Don't Count On Summer Warmth To Squelch Coronavirus

Coronavirus has spread to most nations (blue shading) and will
continue to envelope the world  Viruses often wane in the
 summer, but don't count on that with th coronavirus. 

As all of us know, the coronavirus pandemic we're enduring is much worse than seasonal flu we get every year.  Many more people will die from this than the regular flu, which is why we are all in a panic.

This virus has some simularities to the flu virus though.  The usual flu the world gets every year tends to wane in the summer, as warm weather seems to hinder its spread.  That begs the question: Will we get a similar warm weather break with the coronavirus?

The answer seems to be: Don't count on it, but maybe. Even if it does wane in the summer, that won't solve our problems.

As National Geographic reports, recent research indicates many viruses are more likely to stay intact and travel further in cold, dry air.  These viruses tend not to spread well in warm, humid air.   Some scientists think that low humidity, - you know the dry indoor air we deal with in the winter - makes mucus in the nose function less efficiently.

That mucus helps block viruses and bacteria from getting into your body, and the cold air might weaken that barrier, National Geographic notes. 

Additionally, summer tends to be sunnier than winter, and viruses usually don't do well in sunshine.

Of course, summer doesn't give complete protection from viruses. People still get sick in the summer.

This conronavirus now torturing us is new, so scientists really don't know whether it will wane in the upcoming warm weather in late spring and summer.  We are totally NOT off the hook, I can tell you that.

The current pandemic is seen around the world, including the Southern Hemisphere, where summer is just ending. (Actor Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson recently announced they have the virus, and they caught it in summertime Australia).

It's unclear if the coronavirus will get worse in the Southern Hemisphere as their winter sets in.  The bottom line is scientists really don't know if the coronavirus will wax and wane with the seasons.  Plus, viruses circulate all year in the hot, humid tropics, so summer isn't exactly a disinfectant.

Dr. Marc Lipsitch, Director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, writes that  "new" viruses like the current coronavirus have an advantage.  Pretty much nobody is immune to it,  unlike "old" viruses that have been circulating for years.

New viruses can jump from host to host, person to person freely, without any interference from warm summer weather.  The new viruses like the one in the current pandemic have plenty of low hanging fruit to seize.

Older viruses, not so much.  Lipsitch writes: "Old viruses, which have been in the population longer, operate on a thinner margin - most individuals are immune, and they have to make do with transmitting among a few who aren't. In simple terms, viruses that have been around for a long time can make a living - spreading through the population - only when the conditions are the most favorable, in this case, in winter."

Even if summer gives us a slight break from the coronavirus,  it could easily come roaring back in the autumn.

Jeffrey Shaman, a Columbia University researcher on the flu-weather connection thinks that the virus will continue to rapidly expand in the United States and elsewhere through the month of April, and might finally start to decline in late May or June. This, according to a report by Bob Henson in the Category 6 Weather Underground blog. 

It we get lucky and the coronavirus does wane in the summer, that buys us a little time to get a handle on it. But even so, it would probably come roaring back in the autumn, before humanity has had a chance to develop a vaccine and innoculate people around the world.

One ominous precedent, according to Henson in the Category 6 blog, was the great pandemic of 1918. Sporadic cases popped up in March of that year, but seemed to subside.  Then the pandemic roared to life, killing 195,000 Americans in just the span of a month in October, 2018.  The pandemic would go on to kill many more.

Whether or not this coronavirus ends up being a seasonal thing, a lot of scientists say it's here to stay, and will circulate around the globe perhaps forever, always sickening and killing people.  That's why it's so important to develop a vaccine against this thing to limit the damage and prevent the vast majority of the world from continuing to all victim to the disease year after year.

Scientists are working intensely to develop a vaccine, but one that works is more than a year away, likely more than that.

I don't offer this report just because I want to scare people. It's just to tell you we are in this for the long haul.  Keep washing your hands, folks, and keep up the social isolation.

Does Rain Help Republicans On Election Day?

Where it will be wet on Election Day 2018
Via the Boston Globe. 

A constant trope as an election day nears is, will the weather affect turnout?

Tomorrow is mid-term election day in America, so we're hearing this weather question again.

Weather probably does affect turnout, one way or another, and there is some research to suggest rain helps Republicans.

This is such a weird election, and such a weird, fraught moment in American  history, that the research might go out the window.
But as it stands now, some research says that traditionally, people who were more likely to vote no matter what the weather were white and older, which skews toward Republicans. That's why you might have heard that Republicans always hope for stormy weather on Election Day.

USA Today points to research that suggests that rainy weather might influence some people who were half-heartedly planning on voting for Democrats to switch their vote to Republican at the last minute.

Says USA Today:

"Study authors think it's because voters may be more averse to risk during poor weather. Previous political studies in psychology and other fields have shown that conservatives tend to be more pessimistic and risk-averse than liberals."

The effect of weather are small on election results, at least in the grand scheme of things. But it looks like rain could change the results of a particularly tight electoral contest.'

I wonder if this weird year will contradict this research. The following is my unscientific opinion, not  research. Republicans are different this year than in the past. They're not conservative in the traditional sense. The president is, shall we say, a firebrand, who stirs his base up, and who stirs the opposition up.  There's not a lot of traditional conservatism out there.

I wonder if this change will also alter the idea that rain helps Republicans.  That answer will be hard to tease out, even if researchers study parts of the United States that are rainy on election day. There's so many factors going into this.

