This year’s Asian monsoon has been a real beast for China. Inflated by the aftermath of a strong El Nino combining with record global temperatures, the system has sent powerful thunderstorms roaring over eastern sections of the Yangtze River Valley for the better part of two weeks.
These storms have spurred record tornadoes, rocked the Chinese landscape with lightning strikes, and dumped more than 16 inches of rain over a region near Wuhan and just west of Shanghai. The powerful downpours and related winds have now resulted in more than 54,000 building collapses and an estimated 7.7 billion dollars in damages. 32 million people have already been impacted. 1.4 million people have been displaced. And 231 people are now dead or missing (see China Flooding).
(Very intense rainfall over the past two weeks over the Yangtze River Valley region of China has resulted in severe flooding that has destroyed 54,000 buildings and displaced 1.4 million people. Image source: China’s Meteorological Agency.)
And all this before the predicted arrival of a Super Typhoon which is expected to dump as much as 24 inches of additional rain near the hardest hit regions between Shanghai and Wuhan this weekend after it roars over Taiwan on Thursday.
175 mph Super Typhoon Nepartak in the Pipe
As China was reeling from the impacts of heavy rainfall, sea surface temperatures over the Northwestern Pacific were screaming hot. Surface waters over a region south and east of Taiwan on July 4 and 5 approached 31 degrees Celsius (88 degrees Fahrenheit) or 1-2 C above average. In addition, these hot waters extended to great depth beneath southeastern Pacific surface boundaries. As a result, the amount of ocean heat content available to fuel an intensifying Typhoon was at about the top range one would ever tend to see (near 150 KJ per square centimeter, according to Dr. Jeff Masters at Weather Underground).
Running through these deep, hot waters on July 4 was a 70 mph max wind intensity tropical storm Nepartak. But as wind shear lessened and Nepartak drew in a deep draught of that high energy Pacific Ocean heat and moisture, the storm exploded. In just one 24 hour period, the system added fully 80 mph of maximum wind speed intensity to leap from a mere tropical storm to a very strong category 4 Typhoon by Tuesday night.
(Nepartak barrels toward Taiwan and China on Wednesday in this NOAA enhanced satellite image.)
By Wednesday, the storm had achieved category 5 Super Typhoon intensity with top sustained winds estimated at 175 mph and a lowest central pressure of 900 mb (Japanese Meteorological Agency and Joint Typhoon Warning Center).
The Typhoon is now expected to make landfall in Taiwan on Thursday as a Category 4 storm. Heavy storm surges, very powerful winds, and 5-15 inches of predicted rainfall over most of Taiwan with up to 43 inches in the higher elevations is expected to generate flooding, landslides, structural damage, and to disrupt crops.
The storm is then predicted to leap the Taiwan Strait and track north and west over mainland China. As the storm weakens, it is expected to be drawn northward into a trough that will ultimately funnel its moisture over the already flooded region between Shanghai and Wuhan. In this zone, between 4 and 24 inches of additional rainfall is possible as the storm winds down and unburdens its massive water load.
(NCEP’s predicted rainfall swath for Nepartak results in additional extreme rainfall expected for already flooded regions near the Yangtze River. Image source: NCEP and Weather Underground.)
In total, weather associated with Nepartak is expected to produce a 5 day long extreme wind, storm surge and rainfall event for Taiwan and China. Heaviest impacts will likely occur in Central Taiwan near the predicted point of landfall and in the region west of Shanghai where Nepartak’s predicted rains could result in even more severe flooding for the already hard hit Yangtze River region.
Conditions in Context — Ocean Heat Intensifying, Expanding in All Dimensions
A weak La Nina is starting to form in the Eastern Equatorial Pacific. And, already, deep, hot water formation has re-intensified in the Western Pacific. Ocean surfaces and temperatures at depth there are now very hot (1-2 C above normal at the surface, with such unusually warm waters extending well below the water-air boundary). Such hot, deep waters promote the formation of very intense tropical cyclones. During 2013, similar sea surface and deep water ocean heat states aided in the formation of the monster 190 mph Super Typhoon Haiyan which then devastated the Philippines.
These very hot water conditions occur in the context of a record warm world. And, in fact, scientific observation has found that not only are peak surface temperatures continuing to rise for broad ocean regions as heat expands into the depths, but that the size of biggest body of hot water on Earth in the Indian and Pacific Ocean is also getting bigger. This new world of hotter ocean surfaces, more extensive hot waters, and deeper extending warm waters all provide more storm intensifying fuel for powerful typhoons and hurricanes.
