2017 Hurricane Season

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by mikephoen

I think people need to stop thinking of this as a once in a thousand year event. This is the new normal. As the planet's temperature continues to rise, these events are going to happen at an accelerated rate. I would bet any amount of money that a worse weather related disaster happens within a decade.

Glad your family is still safe though.

Originally Posted by OMG!WTF!

Actually they happen less. That's not to say they're not worse though.

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[Firebot]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

Houston had 41 inches of rain in three days, the annual rainfall in Seattle was 37 inches.

It's almost as if the climate is changing....

Or a major hurricane in a lower than average hurricane season happened to be sitting still on top of a city instead of a corn field .

Does every fricking weather event have to be talked about as climate change?

http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/E11.html

1886 is recorded as the most active hurricane season for the continental USA with 7 landfalling hurricanes.

Yes we don't hear of climate change in 1886.

[KelVarnsen]

Originally Posted by Firebot

Or a major hurricane in a lower than average hurricane season happened to be sitting still on top of a city instead of a corn field .

Does every fricking weather event have to be talked about as climate change?

http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/E11.html



Yes we don't hear of climate change in 1886.

[mikephoen]

Originally Posted by Firebot

Or a major hurricane in a lower than average hurricane season happened to be sitting still on top of a city instead of a corn field .

Does every fricking weather event have to be talked about as climate change?

http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/E11.html



Yes we don't hear of climate change in 1886.

Haha, funny you should use that as your example. One the largest volcanic events in modern times (Krakatoa) happened in 1883 and had huge affects on weather for many years. Krakatoa's affect on the earth's overall temperature is minor compared to what has been going on since.

Every major weather event should be talked about as related to climate change, because they are related.

[Weitz]

Originally Posted by mikephoen

Haha, funny you should use that as your example. One the largest volcanic events in modern times (Krakatoa) happened in 1883 and had huge affects on weather for many years. Krakatoa's affect on the earth's overall temperature is minor compared to what has been going on since.

Every major weather event should be talked about as related to climate change, because they are related.

So Hurricanes have been happening forever, yet they are now related to Climate change?

[Tinordi]

I just love humanity.

A great American city has just suffered through its third 500 year weather event in the past 3 three years and people have the balls to come into this thread and try to sow doubt about climate change and the impact its having.

[Izzle]

Originally Posted by Weitz

So Hurricanes have been happening forever, yet they are now related to Climate change?

Pretty important video ICYMI. It does highlight that hurricanes itself have reduced, but the more catastrophic ones have started to increase.

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

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[accord1999]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

I just love humanity.

A great American city has just suffered through its third 500 year weather event in the past 3 three years and people have the balls to come into this thread and try to sow doubt about climate change and the impact its having.

Or more likely, these aren't 500 year events at all and are just face saving attempts by the authorities to cover up their failures to protect a region that has always been vulnerable to catastrophic flooding.



http://www.houstonchronicle.com/loca...#photo-7457856

[OMG!WTF!]

I'm not denying climate change. But facts are facts. There have been fewer hurricanes. That was just a response to someone who said there are going to be more because of climate change. I have no doubt changing conditions especially in oceans made Harvey way worse.

There. Ya feel better.

[Leeman4Gilmour]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

I just love humanity.

A great American city has just suffered through its third 500 year weather event in the past 3 three years and people have the balls to come into this thread and try to sow doubt about climate change and the impact its having.

Are you talking specifically Houston or 3 different American cities? This is the first hurricane to hit Texas since 1964. Not arguing with your general point as warmer oceans means bigger hurricanes.....Just getting clarity.

[Tinordi]

Ah yes, three 500 year storms in three successive years used to happen all the time! It's just a giant government conspiracy to cover it up. Forgot about that.

[Tinordi]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.4defdef41458

Hurricane Harvey has brought “500-year” rainfall and flood conditions to the Houston area, according to officials at the Harris County Flood Control District.

By the time the storm finally leaves the Houston area the true magnitude may be even greater than that, surpassing 1,000-year thresholds -- potentially even more.

