#extreme storms

[sitting-on-me-bum]

Lightning Scribbles Across the Sky in Dramatic Footage of Extreme Storms Around the U.S.

Photographer: Dustin Farrell

[theatriumlog]

Atrium Haftes, a planet with dead forests and extreme storms. Photography was near impossible and exploration severely hindered by the fierce rainfall. I left once night fell.

[newstfionline]

UN chief: Scientists say extreme storms will be ‘new normal’

By Edith M. Lederer, AP, October 4, 2017

UNITED NATIONS--Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is heading to the hurricane-battered Caribbean, where he said Wednesday that scientists predict the extreme storms during this year’s Atlantic hurricane season “will be the new normal of a warming world.”

The U.N. chief told reporters that Hurricane Irma, which devastated Barbuda, was a Category 5 storm for three consecutive days--”the longest on satellite record”--and its winds that reached 300 kilometers per hour for 37 hours were “the longest on record at that intensity.”

Hurricanes Harvey and Irma marked the first time two Category 4 storms made landfall on the United States mainland in the same year, Guterres said, and Hurricane Maria, a Category 5 storm, followed up by decimating Dominica and devastating Puerto Rico.

The secretary-general said “scientists are learning more and more about the links between climate change and extreme weather.”

A warmer climate “turbocharges the intensity of hurricanes,” which pick up energy as they move across the ocean, he said. “The melting of glaciers, and the thermal expansion of the seas, means bigger storm surges” and with more people living along coastlines “the damage is, and will be that much greater.”

As for changes in major climate systems, Guterres said sea levels have risen more than 10 inches since 1870 and over the last 30 years, “the number of annual weather-related disasters has nearly tripled, and economic losses have quintupled.”

The secretary-general said he will travel to Antigua and Barbuda, and Dominica, on Saturday to survey the damage and assess what more the United Nations can do.

To date, he said the U.N. and its partners have provided hard-hit Caribbean nations with 18 tons of food, 3 million water purification tablets, 3,000 water tanks, 2,500 tents, 2,000 mosquito nets and school kits, 500 debit cards for cash assistance and more.

Guterres stressed that “innovative financing mechanisms will be crucial” to enable these small islands to recover, rebuild and “strengthen resilience.”

[oilchangeus-blog]

Yes, February was too warm. Global climate is in ‘uncharted territory’

Less than three months into the year, climate changes like temperature and sea levels around the world are continuing the record-breaking trends seen in 2016.

Less than three months into the year, climate changes around the world are continuing the record-breaking trends seen in 2016.

More than 11,700 daily temperature records across the U.S. were broken in February, with the average temperature 7.3 degrees warmer than normal for the last full month of winter. According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the Arctic “witnessed the polar equivalent of a heatwave.” This spurred dangerous sea ice melting.

[jammernews]

Multiple fatalities confirmed in Texas Hill Country flooding : NPR

At least 24 dead in extreme Texas flooding. Several people remain missing

At least 24 people are dead following extreme flooding that slammed Texas Hill Country overnight on Friday, according to officials. At least

[mayflower-gal]

Hey so like... the Northeast US is going to be really fucked from climate change and we don't talk about that enough.

TIL: the region on average has already received a 20% increase in precipitation since 1901, which is an additional 7-8 in on average (in my state anyway: take a wild guess which one that is), and this should fucking terrify you because it's only gonna get worse the longer we put off systemically dealing with climate change!! Hurray!

[stevemaclellan]

Atlantic Canada Reels as PM Links Storm Fiona to Climate

Post-tropical storm Fiona took its place as one of the biggest catastrophic events in Atlantic Canada history as communities began picking up the pieces.

On his trip through the region, Trudeau was asked whether the solution to a catastrophic storm like Fiona is to build back differently.

“There’s always lessons to be learned,” he told reporters in Stanley Bridge, where a massive storm surge and hurricane-force winds upended buildings and tossed fishing boats onto the shore. But “unfortunately, the reality with climate change is that there’s going to be more extreme weather events. We’re going to have to think about how to make sure we’re ready for whatever comes at us.”

CP says Trudeau also paid a brief visit to the Cape Breton community of Glace Bay, where he met with residents and surveyed a blustery, rain-soaked neighbourhood where he was shown two homes with their roofs torn off.

Afterwards he was asked whether it’s time to consider stronger building codes given the increasing intensity of storms. “How we make sure that families don’t have to go through this level of anxiety is certainly part of the conversation we can have around building codes, around expectations,” he said.

As for whether it’s time for Ottawa to invest more in burying overhead power lines, “we’re looking at ways of building more resilient infrastructure.” But “the reality is that extreme weather events are going to get more intense over the coming years because our climate is changing.”

[rjzimmerman]

New Research Shows Aerosol Emissions May Have Masked Global Warming’s Supercharging of Tropical Storms - Inside Climate News

This is weird. Reducing air pollution could be a factor in the negative effects of global warming/climate change. Toss this bone to the climate change deniers (i.e., republicans), and watch the battles. “We told you that reducing air pollution is expensive!”

Excerpt from this story from Inside Climate News:

Ample research shows how surging greenhouse gas concentrations intensify deadly storms, droughts and heat waves, but cutting them, along with other industrial pollution emissions, will also affect global weather.

The effects of emissions reductions are less studied than increases, but understanding how the climate responds to such declines is also critical to protecting people from climate extremes like flooding, heat waves, dry spells and cyclones.

New research by NOAA published today in Science Advances shows that the rise and fall of industrial soot—aerosols—plays a critical role in tropical storm activity all over the world. The research identified some twists that should be of interest to policy makers, said study author Hiroyuki Murakami, a tropical storm researcher at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory.

Aerosols often form a reflective shield in the atmosphere that can trap warmth higher up, but reduces the amount of heat reaching the planet’s surface. Murakami’s modeling study suggests that an estimated 50 percent drop in atmospheric aerosol pollution in Europe and North America between 1980 and 2020 led to surface warming of the tropical Atlantic Ocean, where cyclones have increased 33 percent during the same 40-year period, he said.

“Reducing air pollution is not always decreasing the risk of hazards from tropical cyclones,” he said, adding that climate policy needs to consider the pros and cons of different impacts from reducing industrial pollution. If policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions rapidly succeed, it could further reduce aerosol pollution, leading to more heating and more tropical storm activity.