(The hottest pool of water on Earth lies in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. And, according to new scientific research, that hot pool is expanding in size due to human-forced climate change. Image source: Human-Caused Indo-Pacific Warm Pool Expansion.)
In addition, extreme rains over China have been fueled by a record atmospheric moisture loading. As global temperatures increase, the rate of evaporation also increases. This results in more water held aloft in the Earth atmosphere. Overall, atmospheric water vapor content increases by about 7 percent for each 1 degree Celsius of warming. And the result is an increased likelihood for extreme droughts in some regions (due to added heat and related increasing evaporation rates) and extreme rainfall in others (due to the extra atmospheric moisture producing more intense storms with heavier downpours).
So while the La Nina to El Nino cycle is helping to drive the location of extreme rainfall over China and the location of tropical cyclone formation in the Pacific, human-forced warming is providing more atmospheric fuel to increase the top potential strength of these events.
Links/Attribution/Statements
Category 5 Nepartak Headed For Taiwan
China Floods Leave More than 120 Dead, Scores Missing
The Joint Typhoon Warning Center
Japanese Meteorological Agency
China Flooding: Wuhan on Alert For Further Rain
Human-Caused Indo-Pacific Warm Pool Expansion
The Biggest Body of Hot Water on Earth is Getting Bigger
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories
Scientific hat tip to Dr Jeff Masters
Hat tip to Greg
Hat tip to DT Lange
Hat tip to Colorado Bob
Hat tip to 65Karin
climatehawk1
/ July 7, 2016Tweeted.
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dtlange
/ July 7, 2016– Thanks for the in depth report (and hat tip) on a recurring extreme weather event.
– Nature is just releasing a bit of pent up energy we have unwisely given her.
Cheers
– I pass along this ‘cool’ motion contextual graphic of Nepartak.
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robertscribbler
/ July 7, 2016Thanks for the heads-up and for the great commentary that really helped with this one.
This cloud brightness graphic series is an excellent representation of bombification. The eye wall structure just pops.
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Syd Bridges
/ July 7, 2016The increasing frequency of storm bombification is a clear example of the non-linearity of climate change that AGW is causing. We saw it with Patricia recently and in the Atlantic last winter. Kevin Trenbeth’s description of “the climate on steroids” is an apposite one. I dread to think what the human and financial costs to China will be by the time this excess heat finally dumps all its moisture.
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robertscribbler
/ July 7, 2016The monsoon season was on track to be pretty bad. Not as bad as 1998, so far though. Now, all bets are off.
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Ryan in New England
/ July 7, 2016It seems like rapid bombification has been happening rather frequently in recent years. It speaks to the fuel available for the storms to grow.
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robertscribbler
/ July 7, 201680 mph of intensity increase in just one 24 hour period is pretty nuts. And this region has been getting a lot of powerful storms recently. The SST anomaly forecasts for the zone east of the Philippines shows very strong above average ocean surface temperatures through at least late Northern Hemisphere Fall. So we’re looking at a lot of fuel for these kinds of systems over the coming months.
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Spike
/ July 7, 2016From Stefan’s Facebook page, a link to a study on the increasingly deranged hydrological cycle in Europe.
“Their results indicate that there is a greater than 95% chance that anthropogenic climate change is responsible for the increased frequency of severe droughts seen in southern Europe in recent years. What’s more, they also showed that it is more than 95% likely that anthropogenic climate change is behind the increased rainfall observed in northern Europe in recent years. In central Europe the evidence was inconclusive.”
http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/news/65473
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robertscribbler
/ July 7, 2016Thanks for this, Spike. It appears that the attribution studies are really starting to ramp up.
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Aaron Lewis
/ July 7, 2016(Current) Attribution studies are a joke. Energy is fungible. Weather is a thermodynamic engine that does not care where its energy comes from.
All energy in the system affects all the weather in the system. All the weather in the system is affected by all the energy in the system.
And, because of discontinuities in the behavior of Ice, water, water vapor, and CH4, changes in weather as a result of changes in total system energy are not amenable to statistical analysis. A workable attribution study could be done by running a detailed weather model initialized at historical levels of energy and comparing that to a model initialized at current system energy.
