Taste of Autumn into Sunday Morning - Hurricane Potential Southeastern USA by Late August?
76 F. high in St. Cloud Friday. 79 F. average high on August 19. 66 F. high on August 19, 2015.
.62" rain fell at St. Cloud yesterday.
August 20, 1904:
Both downtown Minneapolis and St. Paul are hit by tornadoes, producing
the highest official wind ever recorded in Minnesota over one minute
(110 mph in St. Paul).
A Touch of "Aug-tober" - Sweatshirts Optional
Football
is on the tube - it won't be long before I'm tracking big yellow school
buses on Doppler and people-watching at the Minnesota State Fair. So
why not cue up a cool front, just to remind us what cool feels like? By Sunday morning you may need to rummage around for a light jacket or sweatshirt. Goosebumps. What a concept.
A
storm spinning up along the leading edge of brisk, Canadian air
flushing south whips up more showers today, with temperatures stuck in
the 60s and a whiff of wind chill after dark. Sunday looks MUCH nicer with sunshine, cotton-ball cumulus and afternoon highs in the low 70s. 80s return Monday and Tuesday,
but models pull another puff of premature chill into Minnesota late
next week; more random hints of autumn which spill into the last weekend
of August.
Remind me not to complain. My colleagues in Los
Angeles are trying to pinpoint wind speed & direction to help
firefighters. Louisiana is facing a flood-related housing crisis. And
the GFS model pulls a hurricane into Florida by August 31. I don't believe it yet - but what else can go wrong?
Not Buying It (Yet).
I'm not Tweeting it, or Instagramming it, or Snapchatting it, or faxing
(?) it to tech-wary friends trying to avoid the Inter-webs. It's way
premature. I shouldn't even be showing you this. But in the spirit of
full disclosure here is Friday's 18z 240-hour GFS forecast, showing a
tropical system approaching the east coast of Florida. Odds are (very)
small this will verify, but just in case I want to cover my....Doppler.
Source: WSI.
Showery Saturday - Heaviest Rains East of MSP.
NOAA's 4km NAM spins up a significant swirl of rain across southeastern
Minnesota and Wisconsin today, brushing the Twin Cities metro with
heaviest amounts east of St. Paul. Expect spotty (light) showers up
north with a cool wind blowing, temperatures stuck in the 60s. Future
Radar: AerisWeather.
Sunday Morning: 7am.
Check out these wake-up temperatures Sunday; 40s just west of the Twin
Cities with low 50s in the outlying suburbs. No frost yet, I'm happy to
report. Lows don't fall much below 60F near Lake Superior, thanks to
relatively warm lake water temperatures. This weekend your favorite lake
should be warmerr than the air temperature outside. Source:
AerisWeather.
August Warmth Returns Early Next Week.
ECMWF (European) model guidance pulls 80s back into town Monday and
Tuesday before another Canadian Burp pushes 70s back into the state the
latter half of next week. Highs in the 60s? We'll see. MSP Meteogram:
WeatherBell. Cooler Than Average September?
At some point the law of averages catches up with you and the weather
swings in the opposite direction. We've been trending warmer than
average for all of 2016; a mild La Nina cooling of the Pacific may pull
cooler than average air into the Northern Plains and Upper Midwest next
month, while temperatures continue to bake from Seattle to Anchorage.
Source: NOAA CFS and WeatherBell.
Celestial Sights In The Coming Days. Sky & Telescope reminds us what we can look forward to in the nighttime sky: "Step
outside as the stars come out, look southwest, and you’ll see an
eye-catching pattern. For the next few days (August 17–22), bright
orange Mars shines to the right of Saturn and the reddish star Antares.
The three form a tall triangle that changes every night. Mars is moving
leftward on its way toward passing between the other two. Next Tuesday
and Wednesday, August 23rd and 24th, the triangle will collapse to a
nearly vertical line of three shining points. After that, Mars will
continue leftward and the triangle will widen again, pointing in the
opposite direction..."
Image credit: "Saturn, Mars, and Antares line up almost vertically on the evening of August 23 and 24, 2016. Have a look!" Credit: Sky & Telescope diagram.
Cruel Summer: Floods, Fires and Heat. Andrew Freedman connects the dots in an excellent overview of what's happening at Mashable; here's an excerpt: "...The
‘signal’ of climate change is no longer subtle. We are seeing climate
change impacts now play out, on our television screens, in the
headlines, on our television sets,” said Michael Mann, director of Penn
State University’s Earth System Science Center. “Whether it’s the
multitude of thousand-year flooding events we’ve seen over the past
year, the massive wildfires, the strongest hurricanes in both
hemispheres, etc., we are now dealing with the impacts of climate change
on a daily basis,” Mann told Mashable in an email. “What more do the
critics need to see? It’s almost like someone up there is trying to tell
them something…”
It's Time To Adapt to Megafires. Gizmodo
has an excellent article analyzing fire trends and how we continue to
pay to knock down increasingly pervasive and catastrophic fires: "...Fire
is a natural part of the lifecycle of many ecosystems. But the changes
we’ve seen in the past decade—more fires, hotter fires, larger fires,
weirder fires—are not natural, and they are not going away. As more
people settle at the edge of wildlands, as invasive species transform
ecosystems, and as climate change promotes more exceptionally hot days,
mild winters, and dry summers, our planet is becoming a tinderbox. The
men and women fighting fire understand this. It’s on us to provide them
the tools and resources they need to adapt. “The effects of climate
change are fairly obvious to us as firefighters,” Gray said. “When
you’re used to seeing fire season last four months, and it starts
stretching to eight months, it’s something that’s ever present in your
mind..."
Artwork credit above: Sam Woolley.
Catastrophic Floods in Louisiana Have Caused Massive Housing Crisis. NPR reports: "...And
as NPR's Debbie Elliott reports, waters rose astonishingly high in
places that historically have not experienced flooding. "Even for a
state accustomed to natural disasters, this flood is like nothing
they've ever seen before," Debbie says. She spoke to Wayne Norwood, who
with his wife, Debbie, owns an antiques museum that was destroyed in the
flooding. The couple, both retired police officers, also had four
rental homes damaged in the disaster. "We have fire insurance, but we
don't have flood insurance because we're not in the flood zone," Wayne
Norwood tells Debbie. "And that's what happened to thousands of people..."
"They Didn't Warn You": Louisiana Disaster Reveals Deep Challenges in Flood Communication.
There was no formal tropical storm or hurricane to track or warn on.
Did the stalled tropical depression get the media time and attention it
deserved? Here's an excerpt from Jason Samenow at Capital Weather Gang: "...Some
Louisiana residents said they were completely caught off guard by the
severity of this extreme event. “With a hurricane, they kind of warn
you. But this, they didn’t warn you,” Jayda Guidry, a resident forced
from her home, told The Washington Post.
“We just thought it was raining.” Meteorologists knew this storm could
wreak havoc days before the first drops of rain. And they issued
strongly worded predictions. But now they are soul-searching, wondering
how the message could’ve been more forcefully conveyed and attained
greater reach..."
