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Climate Change Drives Bigger, Wetter Storms -- Storms Like Florence (npr.org)
Rebecca Hersher, reporting for NPR: Hurricane Florence is moving relentlessly toward the Southeastern U.S. It's a large, powerful cyclone that will likely bring storm surge and high winds to coastal communities. But climate scientists say one of the biggest threats posed by Florence is rain. "Freshwater flooding poses the greatest risk to life," explains James Kossin, an atmospheric scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Wisconsin, Madison. And Florence could cause extensive freshwater flooding for two reasons. First, Florence is moving slowly, and could all but stop when it reaches land. "The storm could be over North Carolina and traveling incredibly slowly -- on the order of just a few miles per hour," explains Kossin, who says an official from the city of Charlotte, N.C., contacted him about rainfall projections for that city.
If Florence stalls over the Southeast, it would be reminiscent of Hurricane Harvey, which spent days dumping rain on the Houston region last year. Some areas ended up with more than 60 inches, a catastrophic amount of water that shut down the entire region and resulted in at least 93 deaths. Slow-moving storms like Harvey are getting more common. A study published earlier this year by Kossin found that tropical cyclones around the world have slowed down 10 percent in the last 70 years. "We're seeing that in every ocean basin except the northern Indian Ocean," says Kossin, possibly because climate change is causing the wind currents that hurricanes ride to slow down. If Florence slows down and stalls when it hits land, it will the latest example of that trend. Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., says global warming also affects the size and intensity of storms like Florence.
If Florence stalls over the Southeast, it would be reminiscent of Hurricane Harvey, which spent days dumping rain on the Houston region last year. Some areas ended up with more than 60 inches, a catastrophic amount of water that shut down the entire region and resulted in at least 93 deaths. Slow-moving storms like Harvey are getting more common. A study published earlier this year by Kossin found that tropical cyclones around the world have slowed down 10 percent in the last 70 years. "We're seeing that in every ocean basin except the northern Indian Ocean," says Kossin, possibly because climate change is causing the wind currents that hurricanes ride to slow down. If Florence slows down and stalls when it hits land, it will the latest example of that trend. Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., says global warming also affects the size and intensity of storms like Florence.
Weatherbug was pretty careful not to make the leap that Florence is a result of climate change. They had an article speculating that the reason Florence became so strong is the result of a Bermuda high which is in an unusual position for the year. The article's author felts that the blocking high was keeping Florence over warmer water so it could strengthen. Typically September hurricanes turn back out to sea.
The slow movement of Florence and possibility it stalls are not related to global warming to rather simply to the location of high pressure systems north of the storm preventing it from turning northward.
The size of the storm could be argued to be greater due to warming, but its a statistical discussion about averages over time, not one of any particular storm.
This article is pure bullshit and conjecture.
The parent was down voted. Although it was rather short and blunt, I'm inclined to agree with the sentiment. The article talks about what Hurricane Florence *might* do, then jumps to what Hurricane Harvey did do, to bolster the pure speculation about what Hurricane Florence might do?
I'm interested in seeing if a pattern develops in hurricane activity along the eastern seaboard of the US, especially since a prediction of much worse hurricane seasons was made in relation to observed global warming/climate change. It seems a little early to act as if that hypothesis is already confirmed, though.
And no matter if it's well supported, the politics of the rightwing does not allow AGW to be real. So lots of places won't dare to mention climate change as being the cause of ANYTHING, because the only things AGW deniers will allow climate to do is "change" in such a way that we don't do it. It sure as shit isn't allowed to DO anything. Just change.
There's scientific consensus that life begins at conception? It was my understanding that the scientific consensus was that life had been here for billions of years and propagated through germ lines.
Ezekiel 23:20
What drives storms? Temperature differences.
This is nonsense. Hurricanes are not driven by temperature differences between the tropics and temperate regions. They are driven by vertical differences in temperature and pressure.
Warm seas cause warm humid air near the surface. Warm air is lighter, and high humidity makes it lighter still. So it rises, creating a low pressure region, and drawing in more surface winds that pick up heat and humidity as they move to the center of the storm. When the air in the center rises, it spreads out and cools, condensing the humidity that falls as rain. The cooler dryer air then descends on the edge of the storm.
Warmer seas cause stronger storms. Cooler water weakens the storm as it travels north, the opposite of what you are claiming.
If the oceans were uniformly warm, would we still have hurricanes? Yes, and they would be stronger, bigger, and last longer.
I live in the Northeast and every time a reporter starts showing the people putting up sandbags and preparing, and they get interviewed? They say the same kinds of things. "Been through this a number of times before." The shop owners in places like Annapolis will show you how high flood waters have been, decades ago compared to the last few times they dealt with flooding. And predictions for this one seem to be, at most, somewhat equivalent to one of the higher water levels they saw long ago.
This article talks about a worldwide slowdown of 10% noted in the last 70 years for hurricane movement? Might be completely true, but does that really signify man-made climate change as the culprit? Or would you see at least a 10% variance one way or the other, if you were tracking their speeds of travel in different time periods further back than the last 70 years? Either way, 10% doesn't seem like a huge difference? Assuming the amount of rainfall is directly related to how long the storm sits in a given area, or how much time it has to pick up ocean water as it travels? Wouldn't that mean it accounts for only 6 inches of extra rain from a 60 inch rainfall?
slow moving and steady storms? C'mon climate "science" purveyors, get your shit straight and stop attributing EVERY weather event to 'climate change.' Want to know why intelligent people outside of your funding....er... "science" circles don't believe? (Just in case your science doesn't work out, that is called a rhetorical question).
Science needs to be repeatable and provable, but nothing being trotted about as climate science is anything but half-assed theories and wild fear mongering. I genuinely want to know what are and are not effects of climate change, but I haven't seen anything beyond awful correlations based on fudged data. Call me when you have something based in, well, science.
It was never global cooling in the '70s, despite one or two magazine covers. And they weren't wrong about ozone. And they aren't wrong about global warming. We have more than enough data to be sure of that.
One thing is for sure is you're never going to get idiots stop confusing weather with climate.
True but here's the thing. If you string enough weather events together it becomes climate. If the weather tomorrow is 70F and sunny, that is weather. If the weather for most of the next 500 days is 70F and sunny, that's climate. (also that's San Diego) If the accumulated weather events change enough to be statistically different than previous patterns then that is climate change. The only question is what number of accumulated weather events does it take to make a climate and what magnitude over what time period constitutes climate change? The problem is that there is no simple sound bite answers to those questions so idiots keep arguing about it because there is no standard definition in play.