For a back of envelope analysis we can ask if historical weather models ever predicted the kind of extreme weather we have been seeing over the last few years. Mostly they did not, therefore the kinds of extreme weather we are seeing is the result of what has changed significantly – e.g., level of energy in the system as a result of AGW.
Much of metrology assumes, “all other things being equal”. In a time of global warming, nothing else is equal.
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robertscribbler
/ July 7, 2016The science has been very cautious and conservative RE climate change attribution. My main complaint was that until recently many scientists had adopted language like ‘no single extreme weather event could be attributed to climate change.’
That’s like saying ‘no single instance of cancer could be attributed to smoking.’ Which tobacco companies did say for years.
With both global warming and smoking, underlying contexts are changed. With smoking added toxins result in increased cancer risk such that people end up with radically shortened life expectancy if they do smoke. And with global warming the Earth environment ends up with a growing number of various weather extremes.
Your climate is your weather averaged over 30 years. If your climate has changed, then your weather has changed.
The attribution studies are aimed at looking at specific extreme events and relating them to that overall context in an attempt to attribute percentage influence. I think it’s a worthwhile endeavor. But I also think we should get the overall language and characterization of the issue right as well.
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climatehawk1 (@climatehawk1)
/ July 8, 2016“My main complaint was that until recently many scientists had adopted language like ‘no single extreme weather event could be attributed to climate change.’
“That’s like saying ‘no single instance of cancer could be attributed to smoking.’ Which tobacco companies did say for years.”
Actually, pointing that out to folks who say single events can’t be attributed to climate change sounds to me like a very effective response, so thanks. Won’t convince deniers, of course, but it’s good for other readers to learn from. It’s exactly on point.
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climatehawk1 (@climatehawk1)
/ July 7, 2016Scheduling tweet on this, thanks.
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Mulga Mumblebrain
/ July 8, 2016A deranged hydrological cycle to match the deranged political elite who still refuse to face facts.
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Bill DeMott
/ July 7, 2016Just got back from a three week tour of China and just missed the rain. I was in Wuhan and traveled on the Yangze River, which was regulated at a low level in anticipation of the rainy season. China’s roads, highways, trains, airports and cities are all new as are most of the cars. Amazing amount of high rise appartments–it’s hard to imagine that they will be occupied. My guess is that the building boom in China must be winding down. After growing the economy at such a high rate for so long, it’s scary what will happen when China has a recession.
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robertscribbler
/ July 7, 2016Thanks for the observations, Bill. That kind of heavy manufacturing/construction based growth can really unwind after saturation. Heard lot of stories of so-called ghost cities and other large chunks of unused infrastructure. Seems like the April to June period showed 6.6 percent growth, which would be fast for any other country.
Just wondering if the general population there seemed much concerned about climate change? Between melting glaciers in the Himalyas, expanding deserts in eastern China, and the recent spates of extreme weather, it would be interesting to know if CC is on most people’s radar there.
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Jeremy
/ July 7, 2016China has poured more cement in the past 3 years than the USA has poured in the last 100!
The scale of “Ghost Cities” is staggering.
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Mulga Mumblebrain
/ July 8, 2016The Chinese won’t have a recession, Bill. Their system is different from Free Market Absolutist capitalism that runs amok in the West. The apartments are for the hundreds of millions planned to move from the countryside to the cities in the next few decades. China’s biggest problems are over-population, like the rest of the planet, and the relentless antagonism and aggression of the USA. If the two worked together with the rest of humanity we’d have a better chance of surviving, but the ruling Western elite believe their global ‘Full Spectrum Dominance’ is ordained by God.
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wili
/ July 7, 2016Has there been another cat 5 cyclone to make landfall so far this year, or would this be the first?
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robertscribbler
/ July 7, 2016Nepartak is now expected to make landfall as a Cat 3 or Cat 4 according to latest forecasts. To my knowledge, it is the first Cat 5 Northern Hemisphere storm to form this year. Fantala formed as a Cat 5 in the Southern Hemisphere Indian Ocean in April but it did not make landfall.
It’s worth noting that overall rate of storm formation in the Northwestern Pacific has been somewhat mild this year. It was only recently that SSTs really started to heat up east of the Philippines.
Generally, climate change is expected to increase peak possible intensity of cyclones (heat engine theory). Range of cyclones is expected to extend more and more away from the Equator. And warmer SSTs makes out of season and out of basin storm formation more likely.