But 500-year floods, as it turns out, happen more frequently than you might expect. The Houston area alone has seen no fewer than three such events in the past three years, according to local officials: Memorial Day floods in 2015 and 2016, followed by Hurricane Harvey's torrential rains this year.

[troutman]

How Climate Change Likely Heightened Harvey’s Fury

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2...rming-weather/

The Impact of Climate Change on Natural Disasters

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Fe...sing_cost5.php

Climate change may not be responsible for the recent skyrocketing cost of natural disasters, but it is very likely that it will impact future catastrophes. Climate models provide a glimpse of the future, and while they do not agree on all of the details, most models predict a few general trends. First, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will probably boost temperatures over most land surfaces, though the exact change will vary regionally. More uncertain—but possible—outcomes of an increase in global temperatures include increased risk of drought and increased intensity of storms, including tropical cyclones with higher wind speeds, a wetter Asian monsoon, and, possibly, more intense mid-latitude storms.

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by troutman

Climate change may not be responsible for the recent skyrocketing cost of natural disasters, but it is very likely that it will impact future catastrophes. Climate models provide a glimpse of the future, and while they do not agree on all of the details, most models predict a few general trends. First, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will probably boost temperatures over most land surfaces, though the exact change will vary regionally. More uncertain—but possible—outcomes of an increase in global temperatures include increased risk of drought and increased intensity of storms, including tropical cyclones with higher wind speeds, a wetter Asian monsoon, and, possibly, more intense mid-latitude storms.

The classic prediction so vague that it can claim to be right, no matter what happens.

[mikephoen]

Originally Posted by OMG!WTF!

I'm not denying climate change. But facts are facts. There have been fewer hurricanes. That was just a response to someone who said there are going to be more because of climate change. I have no doubt changing conditions especially in oceans made Harvey way worse.

There. Ya feel better.

The number of hurricanes is also going up, the US has just been lucky and not that many have made landfall in the last decade. That has just been pure luck though.

[Firebot]

Originally Posted by mikephoen

Haha, funny you should use that as your example. One the largest volcanic events in modern times (Krakatoa) happened in 1883 and had huge affects on weather for many years. Krakatoa's affect on the earth's overall temperature is minor compared to what has been going on since.

Every major weather event should be talked about as related to climate change, because they are related.

In the old days people would say God is angry when a weather disaster occurs since they didn't know any better. Nowadays its latte sipping hipster crying climate change on Facebook at the sign of extreme weather while behind their iPhone because it justifies a viewpoint.

Back in 1883, people were more likely to blaming god, than use a fairly recent terminology. These major weather events have happened since the dawn of the planet. Mankind does have an impact to the atmosphere, I'm not questioning that (sorry to burst your bubble).

But does every fricking event have to be linked to climate change? How is any different than preaching that God is angry? They are both empty of any research. Linking every single event to climate change cheapens the message, especially when the whole concept of climate change is very abstract and hard to quantify as it is.

A hurricane is nothing new. A hurricane hitting the US is nothing new. There are no more hurricanes today then there were a hundred years ago. A hurricane staying stationary on top of large population is a fluke and one that can happen once in a thousand years based on probability. That does not make it a climate change related event.

[Ashasx]

I took a Natural Disasters class at the U of C a while ago and the entire course was based around the idea that climate change actually reduces the amount of meteorological/hydrological disasters, but increases their severity.

[Firebot]

Originally Posted by mikephoen

The number of hurricanes is also going up, the US has just been lucky and not that many have made landfall in the last decade. That has just been pure luck though.

No it hasn't.

http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/E11.html

& Landsea et al. (2010) documented a rather large increase in short-lived tropical storms and hurricanes in the last decade, which is likely due to improved monitoring capabilities, that may be influencing the climatological average number of TCs in the Atlantic basin. With the artificial jump in the 2000s in the frequency of short-lived systems, a more realistic estimate of the long-term climatology may be closer to 13 tropical storms and hurricanes per year.
* 1950 is recorded as the busiest season in the whole database for number of Major Hurricanes with 8.
+ 1886 is recorded as the most active hurricane season for the continental USA with 7 landfalling hurricane

[Tinordi]

A hurricane is nothing new. A hurricane hitting the US is nothing new. There are no more hurricanes today then there were a hundred years ago. A hurricane staying stationary on top of large population is a fluke and one that can happen once in a thousand years based on probability. That does not make it a climate change related event.