For what it's worth, the East Coast and Great Lakes look to be rainy, and in some places downright stormy tomorrow, Election Day. Some showers are likely in the Pacific Northwest. Parts of the northern and central Rockies will get snow. It also looks like it will snow in North Dakota and northern Minnesota. The rest of the country looks to be mostly dry.

Whatever the weather tomorrow, you really have to suck it up and vote, no matter what the weather. If you get a bit wet or a bit cold waiting in line to vote, that's a tiny, tiny price to pay considering what's at stake.

You can easily change into dry and warm clothes once you get home from voting. It's a lot harder to change an election outcome you don't like. So you'd better do your best to influence things by voting

I'll see you at the polls! .

Hurricane Bud In Pacific, And Are Hurricanes Getting Even Wetter?

Hurricane Bud looking impressive in this satellite photo from Monday

The second Category 4 hurricane in a week is spinning off the west coast of Mexico this morning. Unlike last week's Aletta, this new one might actually do some damage.  Mostly from flooding.

And it could even wet some of the deserts of the American Southwest. Here are some details:

HURRICANE BUD

It's got an interesting name - Hurricane Bud - and it might sideswipe Cabo San Lucas later this week. By then, Bud's winds will have diminished to nothing too spectacular at all, but it could easily create a lot of heavy rain and flooding in southwestern Mexico, including the Baja Peninsula.

As of this morning, maximum sustained winds were 130 mph with Hurricane Bud, but it's moving northwest into cooler waters, which will start that weakening trend.

However, heavy rains often linger with the remains of hurricanes long after they weaken. Bud wil be no exception.  It will probably still be a tropical storm when it reaches Baja California, and then soak western Mexico with up to 10 inches of rain. Flash flooding is a very good bet in that neck of the woods.

It looks as if moisture from Bud will make it all the way up into Arizona and Mexico. On one hand, this is good. The Southwest has been plagued by wildfires pretty much the entire spring, and some nice rains will help. This system might give Tucson and Phoenix their first rains in three months. 

On the other hand, it doesn't take much rain in the deserts to set off flash flooding, and some of the downpours associated with the  remains of Hurricane Bud at the end of the week could cause some local high water in Arizona and New Mexico.

GULF OF MEXICO STIRRING

Hurricane experts are watching an area of disturbed weather in the Caribbean Sea east of Central America that is likely to eventually drift north. Once it hits the Gulf of Mexico, there is a chance - albeit rather slight at this point - that it could become a tropical storm.

Even if it doesn't, this storminess will bring a slug of heavy rain somewhere into the Gulf Coast toward the weekend or early next week. At this point the target area for the potential heavy rain seems to be Texas and/or Louisiana, but we'll have to wait and see on that.

While nobody is hitting the panic button over potential flooding yet, this kind of thing makes people in and around Houston nervous, given the catastrophe of last year's Hurricane Harvey flooding there.

HURRICANES GETTING WETTER?

Flooding from Hurricane Harvey in Port Arthur, Texas last year.
Photo by Marcus Yam/LA Times/Getty Images

Hurricanes, tropical storms, tropical depressions and the remnants of dead and dying tropical systems almost alway dump heavy rains wherever they go. Inland flooding is often the biggest risks of tropical systems. Note Harvey, mentioned above.

New research into hurricanes are leading to worries about heavier rains and worsening floods from future tropical systems.

The journal Nature reports on findings that hurricanes in general are traveling at a forward speed of 10 percent slower than 70 years ago.

That's bad because the longer a hurricane stays over an area, battering from wind and waves will also last longer. Worse, the heavy rains will go on in any one place for a greater period of time, resulting in worse floods than if the hurricane raced past a particular locations.

Some hurricanes have always slowed down and stalled. Again, witness Harvey in Texas last year. However, it looks like these stalls and decelerations with hurricanes are happening more often.

Once again, we can blame climate change. As NPR reports:

"Climate change is causing the poles to become warmer, which in turn affects the atmospheric pressure. There is less and less difference in pressure between the poles and the tropics, and that causes the big currents of wind between the two areas to slow down. 

Storms ride on those currents of wind, like a boat in a stream."

Which means if the winds carrying tropical systems slow down, so will the hurricanes. Just another reason to dread hurricane season, huh?

We Might Never Know Puerto Rico Maria Death Toll, But U.S. Surely Dropped Ball On Response

Harvard researchers say the death toll in Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria
last year was many times more than the "official" count. I guess
Donald Trump throwing paper towels into a Puerto Rican
crowd was inadequate hurricane relief. 

People are rightly appalled by the figures provided by Harvard University researchers who put the death toll from Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico last year at 4,645.

That's far above the "official" death toll of 64 attributed to the Category 4 hurricane on the island.

The Harvard researchers' findings is an estimate and could well be off. Still, it's horrifying.

It's based on a survey of 3,299 Puerto Rican households, which indicates 31 percent of respondents reported disruptions in medical services and 14 percent said they were unable to get their medications, according to the Associated Press. 

From there the researchers extrapolated the number of deaths caused by the lack of medical care post-Maria.

And that's the big takeaway from this research as far as I'm concerned. However many people died from the hurricane in Puerto Rico, the overwhelming majority of the casualities were not caused directly by storm surges, or flooding or high winds.

Most of the deaths were caused by a weak response to Maria. Yes, surely, some people would have died of medical complications in the immediate aftermath of such an extensive disaster. But the fact that the power was out for months in many areas, and that resources weren't applied adequately to the island is a national shame.