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Greg
/ July 7, 2016Per Jeff Masters:
Nepartak is the third Category 5 storm on Earth so far in 2016. Its 900 mb minimum surface pressure makes it the strongest tropical cyclone of the year (by pressure), and its peak 175 mph winds are tied for the second strongest winds of the year. The other two Category 5 storms earlier this year were in the Southern Hemisphere: the Southwest Indian Ocean’s Tropical Cyclone Fantala, which topped out with 175 mph winds and a 910 mb central pressure on April 17, and the Southeast Pacific’s Tropical Cyclone Winston, which devastated Fiji on February 20 with sustained winds of 180 mph. Winston’s lowest central pressure was 915 mb. Both storms were tied for the strongest tropical cyclones ever observed (by sustained winds) in their respective ocean basins. On average, Earth sees 4 – 5 Category 5 storms per year, with over 50% of these being typhoons in the Northwest Pacific.
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robertscribbler
/ July 7, 2016Thanks for the expert clairification from Dr Masters, Greg. Looks like Nepartak has edged even lower with 897 mb.
So we’ve had 3 Cat 5s and we’ve got half the year ahead. Looks like strong storm pace is higher than average so far. And per my understanding, the Indian Ocean near Madagascar is not a typical location for strong hurricane formation.
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John McCormick
/ July 7, 2016China is being hammered and more drought, rain and damage is certain. This chaos is costing China many billions of dollars from the Treasury. When will it begin to all in its loans to the U.S.?
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John McCormick
/ July 7, 2016Excuse the typo “call in its loans”
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Mulga Mumblebrain
/ July 8, 2016I don’t think the Chinese will do anything to harm the US economy, their biggest export market, short of an outbreak of war, which, unfortunately, is a ‘non-trivial’ possibility. The Chinese would very much prefer ‘peaceful co-existence’, but that term does not appear in Washington’s lexicon.
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robertscribbler
/ July 8, 2016Well, this westerner would rather peacefully co-operate. We’ve got climate change to deal with. War just gets in the way.
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Leland Palmer
/ July 8, 2016There was a hacking incident a few months ago, that looked like a Chinese attempt to get into the Australian Defense Computer Network. Since Australian cooperation would likely be necessary for any American aggression towards China, this seems ominous.
If the Chinese governments isn’t afraid of Trump’s dangerous ignorance they should be, I think.
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John McCormick
/ July 7, 2016Warm pools getting warmer forever. They release CO2 and close off a sink. Meanwhile:
Mauna Loa update now:
June 2015 402.80 ppm
June 2016 406.81 ppm
+4.01 ppm on the year
then:
June 1970 327.66
June 1971 328.57
+ 0.91 ppm on the year
Feedback? Top of my list. Is this where the warm pools increase and the CO2 release and loss of sink is equivalent to the CO2 and SO2 etc. released f rom the Sibeian laval fields above coal and gas deposits?
Larger question: how much CO2, in 70% of our planets surface, is there? And, how did IPCC address this?
Any help here?
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robertscribbler
/ July 7, 2016So IPCC has modeled potential increases in atmospheric CO2 as feedback to human forced warming. IPCC models feedbacks from land and ocean. That said, IPCC has been criticized for failing to include permafrost carbon feedbacks in its models or to include potential ocean methane (clathrate) responses.
This 2006 model summary found that human forced warming was expected to add an average of 87 ppm CO2 from feedbacks on a near business as usual track:
https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch7s7-3-5-2.html
It’s worth noting that this implies an approximate 22 percent feedback factor. So for every 5 ppm of CO2 dumped into the Earth System by human fossil fuel and other emissions, you ultimately get about another 1.1 ppm from the Earth System this century. It’s also worth noting that the model ranges varied from 20 to 224 ppm worth of carbon system feedback.
Feedbacks, however, do not end in 2100. But this model summary does. Notably, the longer term carbon system feedbacks would add to this total.
It’s worth noting that carbon cycle feedbacks come into play more with higher levels of warming and ocean carbon saturation. 1.5 C to 2 C has been seen as a threshold where carbon feedbacks would start to visibly ramp up. And we are near that point now. It’s also worth noting that the energy imbalance of the Earth System is extremely high now when you consider geological contexts in which the Earth warmed and accumulated energy at a much slower pace than it is currently.
