Slashdot Mirror
Tropical Storm Zeta Forms in Atlantic
APSR writes "Even though the Atlantic hurricane season official ends on November 30th, more storms can form and still count towards the total for the year!
According to MSN.com Weather News, Tropical Storm Zeta was formed in the Eastern Atlantic Ocean on December 30th. This storm extends the record-breaking 2005 season to 27 storms, and it's the 6th storm named using the Greek alphabet.
According to Wikipedia, Zeta is the latest a tropical cyclone was formed in the Atlantic, forming around 11 AM ET; this dethrones Hurricane Alice of 1954, which formed December 30th around 2 AM ET. The storm itself will continue to strengthen for 12-24 hours, then weaken; it will not likely make landfall." We've already set records this year, as previously reported.
Hear that Japan? you can still use your weather manipulator and we won't think the better of it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Alice
"Hurricane Alice is currently the only recorded tropical cyclone in Atlantic history to span two calendar years. It formed in late December of 1954, and lasted until early January of 1955."
Apparently, everything starts over in the new year.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Alice
At the time, the National Weather Service used the same naming list each year, so the name given to this storm was "Alice" and it was designated as a part of the 1955 Atlantic hurricane season. However, it was found during post-storm analysis that the storm had actually formed on December 30, and was instead a part of the 1954 Atlantic hurricane season. Therefore, that season had two storms named "Alice": the first storm of the season, and the last. Had Alice been discovered in 1954, it would have been named Irene, the next name on the 1954 list.
Actually, an intresting view, 3 of the 5 major green house gases (accounting for 97% of the total climate forcing gases) have leveled off or declined since the early 1990's. See for yourself http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Major_greenhous e_gas_trends.png
According to Wikipedia, it was only detected in January, named according to that year's scheme, and then later proven that it must have reached naming-strength in December (which means it should've been named Irene).
Except they don't use every letter of the alphabet. No Q, U, X, Y, or Z.
This is namned storm 27 for the Atlantic basin.
but I think the National Hurricane Center makes a much more relevent and useful link when it comes to HURRICANES.
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov
This is what the "greenies" forget. they get all up in arms about there being more storms in a hurricane season when we never used to record storms. we only used to record hurricanes.
How did I know this would be modded up? From the article:
The 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was the busiest on record, with 27 tropical storms, besting the old record of 21 set in 1933. Fourteen of them grew into hurricanes, among the Katrina, beating the record of 12 set in 1969. Hurricanes Dennis, Rita and Wilma also caused significant damage in the U.S.
My wife picks up 4 of my kid's friends and drives 10 miles to the soccer field.
Indeed. Fault the SUV and Hummer owners, but don't fault the soccer moms when you don't carpool yourself. The mile-man-per-gallon (à la man-month) of soccer mom's vehicles is often higher than the average Prius's.
Yeah, like those "greenies" at NOAA:
The frequency of storms seems to be cyclical and unrelated to global warming trends. Their strength, however, is related to the temperature increase.
The NOAA link I give above notes that in 1933 there were 21 named storms. So apparently they were recording and naming them seventy years ago. When exactly is it that you're claiming "we only used to record hurricanes"?
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
"Zeta" sounds more menacing than "Katrina". Mean-sounding storms may get more people to react. If Katrina was instead named "Ball Buster" or "Alimony", then more people may have bothered to leave during the storm. Naming storms after ballerinas is not a way to get them to move their asses. Men will feel demasculated moving for something named after a mere ballerina.
Table-ized A.I.
Yup and the trend of warmer summers and warmer winters is supported more by the increase in solar radiation than greenhouse gas global warming that causes warmer summers and HARSHER winters.
Or the silly fact that we are coming out of an ice age globally of which we have almost zero information about the causes of ice ages on the planet and can certianly be solar system wide phenomonon cause by solar radiation output fluxuations as even the polar caps on mars are receeding as well.
It all comes down to the simple fact that we do not know SQUAT about the environment that this planet has. All the prehistoric data these people throw about show us nothing about solar fluxuations, global volcanic eruptions on the southern hemisphere as compared ot the northern hemisphere, etc....
Hell, noone can discount that maybe 90,000 years ago aliens had giant mirrors around the planet.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Water Vapour is reactive and only serves to amplify other climate forcings. It actually is going up in sympathy with other greenhouse gases as the Earth is getting warmer. It will also continue to increase for centuries after C02 stabilizes in the atmosphere as the ocean has a very long lag time. Unfortunately, the only practical way to reduce H20 levels in the atmosphere is to cool down the planet because H20 is generated in such huge quantities by evaporation from the oceans and plants. Any attempt to reduce evaporation by means such as cutting forests will actually increase temps more by decreasing evaporative cooling and convection.