Remember, Puerto Rico is part of the United States. I remain convinced that because most Puerto Ricans aren't white, and most are Hispanic, the response wasn't as robust as it could have been, due to, yes, racism.

Let's face it, the response to Hurricane Harvey in Texas and Hurricane Irma in Florida last year was way more effective and timely than the Maria response in Puerto Rico. 

I do agree with Vox and other commentaries that the poor response to Maria was a mix of the Trump's administration's racism and its incompetence. As Vox says:

"Suspicion will, of course, linger for years that there's a connection between Trump's habit of weaponizing anti-Latino hysteria as the centerpiece of his politics and the unfolding of an essentially unprecedented human tragedy in a Spanish-speaking U.S. territory. 

The possibility that Trump and his team simply have no idea what they're doing should not, however, be dismissed out of hand. The fat of the matter is this is the only real crisis we've had occasion to see Trump try to wrestle with, and it's been a total fiasco - with a high human cost."

The Trump administration did not adequately gear up ahead of the storm when they knew it was coming. The relief effort was paltry and rife with incompetence or worse. Trump blamed Puerto Ricans for not recovering from Maria by themselves. He seemed to think throwing a few rolls of "beautiful soft" paper towels at people in Puerto Rico after Maria would make all the difference.

More people are researching to determine more precisely how many people died in Puerto Rico due to Maria and the U.S. government's paltry response.

George Washington University is also conducting an independent review to determine the number of Maria-related deaths in Puerto Rico. The results of that study were due out in May, says the AP, but the research team asked for and received more time to complete the study.

I hope more research does shed more light on this travesty, and if people in the Trump administration didn't do enough, let's hold them to account.

Sea Level Rise Might Be Worse Than We Thought

Water from melting flows off the Greenland
Ice Sheet. Recent research suggests ice
sheet melting in Greenland and
Antarctica might be worse than first thought. 

The science shifts a little from time to time as to how bad sea level rise is going to get with global warming. The latest study is mostly bad news on this front.

The latest salvo in this discussion is a new study that says melting ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland are now speeding up the process.

Global warming causes sea levels to rise in two ways: Warmer water expands. When the water heats up, it gets "bigger" meaning it has nowhere to go but up.

The other way sea levels rise is more obvious: Land based ice sheets melt, and the meltwater eventually makes its way to the oceans. Hence, higher water.

The latest research says the pace of sea level rise has picked up over the past 25 years mostly because of the melting ice sheets.

According to The Weather Channel:

"Of the 3 inches of sea level rise in the past quarter century, about 55 percent is from warmer water expanding, and the rest is from leting ice. But the process is accelerating, and more than three quarters of that acceleration since 1993 is due to melting ice sheets in Greenland an Antartica, the study shows."

The bottom line is that by the year 2100, sea levels could rise by two feet, instead of the one foot projections we've commonly heard are due by the end of the century.

One big wild card in all this is probably Antarctica. Will big parts of it keep melting faster and faster? Or will increased snowfall over that continent at the bottom of the Earth offset some of the melt. It tends to snow more when it's warmer, as long as it's not above freezing. A warmer Antarctic climate could increase snowfall. On top of that, some sort of natural cycle has increased snowfall in Antarctica over the past 10,000 years.

A NASA study, using satellite analysis, says the Antarctic ice sheet showed a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice per year from 1992 to 2001. That rate slowed to 82 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008.

It's possible this net gain trend will reverse itself in coming decades. Plus, everybody knows that parts of Antarctica are indeed showing a melting trend. And other research, including the new work I described above, contradicts the NASA findings.

As you can see, scientists really need to continue figuring out Antarctica and how it relates to climate change.

Meanwhile, things are worse in some areas than others. Changing sea currents and sinking land in some parts of the U.S. East Coast are making things worse. After sinking land amid rising sea levels can never be a good thing.

The combined land sinking and sea level rise means that the sea level in the past 100 years has shown a net gain of 11 inches in New York and Boston, 16 inches in Atlantic City, 18 inches in Norfolk, Virginia and 25 inches in Galveston, Texas.

While some of the research is still a little murky, one thing is clear: It's only going to get worse.

Scientists Pin Extreme 2016 Weather Specifically On Climate Change

This severe 2016 flood in China was one of many extreme
weather events that year made worse by climate change

For many years now, scientists have always told us it's really hard to pin a specific extreme weather event on climate change. Global warming just makes those wacky weather moments more likely.

Now, those scientists are getting better at saying certain weather extremes can be definitively linked to climate change. And they're pointing to some weird weather in 2016 as examples.

A peer-reviewed report called "Explaining Extreme Events in 2016 From A Climate Perspective" that takes a serious look at this very phenomenon. It was published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

"For years, scientists have known humans are changing the risk of some extremes. But finding multiple extreme events that weren't even possible without human influence makes clear that we're experiencing new wather, because we've made a new climate," said Jeff Rosenfeld, editor-in-chief of the AMS Bulletin.

The report said 116 scientists from 18 countries looked at nearly two dozen extreme weather events across the globe that happened in 2016.

The planet had its hottest overall year in modern times during 2016, and that was the biggest weather news the scientists studied from that year. In terms of specific weather events, some of those cited in the report you might have heard of. Others were more obscure and esoteric, but would have big effects on people living near where they occured. Or even beyond the local impact.

One intriguing weather event the scientists looked at was extreme heat in Southeast Asia during 2016. There was an El Nino weather pattern in 2015 and early 2016. That pattern does tend to increase heat in Southeast Asia, whether or not global warming is a factor.

