Ophelia Became a Major Hurricane Where No Storm Had Before (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The system formerly known as Hurricane Ophelia is moving into Ireland on Monday, bringing "status red" weather throughout the day to the island. The Irish National Meteorological Service, Met Eireann, has warned that, "Violent and destructive gusts of 120 to 150km/h are forecast countrywide, and in excess of these values in some very exposed and hilly areas. There is a danger to life and property." Ophelia transitioned from a hurricane to an extra-tropical system on Sunday, but that only marginally diminished its threat to Ireland and the United Kingdom on Monday, before it likely dissipates near Norway on Tuesday. The primary threat from the system was high winds, with heavy rains. Forecasters marveled at the intensification of Ophelia on Saturday, as it reached Category 3 status on the Saffir-Simpson scale and became a major hurricane. For a storm in the Atlantic basin, this is the farthest east that a major hurricane has been recorded during the satellite era of observations. Additionally, it was the farthest north, at 35.9 degrees north, that an Atlantic major hurricane has existed this late in the year since 1939.

Comments

Re:Those were the days.

[quantaman]

Pacific Blob? How are you so confident there wasn't a "pacific blob" in the 1600s? Do we have satellite observations of oceanic temperatures from the 17th century to back that up? Are you assembling that data from observations? Did they have calibrated temperature probes taking measurements day and night thousands of miles out at sea?

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It seems to me that a lot of your belief system is built on inferences and assumptions. The largest of those being that the weather events of the 21st century have somehow made a biblical deviation from the norm. Anything approaching a climate "norm" is based on such a limited understanding of the world, it's hard to accept as the truth. Global Warming may be a new phenomenon. But if it is we need to treat it like a science with skepticism, and not like a religion.

Global warming very much is a science, and the researchers involved do examine their data and conclusions with a lot of skepticism and they do a lot of work figuring out how to test their assumptions (I suspect there's a bunch of actual papers dedicated to figuring out if there was a "pacific blob" in the 1600s). Of course there is some uncertainty over how serious the problem will be (though as evidence mounts the problem seems to be getting worse).

But you also need to be prudent. We're talking about taking mitigating action against the cautious projections. You are correct we're dealing with a lot of unknowns. If the scientists are underestimating we might be in a lot more trouble than we realize, this isn't some computer game where someone gave us a nice path to galactic colonization, it's quite possible that the byproducts of industrialization prove disastrous for human civilization.