Eideard

A three-year series of research flights from the Arctic to the Antarctic has successfully produced an unprecedented portrait of greenhouse gases and particles in the atmosphere…

The far-reaching field project, a collaboration including scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography…known as HIPPO, is enabling researchers to generate the first detailed mapping of the global distribution of gases and particles that affect Earth’s climate.

The series of flights…mark an important milestone as scientists work toward targeting both the sources of greenhouse gases and the natural processes that draw the gases back out of the atmosphere.

“Tracking carbon dioxide and other gases with only surface measurements has been like snorkeling with a really foggy mask,” says Britton Stephens, a scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and one of the project’s principal investigators. “Finally, HIPPO is giving us a clear view of what’s really out there…”

The flights have helped scientists compile extraordinary detail about the atmosphere. The research team has studied air samples at different latitudes during various seasons from altitudes of 500 feet above Earth’s surface up to as high as 45,000 feet into the lower stratosphere…

Read the rest of this entry »

C-130J-30 and WC-130J flying over Katrina repairs in progress

The National Hurricane Center says it successfully predicted Hurricane Irene’s North Carolina landfall over the weekend and its destructive route up the U.S. East Coast.

But if members of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives wielding the budget ax in Washington have their way, future accurate forecasting may not be guaranteed and even curtailed, critics including hurricane experts say. Proposed cuts in the budget of the U.S. weather agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and in funding for new satellites to help improve severe storm warnings, could undermine the NHC’s forecasting ability.

“There are certain people that think all we have to do is cut spending,” Florida Senator Bill Nelson, a Democrat, told reporters in a visit to NHC headquarters in Miami on Thursday.

Nelson said that defunding NOAA programs that provide “hurricane hunter” aircraft for researching the intensity and track of hurricanes was “like cutting off your nose to spite your face.”

Well in advance, the Miami-based hurricane center came within about 10 miles of pinpointing the location where the center of Irene came barreling across North Carolina’s Outer Banks on Saturday in its first U.S. landfall.

This remarkable precision, especially given the massive size of the storm, has been credited with reducing costs by preventing unnecessary evacuations and other preparations, and probably saving lives…

Cuts proposed by a committee of the Republican-controlled House include a 42 percent reduction in funding for NOAA’s “hurricane hunter” planes, Nelson said.

Bill Read, the National Hurricane Center director, called the instrument-packed aircraft the “backbone” of storm surveillance and one of the big reasons the United States consistently does a much better job forecasting the track of a storm than any other country around the globe…

“It is our only real tool to know exactly what’s going on at the time we put out our advisory on the structure and the intensity of the storm,” Read added, referring to the closely watched hurricane forecast updates issued by the Miami center.

I can’t think of anything polite to say about Know-Nothing Congress-Creeps who would cut science budgets that provide specific life-supporting services as an immediate result of their research. The economic benefits alone are significant and should be – even to dimwits whose idea of weather forecasting is wetting one finger and sticking it in the air to see which way the wind is blowing.

Photo by Julie Denesha/Getty Images

Record snowfall, killer tornadoes, devastating floods: There’s no doubt about it. Since Dec. 2010, the weather in the USA has been positively wild. But why?

Some recent news reports have attributed the phenomenon to an extreme “La Niña,” a band of cold water stretching across the Pacific Ocean with global repercussions for climate and weather. But NASA climatologist Bill Patzert names a different suspect: “La Nada.”

“La Niña was strong in December,” he says. “But back in January it pulled a disappearing act and left us with nothing – La Nada – to constrain the jet stream. Like an unruly teenager, the jet stream took advantage of the newfound freedom–and the results were disastrous…”

“By mid-January 2011, La Niña weakened rapidly and by mid-February it was ‘adios La Niña,’ allowing the jet stream to meander wildly around the US. Consequently the weather pattern became dominated by strong outbreaks of frigid polar air, producing blizzards across the West, Upper Midwest, and northeast US.”

The situation lingered into spring — and things got ugly. Russell Schneider, Director of the NOAA-NWS Storm Prediction Center, explains:

“First, very strong winds out of the south carrying warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico met cold jet stream winds racing in from the west. Stacking these two air masses on top of each other created the degree of instability that fuels intense thunderstorms.”