The report concluded: "The 2016 extreme warmth across Asia would not have been possible without climate change.... Although El Nino was expected to warm Southeast Asia in 2016, the heat in the region was unusually widespread."

The report continues: "All of the risk of extremely high temperatures over Asia in 2016 can be attributed to anthropogenic (human caused) warming. In addition, the ENSO condition (El Nino) ae te extreme warmth two times likely to occur."

Two of the esoteric events the scientists cited were weird ocean warming in the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska near Alaska, and around the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.

Like the Southeast Asian heat, natural variability played a role in the ocean warmth near Alaska and Australia.  But the natural variability combined with climate change made the warmth unprecented. Why should we care about a warm Bering Sea? For one thing, it caused algae blooms, marine die-offs and contributed to a lack of Arctic ice. That damaged fisheries, and worse, a lack of ice in the Arctic might be messing with weather patterns, affecting, you, me and the rest of us in the Northern Hemisphere.

Of course, not all extreme weather events from 2016 are attributable to climate change. The study noted a big blizzard in the Mid-Atlantic States and a drought in Brazil that year were just random weather events, with little if any input from climate change.

Bob Henson in his Weather Underground Category 6 blog cited another study, which was actually a review of a number of studies that looked into weather particular extreme weather events are attributable to climate change.

Henson wrote that the analysis publishe by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, a non profit grou that focuses on climate change "looked at 59 extreme weather/climate change attribution studies published in the two years since the Paris Climate Accord in 2015. The analysis found that 41 of the studies demonstrated that climate change had made extreme weather events more intense and/or longer lived, and that a few of them had costs and death tolls that could be partially attributed to human-caused climate change."

I'm sure there will be a lot more science coming as researchers peer into more and more individual weather events to see ever more precisely how climate change is affecting us, or more often, screwing us over

Maybe We Need To Change How Severe Weather Warnings Are Issued

A map showing a tornado watch (yellow) tornado warning
(in red) and severe thunderstorm warning (in orange)
The map shows county borders statewide.
If you didn't know the name of your county and surrounding
counties if you were in Oklahoma, you wouldn't know
if the tornado was threatening you. 

You've heard people say this before:

Victims of tornadoes or other severe weather would say, "It hit without warning." or "We had no warning, it just blew in."

Almost always, there had indeed been timely warnings before the storm arrived. Did the storm victims not hear the warnings? Or disregard them?

As we head into the spring and early summer tornado season, this is an important, immediate worry.

Al.com recently had an interesting take on this, which perhaps highlights a need to change how weather warnings go out.

Typically, the National Weather Service will issue a tornado or severe thunderstorm warning for a particular county during a particular time period. The warning might mention a few of the communities that are threatened, but they obviously can't list them all.

The warning might start out reading like this:  "The National Weather Service has issued a tornado warning for Smith County until 7 p.m......."

Here's the problem, put succinctly by the Al.com headline: "Many Alabamians Can't Find Themselves On A Map, And That's Dangerous"

This isn't a slam against Alabama residents. It looks like not a lot of people anywhere in the United States know which county they live in. That's a problem, since, as noted, warnings tell you which county the warning is affected by a warning.

The entire Al.com article, though focused on Alabama, is a must-read for anyone who will someday, sooner or later, will have to heed a weather warning to save their lives and property.

That means pretty much everybody.

This whole question started in Alabama because of social scientist April Taylor.

On April 27, 2011, Alabama was at the epicenter of the most extensive, and one of the most deadly and destructive tornado outbreaks in American history.

One of the tornadoes, an EF5 - the strongest and most dangerous possible - tore through DeKalb County, Alabama, killing 25 people.

Taylor knew that before the tornado in DeKalb County, the National Weather Service issued a tornado warning for the county immediately to the west, the direction from which the tornado was coming.

Then, a warning was issued for DeKalb County itself. Why were people saying they had no warning?

According to Al.com, this prompted Taylor to create an experiment:

A deadly tornado pummels Tuscaloosa, Alabama on
April 27, 2011 during a super outbreak of tornadoes.
Researchers learned some people couldn't understand
weather warnings duirng this storm and many others because
they can't locate the county they live in on a map.

"I pulled together a map and a group of people with college degrees....It was seven people. And I passed out a map of the northern half of Alabama with the major highways listed. 

And I asked them: Label your home county, label the surrounding counties. Put a dot where your hometown is and if you can find where your school and your church and all that is.

"Seven people. All with college degrees. Only three people could label their home county. Only three. Only one was able to label surrounding counties"

In other words, when the National Weather Service issues a tornado or any other warning for X County, few people know what that means or whether it will affect them.

Taylor conducted a similar experiment with many more people. Most people couldn't identify their counties.

She took her study results to Kevin Laws at the National Weather Service office in Birmingham, Alabama, to ask whether there was a way to improve warnings.

Broadcast meteorologists are happy with that move. They are welcoming this look at how warnings are disseminated.

Veteran Alabama television meteorologist James Spann in Alabama says during severe weather he routinely puts maps live on the air showing sections and counties in Alabama that are under tornado warnings.  These maps also go immediately on social media.

"You work really hard on these maps and graphics, really hard. The minute you post it, the first 10 comments are 'What about Cullman?' 'What about Jasper?' 'What about Dora?' 'What about Eastaboga?' 'What about Hanceville?' 'What about Clanton?'

And I'm thinking, I don't understand this. What it is, is that people can't find themselves on a map. They honestly can't help it. They can't find themselves."