Photo credit: "A flooded baseball field at the Gonzales Civic Center in Gonzales, La., on Aug. 17." (Jeffrey Dubinsky via Reuters).
How Louisiana Plans to Rebuild After Historically Damaging Floods. Here's an excerpt of an interview at PBS NewsHour: "...Well,
FEMA will give up to $33,000 if you weren’t in a flood zone and had no
insurance, but the average — that’s the maximum you can get. The average
is about $7,500. We’re going to have to make up that difference with
volunteers and the giving of people from all over the country working
with nonprofits to help make those people back in their house and make
them whole. A lot of elderly people that had never flooded, lived in a
house 40 or 50 years, didn’t see the need or couldn’t afford the flood
insurance. So, those are — those are the ones that we’re really
concerned about...."
Extreme Floods May Be The New Normal. Scientific American explains: "...Over
the past year alone, catastrophic rain events characterized as
once-in-500-year or even once-in-1,000-year events have flooded West
Virginia, Texas, Oklahoma, South Carolina and now Louisiana, sweeping in
billions of dollars of property damage and deaths along with the high
waters. These extreme weather events are forcing many communities to
confront what could signal a new climate change normal. Now many are
asking themselves: Are they doing enough to plan for and to adapt to
large rain events that climate scientists predict will become more
frequent and more intense as global temperatures continue to rise? The
answer in many communities is no, it’s not enough..." (File photo: U.S. Coast Guard).
Hurricanes and Tornadoes Have Them, Is It Time For a Flood Scale? Dr. Marshall Shepherd has food for thought at Forbes: "...Dr. Amanda Schroeder, informed me that their NSF-sponsored SPREAD working group, conceived by Colorado State’s Dr. Russ Schumacher,
recently published a paper proposing a flood severity index. Dr.
Schroeder, a hydrometeorologist with the National Weather Service Fort
Worth, emailed me and said, "I led an interdisciplinary group of young
scientists to develop a flash flood severity scale that goes beyond
confusing return periods and mere historical recollections of past flood
events. This new scale will be applicable across multiple geographic
locations and should provide an easy-to-follow frame of reference for
flood ratings and comparisons"...
13 Years After Northeast Blackout, U.S. Power Grid Remains Vulnerable. Here's an excerpt from a Wall Street Journal article: "...A coordinated attack on just nine of the nation’s 55,000
electrical substations could cause a blackout across the country, a
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission report found in 2014. Through the
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the Energy Department has spent
$4.5 billion over the past few years to modernize the electrical grid.
Most of that funding, which was more than matched by private dollars,
went to “smart grid” efforts, with a notable focus on energy storage and
creating stable power in multiple locations. This is just the beginning
of what’s needed for infrastructure nationally if the goal is a
decentralized (and, ultimately, renewable) electrical grid that ensures
power even under extreme conditions..."
Photo credit: "Cars try to navigate through New York City as the sun sets during a blackout on Aug. 14, 2003." Photo: Associated Press.
Smallpox Could Return as Siberia's Melting Permafrost Exposes Ancient Graves. So don't sweat the thundershowers OK? Here's an excerpt from The Independent: "...Boris
Kershengolts, of the Siberian branch of the Academy of Sciences, said:
“Back in the 1890s, there occurred a major epidemic of smallpox. There
was a town where up to 40 per cent of the population died. “Naturally,
the bodies were buried under the upper layer of permafrost soil, on the
bank of the Kolyma River. “Now, a little more than 100 years later,
Kolyma's floodwaters have started eroding the banks.” The melting of the
permafrost has speeded up this erosion process..."
Photo credit: "The tundra in Yakutia normally melts to a depth of 30-60cm, but this year it has reached a meter." Rex Features.
Exxon Mobile Fraud Inquiry Said To Focus More on Future Than Past. Here's an excerpt from a New York Times story: "...But
in an extensive interview, Mr. Schneiderman said that his investigation
was focused less on the distant past than on relatively recent
statements by Exxon Mobil related to climate change and what it means
for the company’s future. In other words, the question for Mr.
Schneiderman is less what Exxon knew, and more what it predicts. For
example, he said, the investigation is scrutinizing a 2014 report
by Exxon Mobil stating that global efforts to address climate change
would not mean that it had to leave enormous amounts of oil reserves in
the ground as so-called “stranded assets...”
File photo: Mike Mozart.
Netherlands on Brink of Banning Gasoline-Powered Cars. A headline at The Independent has a story that made me do a double-take; here's a clip: "...The
Dutch government has set a date for parliament to host a roundtable
discussion that could see the sale of petrol- and diesel-fuelled cars
banned by 2025. If the measures proposed by the Labour Party in
March are finally passed, it would join Norway and Denmark
in making a concerted move to develop its electric car industry. It
comes after Germany saw all of its power supplied by renewable energies
such as solar and wind power on one day in May as the economic powerhouse continues to phase out nuclear energy and fossil fuels..."
Photo credit: "An
electric Tesla car recharges on the banks of a canal in Amsterdam. The
Netherlands saw an all-time high in electric cars in December this year." Rex Features.
Bigger, Better, Cheaper: Wind Power is Flourishing in the U.S. Dave Roberts reports for Vox; here's the intro: "Here’s some good news for your weekend: Wind power is kicking ass in the US. That is the TL;DR version of the annual Wind Technologies Market Report
just released by the US Department of Energy and Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory (LBNL). With 73,992 MW, the US is now the No. 2
country in the world in installed wind capacity (after China, which has a
mind-boggling 145,053 MW).
And we are No. 1 in actual wind electricity generated. All that wind
only provides about 5.6 percent of US electricity, though, which puts us
well behind leaders like Denmark (40 percent), Portugal, Ireland, and
Spain (between 20 and 30 percent)..." (File photo: Shutterstock).
New Advice for the Graduate. There's a Green Future in Plastics. Really? Bloomberg reports: "Scientists
at Exxon Mobil Corp. and the Georgia Institute of Technology have
discovered an alternative to the most energy-hogging part of
manufacturing plastics, potentially keeping 45 million tons of carbon
dioxide out of the Earth’s atmosphere each year. The breakthrough, set
to be published
in the Aug. 19 issue of the journal Science, ultimately may help
chemical plants shrink their carbon footprint and help the world meet
ambitious targets for paring the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for
climate change. Although nearly 200 nations agreed last December to rein
in carbon dioxide emissions by boosting energy efficiency and shifting
to cleaner sources of electricity, experts say it’s also essential to
green up industrial manufacturing..."
U.S. CO2 Emissions from Natural Gas Will Top Coal in 2016. Greentech Media reports: "At the beginning of 2016, America’s coal production fell to its lowest level in 30 years.
The march away from coal is cheered by those who would like to see the
U.S., and the world, move to a lower-carbon economy. But the
increasingly heavy reliance on natural gas has exacted a toll. The
energy-associated carbon dioxide emissions from natural gas are expected
to top the CO2 emissions from coal for the first time more than 40
years, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration..."