Extreme contrasts in wind speeds and directions of the upper and lower atmosphere transformed ordinary thunderstorms into long-lived rotating supercells capable of producing violent tornadoes.2
In Patzert’s words, “The jet stream — on steroids — acted as an atmospheric mix master, causing tornadoes to explode across Dixie and Tornado Alleys, and even into Massachusetts…”

All this because of a flaky La Niña..?

And of course there’s this million dollar question: “Does any research point to climate change as a cause of this wild weather?”

“Global warming is certainly happening,” asserts Patzert, “but we can’t discount global warming or blame it for the 2011 tornado season. We just don’t know … Yet.”

Not that non-scientists won’t leap to negative conclusions as a result.

Not that anti-scientists won’t leap to stupid conclusions as a result.

A large swath of the country is at risk of moderate to major flooding this spring, from northeastern Montana through western Wisconsin following the Mississippi River south to St. Louis, National Weather Service flood experts are forecasting. Today the agency released an initial spring flood outlook for this high risk region and will release a national spring flood outlook on March 17.

For the third consecutive year, forecasters predict moderate to major flooding along the Red River of the North, which forms the state line between eastern North Dakota and northwest Minnesota and includes the Souris River Basin and the Devils Lake and Stump Lake drainages in North Dakota.

If the current forecast holds, the main stem Mississippi River is at risk for moderate to major flooding from its headwaters in St. Paul, Minn., all the way to St. Louis…

“Excessive precipitation, mainly in the form of snow, coupled with continuously frigid temperatures has yielded a thick snowpack in much of the upper Midwest. We expect significant flooding when this snow begins to melt,” said Lynn Maximuk, central region director of the National Weather Service. “We urge residents in risk areas to closely monitor NOAA’s river forecasts and warnings, and prepare now for flooding.”

For complete details, see the spring flood outlook at http://www.weather.gov/oh/hic/nho.

It would be a chuckle if it weren’t tragic. I don’t see any of the climate change so-called skeptics telling their kin in flood zones to “sit tight and don’t worry about a thing. NOAA experts in weather and climate don’t know nuthin.”

Meanwhile, I hope the rest of y’all pay attention and check predictions and updates for your own neck of the prairie.

Good thing there’s no permafrost in the United States, eh?

Up to two-thirds of Earth’s permafrost likely will disappear by 2200 as a result of warming temperatures, unleashing vast quantities of carbon into the atmosphere, says a new study by the University of Colorado Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.

The carbon resides in permanently frozen ground that is beginning to thaw in high latitudes from warming temperatures, which will impact not only the climate but also international strategies to reduce fossil fuel emissions, said CU-Boulder’s Kevin Schaefer, lead study author. “If we want to hit a target carbon dioxide concentration, then we have to reduce fossil fuel emissions that much lower than previously thought to account for this additional carbon from the permafrost,” he said. “Otherwise we will end up with a warmer Earth than we want.”

The escaping carbon comes from plant material, primarily roots trapped and frozen in soil during the last glacial period that ended roughly 12,000 years ago, he said. Schaefer, a research associate at CU-Boulder’s National Snow and Ice Data Center, an arm of CIRES, likened the mechanism to storing broccoli in a home freezer. “As long as it stays frozen, it stays stable for many years,” he said. “But if you take it out of the freezer it will thaw out and decay.”

While other studies have shown carbon has begun to leak out of permafrost in Alaska and Siberia, the study by Schaefer and his colleagues is the first to make actual estimates of future carbon release from permafrost…

Schaefer and his team ran multiple Arctic simulations assuming different rates of temperature increases to forecast how much carbon may be released globally from permafrost in the next two centuries. They estimate a release of roughly 190 billion tons of carbon, most of it in the next 100 years…

“The amount we expect to be released by permafrost is equivalent to half of the amount of carbon released since the dawn of the Industrial Age,” said Schaefer. The amount of carbon predicted for release between now and 2200 is about one-fifth of the total amount of carbon in the atmosphere today, according to the study…

Greater reductions in fossil fuel emissions to account for carbon released by the permafrost will be a daunting global challenge, Schaefer said. “The problem is getting more and more difficult all the time,” he said. “It is hard enough to reduce the emissions in any case, but now we have to reduce emissions even more. We think it is important to get that message out now.”

