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HURRICANE SANDY and GLOBAL WARMING.
SANDY was a tropical cyclone that severely affected the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern US in late October. It was the largest Atlantic hurricane on record, with winds spanning 1,100 miles (1,800 km)... (see Wikipedia)
Global warming makes extreme events like Sandy more probable. The Atlantic ocean gulf current is warmer, giving more energy to the weather system. The sea level is getting higher, making flooding worse. The anomalous jet stream configuration that lead to the "left turn" of Sandy smack into shore is an example of the destabilization of the jet stream that has been qualitatively linked to global warming heating up the arctic, see HERE.
In the diagram below, the purple line is the jet stream with the anomalous shape, the blue dotted line is a blocking pattern, and the red circle is Sandy getting ready to turn left and devastate New Jersey and New York.
None of this means that global warming "caused" Sandy. However global warming can make naturally occurring events more extreme. It also does not mean that another event exactly like Sandy will occur. The point is that there are many ways for extreme events to occur, and global warming makes it more probable that extreme events will be worse when they occur. For example, if the jet stream had not been anomalous (a possible feature of global warming), Sandy might not have turned left at all.
HERE is a lecture by Dr. Jennifer Francis, Rutgers U. documenting the connection between the loss of Arctic ice due to global warming, slower moving jet streams with larger meandering amplitudes, and increases in extreme weather.
SEE BLOG POSTS on Sandy BELOW
1 Comment
Add CommentJan Dash (Author) wrote:
I am one of the lucky ones in New Jersey. No power, but I was able to get a portable generator. No damage to the house, which I had boarded up with boards from the previous hurricane. Water is on, we have food. Cold downstairs, but not so bad. ---------- Trains not running to NY, where I normally commute. Insane to drive in - plus no gasoline without waiting for hours in line, assuming you can find a station that has gas. I somehow was able to get the Internet back, so I have been working from home. ---------- My electrician who lives a mile from the ocean showed me a cell phone video of his basement with water up to the doorknob. He has 16 people and 2 dogs from 3 families in his house; the neighboring houses are wrecked. One of his workers found only one wall of his house standing, the rest gone. ---------- So the question is, what does climate change have to do with Sandy? Climate deniers will say that there is no proof that climate change caused Sandy. That is the wrong framework. It is up to the climate deniers to show that climate change did not make Sandy worse. Although quantitative attribution is very difficult and statistically based and so on, there is a-priori evidence that climate change probably DID make Sandy worse. The global warming trend of climate change is dumping more energy into the weather system, making naturally occurring extreme events even more extreme. The jet stream that normally belts in the cold Arctic weather is weakening because the Arctic is heating up. Hurricane intensity is increasing, as shown by Kerry Emanuel of MIT. ---------- The climate deniers led by right wing politicians and media have gripped the Republican party in a Neanderthal other-world position of denying reality. Why? A great article "Republicans Reject Green Future to Bet on Old Economy" by Carl Pope on 2012-11-01 explains it as being due to supporting "...fading finance- and commodity-dominated economic order". ---------- The economic value of fossil fuel in the ground that is not used is zero. Thus, fossil fuel companies are doing everything they can to make sure that the fossil fuels are extracted and burned. They are supported by fanatical right-wing ideologues that want to reduce government action on everything, including climate mitigation. ---------- These people bear the responsibility for opposing action on climate change locally, nationally, and internationally. History will judge them very severely.