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Climate Change is Making Hurricanes Even More Destructive, Research Finds (theguardian.com)
Hurricane Harvey swamped Houston with seven days of pounding rain last August. When scientists went back to look at historical weather patterns, they reported Harvey dumped 20 percent more rain than it typically would have. The culprit: climate change. From a report: High-resolution climate simulations of 15 tropical cyclones in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans found that warming in the ocean and atmosphere increased rainfall by between 5% and 10%, although wind speeds remained largely unchanged. This situation is set to worsen under future anticipated warming, however. Researchers found that if little is done to constrain greenhouse gas emissions and the world warms by 3C to 4C this century then hurricane rainfall could increase by a third, while wind speeds would be boosted by as much as 25 knots.
"Climate change has exacerbated rainfall and is set to enhance the wind speed," said Christina Patricola, who undertook the study with her Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory colleague Michael Wehner. "My hope is that this information can be used to improve our resilience to the kinds of extreme weather events we are going to have in the future." The research, published in the journal Nature, used climate models to see how factors such as air and ocean temperatures have influenced hurricanes. Projections into the future were then made, based upon various levels of planetary warming. The findings suggest that enormously destructive storms have already been bolstered by climate change and similar events in the future are on course to be cataclysmic.
"Climate change has exacerbated rainfall and is set to enhance the wind speed," said Christina Patricola, who undertook the study with her Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory colleague Michael Wehner. "My hope is that this information can be used to improve our resilience to the kinds of extreme weather events we are going to have in the future." The research, published in the journal Nature, used climate models to see how factors such as air and ocean temperatures have influenced hurricanes. Projections into the future were then made, based upon various levels of planetary warming. The findings suggest that enormously destructive storms have already been bolstered by climate change and similar events in the future are on course to be cataclysmic.
Wetter and windier hurricanes going forward is not surprising, since global warming of the atmosphere causes weather systems to have more energy and the atmosphere to hold more water vapor,
This study is consistent with climate science assumptions going back at least several decades.
In short, this is not really news. Just more detailed simulations confirming the general model.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Harvey dumped a stupid amount of rain on SE Texas ( ~56 inches where I live ) for a couple of reasons.
1) It was caught in between two high pressure systems ( One in Texas, the other over the Gulf ) which is why it tracked the way it did.
2) It was moving at a blistering 2-3 mph which meant the rain bands just kept dumping water over the same areas for hours at a time. ( ~4in / hour or more )
It went from " who cares, it's a tropical depression " to " holy shit it's a significant strength hurricane " in a day or two.
This was due to the warm water ( ~85-90f is typical in the Summer months ) in the Gulf of Mexico and # 2 above.
Again, the only reason it dumped so much water is because it effectively sat on the coastline and kept drawing in Gulf moisture. The Gulf Water temps have always been warm in late Summer ( has been that way my entire life ), so I don't see where they drew the conclusion about the amount of water Harvey dumped and climate change.
Had it been tracking at typical hurricane speeds, it wouldn't have been able to continue funneling Gulf Moisture onto the Texas Gulf Coast for as long as it did.
I would lean more towards just bad timing with the two High Pressure systems coupled with the normal seasonal water temps in the Gulf of Mexico as the root cause.
Not to downplay your post but . . . . . .
Harvey flooded areas that were not considered flood plain previously. It doesn't matter where you live, if a storm dumps nearly sixty inches of water on your neighborhood over a three day period, you're going to flood. ( So will everyone downstream from you as that water makes its way back to the ocean )
Your post is somewhat misleading.
Most of what you've listed for weather-related impacts are regional, and those impacts are not going to be the same in every region or every season. For example, the southwest US is likely to become drier while the north central US is likely to be wetter. These are not contradictory conclusions at all, just the reality that climate change doesn't affect every region in the same way.
In terms of temperature, the Arctic is warming disproportionately to other regions. Although climate models project most areas to warm significantly, it's not all at the same rate. The models do suggest that one small area in the far north Atlantic might get cooler, which is probably due to changes in the ocean circulation.
As for extreme winter weather becoming more frequent, this is generally confined to the mid-latitude regions. Overall, temperatures are warming, but disproportionately in the Arctic. The result is less of a temperature difference between the tropics and polar regions. The result is a jet stream that's slower and, as a result, tends tends to meander more. The jet stream roughly divides between warm air on the equatorial side and cold air on the polar side.
In the US, if the jet stream meanders more during the winter, that might allow cold air to come south from the Arctic more frequently. Although the Arctic air masses aren't as cold, due to climate change, they might more frequently move into the mid-latitudes. The result would be more cold air outbreaks, but on a global scale, temperatures would still be warmer. This is primarily regional in its impacts and to some degree seasonal, in that it generally affects weather in the winter. This is somewhat new research and the confidence in this result is much lower. By the way, slowing winds in the upper atmosphere and a more meridional jet stream will also result in weather systems that move slowly and increase the frequency of blocking events.
Mea culpa? They proposed a change to the current model, they proposed a paper, people read it, they found flaws, and it was retracted and is being modified in subsequent studies. You're a moron, this is science. You don't understand.
But then, it's not your fucking job to know how this works, AM radio retard Republican trashminds.
If you want to have a legitimate discussion, then you first have to appreciate why conversation shut down in the first place.
The legitimate discussion is over. It has been over for 20 years. We're now discussing exactly how bad it will be.
The fact that you want to ignore that 20 years of discussion is indicative of just how important discussion actually is to you. And it appears to be far less important than tribalism.
See here. Though it's still not enough to say if your city will be spared or not. We know enough to tell people when to evacuate, which is pretty damn good if you ask me.
Your post seems to be trying to cast shade on scientists, implying that their computer models are purposefully wrong. They're not. Again, these computer models are amazing things that are saving lives.
I'm not sure if you really intended to imply the scientists are lying for the sake of profit, but you are. Comments like yours are part of a broader narrative to discredit scientists in general. That narrative is coming out of right wing, pro-corporate think tanks who don't want their profits jeopardized. It's not even that there'd be all that much less money going around if we fought climate change instead of ignoring it, rather the money might go somewhere else. Somewhere besides their coffers.
Again, I don't know if you were aware of all this when you posted, but if by some chance you read my post, well, congrats, you are now. The only question is what are you going to do with this information?
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