Using importance and science in the same sentence won’t mean much to politicians, pundits – or the pipsqueaks who prance around at the behest of fossil fuel profiteers. And the average consumer isn’t as likely to be impressed by computational analysis as how much their pocketbook is being squeezed for fuel oil and gasoline.

Fortunately, the Oil Patch Boys and their bubbas in the Middle east are doing a reasonably effective job of the last-named activity.

Not only is Earth’s surface warming, but the troposphere — the lowest level of the atmosphere, where weather occurs — is heating up too, U.S. and British meteorologists have reported.

In a review of four decades of data on troposphere temperatures, the scientists found that warming in this key atmospheric layer was occurring, just as many researchers expected it would as more greenhouse gases built up and trapped heat close to the Earth.

This study aims to put to rest a controversy that began 20 years ago, when a 1990 scientific report based on satellite observations raised questions about whether the troposphere was warming, even as Earth’s surface temperatures climbed.

The original discrepancy between what the climate models predicted and what satellites and weather balloons measured had to do with how the observations were made, according to Dian Seidel, research meteorologist for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration…

The first satellite data on troposphere temperature was gathered in 1979, but neither weather balloons nor these early satellite weather observations were accurate measures of climate change, Seidel said.

“They’re weather balloons and weather satellites, they’re not climate balloons and climate satellites,” she said. “They’re not calibrated precisely enough to monitor small changes in climate that we expect to see…”

This latest paper reviewed 195 cited papers, climate model results and atmospheric data sets, and found no fundamental discrepancy between what was predicted and what is happening in the troposphere. It is warming, the study found…

Scientists at NOAA, the United Kingdom Met Office and the University of Reading contributed to the paper, published on Monday in Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews – Climate Change, a peer-reviewed journal.

The junk science crowd won’t read it – or comprehend it if they did. Governments mostly will ignore the information.

Forgive my cynicism; but, I have little confidence in most human beings responding to scientific analyses of human problems – when we barely get past ideology or superstition for issues affecting the whole species.

In an international assessment of the Arctic, scientists from the United States, Canada, Russia, Denmark and other countries said, “Return to previous Arctic conditions is unlikely…”

“Winter 2009-2010 showed a new connectivity between mid-latitude extreme cold and snowy weather events and changes in the wind patterns of the Arctic, the so-called Warm Arctic-Cold Continents pattern,” said the report, issued by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)…

Normally cold air is “bottled up” in the Arctic during winter months but in late 2009 and early 2010, powerful winds blew cold air from north to south instead of the more typical west to east pattern, said Jim Overland, an oceanographer at NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle.

Overland saw this as a direct link between a warmer Arctic with less sea ice and weather in the middle latitudes, and he suggested it was likely to become more common as Arctic sea ice melts over the next 50 years.

This pattern has occurred only three times in the past 160 years, Overland said at the briefing.

“It’s a bit of a paradox where you have overall global warming and warming in the atmosphere (that) actually can create some more of these winter storms,” Overland said. “Global warming is not just warming everywhere. … It creates these complexities.”

“There’s now really no doubt that glacier ice losses have not just increased but have accelerated,” said Jason Box of the Byrd Polar Research Center. “Sea level rise projections for the future will again need to be revised upward.”

Reporting on this inexorable process continues, week-by-week, month-by-month. I don’t expect most people – especially in the United States – to pay much attention. First off, it’s science. Not as interesting as NASCAR or the NFL. 2nd, climatology requires understanding of time measured in quantities longer than 2 quarters of Wall Street reporting.

Those who ignore peer-reviewed study for the mumbo-jumbo of junk science designed to reinforce the status quo for an oil-based economy – aren’t even up to that level.

The report is over here.

Arranging blue crabs for sale in New Orleans
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

The US government reopened nearly 30 percent of federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico that were closed to fishing following the BP oil spill after tests showed that seafood there is safe to eat.

