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Hurricane Irma Reaches 185 MPH, Trailing Only Allen As Strongest Atlantic Storm On Record (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: We are quickly running out of adjectives to describe the destructive potential of Hurricane Irma. As of 2pm ET on Tuesday, the National Hurricane Center upgraded the storm's sustained winds to 185mph. This is near-record speed for a storm in the Atlantic basin, which includes the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, and Gulf of Mexico. Such high, sustained winds tie Irma for the second-strongest storm on record in the Atlantic, along with Hurricane Wilma (2005), Hurricane Gilbert (1998), and the 1935 Florida Keys hurricane. Only Hurricane Allen, which reached 190 mph in 1980 before striking a relatively unpopulated area of Texas, reached a higher wind speed. Globally, the all-time record for hurricanes is held by Patricia, which reached a staggering 215 mph in the Pacific Ocean in 2015. Although sustained winds capture the most public attention, meteorologists generally measure the intensity of a storm based upon central pressures, which are considerably lower than sea-level pressure on Earth, 1,013 millibars. Typhoon Tip, in 1979, holds this record at 870 millibars. For now, at least, Irma has a relatively high central pressure of 927 millibars. Why the storm has such an odd wind-speed-pressure relationship isn't entirely clear. According to the National Hurricane Center, Irma is expected to bring catastrophic winds and potential storm surges to the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, and the UK territory of Turks and Caicos this week. The Florida Keys could get hit by late Saturday night or Sunday.
...probably reached 200 MPH, but the instruments at Keesler AFB were blown away when Camille hit Biloxi, so they can't count "sustained wind speed."
Uh, that's not quite the way hurricanes work. They don't "slam into" something and stop. Caribbean islands are small compared to hurricanes!
They stop when they traverse a region where they are separated from the warm ocean, which is (in essence) their power source.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
The only question you need to ask the pseudoskeptics is "Where do you think all the extra energy is going?"
That CO2 absorbs solar radiation and traps it in the lower atmosphere is not debatable. These absorption patterns of CO2 have been known since the 19th century. So, increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, increase the amount of energy (heat) being trapped.
That CO2 interacts with ocean water and alters its pH has been known probably even longer. Increase the amount of CO2 in the lower atmosphere, increase the amount of absorption of CO2 in salt water.
So we can dicker about which storms are being made more powerful by climate change, we can dicker about whether a colder winter in one part of the world or a warmer winter in another part is caused by climate change, but the fact is that the steady increase in CO2 concentration inevitably, by the physical laws of nature, will increase the amount of energy trapped in the lower atmosphere (increase overall surface temperatures as a mean) and increase the acidity of the oceans. There is no questioning this, unless one wishes to throw out well over a century of physics and chemistry.
Now, if these folks have some magic heat sink that blasts all that energy off into space, then by all means, point to where it is, otherwise all we're doing in debating with these liars and idiots is dignifying their fraud and stupidity. They are the Creationists of the 21st century; not pseudoscientists, no pseudoskeptics, just plain old morons and liars.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Sorry, here is a link to the many, many people who claimed Global Warming would cause more hurricanes.
It's also funny how the GFDL used to claim global warming would neither make hurricanes more frequent nor more powerful...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Human industrial activity within the past 300 years, especially with the most significant of it happening only within the past 100 years, is not responsible for the ice sheets retreating. This most recent cycle of retreating glaciation has been going on for over 10,000 years now, and started well before humans were engaging in any sort of notable industrial activity.
The more recent cycle of retreating glaciation started over 20,000 years ago and was largely over by the Holocene Climatic Optimum 5,000-9,000 years ago. Since then temperatures have generally been declining and glaciers growing ... until recently when anthropogenic global warming has taken over.
We'll all remember your instance that weather is climate the furst extreme cold snap that occurs this winter, which by your logic utterly disproves global warming...
I guess to you it's just an "inconvenient truth" how long it's been since we've even had any serious hurticanes hit the US.
Part of the reason why the hurricanes were absent was because of an unusual prolonged el Nino in the Pacific. The duration and severity of the typhoons in the Eastern Pacific during the el Nino years were also effected. But because typhoons do not directly effect North Americans by and large they are ignored. Now the situation is doing a wild swing in the other direction. Now we see the jet stream taking a long sweep to the north all summer pumping moisture eastward like a vacuum cleaner gone mad. All indications of radical changes in the earths climate. These changes are like the mood swings in bipolar individuals that are becoming suicidal.
The upside of the damage that is being done is that it might just shut down a fair portion of the biggest polluters and make gasoline and oil refining too expense to maintain thereby effectively reducing North American oil consumption. Houston and the gulf coast was a dumb place to put the majority of North America's key oil refining infrastructure the same as putting the Fukushima nuclear facility near the ocean in an earth quake hot spot was not exactly the best idea it was just the cheapest place to build because of the easy water and a handy heavy lift port access.
We are in for a very rough ride, this is just the beginning of hurricane season and a sustained change in corresponding ocean temperature patterns. My bet is that the majority of US centric ignorant Americans do not even know about the very recent North Pacific Blob and how radical changes in the ocean temp there are strongly effecting much more than just global weather patterns in ways never seen in history.
Right now large areas of Southern California are experiencing temps that are marginal for human survival. 45 degrees C over more than a few days is downright dangerous and the pattern of extreme summer drought on the West Coast will be followed with flooding in winter. Unfortunately we have brought this situation on ourselves and it will take huge human die off to effectively wake people up. Ocean temp change are contributing to the loss of a huge portion of the ocean's fisheries which is almost exclusively from our activities. The rapid loss of cheap protein from ocean sources will be the first phase of a planetary human die off. Be prepared for Friskies kitty vitals at 10 dollars a can boys! MEOW
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call