Adjusting the Tune on Climate Change

Cambridge, Mass. — For a week in November, people across the United States were complaining bitterly about the cold. Record low temperatures were experienced in 43 states; in some northern regions, residents had to dig tunnels to get out of houses engulfed by as much as seven feet of snow.

The freakish cold snap hardly rates in comparison with the devastating floods, fires and droughts that have recently afflicted other parts of the world. But it is another example of how extreme weather has become a global reality, one that is putting the contentious issue of climate changesquarely in the middle of everyday conversations.

“Everybody is starting to understand that weather is doing something strange,” said Marilyn Weiner, director of “Extreme Realities,” a documentary produced by her husband, Hal Weiner. The film is making the rounds of American universities and civic groups ahead of its television premiere in December.

The film, narrated by the actor Matt Damon, argues that climate change has geopolitical consequences, which in turn have implications for American national security. Natural catastrophes have stoked wars, political instability, a surge in refugees, even terrorism.

Somber experts — from the World Bank, the Pentagon and the world of environmental sciences — tell the camera that the quickening pace of climate change can only be halted by concerted international action.

How many times have we heard that before? Almost every year, the World Bank has put out a devastating report on some aspect of climate change. Last month, in a report entitled “Turn Down the Heat,” the World Bank warned that if nothing is done, global temperatures will rise by 4 degrees Celsius, or 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit, by 2060, creating a “cataclysm” for poor countries.

The Weiners have been making documentaries about the environment since 1992, with notable success; their films regularly appear on PBS channels and college campuses across the United States. Despite these credentials, for “Extreme Realities,” their latest film in a 13-part series, they had to turn to crowdfunding when their usual package of grants fell short.

Getting the message out is never easy; getting people to listen is harder yet, particularly on a subject as elusive as climate science. The trick is to find a narrative compelling enough to reach a wider audience, the Weiners said.

“This time, we have tried very, very hard to find a subject that people on both sides would be interested in,” Mr. Weiner said. “That subject is weather; everyone is interested in weather, and everyone is interested in terrorism.”

String of Deadly Storms Hits Across Midwest and South

ATLANTA — A violent weather system lashed the Midwest and South with tornadoes on Sunday, killing at least nine people, according to some reports, and leaving vast areas of destruction. Forecasters warned that additional severe storms were likely on Monday.

In Arkansas, the National Weather Service reported late Sunday that one tornado had “caused extensive destruction, possibly to multiple towns” just north of Little Rock.

Local television stations and social media websites showed mangled trees and splintered houses, and a segment of Interstate 40 near Mayflower was closed. Entergy Arkansas reported more than 15,000 customers without electricity late Sunday.

The Arkansas Department of Emergency Management, in a situation updateposted late on Sunday, said that counties had reported eight fatalities statewide.

In a telephone interview early Monday, Lt. Carl Minden of the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Department said that three of those deaths were in his county, and all of them were at the same address.

The Emergency Management report listed four deaths in Faulkner County, and a spokesman for the Arkansas State Police, Bill Sadler, said late Sunday night that the authorities knew of “significant property damage” there.

Matt DeCample, a spokesman for Gov. Mike Beebe, said in a telephone interview late on Sunday that state officials had confirmed one fatality in White County and that they were tracking reports of deaths elsewhere. Mr. DeCample, who said the governor was planning to visit the damaged areas on Monday, also said there were “widespread injuries.”

Taking the Earth’s Temperature

Q. What is your meteorological specialty?

A. Atmospheric modeling. Several times a day, I obtain data about atmospheric conditions, which is entered into a computer for processing. Our forecasters and those at other organizations then develop the actual forecasts from the results. We offer the information I collect to both the public and private sector at no charge.

What data do you collect?

Various measurements that are based on elements of physics. Think of a lattice in a garden as representing the atmosphere, with data available where the slats intersect to form a grid. We collect measurements relating to temperature, wind, atmospheric pressure, moisture and the like, to fill the lattices across the globe. Every day, we grab about four billion bits of information.

When were you first attracted to weather as a career?

In ninth grade, my guidance counselor said students needed to start thinking about a college major. My earth science class was just finishing a chapter on weather, and I was good in math and science, so meteorology seemed the obvious choice. My family also watched the meteorologist Don Kent on Channel 4 in Boston. He was an influence.

Amid Bugs, Hail, Floods and Bacteria, Italian Olives Take a Beating

CALENZANO, Italy — Strolling through the olive grove that abuts his family villa on a gloomy November morning, Federico Dufour knelt to the ground and picked up a few purplish, pellet-size lumps. “I am ashamed to call them olives,” he said mournfully.

Inviting closer inspection of a tiny perforation, he displayed the withered fruits on his palm. “Look, here’s a hole,” he said, then described the brief but devastating life cycle of an olive fruit fly that had ravaged his crop.

