Weather

Some strong words have been exchanged by Greg Holland (UCAR) and Chris Landsea (NOAA) on the recent paper by Holland/Webster in the Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society (hereafter, HW2007). Greg Holland inserted himself into the debate over greenhouse gas emissions, by predicting that hurricanes will increase without such reductions:

This too is wrong. Since scientists started thinking about climate trends, concerns have been raised about the continuity of records - whether they are met. stations, satellites or ocean probes. The danger of mistakenly interpreting jumps due to measurement discontinuities as climate trends is well known. Some of the discontinuities (which can be of either sign) in weather records can be detected using jump point analyses (for instance in the new version of the NOAA product), others can be adjusted using known information (such as biases introduced because changes in the time of observations or moving a station).

Mooney covers many of the themes and issues we've discussed here before, but adds his own novel interpretations and uncovers a number of key historical details, in the process of stitching together a compelling narrative. Naturally, there is discussion of the hoopla over the active 2004 and 2005 Atlantic hurricane seasons and the aftermath of Katrina. There is extensive discussion of the high-profile studies by Emanuel, Webster, Curry and coworkers (see e.g. here and here) which, eerily coincident with the record-setting 2005 season, first suggested a detectable climate change signal in hurricane behavior.

I remember seeing the news in the days running up to the event. I remember we were at my brother's girlfriend's house for some sort of party (her graduation party? Kind of late for it, in September...). I remember Max Mayfield of NOAA (who is to retire in January) warning everyone to leave on the The Weather Channel. I remember Kanye West.

Masters also has a very interesting analysis of Alberto. Among other things, he notes that “the official NHC forecast outperformed all the [computer] models” in predicting Alberto’s track. Way to go, NHC! Masters talks about the Loop Current’s impact, too.

1. Check in with the National Hurricane Center (NHC) when planning a trip to a potential hurricane area.

Lesson: Don’t believe everything that is out there on the web, even from resources such as NOAA. Standards have changed and we learn more from every disaster. Make sure you have the most up to date information possible to protect yourself and your family.

Another summer of Weather Channel watching and browsing to the NOAA site for me. I really hope there’s no need to evacuate like there was last year for Rita. What a royal pain in the ass that was, but also kind of fun once we got off the damn highway and into the hotel we’d booked in ALABAMA.

Charles Fenwick at Eye of the Storm has a post about a new NOAA map that analyzes the percentage probability of tropical development, at any given time, in 4,000-square-mile blocks of the Atlantic and eastern Pacific basins. Pretty cool. Currently, the greatest threat area is due south of the Manzanillo area in Mexico, where The Storm Track says Tropical Depression 2E might soon form.

Link: Experimental XML Feeds and Web Displays of Watches, Warnings, and Advisories.

According to one government report, by NASA's Goddard Institute, 2005 was the hottest year on record. By the measure of two others, it was the second hottest, and hottest in the northern hemisphere. The others were by NOAA and the United Kingdom's Meteorological Institute.

I have not written anything about Tropical Storm Delta after it formed as I thought it was a last gasp type of storm that would fade away soon after its formation. However, the storm has persisted and is now making its way towards the Cape Verde Islands and the shores of Morocco.

Aside from NASA (as found in my previous post) there are other government agencies that have public domain photos availible. One such agency is NOAA, that's right the folks that do the weather forecast and issue hurricane alerts also take pictures. At the NOAA Photo Library you can find everything from animals to tonadoes, sunsets to ships and satellites to airplanes.

As of 2:00 PM EDT... Tropical Depression TWENTY-FIVE (Click here for PUBLIC ADVISORY) had Maximum sustained Winds of near 35 MPH with higher gust... Estimated Minimum Central Pressure is 1007 MB... The Depression is becoming better organized and may become a TROPICAL STORM later this afternoon... This would be a record for most Tropical Storms in one year in the Atlantic Basin and the first time the Greek Alphabet has ever been used to name an Atlantic Storm. This storm will be named “ALPHA” if it should develop into the record books....

Nielsen/NetRatings reports online traffic to redcross.org and NOAA showed significant increases during and with the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. Here is the Nielsen chart:

As tropical depression #8 forms in the Atlantic tonight and NOAA predicts an even worse hurricane season than initially forecasted in May, I can’t help but feel fortunate that the Tampa Bay area and most parts of Florida (with the exception of the Panhandle, unfortunately) affected by last season have been spared so far this season.