Part of the problem might be the maps. Sometimes, they're not labeled. It's hard to formulate a map that tells you both what's going on, and where you're referencing. You have to do both, apparently, but if the map gets too cluttered with information, you lose everything.

On top of that, Al.com notes, we don't use maps nowadays the same way we used to.

"'You look at college kids today, and I study them, because I've got to reach them,' Spann said. 'They pull out their maps app all the time, but they use the directions coming off that maps app that tells you what to do. It tells you to turn here and turn here, and they really don't even look at the map, they just follow directions.'"

Researchers are taking the experiences in Alabama with warnings and maps and doing even more research. They want to design warning maps that people can easily understand and interpret.

At the risk of sounding like Jason Chaffetz, I'm going to advocate for personal responsibility. I get it we don't know where we are on maps, so plan ahead. This won't really even cost you any morey.

Get a copy of a map of your area, preferably one that sbows counties, roads and landmarks surrounding your area.  Find it online and print if you want. Make it big enough so that you can mark each county with its name, and leave it where you can find it when there's weather warnings.

Like right next to your weather radio. You do have a weather radio, right?

This way, when the National Weather Service or a broadcaster squawks a warning, you can readily see where they're talking about. Pay attention to directions, too. If they say the storms are moving east, you can look at the map and see if the storms are west of you. If they are, be on the lookout.

Sorry, Republican Congress Creatures: NOAA's NOT Fudging Climate Data

NOAA said in 2015 that there was no slow down in global
warming between 1998 and 2014 and used this chart to
illustrate this. A recent study by Berkeley scientists
confirmed NOAA's findings.

The now terribly named U.S. House Committee on Science, Space and Technology is ever so annoyed with NOAA climate scientists.

There were some questions about what some saw as a "hiatus" in global warming, largely between 2005 and 2012. 

Climate deniers were pinning their hopes on this supposed hiatus to say the climate change is over, and besides, whatever warming there was didn't happen because of us humans and our fossil fuel use.

Never mind that 2014 turned out to be the hottest year on record. That is until 2015, which beat that record. That is until 2016, which set a new, new record for hottest year.

Still, our climate deniers want ot hang on to any shred of "evidence" they can find to "prove" global warming is a hoax.

Which is what peeved the Republicans on the Science, Space and Technology Committee.

Back in June, 2015, NOAA scientists came up with some research that cast doubt on the warming "hiatus." NOAA researchers increased the estimated rate of global warming in the 15 years prior to 2014.

 NOAA scientists say that more comprehensive data from the oceans and the Arctic showed that warming continued without a break during the late 2000s and early 2010ns.

Deniers quickly pounced on NOAA, claiming the erasing of the "hiatus" was political, that NOAA was trying to convince people of warming that wasn't there.

Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, who chairs the committee said in 2015 "climate data has clearly showed no warming for the past two decades" and NOAA "altered the data to get results they needed to advance this administration's (Obama's) extreme climate change agenda."

The question is there: Did NOAA cook the books to help Obama advance his proposed climate change proposals?

Of course, NOAA's data was public, meaning it was easy to capture for peer review. Scientists LOVE reviewing other people's data. Will there be holes, or is the research solid? That attitude is just part of science,and a healthy part of science at that.

Scientists want to advance knowledge, and besides, debunking science from an outfit like NOAA can't hurt a career. (I'm being cynical here.)

So scientists at the University of Berkeley,  California went ot work, and reviewed climate data obtained separately from NOAA.

The Berkeley scientists  concluded --- wait for it --- that the NOAA research was accurate. "They weren't cooking the books," said Zeke Hausfather, the Berkeley study's lead author.

Yep, it turned out the Earth was cooking, but NOAA's books were not.

To determine whether NOAA knew what it was doing, and whether they were faking data, which critics had contended, the Berkeley researchers went through independent data with a fine-toothed comb .

The researchers examined satellite data, readings from floating buoys and information from devices that sink into the oceans to record temperatures, salinity and other factors.

The Berkeley analysts said their conclusions agreed almost perfectly with the NOAA data.

It turns out the "hiatus" in warming in the years surrounding 2010 was the false stuff: It turns out the data that suggested the hiatus was faulty.

Better data showed the warming continued apace.

Of course, then came 2014 through 2016, which turned out to be the warmest years on record.

Most scientists think 2017, on a global basis, will still be much warmer than normal, but a tad cooler than the record breaking levels of 2016.

I guess that will bring us to the next, familiar step from the climate deniers: If 2017 ends up being a bit chillier than toasty 2016, the deniers will tell us that climate change is over, or never happened.

I'm sure we'll hear that any minute. If we haven't already.

With Republicans in charge, and the House Committee on Space, Science and Technology will continue to claim that fighting global warming is futile, because it doesn't exist and would be expensive.

I guess facts are whatever you want to believe, in the U.S. Congress, and if reality intrudes, pretend it doesn't exist.

Sigh.

Another Weird Heat Wave Coming To Arctic, Grounding Santa's Sleigh?

Record warmth in the Arctic is expeted in the
next several days as this global map shows.
Iage is GFS modeling via the University of Maine
Climate re-analyzer 

For the second winter in a row, forecasters are expected a bizarre warm spell up in the Arctic that could bring temperatures to near the freezing point right around the North Pole.

In the darkness of winter, the Arctic is normally a wicked frigid place. It's usually way, way below zero and pretty damn inhospitable.

But over the next few days, temperatures at the North Pole could be very similar to those here where I am in Vermont.

