Weather Whiplash
gregladen | June 7, 2016The human release of greenhouse gasses has ultimately caused changes in weather patterns so that major storm systems in the Northern Hemisphere get wetter and move along more slowly, causing significant rainfall events to occur at a much higher rate than previously. This has become a nearly ongoing phenomenon, with major floods in Canada, Colorado, Texas, Western Europe, Texas again, various places in Azia, more in Europe, Texas again, and so on.
The short version of the story: The jet stream is often fairly linear, traveling around the planet at a high speed, but it can also get all wavy…
gregladen | December 31, 2015This is a guest post by Larry Lazar.
If you have had the news on the last day or two you may have seen stories and images about the Missouri floods. Many of those images are from Eureka (where we live), Pacific (where my wife Kellie works) and Valley Park (which is on my commute to work). That picture of the submerged McDonald's you may have seen on the news is in Union, Missouri, about 20 miles to the southwest of Eureka
We are dry, mostly, and doing okay. The basement was flooded during the initial 3 day rain event due to a failed sump pump and a couple downspouts that came unattached from…
gregladen | December 28, 2015I had considered writing an accounting of all the outlandish weather events of 2015, but that project quickly became a tl:dr list of untoward happenings which is both alarming and a bit boring, since it is so long. So, I decided to generate something less comprehensive, focusing more on the context and meaning of the diverse and impressive set of outcomes of anthropogenic global warming, an historically strong El Niño, and, well, weather which is already a pretty whacky thing.
See: Highlights of Climate Change Research in 2015
It should be noted right away that 2015 is the last year in which…
gregladen | July 1, 2015I want to quickly mention two interesting items that crossed my desk. First is a study in Nature that looks at changes in extreme weather patterns between 1979 and very recently, the other is a study of how media has been addressing climate science denial among presidential candidates.
Evidence that global warming is intensifying extreme weather
First, the changes in weather. Human caused greenhouse gas pollution has resulted in important changes in key factors that affect the weather. The simplest (but not complete) explanation is probably this. Overall patterns of air circulation (…
gregladen | June 3, 2015Joe and Mary built a house.
They built it on an old flood plain of a small river, though there'd not been a flood in years. This was a 500-year flood plain. Not a very floody flood plain at all.
The local zoning code required that for a new house at their location the bottom of the basement needed to be above a certain elevation, with fill brought in around the house to raise the surrounding landscape. But Joe's uncle was on the zoning board, and it wasn't that hard to get a variance. This saved them thousands of dollars, and they built the house without the raised foundation or the fill.…
gregladen | February 23, 2015A newly published study has identified changes in precipitation patterns in the US Northeast, which are likely caused by human pollution of the atmosphere with greenhouse gasses, which has resulted in global warming. According to the study, there has been an increase in extreme precipitation events, and an increase in the clumping across time of precipitation, with longer or more intense rainy periods, and longer dry periods.
Generally, climate and weather watchers have noticed that arid regions are drier, wetter regions are wetter, and many feel this is a consequence of global warming.…
gregladen | August 14, 2014A new paper advances our understanding of the link between anthropogenic global warming and the apparent uptick in severe weather events we’ve been experiencing. Let’s have a look at the phenomenon and the new research.
Climate Change: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.
It is mostly bad. Sometimes it is ugly. I was looking at crop reports from the USDA and noticed an interesting phenomenon in Minnesota, that is repeated across much of the US this year: Fewer acres are in crops but among those acres that are planted there is a high expected per-acre yield. The higher yield will make up for the…
gregladen | May 27, 2014Excessive warmth attributable to global warming and a stalled weather system, also attributable to global warming, have caused a weather system in over southeast China to dump rain since May 12th. A million people are in the impacted area, ahlf of them have had to move or have been rescued, and the 2-6 inches of daily rain continues. 25,000 homes have been destroyed.
This area has recieved huge investments over the last few decades, since a huge 1998 storm killed thousands and caused 26 billion dollars in damage. They now fear that the present flooding will be as bad.
Here's some video (…
gregladen | May 20, 2014This Sunday morning, on Atheist Talk radio, I’ll interview Paul Douglas, America’s favorite meteorologists (at least when the weather is good).
When I first moved to Minnesota, which happened to be during a period of intense Spring and Summer storminess for a few years in a row (including this event which wiped out Amanda’s dorm long before I ever met her), I spent a bit of time while searching for a place to live watching the local news, to get a feel for the place. Coming from the Boston area, where the main local news stations aggressively compete with each other using their…
gregladen | March 26, 2014From meteorologist Paul Douglas:
Published on Mar 14, 2014
Weather seems to be staling. Look into how the speed of the jet stream causes this "stuck in a rut" weather pattern. Meteorologist Paul Douglas also takes a look back as to how this winter compares to years past. Checking out extreme drought conditions, snow cover and cooler temperatures overall. This did not only impact the U.S. but other areas of the world. England experienced their wettest winter yet!
gregladen | March 4, 2014There are few different, related, ways in which climate change, including anthropogenic global warming, can cause extreme weather events. One is that climate zones move. This may result in "normal" weather for a different location occurring elsewhere. For example, if southern warm air system shift north, than the frequency of low and high temperatures, and their distribution throughout the year, can change. Another is the rise of entirely new conditions that were previously either rare or virtually unknown. One example of this might be the steering of Hurricane Sandy into the northeastern…
gregladen | March 1, 2014Nice coverage of climate change that is NOT A "DEBATE" ASSUMING SOME KIND OF DUMB FALSE BALANCE. Way to go, MSNBC. Thank you.