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Greg
/ July 7, 2016The currently expected landfall location for Nepatak in Taiwan, Tatung City, population about 100,000, relatively rural for such a populous island:
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Greg
/ July 7, 2016Current Track:
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Greg
/ July 7, 2016Taitung and Hualien counties in eastern Taiwan are likely to be the first to be hit by Nepartak. They contain a long, low river valley so flooding is likely. The forecast rainfall is expected to be at least 300mm.Current measurements by NASA suggest cloud tops of 17,000 metres, or 56,000 feet, which mean that thunderheads around the typhoon’s eye are punching through the top of the atmosphere. Rainfall rates over the ocean could be as high as 190mm per hour.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/07/nepartak-hu ge-typhoon-heading-taiwan-160707084908359.html
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Greg
/ July 7, 2016And a reminder from mainland China t.v. what they’ve endured in the previous weeks before this storm:
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Montysano
/ July 7, 2016Speaking to bombification, I know that here in north Alabama, a gentle, pleasant rain shower seems to have become a thing of the past. If it rains, it’s a deluge, just about every time. It’s unsettling.
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climatehawk1 (@climatehawk1)
/ July 7, 2016“Speaking to bombification, I know that here in north Alabama, a gentle, pleasant rain shower seems to have become a thing of the past. If it rains, it’s a deluge, just about every time. It’s unsettling.”
And it’s still just early days …
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Greg
/ July 7, 2016Yesterday in Louisiana, U.S. record minimum temperatures avoidably shot multiple times (yes pun intended). No surprises based on models of climate change:
Record ReportIssued: 2:23 AM CDT Jul. 7, 2016 – National Weather Service
A record high minimum temperature of 79 degrees was set at Baton
Rouge Airport yesterday. This breaks the old daily record of 78 set
in 2009. The period of record for Baton Rouge Airport began in
January of 1930.
A record high minimum temperature of 83 degrees was set at New
Orleans International Airport yesterday. This breaks the old daily
record of 79 degrees set in 2009. The period of record for New
Orleans International Airport began in may of 1946.
A record high minimum temperature of 83 degrees was set at New
Orleans Lakefront Airport yesterday. This breaks the previous record
of 82 degrees set in 1998. The period of record for New Orleans
Lakefront Airport began in January of 1937.
A record high minimum temperature of 83 degrees was set at Slidell
Airport yesterday. This breaks the previous record of 76 degrees set
in 2010. The period of record for Slidell Airport began in April
1994.
A record high minimum temperature of 83 degrees was set at Gulfport
Airport yesterday. This breaks the old record of 78 set in 2010.
Record reports for this station may not be as meaningful as those
for stations with 30 year decadal normals. The period of record
at Gulfport Airport began in September of 2000.
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Greg
/ July 7, 2016Jeff Master Update just published on Nepartak:
https://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=3350
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dtlange
/ July 7, 2016– USA – W & SW Hotspots;
(Miramar/San Diego, CA is also on the list, Andy.)
-LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
[Death Valley, CA]
The new mark of 101.9 tops the previous record of 101.3 set in June 2013 at the park’s official weather station in Furnace Creek, California. The average temperature for a typical June in Death Valley is 95.5.
According to the National Weather Service, Las Vegas also just sweated through its hottest June on record, with an average temperature of 92.8, nearly a full degree warmer than the previous mark of 91.9 set last year. That broke a record of 91.5 degrees from June 2013.
Four of the five warmest Junes on record for Las Vegas have come since 2006, and the three warmest have all been recorded since 2013, according to the weather service.
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dtlange
/ July 7, 2016Zack Labe @ZLabe 1h1 hour ago
The drum beats on… June was the warmest on record for the contiguous United States (since at least 1895)!
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Greg
/ July 7, 2016surprise, surprise, surprise
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dtlange
/ July 7, 2016LikeLike
dtlange
/ July 7, 2016Michael Ventrice @MJVentrice 56m56 minutes ago
The 597dm height contour is showing up in an ensemble mean on Day 13. This is a huge signal for a U.S. *heat* wave.
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robertscribbler
/ July 7, 2016Just nuts.
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dtlange
/ July 7, 2016– USA – SW – FYI Info- Wildfire: ‘Full Suppression’
‘Full suppression strategy employed against northern NM wildfire’
SANTA FE, N.M. — A wildfire is burning in the Carson National Forest about 4 miles east of El Rito and near the village of Vallecitos, the U.S. Forest Service reported.