PS: Why do so many people bring up the water vapour issue? If one is smart enough to know that water vapour is a greenhouse gas, wouldn't one be smart enough to have a basic understanding of the water cycle?
I've wondered about the fact that only in the past four decades we've had the ability to track storms AND measure their strength in a systematic manner, and even then there are problems, i.e. Katrina was originally thought to have struck the Gulf Coast as a Cat 4, yet about a month or two later a more detailed analysis of the data indicated that Katrina was actually a Cat 3.
Furthermore, if you look up Pacific Basin hurricanes on the NOAA page, you will find that Hurricane Linda in 1997 was the strongest ever recorded in the area, but there is an intriguing disclaimer, which goes something like this: Due to lack of consistent monitoring in the Pacific Basin, we have insufficient data for any year before 1996.
Which brings me to my question: How many tropical storms in the last century have gone unnoticed before the advent of satellites, and even if noticed by the occasional cargo boat in some remote shipping route (which is precisely where Tropical Storm Zeta is right now), have been dismissed by captain and crew as a northern gale that strayed too far south? Maybe they just passed tangentially across and thought "no big deal".
As an example, a similar argument can be made for the increase of measured cancer and heart disease related deaths, which supposedly are statistically on the increase, yet in decades past a lot of passings have been categorized as sudden death or natural causes, especially outside the larger cities. You can see it, can't you? Millions of people all over the world going about their daily business in their small towns, with undiagnosed metatastic cancer, incredibly clogged arteries, or whatever else you can think of.
My point is: In general, systematic and accurate compiling of information in some areas goes back less than half a century. Beyond the two parameters (geography and time), applied differently in each case, it's anybody's guess. Now compound this with our inevitable tendency to view things in an anthropocentric as well as cronocentric manner and yikes! How to make heads or tails of all this?
Basically, our elders, through no fault of their own, left us a mess of incomplete info. And to be fair, even if we get our act together of compiling precise data, which we seem to be nobly attempting, there will always be something we missed that'll vex our offspring in a hundred years.
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
Not according to my latest Greenpeace flyers.
- Methane is about 23 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
That is on a molecule-by-molecule basis. But CO2 is hundreds to millions of times more common than methane or CFC's, and so is producing a more significant warming effect.
The last two posts have been so wrong and misleading as to indicate one of two possibilities: either the authors are deliberately trying to confuse the issues, or they are just ignorant.
Specifically, saying "3 out of 5 greenhouse gases which account for 97% of the warming" are flat is ignoring the fact that 90 out of those 97% comes from CO2, which is in fact increasing rapidly. So you are giving the misleading impression that the problem isn't getting worse, when in fact it is....
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
Paranoia is fear without reason. However, there are reasons to be concerned. It's plain to see the glacial retreats all over the world. It's also pretty obvious that the permafrost in the Sibera, Alaska, and northern Canada are thawing. It's also obvious that the forest line has been moving northward as well. The sea surface temperatures world-wide have been increasing. Warmer water aquatic animals have been trekking further northward (and southward). And yes, the weather has been straying from the "norms". Now maybe it's just coincidence that all this happens to coincide with the rapid industrialization of the planet, but I doubt it. But let's say this is just part of the natural cycle. In that case, we certainly are not helping the situation. Regardless, we need to start thinking about how this will impact the planet because it's going to happen and will happen quickly. And to correct your statement, excess energy does cause storms. If the Earth can't radiate the heat off into space, it has to go somewhere. Since most of the earth is covered by water, a majority of this excess energy goes into oceans. Ocean temps strongly impact weather. You can figure out the rest. All that aside, when would YOU start to take action? When the sea levels raise by 5 feet? When England and northern Europe no longer have "summer" due to the gulf stream being weakend? When an averge hurricane season has 30 storms a year? By that point, it's already far too late to do anything about it. Some scientist already think it's too late and are recommending we begin preparing for the climate changes. About 5,000 years ago there was a rapid global climactic shift that destroyed several civilizations. While I believe technologically we could definately survive such a change now, just imagine the problems that would be caused if the US midwest turned into a desert and bread costs $30.00 a loaf. ~X~
~X~