Summer weather in Sochi, a record-drought in California and a polar vortex. The evidence for climate change is all around us. Bill Nye and Jeffrey Sachs talk about the climate debate and need for energy research.
See also this guy:
It is funny that this guy got two people who are also not climate change scientists, but whatever.
gregladen | February 28, 2014If water had its way, this is what California would look like:
Think about it for a second. Every single moment, currents of air move, slowly or rapidly, across every land surface on the planet. Anything loose gets blown slowly or rapidly, to lower places. Every now and then, in some places rarely and in other places commonly, liquid water falls from the sky on almost every land surface on the planet. Now and then, in certain limited areas, frozen water builds up to great heights, thousands of feet hight, and moves along, scraping deep hollows and grooves the size of big lakes out of…
gregladen | February 27, 2014The famous Polar Vortex has come and gone in North America. Then, it came back. What a jerk.
As I write this the outside temperature is 13 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, and tomorrow morning’s Bus Stop Temperature promises to be about –25F windchill here in central Minnesota. Meanwhile my Twitter stream is polluted with climate science denialist tweets pointing out that it is too cold outside to believe in global warming, even though the entire land area of the United States, where this cold is being experienced as a cultural and physical phenomenon, is about one and half percent of the…
gregladen | February 25, 2014I first interviewed Dr. Alun Hubbard on the edge of the Watson River in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland last summer. His vivid language and lucid storytelling made that video on of the most popular in the Yale Series. (see below)
Both Dr. Hubbard, and my Dark Snow Project cohort, Sara Penrhyn Jones, live in the tiny village of Aberystwyth, on the coast of Wales, and teach at the local university. I skyped with Alun a week or so ago in the midst of the storms hammering the area. Shortly after that he wrote me to explain that his roof had just blown off in hurricane force winds....
Read the rest HERE…
gregladen | February 22, 2014 Paul Douglas send me this photo: "Check out the piles of melting slush in the foreground; looks like half a foot (?) of dirty snow in that one clump. This takes weather whiplash to a new (and ridiculously jaw-dropping) level. Photo courtesy of Dana Cottingham Fricke, from Concord, Illinois."
The biggest loss of containers from a container ship (that didn't just plain sink) happened a few days ago as the Svendborg Maersk was battered with hurricane like conditions including Waves Of Unusual Size generated in the Global Warming Enhanced megastorm, while at the same time tornadoes, some…
gregladen | February 19, 2014Last night I attended a talk by meteorologist Paul Douglas, at the Eden Prairie High School. The talk was “Weird Weather: Minnesota’s New Normal? Our Changing Climate and What We Can Do About It,” and it was sponsored by Environment Minnesota, Cool Planet, and the Citizens Climate Lobby. I didn’t count the number of people in the audience but it was well attended (over 100, for sure). Extra chairs had to be brought in.
You probably know of Paul Douglas either because of his own fame or because I often link to (or facebook-post) his blogs at Weather Nation or the Star Tribune, and I…
gregladen | February 13, 2014Links to sites/commentary/lists for extreme weather events.
Articles or blog posts listing events
Top 10 Global Weather Events of 2011
2012 Extreme Weather Sets Records, Fits Climate Change Forecasts
2012 Infographic on severe weather events
Heat, Flood, Cold in 2012
Weather extremes: freak conditions from around the globe for 2013
2013’s Most Terrifying Weather Disasters
2013 NOAA report on Billion Dollar Disasters (overview) and the report as a PDF file is here
Timelines, official lists, maps, etc.
State of the Climate: Extreme Events
Severe weather information centre
NOAA list of daily…
gregladen | February 13, 2014For the first time in weeks we are experiencing warm weather in central Minnesota (it is now 21 degrees F) with a bit of snow off and on. But elsewhere there are interesting things happening. First, in far northern California and the Pacific Northwest there will be rain. A LOT of rain. That's great because it will help a little with the drought. But, it will also probably cause some severe flooding.
Also, everywhere on the east coast from Atlanta up to New England is experiencing some kind of bad.
Snomageddonapocalypse. On fire.
A friend of mine in the Raleigh-Durham area told me…
gregladen | January 29, 2014From Paul Douglas at WeatherNation:
Published on Jan 28, 2014
WeatherNationTV Chief Meteorologist Paul Douglas looks at the devastating winter storm impacting much of the Southeast. Multiple accidents have been caused by the treacherous conditions. Schools are closed through Wednesday across the affected areas. Multiple states have declared States of Emergency, including Georgia and Alabama. Stay safe!