The immediate cause of the likely upcoming Arctic heat wave is a strong storm near Greenland that will pull warm air up toward the Arctic.

Relatively warm air sometimes does get pushed into the area around the North Pole if the wind is right, but I'm talking single numbers and teens above zero. Not near 32 degrees. That's something like 40 to 50 degrees warmer than normal.

In this case, there's more open water in the Arctic than usual and less ice. The ice tends to act as a buffer to chill many incoming bursts of warm air, but with the relative lack of ice, this frozen buffer isn't nearly as effective as it ought to be.

Many scientists are saying this has the fingerprints on climate change on it. As you've read here previously, the Arctic has been particularly toasty warm this year. 2016 will end up by far. Temperatures in the Arctic in November and December were especially hot.

That's in part because of the relative lack of sea ice up there. Starting in early autumn, the amount and thickness of sea ice in the Arctic expands greatly as winter sets in. That expansion continues into the spring.

This year, the ice has indeed gotten more extensive day by day as winter progresses, but the process has not been nearly as fast as usual. In fact, some of the sea ice started to melt back for a few days in November, which is a super, super rare occurence.

Scientists tell The Guardian newspaper that the only explanation for the extreme warmth in the Arctic is global warming. Oh, sure they get spells of relatively warm air up there, but not like this.

There's data that shows big winter warm surges have pushed into the high Arctic on average twice a decade since at least the 1950s and probably well before that. But the extreme nature of the warmth is what fascinates and worries scientists.

Scientists are also still trying to figure out whether the surges of warm air into the Arctic are becoming more frequent, says the Washington Post. 

The fact that this is the second year in a row the temperature will have flirted with 32 degrees near the North Pole is doubly shocking.

The fact that the cold air was displaced from the Arctic, possibly due to warm Arctic seas, the cold air that's normally at the North Pole has to get shoved somewhere. In November, it settled over northern Asia and Siberia, which had recofd cold weather.

Eventually, some of that frigid air sloshed into North America, helping to cause a spate of record cold in the middle of the United States last weekend. 

The cold air again shoved into Siberia, and may find its way into the United States in the form of another spell of brutal colld air in January.

I said maybe on that one. Time will tell.

One Of The Most Incredible Tornado Videos You'll See Ended In Tragedy

A still from a video taken by Clem Schultz last year
of a tornado approaching his house. It would
kill his wife, injury him and destroy his home. 

About a year ago, on April 9 2015,  a terrible tornado swept across northern Illinois.

It killed two people, injured a couple dozen and packed winds of up to 200 mph

A man  named Clem Schultz, 85, of Fairdale, Illinois knew the tornado was approaching. But he was convinced the tornado would sweep by just to the south or west of his house.

As the tornado approached, he was upstairs in the house retrieving camping lanterns because he and his wife Geri figured the storm would still cut off electricity to the house, says the Chicago Daily Herald. 

While he was upstairs, Clem spotted the tornado to the west. He started taking a video of it on his cell phone. You'll see the video at the bottom of this post and it is incredible. And scary.

Early in the video, you get the sense that Clem was right. The tornado seemed ready to pass just to the south of his location.

But it turned, and you see the tornado approaching Clem, then engulfing the neighborhood, then him and the house. The house blew apart, and Clem rode a collapsing chimney down to the ground.

A few minutes after the tornado passed, neighbors dug Clem out of the rubble. Geri had been in the kitchen. She died in the tornado.

After the tornado, Clem moved to a farmhouse in another town. He watches TV, sees something that needs commenting on, and is ready to tell Geri, but she's not there.

His dog Missy survived the tornado, so they watch TV together. Clem was able to retrieve a aftgan Geri had made. It was the last Geri crocheted before the tornado, the Daily Herald reports. 

Clem said at first he didn't have the will to watch the video he recorded, but finally did. He then shared it with a meteorology student that had been chasing the storm.

Says the Daily Herald:

"That student included it in his doctorate studies about the internal structure of tornadoes. The rare look from inside has been shared worldwide, and it is due to be shown soon at an international atmospheric science convention in California.

"I'm proud of it," Schultz says. "My video is saving lives."

I'm glad he's able to see the real silver lining in this tragedy. And I hope this video does lead to better undestanding of tornadoes and how to forecast them and how to get people out of danger.

This is the second tragic time of aware of where a person filmed an approaching tornado that would soon kill their spouse.

In March, 2012, a couple sat in their living room in Henryville, Indiana, filming a tornado as it approached. As it got close, they tried to take shelter in a corner of their house, which lacked a basement.

The Indiana tornado tore the house apart, killing the husband and injuring the wife.

Here's Clem Shutz's video from last year in Fairdale, Illinois. Watch it in full screen to really see what's going on. So frightening:

Washington DC Is Sinking Into The Sea; Will Take Bad Politicos With It?

Burlington (Vermont) Free Press editor and writer Adam Silverman created a splash on the pages of USA Today this week by reporting on splashy research indicating Washington DC is sinking.

Well, we knew for ages that metaphorically, Washington is sinking, but now Silverman tells us that University of Vermont research say the sinking scenario is literal.

Washington DC is sinking, and the ocean is rising
Rut ruh, Jim Inhofe!!  

Or, as Silverman puts it, "......the results of a study that concludes the District of Columbia is sinking is a physical manifestation of the political environment in the nation''s capital."

The news has been picked up by all the major news outlets. Cue the late night comic jokes, too.