Beyond Coal: Imagining Appalachia's Future. Another hopeful article about reinvention from The New York Times: "Here
in the heart of central Appalachian coal country, an economic
experiment is underway inside an airy renovated Coca-Cola bottling
plant. Most days, Michael Harrison, a former mine electrician and “buggy
man” who once drove trucks 700 feet underground, can be found hunched
over a silver laptop, designing websites for clients like the Pikeville tourism board. Mr. Harrison, 36, is one of 10 former mine workers employed at BitSource,
an internet start-up founded by two Pikeville businessmen determined to
prove a point: that with training and encouragement, Kentucky miners
can learn to code..."
Photo credit: "Mountaintop
removal in Virginia as seen from Black Mountain in Kentucky. Pikeville,
Ky., is among the central Appalachian towns working to diversify their
economies as the coal industry fades."Credit George Etheredge for The New York Times.
The Cheapest Places to Travel For Each Month of the Year.Travel + Leisure has some news you can use: "You’ve heard the myths: Tuesday is the best day to book airfare. Wednesday is the best day to fly. January is the cheapest month to travel. All of them are up for debate, to a certain extent. But according to new data from Booking.com, you can count on getting good hotel values by picking the right destination for the right time of year. If a cheap vacation
is what you’re after, plan your trips based on when hotel rates are
proven to be low; then use a service like Hopper or Kayak to find the
best-priced plane tickets to round out your plans..."
Northeast Ohio is Built Like New England Because It Used To Be Owned by Connecticut. I had no idea, but Atlas Obscura enlightened me: "If
you look at a map of Connecticut, paying particular attention to town
names, and then do the same to Northeast Ohio, you might get the
impression that, at some point, the map was folded over onto itself
before Ohio had been filled in, and before the ink of Connecticut’s
place names had dried. That’s
because in a sense, it was. In America’s early years, what is now
Northeast Ohio belonged to Connecticut, and in the late 1700s and early
1800s, Connecticut transplants gave Ohio many of its names,
institutions, traditions, and people, into what was then called the
Connecticut Western Reserve..."
Image credit: "Cleveland's Public Square in the 1910s." (Photo: Public domain)
“If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to serve as a horrible warning.” – Catherine Aird
TODAY: Cool and showery with a damp, annoying wind. Winds: NW 10-20. High: 67
SATURDAY NIGHT: Showers taper, clearing late - brisk! Low: 54
SUNDAY: Partly sunny, the nicer outdoor day of the weekend. Winds: NW 8-13. High: 73
MONDAY: Plenty of sunshine, gusty and warmer. Winds: S 10-20. Wake-up: 61. High: 82
TUESDAY: Sticky sunshine, feels like summer. Winds: S 10-20. Wake-up: 68. High: 87
WEDNESDAY: Few showers, grumbles of thunder. Winds: NW 8-13. Wake-up: 69. High: 79
Historical Data Shows Arctic Melt of Last Two Decades is "Unprecedented". Here's an excerpt from InsideClimate News: "...Now, scientists have compiled the most detailed study to date
of sea ice records going back more than a century and a half. The data
shows that the rapid meltdown that satellites have been documenting
since 1979 is unprecedented since at least 1850 and coincides with the
buildup of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from burning
fossil fuels. Arctic sea ice has not been at levels as low as today's for at least 5,000 to 7,000 years, according to Julienne Stroeve, a researcher with the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), who was not involved in the study.
"It may have been sometime during the mid-Holocene, based on driftwood
found in Greenland that came from Siberia," she said. "Some other
studies have suggested at least 800,000 years..."
Image credit: "A gridded database of Arctic sea ice extending back to the 1800s."
Arctic Faces "Boom" in Shipping As Ice Melts. Here's an excerpt from Climate Home: "...While
a smattering of yachts and smaller passenger ships have plied these
Arctic waters over the years, never before has such a large ship set
sail on such an ambitious, and risky, voyage through the Northwest
Passage. The Serenity’s hull is not strengthened against sea ice, and a
conventional icebreaker won’t escort her; instead, she’ll be accompanied
by the RRS Shackleton, a British logistics vessel typically used to
support Antarctic researchers. Perhaps that’s why each passenger is
required to carry $50,000 in evacuation insurance in addition to the
$20,000 to $120,000 they paid for their ticket. However unprecedented,
the Serenity’s voyage is a sign of things to come. This may be the
beginning of a boom in Arctic vessel activity..."
Enlist the Market in the Climate-Change Fight. Here's the intro to an Op-Ed at The Wall Street Journal: "Even before the devastating flooding began in Louisiana last week, and we learned that July 2016
shattered all global temperature records, mounting data had
demonstrated the growing risks climate change poses to the global
economy. Whether you are an investor assessing the $2 trillion in bonds
that Moody’s
found carry elevated near-term climate risk, one of the nearly two
million U.S. homeowners facing significant risk from climate-related
flooding, or a U.S. taxpayer staring at $360 billion in direct
government costs from extreme weather over the past decade—these threats
are looming, large and increasing. This year’s World Economic Forum Global Risks Report declared the “failure of climate-change mitigation and adaptation” the “risk with the greatest potential impact in 2016...”
Climate Change Will Redraw Louisiana's Flood Risk Maps. Here's an excerpt from Newsweek: "...And
FEMA is going with another, more direct way of managing the increasing
risks of climate change: encouraging more severe weather-resistant
infrastructure. Some of the funds FEMA provides for a disaster go
towards rebuilding cities and houses to stricter code and in areas that
aren’t quite so risky—say, at higher elevations or further away from the
ocean. “Instead of constantly rebuilding for the next disaster, it’s
much smarter to use federal dollars to build safer and build back,” says
Lemaitre. As climate change risks climb and insurance costs rise to
reflect reality, the shoreline of Louisiana will change, too: fewer
buildings on the coast, and a lot more houses on stilts."
Photo credit: "A submerged vehicle is seen in Ascension Parish, Louisiana." Jonathan Bachman/Reuters.
Space, Climate Change, and the Real Meaning of Theory. Here's an excerpt of an excellent essay from Piers Sellers at The New Yorker: "...Climate-change
deniers in the United States have done a first-class job in spreading
confusion and misinformation. As a result, many prominent politicians
insist, and get away with insisting, that climate change is a hoax, a
mantra that has gained some credibility through sheer repetition.
Climate deniers are also fond of saying that global warming is not
resolved in science or is “just” a theory. This is a perfect example of
Orwellian Newspeak which also flies in the face of three hundred years
of scientific progress, in which intellectual argument and conviction
must be based on facts and substantiated theories, rather than personal
beliefs or biases. It is also dangerous. If nothing is done to reduce
carbon emissions over the next couple of decades, our climate models
predict that there will be massive changes in the global precipitation
and temperature patterns, with huge effects on water and food security,
and dramatic sea-level rise..." (Image credit: NASA).
Don't Call the California Wildfires "Natural Disasters". Here's an excerpt from an article at TIME: "...Nine
out of 10 wildfires are the direct result of human activity, a long
list that includes poorly attended camp fires, discarded cigarette butts
and equipment use. More than 2.4 million acres burn each year as a
result of human-caused fires, according to a National Interagency Fire
Center report.