The La Canada Wildfire was sighted Wednesday afternoon and had reportedly burned 55 acres by late evening. Firefighters completed a hand line around the perimeter of the fire, which held through the night, the Forest Service reported. Firefighters are employing a full suppression strategy utilizing “several engines, Carson Hotshots, the Type 2 Red River Chasers and a Type 3 helicopter from the Santa Fe National Forest,” according to USFS.
http://www.abqjournal.com/804030/full-suppression-strategy-employed-against-northern-nm-wildfire.html
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dtlange
/ July 7, 2016A full suppression strategy for climate change is definitely needed ASAP – vs only adaptation.
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robertscribbler
/ July 7, 2016Full climate change suppression necessary now — I like that. Well constructed.
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dtlange
/ July 7, 2016LikeLike
dtlange
/ July 7, 2016LikeLike
Greg
/ July 7, 2016The battle to prepare New York for rising tides is just beginning. NY’s Clever New Park Will Weather Epic Storms and Rising Seas
http://www.wired.com/2016/07/nyc-park-built-withstand-epic-storms-rising-seas
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Greg
/ July 7, 2016Deja Vu. Flash flood emergency in Tennessee/Kentucky/Illinois this morning with heavy rains for next 24 hours. Lots of water rescues. Rainfall rates of 4-6 inches per hour predicted in hours ahead. Only commercial video at moment:
https://weather.com/news/weather/video/flash-flood-emergency-in-tennessee
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Greg
/ July 7, 2016“I looked outside at about 4:30 or so (this morning), but I didn’t see anything,” Wilkinson said. “About 5 minutes later, I heard this weird, kind of roaring sound, and I looked outside. Water was everywhere, completely surrounding the house. It was that fast.”
http://www.tennessean.com/story/weather/2016/07/07/damage-flooding-across-middle-tennessee-after-storms/86794124/
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Greg
/ July 7, 2016Live local coverage throughout the day where flash flood warnings in effect until this evening:
newschannel5.com/watch-live (removed the http://www. at beginning in case it auto-loaded)
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robertscribbler
/ July 7, 2016Another rain bomb goes off. Garden variety storms are apparently becoming obsolete.
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climatehawk1 (@climatehawk1)
/ July 7, 2016Scheduling tweet on this, thanks.
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Suzanne
/ July 7, 2016Arctic Sea Ice Crashes in June to Record Lows…at the Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jul/07/arctic-sea-ice-crashes-to-record-low-for-june
The summer sea ice cover over the Arctic raced towards oblivion in June, crashing through previous records to reach a new all-time low.
The Arctic sea ice extent was a staggering 260,000 sq km (100,000 sq miles) below the previous record for June, set in 2010. And it was 1.36m sq km (525,000 sq miles) below the 1981-2010 long-term average, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
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robertscribbler
/ July 7, 2016The race with 2012 for new record end season lows is still very much afoot for this year. Satellite passes show a very shattered ice pack in the Arctic Ocean. Big zone of storm thinned ice north of the ESS threatens to result in a large hole in the ice as July progresses.
Neven wrote a lot about the separation event that aided in 2012’s big melt. Given the dispersal this year, there’s a decent risk for similar events come late July and August.
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Suzanne
/ July 7, 2016I think we are getting closer, and closer to an ice free arctic sea much faster than anyone might have imagined. Those positive feedback loops seem to be in full swing, with consequences unheard of in modern times.
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climatehawk1 (@climatehawk1)
/ July 7, 2016Scheduling tweet on this. Thanks, Suzanne.
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Genomik
/ July 7, 2016In Zarrilli’s view, there is no time to waste. By 2030 or so, the water in New York Harbor could be a foot higher than it is today. That may not sound like much, but New York does not have to become Atlantis to be incapacitated. Even with a foot or two of sea-level rise, streets will become impassable at high tide, snarling traffic. The cost of flood insurance will skyrocket, causing home prices in risky neighborhoods to decline. (Who wants to buy a house that will soon be underwater?)