Dev Anand Teelucksingh sent this link to MegaTrack, “an OSS application that tracks Atlantic and eastern Pacific tropical storms on a map. Requires Java to run and installs available for Windows, Linux and MacOS X. Gets the storm locations from NOAA’s NHC website.”

Report from Washington State: NOAA’s weather and hazard alert radio failed during Tuesday night’s tsunami warning on the West Coast.

William M. Gray and Philip J. Klotzbach have recently revised their annual forecast for likely hurricane activity in the Atlantic basin. They foresee an above-average hurricane season for the Atlantic in 2005. They also anticipate an above-average probability of US major hurricane landfall. They have adjusted their forecast upward from an early December forecast and state that they may further raise their prediction in later updates if they...

The NOAA web site has a graphical depiction of Project Stormfury Hypothesis. Here's another article on Project Stormfury. My own take on the skepticism expressed in the article is that that science is all about experimentation. If an attempt at cloud seeding was attempted on a much larger scale (say bump up the seeding by a couple of orders of magnitude) using today's technology then the seeding approach could be much more thoroughly tested.

Some people are going to oppose climate engineering because, for reasons that are religious in character, they believe that humans do not have the right to intervene in nature to cause climate scale changes. Others will oppose it out of fear of unintended consequences. However, even if we reject the sort of moral philosophy that views natures as something that should not be tampered with and even if we may some day know enough to be able to predict all major consequences there will still be another argument against climate engineering: any intentional shift in weather that causes changes in one place will cause changes throughout the world. As a consequence of those changes (no matter how large or small) there are bound to be winners and losers throughout the world as well. For instance, a slight increase or decrease in rainfall in other countries will either increase flooding or lead to a reduction of crop yields.

The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale is a 1-5 rating based on the hurricane's present intensity. This is used to give an estimate of the potential property damage and flooding expected along the coast from a hurricane landfall. Wind speed is the determining factor in the scale, as storm surge values are highly dependent on the slope of the continental shelf in the landfall region. Note that all winds are using the U.S. 1-minute average.

Total activity for the tropical cyclone season was slightly below normal, with three systems occurring within the area of responsibility of the Central Pacific Hurricane Center (CPHC). One tropical cyclone (01-C) developed within the central Pacific and the other two, Darby and Estelle, moved into the area from the eastern Pacific. Estelle was the strongest of the three systems and the only one of tropical storm intensity. There were no deaths recorded or property damage reported in the central North Pacific due to these three tropical cyclones.

The MODIS instrument flying aboard NASA's Terra satellite captured this true-color image of Typhoon Meari along the eastern China coast on September 27, 2004 at 02:55 UTC. At the time this image was taken, Meari had maximum sustained winds near 105 knots with gusts to 130 knots. Meari was expected to weaken slightly over the next 24 hours and make a gradual turn to the north.

This site provides information and links to a number of coastal ocean observing systems in the United States. Data collection platforms include moored and drifting buoys, meteorological towers and stations, bottom-moored instruments, stand-alone instruments, ship survey cruises, satellite imagery, and remotely and autonomously operated vehicles. Both operational and research systems throughout the U.S. are included here.

More than half of all Americans live on or near the nation's coastal areas, and the number is growing, posing a challenge for emergency management officials in the event of hurricanes, tsunamis and other natural disasters, federal officials said Tuesday.

Coastal area growth also poses environmental and economic challenges to local governments, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a report on coastal population trends.

Whether it's tsunamis on the West Coast or hurricanes and other storms in the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, rising populations complicate evacuations and make emergency response more complex, officials said.

The ten most deadly hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean, measured since 1492. Listed by hurricane, location, date and estimated casualties.