Human-caused global warming has also contributed to more frequent and
severe wildfires, scientists say. Warm weather and a lack of water kills
trees, creating kindling for fires, and heat increases the length of
the wildfire season. And, because temperatures tend to be hotter and drier
than in previous generations, firefighters often struggle to put out
blazes. The length of fire season increased by 19% between 1979 and
2013, according to recent research, as temperatures have spiked due to climate change..."
In a Warming World, Deluges Like Louisiana's Expected to Increase. InsideClimate News has the story: "...The
devastating rainstorm that unleashed terrifying flooding last weekend
in Louisiana, with thousands of people escaping their homes and whole
parishes being overtaken by water, comes in recent succession to
similarly extreme and deadly storms across the country—in Texas,
Maryland, West Virginia and South Carolina. These intense storms have
become seemingly commonplace, raising questions about climate change's
role.
Of the two factors that made Louisiana's storm so devastating, one
(increased moisture in the air) wears the fingerprints of man-made
climate change from mostly fossil-fuel burning, while the other (how
slowly the storm was moving) is not so easily explained..."
Image credit: "Flooding devastated area in Port Vincent, Louisiana along the Amite River southeast of Baton Rouge." Credit: NOAA Remote Sensing Division.
Climate Change Is Going To Bring More Floods Like Louisiana. We're Not Ready. Here's a clip from an analysis at Vox: "...Though
smaller than the devastation wrought by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, this
latest flood reminds us of what a changing climate has in store for us:
Places that have flooded before will flood again, and places that
haven’t in the past will do so for the first time. These disasters are
the new normal — several other states are currently recovering from
disasters of their own. What has become painfully clear is that the
“emergency management system” in the United States does not have the
capacity to address all the needs. The systems we have in place to
mitigate, prepare for, respond to, and recover from these events do not
have the ability to deal with so many disasters at once. We can do
better..."
File photo: AP.
When Climate Change Becomes The New Terrorism.
A new level of climate volatility and weather disruption is already
resulting in far more displacement, cost and heartache than conventional
terrorism. Here's an excerpt of an Op-Ed that struck a chord at Philly.com: "...I
guess the only way Americans will take global warming seriously is if
and when we consider this the new form of terrorism. And the truth is,
what could be more terrifying than going to bed one night and waking up
with the floodwaters pounding on the front door, or trying to survive a
110-degree heat index day when you're old and sick in a North Philly
walk-up that's not air conditioned? Americans have become so conditioned
to the threat of a 9/11-style attack that JFK Airport was evacuated
the other night when someone panicked over loud cheering for Usain Bolt and thought it was gunshots. Maybe it's time for the public to fear things that are actually happening."
Photo credit: Reuters/Jonathan Bachman. "A casket is seen floating in flood waters in Ascension Parish, Louisiana, on Aug. 15, 2016."
85 F. high in the Twin Cities Thursday. 80 F. average high on August 18. 67 F. high on August 18, 2015.
August 19, 2007:
Record 24-hour maximum rainfall of 15.10 inches set in Hokah, MN
(Houston county). This 24-hour total contributed to the record monthly
maximum rainfall of 23.86 inches that was set in Hokah during August of
2007. August 19, 1980: Strong winds at Belle Plaine severely damage five planes.
Puddles into Saturday - We Should Salvage a Nice Sunday
"Predicting
rain doesn't count. Building arks does" mused billionaire uber-investor
Warren Buffett. I'm still ark-free, but moss is forming on my northern
side and I think I'm growing an umbrella.
This feels like 3 Junes
in a row. During a typical August our atmosphere stabilizes, with fewer
storms, leading to pockets of drought. Not this summer. Minnesota is
teetering on the northern fringe of a sprawling heat dome; wave after
wave of stormy weather rippling along the northern periphery of this
temperature gradient - each one accompanied by another slug of rain.
A wave of low pressure rippling along an approaching cool front may squeeze out another 1-3 inches of rain by Saturday night. Have a Plan B (indoors) tomorrow with leaky clouds, 60s and a stiff north wind. Sunday will be better as a weak ridge of high pressure treats us to sunshine and 70s. The nicer lake day, by far.
While we whine about a rainy Saturday
shell-shocked residents of Louisiana are facing the biggest U.S.
weather disaster since Sandy, in 2012. 40,000 homes damaged or destroyed
by flooding. Surreal.
Consistent Model Runs: Saturday Soaking.
The 00z NAM run prints out nearly 3" of additional rain by late
Saturday night. Sustained winds reach 20-30 mph from the northwest late
Saturday and Saturday night as temperatures fall through the 60s into
the 50s. Perfectly normal for early October. Translation: Saturday will
be a lousy lake day - Sunday looks better, brighter and drier, but still
on the cool side.
Potential for a Lousy Saturday.
Steady rain, chilly north winds, temperatures stuck in the 50s and 60s?
More late April than mid August, but models continue to hint at a storm
spinning up along the leading edge of significantly cooler air,
prolonging moderate to heavy rain into Saturday. 4km NAM Future Radar:
NOAA and AerisWeather.
Saturday: Bordering on Raw.
If you are tempted to go jump in a lake Saturday odds are lake water
will be 5-10F warmer than air temperatures. Our model ensemble shows 60s
by mid-afternoon Saturday; even 50s up north. Model guidance: NOAA and
Aeris Enterprise.
Dueling Models.
ECMWF (European) temperature guidance is on top, GEFS guidance from
NOAA below, which is actually a composite of 21 different runs of the
GFS, each one using slightly different initial conditions. Both models
forecast a cool weekend, then warming to near 890F next Tuesday before
cooling back down as we sail into early September. Source: WeatherBell. Cooler Than Average September?
At some point the law of averages catches up with you and the weather
swings in the opposite direction. We've been trending warmer than
average for all of 2016; a mild La Nina cooling of the Pacific may pull
cooler than average air into the Northern Plains and Upper Midwest next
month, while temperatures continue to bake from Seattle to Anchorage.
Source: NOAA CFS and WeatherBell.
"A Very Dangerous Place to Be". Huge California Blaze Forces 82,000 Evacuations. Here's an excerpt from The Washington Post: "...Exacerbating
conditions and the wildfire’s aggressive nature are the state’s
five years of record drought, experts say. Park Williams, a
bio-climatologist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth
Observatory, said vegetation that fuels wildfires is drier than it
ordinarily would be. Global warming “is absolutely contributing to what
we’re seeing in California this year, and more broadly, to the increases
in fire activity that we’ve seen over the past several decades
throughout the western United States,” Williams said Wednesday. “The
relationship between fuel dryness and fire activity is exponential. This
means that as drying occurs, the effects on fire are increasingly
extreme...”
It's Time To Adapt to Megafires. Gizmodo
has an excellent article analyzing fire trends and how we continue to
pay to knock down increasingly pervasive and catastrophic fires: "...Fire
is a natural part of the lifecycle of many ecosystems. But the changes
we’ve seen in the past decade—more fires, hotter fires, larger fires,
weirder fires—are not natural, and they are not going away. As more
people settle at the edge of wildlands, as invasive species transform
ecosystems, and as climate change promotes more exceptionally hot days,
mild winters, and dry summers, our planet is becoming a tinderbox. The
men and women fighting fire understand this. It’s on us to provide them
the tools and resources they need to adapt. “The effects of climate
change are fairly obvious to us as firefighters,” Gray said. “When
you’re used to seeing fire season last four months, and it starts
stretching to eight months, it’s something that’s ever present in your
mind..."