Then the big storm will come, as it always does. It might come this year, it might come in 2018, 2029 or 20-whatever. It might be bigger than Sandy. It might be smaller. But if you add a foot or two of sea-level rise to a 14-foot storm tide, you have serious trouble. And if it hits before the Big U is completed around Lower Manhattan, you have even more serious trouble. Water will flow over the aging sea walls at Battery Park and onto the West Side, pouring into the streets, into basements, into cars, into electrical circuits, finding its way into the subway tunnels. New Yorkers will learn that even after the region spent $60 billion on rebuilding efforts after Sandy, the city’s infrastructure is still hugely vulnerable. In the aftermath, it’s not hard to imagine how this will play out: Businesses that don’t need to be in Lower Manhattan – hedge funds, banks, law firms – will move to Midtown, others to Westchester County or the New Jersey suburbs. The economic engine of the city will sputter. Rents and property values will fall, eviscerating the tax base. Throughout the city, people with money will begin moving to higher ground, leaving the poor behind in polluted swamps of abandoned buildings along the waterfront.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/can-new-york-be-saved-in-the-era-of-global-warming-20160705?page=3
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robertscribbler
/ July 7, 2016So you don’t have to be in a low lying part of a city to be threatened by sea level rise. It becomes a big problem when it starts to cut off transportation arteries and impact other forms of infrastructure. In this way, communities start to become more and more isolated even as economic resiliency is threatened. Of course, you also end up with low lying properties getting hit with more and more flooding as well. One is a direct impact, the other is a compounding impact on regional stability and cohesion.
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Greg
/ July 7, 2016The New York Time’s in depth piece on how Climate Change Claims a Lake, Bolivia’s second largest. “After surviving decades of water diversion and cyclical El Niño droughts in the Andes, Lake Poopó basically disappeared in December. The ripple effects go beyond the loss of livelihood for the Quispes and hundreds of other fishing families, beyond the migration of people forced to leave homes that are no longer viable. The vanishing of Lake Poopó threatens the very identity of the Uru-Murato people, the oldest indigenous group in the area. They adapted over generations to the conquests of the Inca and the Spanish, but seem unable to adjust to the abrupt upheaval climate change has caused.”
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/07/07/world/americas/bolivia-climate-change-lake-poopo.html
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Colorado Bob
/ July 7, 2016LLAPALLAPANI, Bolivia — The water receded and the fish died. They surfaced by the tens of thousands, belly-up, and the stench drifted in the air for weeks.
The birds that had fed on the fish had little choice but to abandon Lake Poopó, once Bolivia’s second-largest but now just a dry, salty expanse. Many of the Uru-Murato people, who had lived off its waters for generations, left as well, joining a new global march of refugees fleeing not war or persecution, but climate change.
“The lake was our mother and our father,” said Adrián Quispe, one of five brothers who were working as fishermen and raising families here in Llapallapani. “Without this lake, where do we go?”
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/07/07/world/americas/bolivia-climate-change-lake-poopo.html?_r=0
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dtlange
/ July 7, 2016“The lake was our mother and our father,”
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robertscribbler
/ July 7, 2016God, this just rips you right in the gut.
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Jeremy
/ July 7, 2016What is wrong with us?
“Shores of the Danish Faroe Islands in the First Pilot Whale Slaughter of the Year.”
http://www.seashepherdglobal.org/news-and-commentary/news/blood-spills-on-to-the-shores-of-the-danish-faroe-islands-in-the-first-pilot-whale-slaughter-of-the-year.html
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robertscribbler
/ July 7, 2016So sad. We could be so much better than this.
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Andy in SD
/ July 7, 2016In 2012, one of the triggers which assisted in the low point for Arctic ice extent was a rather nasty cyclonic storm tearing the ice up. What I perceive as a red flag is that in 2016 we are plumbing a similar track, however we do not have such an anomalous (physical) event contributing to the depletion so far.
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Andy in SD
/ July 7, 2016Looking at the date for that event, it was early August. So perhaps there is no difference at this time of the melt season. My comment regarding a difference should be ignored.
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robertscribbler
/ July 7, 2016Ninja’d. No worries. It’s a good opener for the discussion.
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Shawn Redmond
/ July 7, 2016Watching floating ice melt here in Atlantic Canada in the spring over the decades is interesting and may have some similarities. At first when it is clear and solid it will pond on warm days. Then it turns kind of frosted white and is still solid enough to carry you or even an ATV, but it no longer holds ponding we’re talking 10 or 12 inches the water passes right through. From there it’ll turn grey to dark grey even with a cold spell it won’t hold pond water any longer. At a certain point the heat welling up from below just keeps eating it away. The ice in the arctic may be thicker but the conditioning it has gone through over the last decade may have set the table for things to fall apart from a different mechanism i.e. the new heat sources from below.