 	
Barbados, St. Eustatius, Martinique	
Oct. 1780
20,000-22,000

Mitch, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Belize
Oct. 1998	
9,086 dead,
9190 missing

Galveston,
Sept. 1900
8,000 - 12,000

Fifi, Honduras
Sept. 1974
8,000 - 10,000

Dominican Republic
Sept. 1930
2,000 - 8,000

Flora, Haiti, Cuba
Oct. 1963
8,000

Guadeloupe
Sept. 1776
6,000

Newfoundland Banks
Sept. 1775
4,000

Puerto Rico, Carolinas
Aug. 1899
3,063 - 3,433

Martinique, Guadeloupe, Puerto Rico, Turks and Caicos, Florida
Sept. 1928
3,375 - 4,075

With all the recent hurricanes, sometimes it's good to look back to time before people could get warnings on TV and radio.

This killer weather system was first detected over the tropical Atlantic on August 27. While the history of the track and intensity is not fully known, the system reached Cuba as a tropical storm on September 3 and moved into the southeastern Gulf of Mexico on the 5th. A general west-northwestward motion occurred over the Gulf accompanied by rapid intensification. By the time the storm reached the Texas coast south of Galveston late on September 8, it was a Category 4 hurricane. After landfall, the cyclone turned northward through the Great Plains. It became extratropical and turned east-northeastward on September 11, passing across the Great Lakes, New England, and southeastern Canada. It was last spotted over the north Atlantic on September 15.

This hurricane was the deadliest weather disaster in United States history. Storm tides of 8 to 15 ft inundated the whole of Galveston Island, as well as other portions of the nearby Texas coast. These tides were largely responsible for the 8,000 deaths (estimates range from 6,000 to 12,000) attributed to the storm. The damage to property was estimated at $30 million.

2004 saw a large number of high energy hurricanes hit the U.S. coast, especially in Florida.

An article from the Christian Science Monitor today on the analysis and impacts of the recent hurricanes.

Last month marked the first time since the beginning of postwar hurricane reconnaissance flights that August generated three major hurricanes in the Atlantic. If the current forecast track for hurricane Ivan holds, it will be the third hurricane to strike Florida in a month.

Yet for all its fury, this season's burst of activity falls well within the bounds of past experience. What's surprising, say experts, is that the US and Florida haven't seen more major storms make landfall over the past few decades.

.... Yet even with improved forecasting tools, the public doesn't always put the information to best use, some researchers say. "We still can't explain why only some people leave and others don't," says Jay Baker, a geographer at Florida State University in Tallahassee who works on emergency-preparedness issues. Understanding that motivation may help officials devise education programs to encourage more people to heed calls for evacuation.

That response may have less to do with knowing the difference between a hurricane watch and a hurricane warning than it does with perceptions of individual risk, he says - a perception that can include misconceptions about how far a person needs to travel to avoid the storm. The solution can be as simple as more accurate hazard maps .....

Hurricanes and cyclones start the same way.

Several important ingredients are needed for a tropical disturbance to become a tropical cyclone and later strengthen into a tropical storm or hurricane:

1. A tropical disturbance with thunderstorms.
2. A distance of at least 500 kilometers (300 miles) from the equator.
3. Ocean temperatures of 26.5�C (80�F) or warmer to a depth of at least 50 meters (164 feet) below the surface.
4. Lots of moisture in the lower and middle part of the atmosphere.
5. Low wind shear.

This site has lots of good hurricane info including hurricane seasons.

Hurricanes happen in both the Atlantic Basin and the Eastern Pacific Ocean, but the season is a little different in each place.

In the Atlantic Basin, hurricane season officially begins on June 1st and lasts until the end of November each year. This chart shows the average number of tropical storms (gold) and hurricanes (red) in the Atlantic Basin during a period of 100 years.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is the government agency that studies hurricanes and other weather-related events. Here is the NOAA description of a hurricane.

A hurricane is a severe tropical storm, that forms in the southern Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico or in the eastern Pacific Ocean. Hurricanes need warm tropical oceans, moisture and light winds above them. If the right conditions last long enough, a hurricane can produce violent winds, incredible waves, torrential rains and floods.

Hurricanes rotate in a counterclockwise direction around an "eye." Hurricanes have winds at least 74 miles per hour. There are on average six Atlantic hurricanes each year; over a 3-year period, approximately five hurricanes strike the United States coastline from Texas to Maine.

When hurricanes move onto land, the heavy rain, strong winds and heavy waves can damage buildings, trees and cars. The heavy waves are called a storm surge. Storm surge is very dangerous and a major reason why you MUST stay away from the ocean during a hurricane warning or hurricane.