The area covers 6,879 square miles off the coasts of Florida and Alabama, and is the ninth reopening of waters since the spill, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said in a statement on Friday.

At its closest point, the area is about 110 miles southeast of the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig that exploded in April and sank to the sea floor, hemorrhaging crude for more than 100 days.

“Each reopening is a reassuring sign that areas once impacted by oil can again support sustainable fishing activities,” said NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco.

“Tourists and consumers should know most Gulf waters are open for fishing and seafood from these waters is safe to eat…”

About seven percent of federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico, or 16,481 square miles (42,685 kilometers), remain closed to fishing, it added.

Of course, if you think you need more to worry about in terms of food safety — you can always warm yourself with no confidence in any testing whatsoever.

One of the benefits of being a lifetime news junkie.

Last month was the warmest June on record worldwide, according to a report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Warmer-than-average conditions were present across nearly all continents, including much of the United States, according to the organization’s State of the Climate report…

Although global sea surface temperatures ranked the fourth-warmest on record, the combination of land and sea anomalies pushed June 2010 past June 2005, previously the warmest June on record, the report said. June was also the fourth consecutive month in a row of record warmth worldwide…

June also marked a record low in Arctic sea ice — the 19th June in a row the sea ice has been below average.

“This is important, because sea ice reflects incoming solar radiation back to space,” said CNN Meteorologist Taylor Ward. “Without the normal extent of sea ice in the Arctic, we can expect more radiation to be absorbed into the ocean, leading to more melting. It’s what we call a ‘positive feedback.’” The amount of sea ice in the Arctic has been steadily declining since 1990.

Warmer-than-average temperatures in the equatorial Pacific, also known as El Nino, have been contributing to the warmth. La Nina conditions — cooler-than-average temperatures in the same region — are beginning to set in, which could prevent more monthly records from being set. However, La Nina combined with record-setting warm Atlantic sea surface temperatures is expected to fuel an active Atlantic hurricane season.

The announcement of June’s record-setting warmth comes during a period of extreme heat in the United States and Europe. Excessive heat warnings have been topping weather headlines in the United States for more than two weeks now, and Europe has been shattering temperature records as well, with a heat wave through the first half of July. Eastern Europe has seen the most significant temperatures, although much of the continent has experienced above-average heat.

Just in case you didn’t notice.

The Atlantic storm season may be the most intense since 2005, when Hurricane Katrina killed over a thousand people after crashing through Gulf of Mexico energy facilities, the U.S. government’s top climate agency has predicted.

In its first forecast for the storm season that begins next Tuesday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast 14 to 23 named storms, with 8 to 14 developing into hurricanes, nearly matching 2005′s record of 15.

Three to seven of those could be major Category 3 or above hurricanes, with winds of more than 110 miles per hour, the agency said, echoing earlier predictions from meteorologists for a particularly severe season that could disrupt U.S. oil, gas and refinery operations.

“If this outlook holds true, this season could be one of the more active on record,” said Jane Lubchenco, NOAA’s administrator. “The greater likelihood of storms brings an increased risk of a landfall.”

In addition to the risk that major hurricanes can pose to about one-quarter of U.S. oil production and more than a 10th of natural gas output offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, this year’s storms could threaten to complicate efforts to combat the environmental disaster of BP’s gushing oil well.

The hurricane season officially starts on June 1 and typically peaks between late August and mid-October. An average Atlantic hurricane season brings 11 tropical storms with six hurricanes, including two major hurricanes, NOAA said…

Private forecaster WSI and Colorado State University’s hurricane-forecasting team so far expect the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season to produce at least eight hurricanes, four of them major, posing a heightened threat to the U.S. coastline.

CSU forecasters are expected to ramp up their prediction for the 2010 season in a report due out on June 2.

“The numbers are going to go up quite high,” William Gray, the hurricane forecast pioneer who founded CSU’s storm research team, said on Wednesday. “This looks like a hell of a year.”

I wish the head-in-the-sand crowd would all move down to the beach for the season. Reality might finally have a chance to bite them on their unfounded skeptical fundaments.