Artwork credit above: Sam Woolley.
Needed in Louisiana as Flood Waters Ebb: 40,000 New Homes.
The level of displacement is amazing, the number of people and homes
impacted - and this is why the American Red Cross has called Lousiana
flooding America's biggest natural disaster since Sandy in 2012. Here's
an excerpt at Christian Science Monitor: "As
the flood water in Louisiana begins to recede, the true extend of the
damage caused by rain storms that dumped more than two feet of water on
Baton Rouge and Lafayette in just two days is becoming clear. With an
estimated 40,000 homes damaged by the deluge, thousands of people have
been displaced from their homes, staying in overflowing shelters, with
relatives and friends, and in trailers. Those with flood insurance will
need places to stay while they rebuild. Those without flood insurance
have the even greater challenge of relocating completely..."
Photo credit: "Megan
Schexnayder and David McNeely (R) sit on the porch of a home surrounded
by floodwaters after heavy rains in Sorrento, Louisiana, on August 17,
2016." Reuters.
Extreme Floods May Be The New Normal. Scientific American explains: "...Over
the past year alone, catastrophic rain events characterized as
once-in-500-year or even once-in-1,000-year events have flooded West
Virginia, Texas, Oklahoma, South Carolina and now Louisiana, sweeping in
billions of dollars of property damage and deaths along with the high
waters. These extreme weather events are forcing many communities to
confront what could signal a new climate change normal. Now many are
asking themselves: Are they doing enough to plan for and to adapt to
large rain events that climate scientists predict will become more
frequent and more intense as global temperatures continue to rise? The
answer in many communities is no, it’s not enough..." (File photo: U.S. Coast Guard).
Hurricanes and Tornadoes Have Them, Is It Time For a Flood Scale? Dr. Marshall Shepherd has food for thought at Forbes: "...Dr. Amanda Schroeder, informed me that their NSF-sponsored SPREAD working group, conceived by Colorado State’s Dr. Russ Schumacher,
recently published a paper proposing a flood severity index. Dr.
Schroeder, a hydrometeorologist with the National Weather Service Fort
Worth, emailed me and said, "I led an interdisciplinary group of young
scientists to develop a flash flood severity scale that goes beyond
confusing return periods and mere historical recollections of past flood
events. This new scale will be applicable across multiple geographic
locations and should provide an easy-to-follow frame of reference for
flood ratings and comparisons"...
Louisiana Flooding Leaves 11 Dead, Forces Thousands From Their Homes. Here's an excerpt of an update from The Washington Post: "The
waters and the death toll continued to rise Tuesday in rain-battered
Louisiana, as flooding of historic levels swept anew into some
communities and stubbornly lingered in hundreds more. The scope of the
disaster was unprecedented, officials said. At least 40,000 homes had
been damaged, Louisiana’s governor said, and 11 people have been killed
since two feet of rain began falling Thursday night. More than 10,000
people were in shelters, miles of roads remained impassable, the start
of the school year was canceled and first responders began the grim work
of door-to-door inspections to check for drowning victims..."
U.S. Losses from Hurricanes Set To Soar By 2100. Thinking of retiring on the coast? Might I suggest a nice rental at VRBO.com. Here's an excerpt from Thomson Reuters Foundation: "The
annual cost of damage caused by hurricanes in the United States may
rise eight times by the end of the century, as the number and intensity
of the storms increase on a warmer planet, researchers said on Tuesday.
Globally, tropical cyclones account for more than 50 percent of economic
losses caused by weather. Their impact is projected to increase
"substantially" as the number of people affected grows, incomes rise and
storms worsen, the researchers said. In the United States, the increase
in the cost of hurricanes may even outpace economic growth if climate
change is not curbed, the Germany-based Potsdam Institute for Climate
Impact Research (PIK) said in a paper..."
File photo: "In
this file photo, neighborhoods are flooded with oil and water two weeks
after Hurricane Katrina went though New Orleans, September 12, 2005." REUTERS/Carlos Barria.
Mild La Nina?
I suspect much of the Farmer's Almanac winter forecast calling for
severe cold is based on the La Nina cool phase in the Pacific, but the
latest forecasts shohw only slight cooling in the months to come.
Graphic: Earth Institute at Columbia University.
Bitter Winter for Minnesota? Take It With a Grain of (Road) Salt. Here's an excerpt from The Star Tribune: "Minnesota
and much of the rest of the United States are in for an especially
frigid winter, according to the newly released Farmers’ Almanac and its
older rival, which comes out later in August. In its 200th anniversary
edition unveiled Monday, the Farmers’ Almanac said a deep freeze will
grip the Northern Plains, the Great Lakes, the Midwest, the Ohio Valley,
the mid-Atlantic and New England. For a warm winter, head west, said
the folksy, Maine-based publication. A local meteorologist was quick to
call the almanac a curiosity that lacks “scientific validity...” Graphic credit: Farmer’s Almanac
Coal Burning Causes The Most Air Pollution Deaths in China, Study Finds. The New York Times has details: "Burning coal has the worst health impact of any source of air pollution in China
and caused 366,000 premature deaths in 2013, Chinese and American
researchers said on Thursday. Coal is responsible for about 40 percent
of the deadly fine particulate matter known as PM 2.5 in China’s
atmosphere, according to a study the researchers released in Beijing.
Those figures are consistent with what Chinese scientists have been
saying in recent years about industrial coal burning and its relation to
air pollution..." 13 Years After Northeast Blackout, U.S. Power Grid Remains Vulnerable. Here's an excerpt from a Wall Street Journal article: "...A coordinated attack on just nine of the nation’s 55,000
electrical substations could cause a blackout across the country, a
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission report found in 2014. Through the
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the Energy Department has spent
$4.5 billion over the past few years to modernize the electrical grid.
Most of that funding, which was more than matched by private dollars,
went to “smart grid” efforts, with a notable focus on energy storage and
creating stable power in multiple locations. This is just the beginning
of what’s needed for infrastructure nationally if the goal is a
decentralized (and, ultimately, renewable) electrical grid that ensures
power even under extreme conditions..."
Photo credit: "Cars try to navigate through New York City as the sun sets during a blackout on Aug. 14, 2003." Photo: Associated Press.
Smallpox Could Return as Siberia's Melting Permafrost Exposes Ancient Graves. So don't sweat the thundershowers OK? Here's an excerpt from The Independent: "...Boris
Kershengolts, of the Siberian branch of the Academy of Sciences, said:
“Back in the 1890s, there occurred a major epidemic of smallpox. There
was a town where up to 40 per cent of the population died. “Naturally,
the bodies were buried under the upper layer of permafrost soil, on the
bank of the Kolyma River. “Now, a little more than 100 years later,
Kolyma's floodwaters have started eroding the banks.” The melting of the
permafrost has speeded up this erosion process..."