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robertscribbler
/ July 7, 2016That very strong Arctic Cyclone revved up during August of 2012.
My opinion is that very warm winter conditions during 2012 and 2011 prepped the ice for a big loss. 2012 had clear skies and a good degree of melt ponding in June. But summer Arctic air temps weren’t too far above average over the Arctic Ocean zone. The big factors appear to have been winter heat and warming ocean waters. In fact, a huge plug of well above average sea surface temperatures in the Beaufort helped to lead the charge to record melt. That heat was further unleashed by the powerful Arctic cyclone you mention.
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Colorado Bob
/ July 7, 2016The latest damage estimate from Alberta forest fires: $3.6 billion
FORT MCMURRAY, Alta. – The Insurance Bureau of Canada says damage caused by the wildfires in Fort McMurray, Alta., totalled $3.58 billion, making it the most expensive disaster for insurers in the country’s history.
CEO Don Forgeron says the damage from the fires provide “alarming evidence” that extreme weather events have increased in frequency and severity in Canada.
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/the-latest-damage-estimate-from-alberta-forest-fires-3-6-billion/
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Colorado Bob
/ July 7, 2016Wuhan, with a population of 10.8 million–received over 560 mm (1.8 feet) of rain over the past ten days, with an additional 7.09” (180 mm) of rain falling in the twelve hours ending at 8 am July 6,
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robertscribbler
/ July 7, 2016Region could get 4 inches to two feet more in just a 24-48 hour period.
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Colorado Bob
/ July 7, 2016A broad swath of 5 to 8 inches of rain was estimated by Doppler radar from far downstate Illinois to Kentucky and northern Tennessee.
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Suzanne
/ July 7, 2016“June Swoon: U.S. breaks another monthly temperature record”.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jul/07/us-june-hottest-temperature-record-climate-disasters
The US experienced its warmest ever June last month, with a scorching summer set to compound a string of climate-related disasters that have already claimed dozens of lives and cost billions of dollars in damage this year.
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Exposing the Big Game
/ July 7, 2016Reblogged this on Exposing the Big Game.
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Shawn Redmond
/ July 7, 2016What’s the condition of the N.A. grain crop this year? Or the global one for that matter. When do these extremes start to take a toll on base foods? Heat waves and deluges’ could cost a lot more yet. We all could make though winter without a salad but a lack of wheat, rice and other grains not so much I fear.
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wili
/ July 7, 2016The FAO food price index is lower than it’s been in the last few years, but it is on a sharp upward curve and seems about to overtake last years prices. http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/foodpricesindex/en/
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wili
/ July 7, 2016Here’s the link specifically to their analyses of cereal supply and demand: http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/csdb/en/
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robertscribbler
/ July 7, 2016We’ve had regional issues. Let’s hope they don’t go global ala 2011.
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Shawn Redmond
/ July 7, 2016Thanks Wili got it bookmarked
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dtlange
/ July 7, 2016LikeLike
dtlange
/ July 7, 2016(71.3 mps).! … One-Mississippi… = 71 miles. No?
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Jeannie
/ July 7, 2016I think it’s meters per second there?
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climatehawk1 (@climatehawk1)
/ July 8, 2016“I think it’s meters per second there?”
Correct, that is the metric measurement that is being provided.
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dtlange
/ July 8, 2016🙂
OK I see the error… It didn’t make sense but sounded dramatic.
Too big of a hurry to catch a bus for a med.appointment.
The right brain a bit fragmented… a bit foggy at the time.
I also have monocular vision – one eye sees far — the other close — data figures don’t always line up according to needs. I was cross eyed as a child.
Group-think very valuable here, as everywhere.. THX2
– Ps The late great jazz composer/musician was cross-eyed, so he couldn’t read music. The staff lines where the notes are were impossible to line up.
Different sides of the brain swing into action for different tasks — and can be quite challenging at times.
” One Texas — two Texas…”
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Colorado Bob
/ July 8, 2016109F here today, crushed the old record by 6F degrees.
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Colorado Bob
/ July 8, 2016Super Typhoon Nepartak Back Out to Sea After Landfalling in Southern Taiwan; Heavy Rain A Threat in Taiwan and Eastern China
https://weather.com/storms/typhoon/news/super-typhoon-nepartak-taiwan-china-forecast
The forecast track is really bad for China .
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robertscribbler
/ July 8, 2016Man that’s rough. Right for the flood bull’s eye.
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