could severely reduce humanity’s ability to limit the rise in the world’s temperature caused by greenhouse gas emissions to 2 degrees Celsius. We are already seeing the effects of our reckless abuse of the planet in which we live and if the nations of the world do not succeed in achieving the goals set out in the Paris accord then global warming will be a grave threat to our species for the foreseeable future.

Now I don’t intent to defend climate science here. Other scientists have done a much better job than I am capable of. However, for anymore who is still unsure of the reality of climate change I cannot do better than to recommend the sites listed below. The ‘Union of Concerned Scientists’, The ‘American Association for the Advancement of Science’ and the peer reviewed journal ‘Nature’ are all a part of the foundation of what we call SCIENCE!

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming#.WTK4CWcku71

http://whatweknow.aaas.org/

http://www.nature.com/nclimate/index.html

Before I go any further the quote in the title is from the novel “Moby Dick” or “The Whale” by Herman Melville, and I’ll bet you didn’t know Moby Dick was one of those books with two titles. Now, by that quotation do I mean to imply that Donald Trump is like Moby Dick? Well he is undeniably a larger than life figure, one that arouses passions of both abhorrence and it must be admitted admiration. And I think even most of his supporters would agree that Trump is a creature capable of much chaos and destruction, after all they voted for him to shake up Washington.

My main focus however is on the phrase ‘ blindest instinct’ because I think that is the best way to understand not only Trump but climate change deniers in general. It’s all about instinct over reason.

Look at it this way; throughout a billion years of evolution living creatures had no real control over the world around them, they adapted to their environment not their environment to them. Even animals like the beaver or social insects can only make minor changes to their environment.

This impotence, this ‘Fact’ that the world is what it is and nothing can change it is built into our genetic makeup and despite all the evidence that this is no longer true for our species it is nevertheless still our automatic, instinctive response to the idea that we are causing climate change. I’ve personally known otherwise intelligent engineers who deny global warming simply because “the world is so big it can take a lot more abuse than we can give it”.

As I sit here writing this post all the 24 hour news channels are falling over themselves asking the question ‘does Donald Trump believe in climate change’ and the White House is working to avoid answering the question. The answer is simple, you can’t just see climate change happening so of course Donald Trump does not believe in it. If he cannot instinctively react to something then it just doesn’t exist.

Understanding global warming requires either surveying enormous amounts of data taken over decades from thousands of locations and then corroborating that data with the known properties of greenhouse gasses or else accepting the judgment of someone who has done that work, someone who knows more than you do. Donald Trump is capable of neither of these mental efforts.

This is the hallmark of the anti-intellectualism growing in the United States at the present. “I will not make the mental effort to understand this complex subject,” the new Neanderthals say. “And don’t you think you’re smarter than me because you have.”

These are just a few of my reasons for considering Donald Trump to be ‘a dumb brute’ whose behavior is ruled by ‘blindest instinct’. Of course however there is one way in which Donald Trump is very different from Moby Dick. Unfortunately Donald Trump is not a fictional character.

To those of my frequent readers who may disapprove of this post’s rather political theme I can only beg your pardon and remind you that climate change is a scientific problem as well as a political issue. I would much prefer for the blog ‘Science and Science Fiction’ to remain true to its name and I assure you that my next post will do so.