Photo credit: "The tundra in Yakutia normally melts to a depth of 30-60cm, but this year it has reached a meter." Rex Features.
Donald Trump's Lack of Respect for Science is Alarming. So says Scientific American; here's a clip from a recent post: "...The
current presidential race, however, is something special. It takes
antiscience to previously unexplored terrain. When the major Republican
candidate for president has tweeted that global warming is a Chinese
plot, threatens to dismantle a climate agreement 20 years in the making
and to eliminate an agency that enforces clean air and water
regulations, and speaks passionately about a link between vaccines and
autism that was utterly discredited years ago, we can only hope that
there is nowhere to go but up..."
Can Zero-Energy Buildings Become The Norm?GreenBiz has an encouraging story - here's a link and excerpt: "...With
buildings accounting for nearly 40 percent of the nation’s energy
consumption, they serve as a substantial part of our energy challenge,
as well as a potential solution — and a key sector on the path to a
zero-energy society. First, what exactly is zero energy? As defined by
the U.S. Department of Energy
(DOE), a zero-energy building is an energy-efficient building where, on
a source energy basis, the actual annual delivered energy is less than
or equal to the onsite renewable exported energy. According to the 2016 Energy Efficiency Indicator (EEI) Survey
published by Johnson Controls, 85 percent of respondents across regions
surveyed indicated that their organizations are paying considerably
more attention to energy efficiency with 72 percent planning to increase
investments in this capacity and in renewable energy..."
Photo credit: "The Lewis Center for Environmental Studies at Oberlin College is a zero-energy building."
U.S. CO2 Emissions from Natural Gas Will Top Coal in 2016. Greentech Media reports: "At the beginning of 2016, America’s coal production fell to its lowest level in 30 years.
The march away from coal is cheered by those who would like to see the
U.S., and the world, move to a lower-carbon economy. But the
increasingly heavy reliance on natural gas has exacted a toll. The
energy-associated carbon dioxide emissions from natural gas are expected
to top the CO2 emissions from coal for the first time more than 40
years, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration..."
What's The Future of Nuclear in the Midwest? A State-by-State Look.
Call me crazy but if we want to lower CO2 levels quickly we will need
some level of nuclear power, until clean renewables are at scale, which
is going to take more time, in spite of great technology, tumbling
prices and consumer demand. Here's an excerpt from a story at Midwest Energy News: "...Minnesota,
also a regulated state, has two nuclear plants, Prairie Island and
Monticello. Both are owned by Xcel Energy and they provide about 30
percent of the energy for Xcel’s upper Midwest customers, not all of
them in Minnesota. Minnesota also has a moratorium on new nuclear
plants, but some have pushed to lift it, specifically to build another unit at Monticello. Xcel Energy has said it could close Prairie Island before its license expires in
2033/2034, because of increased expenditures required to make upgrades
required in response to the Fukushima Daiichi disaster, and other
federal requirements..." (Photo credit: The Byron nuclear plant in Illinois.)
Beyond Coal: Imagining Appalachia's Future. Another hopeful article about reinvention from The New York Times: "Here
in the heart of central Appalachian coal country, an economic
experiment is underway inside an airy renovated Coca-Cola bottling
plant. Most days, Michael Harrison, a former mine electrician and “buggy
man” who once drove trucks 700 feet underground, can be found hunched
over a silver laptop, designing websites for clients like the Pikeville tourism board. Mr. Harrison, 36, is one of 10 former mine workers employed at BitSource,
an internet start-up founded by two Pikeville businessmen determined to
prove a point: that with training and encouragement, Kentucky miners
can learn to code..."
Photo credit: "Mountaintop
removal in Virginia as seen from Black Mountain in Kentucky. Pikeville,
Ky., is among the central Appalachian towns working to diversify their
economies as the coal industry fades."Credit George Etheredge for The New York Times
All 50 States Reimagined as Food Puns. Ramennesota? I defy you to check this out and not get hungry. Mental Floss has details: "If
you had to assign one piece of food to represent each state, which item
would you pick? For the good people at Foodiggity, the answer is
whatever is punniest. Armed with a set of state-shaped cookie cutters
and a love of wordplay, the team set out to make each state out of a
food. The series, called The Foodnited States of America,
features all 50 states. The project came about when Foodiggity founder
Chris Durso's young son suggested they make states out of food..." (Image credit: food diggity).
The Forgotten Tale of How America Converted Its 1980 Olympic Village Into a Prison. Who knew? Atlas Obscura has the details: "For
two weeks in the winter of 1980, a small town in upstate New York had
an Olympic Village filled with 1,800 of the world’s most elite athletes.
Despite Cold War tensions, the mood in the village was jovial; the
athletes shared meals, traded pins, and gathered in the Village’s “psychedelic room full of blinking electronic game machines” for endless rounds of pinball. Emotions ran high, as most Americans fondly remember the 1980 games for the “Miracle on Ice” victory
over the Soviet hockey team, one of the iconic moments of any Winter
Olympics. But a short six months later, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons had
converted the Olympic Village into Federal Correctional Institution Ray
Brook, still standing today..."
Tornado Located Over Hurricane?
A colleague at AerisWeather passed this NOAA warning along, showing a
potential tornado over the town of Hurricane, West Virginia. Who
wouldn't want to live in Hurricane?
TODAY: Showers, possible thunder. Winds: N 8-13. High: 77
FRIDAY NIGHT: Lingering showers. Low: 60
SATURDAY: Gray and unpleasant. Periods of rain, chilling breeze. Winds: NW 10-15. High: 66
SUNDAY: Partly sunny, nicer day of the weekend. Winds: NW 7-12. Wake-up: 55. High: 74
MONDAY: Sunny, breezy and warmer. Winds: S 10-20. Wake-up: 59. High: 83
TUESDAY: Sticky sun, feels like August again. Winds: S 10-20. Wake-up: 66. High: 87
WEDNESDAY: Showers and T-storms likely. Winds: W 10-15. Wake-up: 69. High: 82
Space, Climate Change, and the Real Meaning of Theory. Here's an excerpt of an excellent essay from Piers Sellers at The New Yorker: "...Climate-change
deniers in the United States have done a first-class job in spreading
confusion and misinformation. As a result, many prominent politicians
insist, and get away with insisting, that climate change is a hoax, a
mantra that has gained some credibility through sheer repetition.
Climate deniers are also fond of saying that global warming is not
resolved in science or is “just” a theory. This is a perfect example of
Orwellian Newspeak which also flies in the face of three hundred years
of scientific progress, in which intellectual argument and conviction
must be based on facts and substantiated theories, rather than personal
beliefs or biases. It is also dangerous. If nothing is done to reduce
carbon emissions over the next couple of decades, our climate models
predict that there will be massive changes in the global precipitation
and temperature patterns, with huge effects on water and food security,
and dramatic sea-level rise..." (Image credit: NASA).
Don't Call the California Wildfires "Natural Disasters". Here's an excerpt from an article at TIME: "...Nine
out of 10 wildfires are the direct result of human activity, a long
list that includes poorly attended camp fires, discarded cigarette butts
and equipment use. More than 2.4 million acres burn each year as a
result of human-caused fires, according to a National Interagency Fire
Center report.