This is a big steamy pile of nonsense and downright lies. There is lots of research to support the fact that climate change has made Harvey alot worse. It's nothing like religion.

There are certain climate change-related factors that we can, with great confidence, say worsened the flooding.

Sea level rise attributable to climate change (some is due to coastal subsidence due to human disturbance e.g. oil drilling) is more than half a foot over the past few decades (see http://www.insurancejournal.com/…/so.../31/452704.htm for a decent discussion).

That means that the storm surge was a half foot higher than it would have been just decades ago, meaning far more flooding and destruction.
In addition to that, sea surface temperatures in the region have risen about 0.5C (close to 1F) over the past few decades, from roughly 30C (86F) to 30.5C (87F), which contributed to the very warm sea surface temperatures (30.5-31 C or 87-88F). There is a simple thermodynamic relationship known as the "Clausius-Clapeyron equation (see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/…/Clausius%...n_relat…) that tells us there is a roughly 3% increase in average atmospheric moisture content for each 0.5C (~1F) of warming. Sea surface temperatures in the area where Harvey intensified were 0.5-1C warmer than current-day average temperatures, which translates to 1-1.5C warmer than the 'average' temperatures a few decades ago. That means 3-5% more moisture in the atmosphere.

That large amount of moisture meant the potential for much greater rainfalls and greater flooding.

The combination of coastal flooding and heavy rainfall is responsible for the devastating flooding that Houston is experiencing.

Not only are the surface waters of the Gulf unusually warm right now, but there is a deep layer of warm water that Harvey was able to feed upon when it intensified at near record pace as it neared the coast. Human-caused warming is penetrating down into the ocean warming not just the surface but creating deeper layers of warm water in the Gulf and elsewhere.

So Harvey was almost certainly more intense than it would have been in the absence of human- caused warming, which means stronger winds, more wind damage, and a larger storm surge (as an example of how this works, we have shown that climate change has led to a dramatic increase in storm surge risk in New York City, making devastating events like Superstorm #Sandy more likely (http://www.pnas.org/content/112/41/12610.full).

Finally, the more tenuous but potentially relevant climate factors: part of what has made Harvey such a devastating storm is the way it has stalled right near the coast, continuing to pummel Houston and surrounding regions with a seemingly endless deluge which will likely top out at nearly 4 feet of rainfall over a several days-long period before it is done.

The stalling is due to very weak prevailing winds which are failing to steer the storm off to sea, allowing it to spin around and wobble back and forth like a top with no direction. This pattern, in turn, is associated with a greatly expanded subtropical high pressure system over much of the U.S. right now, with the jet stream pushed well to the north. This pattern of subtropical expansion is predicted in model simulations of human-caused climate change.

More tenuous, but possibly relevant still, is the fact that very persistent, nearly 'stationary' summer weather patterns of this sort, where weather anomalies (both high pressure dry hot regions and low-pressure stormy/rainy regions) stay locked in place for many days at a time, appears to be favored by human-caused climate change. We recently published on this phenomenon: https://www.nature.com/articles/srep45242
In conclusion, while we cannot say climate change "caused" hurricane Harvey (that is an ill-posed question), we can say that it exacerbate several characteristics of the storm in a way that greatly increased the risk of damage and loss of life.

Climate change worsened the impact of Hurricane Harvey.

https://www.facebook.com/MichaelMann...15449771844553

[Johnny Makarov]

Originally Posted by Ashasx

I took a Natural Disasters class at the U of C a while ago and the entire course was based around the idea that climate change actually reduces the amount of meteorological/hydrological disasters, but increases their severity.

You can tell some of these climate change deniers do not have much education.