Here's the problem:

The U.S. Geological Survey and UVM research shows much of DC sits on land dredged up from the Potomac River. It's settling, and is expected to fall six inches or more during the next 100 years.

Meanwhile, sea levels are rising, possibly faster than first thought, due to climate change.

Money quote in the USA Today article:

"'It's ironic that the nation's capital, the place least responsive to the dangers of climate change, is sitting in one of the worst spots in could be,' said Paul Bierman a geologist at the University of Vermont in Burlingotn and senior author of the new paper about Washington's descent, said in a statement. 'Will the Congress just sit there with their feet getting ever wetter?'"

Probably not, the way things are going. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-OK, will probably just grab another snowball to "prove" to the world that Washington is not in climate and elevation trouble.

I'll just let Silverman do a little more reporting here, as seen in USA Today:

"'This falling land will exacerbate the flooding that the nation's capital faces from rising ocean waters due to a warming climate and melting ice sheets  - accelerating the threat to the region's monuments, roads, wildlife refuges and military installations,' University of Vermont researchers said in releasing the findings Tuesday."

We've heard about Nero fiddling while Rome burned. Will Congress, under the powerful intoxicant of the fossil fuel lobby, throw snowballs while Washington DC sinks?

Finding The Bright Side To Pollution: Hurricane Weakener?

Satellite view of Irene in the Northeast
in August, 2011 causing catastrophic flooding.  

Finally! A reason to love air pollution.

Particles in the air from cars and smokestacks and such could sometime weaken hurricanes approaching the U.S. coastline.

Um, Yay?

Oh sure, there's lots to hate about air pollution. It causes illness, lung disease, early death. Plus it's unpleasant.

But according to Dr. Jeff Masters in his Weather Underground blog, air pollution might help weaken hurricanes if they encounter the junk we belch into the air day in and day out.

Citing research published recent in the Journal of Atmosphere Science, Masters said a study look at Hurricane Irene as it approached the North Carolina coast in August, 2011.

Irene had just gone through an eyewall replacement cycle, a common occurence in hurricanes in which the band of intense thunderstorms around the storm's eye reorganized. During the eyewall replacement cycle, a hurricane will usually temporary weaken, then regain strength as the replacement cycle is complete.

This time, Irene did not restrengthen when it finished an eyewall replacement cycle southeast of North Carolina.

Extreme flooding from Hurricane Irene
destroyed this Pittsfield, Vermont house in 2011.   

The research indicates that Irene was encountering air pollution as it approached the United States. The pollution particles reinvigorated and strenthened the outer rainbands of Irene at the expense of its inner core.  

So ultimately, the hurricane came ashore as a category one storm as opposed to the expected and more feared catagory three storm.

Of course, Hurricane Irene continued on, not as a strong hurricane, but one that dumped incredibly heavy rain on much of the Northeast, especially New York and Vermont, causing catastrophic flooding in those two states. 

This is pure speculation on my part, but I wonder if the outer rain bands, strengthened by the pollution, dumped more rain on New York and Vermont than they otherwise would have without the pollution. That combined with the downpours closer to the center of Irene, maybe produced a more prolonged and heavy rainstorm, making the flooding worse.

There is evidence that pollution weakened Hurricane Katrina in 2005 from a monster Catagory 5 storm to a somewhat weaker Catagory 3 storm as it approached the Gulf Coast.

A lot of good that did. New Orleans still drowned.

In his blog, Masters raises an excellent point: If pollution particles weaken hurricanes, why not blast every hurricane that is threatening death and destruction at landfall with particles to weaken it?

Masters reports that this idea is actually a bad one.

It seems the injection of particles must happen at the right time, when the hurricane is going through an eyewall replacement cycle. If you inject the particles at the wrong time, you might actually strengthen the hurricane because the polllution would penetrate to the core of the storm, intensifying the thunderstorms surrounding the hurricane eye.

Most hurricanes don't go through a hurricane replacement cycle at the most convenient time, right before landfall.

There's probably other factors at work, too that would make injecting pollution into hurricanes backfire, making the problems worse.

Still, next time you find yourself choking in the smog, remember, this awful air pollution might be your friend in the unlikely event a hurricane is approaching.

With friends like this, who needs enemies?

If You Like Lightning, You'll Love Global Warming

Will global warming cause more lightning?
Researchers think so.  

ZAP!!! BOOOMMMM!!!!!!!

Ah yes, the sights and sounds of a wild thunderstorm. Fun to watch from a safe place. Dangerous, too, given that lightning sets fires, kills people and cuts the power.

Get ready for a lot more lightning in the future if a new study released is true.

The study says that the amount of lightning in the United States will increase by 50 percent by the end of the century under the effects of climate change, according to the Associated Press, which ran an article on the study. 

For every degree the world warms in the future, lightning strikes will increase by almost seven percent, researchers concluded.

If global warming really gets out of control, as some predict, what is two lightning strikes in a storm now would be three.

The reason for all this new lightning in the future? Warmer air holds more water vapor. Water vapor is a fuel for thunderstorms, thus more lightning. (Ever notice thunderstorms are more likely on warm, humid days? There you go.)

Plus, in a warmer world, researchers think clouds would tend to have more upward momentum. Think thunderheads. Towering clouds sometimes form into thunderstorms. Again, Zap! More lightning.

More lightning, can of course, be very bad, given that it sometimes sets fire to homes and forests. Though the vast majority of wildfires are started by humans, a few are set off by lightning, so that's a danger.