Human-caused global warming has also contributed to more frequent and
severe wildfires, scientists say. Warm weather and a lack of water kills
trees, creating kindling for fires, and heat increases the length of
the wildfire season. And, because temperatures tend to be hotter and drier
than in previous generations, firefighters often struggle to put out
blazes. The length of fire season increased by 19% between 1979 and
2013, according to recent research, as temperatures have spiked due to climate change..."
In a Warming World, Deluges Like Louisiana's Expected to Increase. InsideClimate News has the story: "...The
devastating rainstorm that unleashed terrifying flooding last weekend
in Louisiana, with thousands of people escaping their homes and whole
parishes being overtaken by water, comes in recent succession to
similarly extreme and deadly storms across the country—in Texas,
Maryland, West Virginia and South Carolina. These intense storms have
become seemingly commonplace, raising questions about climate change's
role.
Of the two factors that made Louisiana's storm so devastating, one
(increased moisture in the air) wears the fingerprints of man-made
climate change from mostly fossil-fuel burning, while the other (how
slowly the storm was moving) is not so easily explained..."
Image credit: "Flooding devastated area in Port Vincent, Louisiana along the Amite River southeast of Baton Rouge." Credit: NOAA Remote Sensing Division.
Climate Change Is Going To Bring More Floods Like Louisiana. We're Not Ready. Here's a clip from an analysis at Vox: "...Though
smaller than the devastation wrought by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, this
latest flood reminds us of what a changing climate has in store for us:
Places that have flooded before will flood again, and places that
haven’t in the past will do so for the first time. These disasters are
the new normal — several other states are currently recovering from
disasters of their own. What has become painfully clear is that the
“emergency management system” in the United States does not have the
capacity to address all the needs. The systems we have in place to
mitigate, prepare for, respond to, and recover from these events do not
have the ability to deal with so many disasters at once. We can do
better..."
File photo: AP.
When Climate Change Becomes The New Terrorism.
A new level of climate volatility and weather disruption is already
resulting in far more displacement, cost and heartache than conventional
terrorism. Here's an excerpt of an Op-Ed that struck a chord at Philly.com: "...I
guess the only way Americans will take global warming seriously is if
and when we consider this the new form of terrorism. And the truth is,
what could be more terrifying than going to bed one night and waking up
with the floodwaters pounding on the front door, or trying to survive a
110-degree heat index day when you're old and sick in a North Philly
walk-up that's not air conditioned? Americans have become so conditioned
to the threat of a 9/11-style attack that JFK Airport was evacuated
the other night when someone panicked over loud cheering for Usain Bolt and thought it was gunshots. Maybe it's time for the public to fear things that are actually happening."
Photo credit: Reuters/Jonathan Bachman. "A casket is seen floating in flood waters in Ascension Parish, Louisiana, on Aug. 15, 2016."
Disasters Like Louisiana Floods Will Worsen as Planet Warms, Scientists Warn. Here's an excerpt from The Guardian: "...There’s
a very tight loop – as surface temperatures of the oceans warm up, the
immediate response is more water vapor in the atmosphere. We’re in a
system inherently capable of producing more floods.” The number of heavy
rainfall events in the US has risen well above the long-term average since the 1990s,
with large regional variances. While the north-east, Midwest and upper
great plains have experienced a 30% increase in heavy rainfall episodes –
considered once-in-every-five year downpours – parts of the west,
particularly California, have been parched by drought. Warmer air,
influenced by heat-trapping gases released by human activity, can
contain more water vapor than cooler air..."
Photo credit: "Close
to two feet of rain fell over a 48-hour period in parts of southern
Louisiana, causing residents to scramble to safety from flooded homes
and cars." Photograph: John Oubre/AP.
Nightly Newscasts Ignore Climate Change in Coverage of Worst U.S. Weather Disaster Since Hurricane Sandy. Here's the intro to a story at Media Matters: "The major U.S. broadcast news networks have all ignored climate change in their nightly news coverage of Louisiana's recent record-breaking
rainfall and flooding. The New York Times and The Washington Post, by
contrast, have explained how the extreme weather and flooding in
Louisiana are in line with the predicted impacts of a warming planet.
The disaster in Louisiana killed at least 11 people and displaced thousands more. The American Red Cross described
the state’s flooding as “the worst natural disaster to strike the
United States since Superstorm Sandy,” and the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Association classified the record rainfall as a once-in-every-500-years event -- the eighth such event to take place in the U.S. since May 2015..."
Can We Economically Outgrow Climate Change Damages? Not For Hurricanes We Can't. Here's the intro to a story at phys.org that caught my eye: "When
hurricanes like Katrina in 2005 or Sandy in 2012 impact on highly
populated regions they bring about tremendous damages. More than 50% of
all weather-related economic losses on the globe are caused by damages
due to tropical cyclones. Researchers from the Potsdam Institute for
Climate Impact Research (PIK) now analyzed the magnitude of future
hurricane losses in relation to economic growth. Showcasing the United
States they found that financial losses per hurricane could triple by
the end of the century in unmitigated climate change, while annual
losses could on average rise by a factor of eight. Most importantly and
contrary to prevalent opinion, they conclude that economic growth will
not be able to counterbalance the increase in damage..." (File image: NASA).
Bracing Ourselves For The Climate Tipping Point. Has that inflection point already arrived? Here's an excerpt of a post from Eric Holthaus at Pacific Standard: "...So,
what does it mean that we’re now in uncharted territory? And have we
already come too far to avoid key planetary tipping points? What hope
should we have that we’ll fix this sooner rather than later? This week,
scientists are gathering in Geneva, Switzerland, in an attempt to
answer these questions. That we’ve reached a new, increasingly urgent
phase of global warming is becoming apparent after a surge of millennial-scale floods, ecosystem collapses, and record-strong cyclones — all within the last year, coinciding with what’s likely to become the warmest year on record. The planet seems at the breaking point, with increasing evidence
that we’ve already locked in additional warming that will take us
further into uncharted territory — assuming we don’t rapidly change
course..." (File photo: Shutterstock).
Not Buying It (Yet).
I'm not Tweeting it, or Instagramming it, or Snapchatting it, or faxing
(?) it to tech-wary friends trying to avoid the Inter-webs. It's way
premature. I shouldn't even be showing you this. But in the spirit of
full disclosure here is Friday's 18z 240-hour GFS forecast, showing a
tropical system approaching the east coast of Florida. Odds are (very)
small this will verify, but just in case I want to cover my....Doppler.
Source: WSI.
Showery Saturday - Heaviest Rains East of MSP.
NOAA's 4km NAM spins up a significant swirl of rain across southeastern
Minnesota and Wisconsin today, brushing the Twin Cities metro with
heaviest amounts east of St. Paul. Expect spotty (light) showers up
north with a cool wind blowing, temperatures stuck in the 60s. Future
Radar: AerisWeather.
Sunday Morning: 7am.
Check out these wake-up temperatures Sunday; 40s just west of the Twin
Cities with low 50s in the outlying suburbs. No frost yet, I'm happy to
report. Lows don't fall much below 60F near Lake Superior, thanks to
relatively warm lake water temperatures. This weekend your favorite lake
should be warmerr than the air temperature outside. Source:
AerisWeather.
August Warmth Returns Early Next Week.
ECMWF (European) model guidance pulls 80s back into town Monday and
Tuesday before another Canadian Burp pushes 70s back into the state the
latter half of next week. Highs in the 60s? We'll see. MSP Meteogram:
WeatherBell.
Celestial Sights In The Coming Days. Sky & Telescope reminds us what we can look forward to in the nighttime sky: "Step
outside as the stars come out, look southwest, and you’ll see an
eye-catching pattern. For the next few days (August 17–22), bright
orange Mars shines to the right of Saturn and the reddish star Antares.
The three form a tall triangle that changes every night. Mars is moving
leftward on its way toward passing between the other two. Next Tuesday
and Wednesday, August 23rd and 24th, the triangle will collapse to a
nearly vertical line of three shining points. After that, Mars will
continue leftward and the triangle will widen again, pointing in the
opposite direction..."
Cruel Summer: Floods, Fires and Heat. Andrew Freedman connects the dots in an excellent overview of what's happening at Mashable; here's an excerpt: "...The
‘signal’ of climate change is no longer subtle. We are seeing climate
change impacts now play out, on our television screens, in the
headlines, on our television sets,” said Michael Mann, director of Penn
State University’s Earth System Science Center. “Whether it’s the
multitude of thousand-year flooding events we’ve seen over the past
year, the massive wildfires, the strongest hurricanes in both
hemispheres, etc., we are now dealing with the impacts of climate change
on a daily basis,” Mann told Mashable in an email. “What more do the
critics need to see? It’s almost like someone up there is trying to tell
them something…”
Smallpox Could Return as Siberia's Melting Permafrost Exposes Ancient Graves. So don't sweat the thundershowers OK? Here's an excerpt from The Independent: "...Boris
Kershengolts, of the Siberian branch of the Academy of Sciences, said:
“Back in the 1890s, there occurred a major epidemic of smallpox. There
was a town where up to 40 per cent of the population died. “Naturally,
the bodies were buried under the upper layer of permafrost soil, on the
bank of the Kolyma River. “Now, a little more than 100 years later,
Kolyma's floodwaters have started eroding the banks.” The melting of the
permafrost has speeded up this erosion process..."
Netherlands on Brink of Banning Gasoline-Powered Cars. A headline at The Independent has a story that made me do a double-take; here's a clip: "...The
Dutch government has set a date for parliament to host a roundtable
discussion that could see the sale of petrol- and diesel-fuelled cars
banned by 2025. If the measures proposed by the Labour Party in
March are finally passed, it would join Norway and Denmark
in making a concerted move to develop its electric car industry. It
comes after Germany saw all of its power supplied by renewable energies
such as solar and wind power on one day in May as the economic powerhouse continues to phase out nuclear energy and fossil fuels..."
New Advice for the Graduate. There's a Green Future in Plastics. Really? Bloomberg reports: "Scientists
at Exxon Mobil Corp. and the Georgia Institute of Technology have
discovered an alternative to the most energy-hogging part of
manufacturing plastics, potentially keeping 45 million tons of carbon
dioxide out of the Earth’s atmosphere each year. The breakthrough, set
to be published
in the Aug. 19 issue of the journal Science, ultimately may help
chemical plants shrink their carbon footprint and help the world meet
ambitious targets for paring the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for
climate change. Although nearly 200 nations agreed last December to rein
in carbon dioxide emissions by boosting energy efficiency and shifting
to cleaner sources of electricity, experts say it’s also essential to
green up industrial manufacturing..."
U.S. CO2 Emissions from Natural Gas Will Top Coal in 2016. Greentech Media reports: "At the beginning of 2016, America’s coal production fell to its lowest level in 30 years.
The march away from coal is cheered by those who would like to see the
U.S., and the world, move to a lower-carbon economy. But the
increasingly heavy reliance on natural gas has exacted a toll. The
energy-associated carbon dioxide emissions from natural gas are expected
to top the CO2 emissions from coal for the first time more than 40
years, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration..."
Northeast Ohio is Built Like New England Because It Used To Be Owned by Connecticut. I had no idea, but Atlas Obscura enlightened me: "If
you look at a map of Connecticut, paying particular attention to town
names, and then do the same to Northeast Ohio, you might get the
impression that, at some point, the map was folded over onto itself
before Ohio had been filled in, and before the ink of Connecticut’s
place names had dried. That’s
because in a sense, it was. In America’s early years, what is now
Northeast Ohio belonged to Connecticut, and in the late 1700s and early
1800s, Connecticut transplants gave Ohio many of its names,
institutions, traditions, and people, into what was then called the
Connecticut Western Reserve..." 
Arctic Faces "Boom" in Shipping As Ice Melts. Here's an excerpt from Climate Home: "...While
a smattering of yachts and smaller passenger ships have plied these
Arctic waters over the years, never before has such a large ship set
sail on such an ambitious, and risky, voyage through the Northwest
Passage. The Serenity’s hull is not strengthened against sea ice, and a
conventional icebreaker won’t escort her; instead, she’ll be accompanied
by the RRS Shackleton, a British logistics vessel typically used to
support Antarctic researchers. Perhaps that’s why each passenger is
required to carry $50,000 in evacuation insurance in addition to the
$20,000 to $120,000 they paid for their ticket. However unprecedented,
the Serenity’s voyage is a sign of things to come. This may be the
beginning of a boom in Arctic vessel activity..."
Don't Call the California Wildfires "Natural Disasters". Here's an excerpt from an article at TIME: "...Nine
out of 10 wildfires are the direct result of human activity, a long
list that includes poorly attended camp fires, discarded cigarette butts
and equipment use. More than 2.4 million acres burn each year as a
result of human-caused fires, according to a National Interagency Fire
Center report.
Human-caused global warming has also contributed to more frequent and
severe wildfires, scientists say. Warm weather and a lack of water kills
trees, creating kindling for fires, and heat increases the length of
the wildfire season. And, because temperatures tend to be hotter and drier
than in previous generations, firefighters often struggle to put out
blazes. The length of fire season increased by 19% between 1979 and
2013, according to recent research, as temperatures have spiked due to climate change..."
File photo: AP.
When Climate Change Becomes The New Terrorism.
A new level of climate volatility and weather disruption is already
resulting in far more displacement, cost and heartache than conventional
terrorism. Here's an excerpt of an Op-Ed that struck a chord at Philly.com: "...I
guess the only way Americans will take global warming seriously is if
and when we consider this the new form of terrorism. And the truth is,
what could be more terrifying than going to bed one night and waking up
with the floodwaters pounding on the front door, or trying to survive a
110-degree heat index day when you're old and sick in a North Philly
walk-up that's not air conditioned? Americans have become so conditioned
to the threat of a 9/11-style attack that JFK Airport was evacuated
the other night when someone panicked over loud cheering for Usain Bolt and thought it was gunshots. Maybe it's time for the public to fear things that are actually happening."
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