As I write this, lightning is flashing in some epic lake effect snow bands in New York State. Though I certainly can't connect that to climate change, it's just that much more lightning flashing out there.

U.S. Government Forecasters Last Fall Said This Winter Would Be Kind Of Warm. Oops

Last fall, I was a bit relieved when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Climate Prediction Center said the upcoming winter would be sort of on the warm side.    

This long range forecast for the winter, issued by
U.S. government forecasters in November
did not capture how cold the winter would be
in the eastern half of the nation.  

If that came true, maybe my fuel heating bill wouldn't be as high and nasty as it otherwise might have been.

Well, as you all know, that forecast was pretty much wrong. 

Much of the nation east of the Rockies has had a good old fashioned cold winter. Not the coldest ever, not the most extreme, but pretty darn cold.

The entire winter wasn't exactly one Big Fat Giant January thaw.

The not-so-great forecast from the Cimate Prediction Center is more evidence that mid-range forecasts, weeks and months out are lousy. A lot more research needs to be done to make them better.

It would be extremely helpful to have reliable forecasts for weeks and months down the road. Yeah, the accurate forecast for tomorrow can tell us whether to bring an overcoat or an umbrella, but in the grand scheme of things that's not totally crucial for the greater good of society.

What if long range forecasts for weeks or months down the road were reliable and accurate?  Water managers in California, for instance, would be able to tell how stringent water regulations should be because they'd know whether the drought there was going to get worse or not.

Midwest farmers would have a good idea about what kind of rainfall and heat the summer would bring, which would inform them as to what crops to plant, when to plant them, which pests will most need controlling and when to harvest.

Less important but still crucial, here in Vermont, ski resorts would know in advance if an upcoming winter would bring lots of snow or not, which would influence their long term plans on snowmaking and how much staff to hire to serve skiers and riders.

And yes, if long range forecasters were accurate, I would have been better able to predict how much cash I would have had to fork over to keep my house warm all winter.

The reason long range forecasts weeks or months down the road are so lame is scientists don't have a great understanding as to why large scale weather patterns set up the way they do, and when they do. 
For instance, forecasters didn't count on a persistent ridge of high pressure along the West Coast of the United States this winter.

That ridge worsened the California drought, and re-arranged the jet stream so that it delivered repeated Arctic blasts of frigid air to the eastern half of the nation this winter.

Scientists want to better understand why things like the western ridge developed. It has to do with a complex web of changing ocean currents and temperatures, poorly understood weather phenomenon on one side of the globe that affect much of the rest of the planet, and probably atmospheric mysteries that scientists don't even realize exist yet.

The Climate Prediction Center does implicitly acknowledge their long range forecasts are iffy. Back in the fall, they did have vast swaths of the country in an "equal chances" catagory when the December-February forecast came out, reflecting the inherent uncertainty of predictions two or three months out.

There were bits and pieces of the forecast that were accurate, so it's not all bad. The prediction called for below normal temperatures in the northern Plains, which was right. It also said New England would probably be on the warm side.

This winter, New England wasn't warm, necessarily, but the region wasn't as far below normal temperature wise as the Midwest, Middle Atlantic States and South. Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, for instance, are only slightly cooler than average for this winter.

Given the unreliability of long range forecasts, don't ask me what kind of spring and summer we're going to have.  All I can tell you is we will have bright days and dark nights, most afternoons will be warmer than most nights, and if the wind blows, the breeze will come out of a direction.

That's about as good as anybody can do.

Will Global Warming Gives Us More Severe Thunderstorms?

Yes, I love loud thunderstorms.

A severe thunderstorm approaches St. Albans, Vermont
in July, 2013. New research indicates
global warming might cause more frequent
severe storms in much of the U.S., including Vermont.  

But most of us don't like the severe ones that wreck houses, cut the power for a week or flood whole neighborhoods.

But a Stanford-led study says we might be in for more storms like that.

According to the Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang, a warming climate will make severe thunderstorms and tornadoes more likely in the eastern two thirds of the nation over the coming decades.

When forecasters are considering the possibility of severe thunderstorms, they look at something called Convective Available Potential Energy, or CAPE. I won't bore you with the details, but CAPE refers to the amount of heat energy available in the atmosphere.

The more heat and humidity in the air, the higher the CAPE, and all other things being equal, the greater the chance of severe storms.

Forecasters also look at something called shear when looking at thunderstorms. Shear is just changing wind direction with increased elevation.  Shear helps thunderstorms spin, and a spinning thunderstorm tends to be stronger and lasts longer than your average garden variety storm.

If you have a big CAPE number and a lot of shear, you're likely to get destructive thunderstorms.

The Stanford study echoed previous research that said global warming would increase CAPE but reduce shear.  That's a mixed result that has had researchers not knowing whether global warming would increase storms.

The Stanford study says shear would decrease in general, but in situations where the CAPE number is high, shear would tend to stay high, too. Hence more frequent and more intense thunderstorms in much of the United States, including Vermont, by the way.

Of course, the Stanford study will be reviewed by other scientists, who might draw other conclusions.

Which leads me to a larger point: While scientists pretty much agree that man made global warming is occuring and bad stuff will result, there's still a lot of disagreement on exactly what kind of bad stuff will happen.

Yes, there's a general idea that the warming will cause bigger and more intense weather extremes, but what that means for a particular area is not always 100 percent certain. We only have educated guesses and general ideas, which of course makes planning for climate change that much more difficult.

And, just for "fun," I guess, here's video I shot of a severe thunderstorm in Burlington, Vermont in July, 2012.