In its lifetime, each fly can deposit hundreds of eggs in as many olives, wiping out entire olive groves “in no time,” he said. “It’s an infinite drama.”

This year, that drama played out in hundreds of olive oil producing farms in Tuscany and other parts of Italy, helping make 2014 Italian olive oil’s annus horribilis.

Aside from the fly — the Bactrocera oleae, to be precise — severe hailstorms and flooding, and a devastating bacteria in parts of Puglia, Italy’s largest olive oil producing region, cut olive production by about 35 percent.

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As Mexico Addresses Climate Change, Critics Point to Shortcomings

EJIDO RANCHO OJO LAGUNA, Mexico — For six years, while drought ravaged Chihuahua State, Mario Ruiz clung to his small herd of cattle.

The pasture where his cattle graze, about 45 miles north of the city of Chihuahua, turned bare. Many of his cows starved. Others he sold to buy fodder for those worth saving. Of 130 cows, just 30 are left.

Now that the rains have returned, turning the dusty steppe a rich green, farmers like Mr. Ruiz, 41, are struggling to restock their herds and dig themselves out of debt. They fret that the drought, which devastated crops and killed 400,000 head of cattle in Chihuahua State, just south of the United States border, could become a familiar enemy.

Governor Cuomo Tries to Do Something About the Weather

After the ferocious storm that unloaded more than seven feet of snow in Western New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo at first blamed the National Weather Service for not giving his constituents enough warning. Then he talked up his $18.7 million plan to create a state weather service, which he promised would do the job a lot better than the folks around Washington.

Well, not exactly. New York’s weather service would not actually be “a forecast system,” according to weather service spokesman Christopher Vaccaro.  The Cuomo sensors could help assess current conditions —collecting and analyzing temperatures and wind speeds and other climate data.  But it would not predict storms like the one that hit parts of Buffalo last month.

Mr. Vaccaro explained that predicting weather is a hugely complicated operation.  The nation’s weather experts use sensors and data collection devices from all over the world. They get readings from satellites. They use super computers. Expert meteorologists watch the way weather conditions move, not just within the borders of New York State, but in Canada, the Midwest, even as far away as the Pacific Ocean.

Looking to Mars to Help Understand Changing Climates

Ten thousand times a hundred thousand dusty years ago

Where now it stands the Plain of Gold did once my river flow.

It stroked the stones and spoke in tongues and splashed against my face,

Till ages rolled, the sun shone cold on this unholy place.

That was the planet Mars as channeled by the folk singer and science writer Jonathan Eberhart in “Lament for a Red Planet.”

Ever since the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli thought he spied lines that he called “canali” on Mars in 1877, earthlings’ romantic thoughts about our nearest cosmic neighbor have revolved around water and its possible consequence, Life as We Know It. We haven’t found life on Mars, but decades of robotic exploration have indeed strengthened astronomers’ convictions that rivers and perhaps even oceans once flowed on the red planet.

Wild weather to continue to batter eastern Australia in lead-up to Christmas

Unusually tumultuous weather has swept parts of eastern Australia over the past week, with meteorologists warning that further storms, hail and rain are likely to return in the lead-up to Christmas.

A severe thunderstorm battered Sydney on Sunday, leaving more than 10,000 homes without power as large hailstones rained down on parts of the city. Flights from Sydney airport were cancelled while the Tropfest short film festival was delayed after its venue in Centennial Park was evacuated

Heatwaves likely 'every other year' by 2030s, says Met Office study

Torrid European summers like the one in 2003 which claimed an estimated 70,000 lives are set to become a regular occurrence within two decades and the “new normal” by the end of the century, according to a new Met Office study.

The climate modelling, which was published in Nature Climate Change on Monday, foresees a dramatic rise in the chance of severely hot weather patterns in central Europe and the Mediterranean, if greenhouse gas emissions continue along their current path.

“Extremely warm summers that would occur twice a century in the early 2000s are now expected to happen twice a decade,” said Dr Nikos Christidis, the lead author of the new paper. “The chances of heatwaves as extreme as seen in 2003 have increased from about one-in-1,000 years to about one-in-100 years and are projected to occur once every other year by the 2030s-2040s under continuing greenhouse gas emissions.”

New technique offers spray-on solar power

That's Illan Kramer's (ECE) hope. Kramer and colleagues have just invented a new way to spray solar cells onto flexible surfaces using miniscule light-sensitive materials known as colloidal quantum dots (CQDs) -- a major step toward making spray-on solar cells easy and cheap to manufacture.

"My dream is that one day you'll have two technicians with Ghostbusters backpacks come to your house and spray your roof," said Kramer, a post-doctoral fellow with The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto and IBM Canada's Research and Development Centre.

Solar-sensitive CQDs printed onto a flexible film could be used to coat all kinds of weirdly shaped surfaces, from patio furniture to an airplane's wing. A surface the size of your car's roof wrapped with CQD-coated film would produce enough energy to power three 100-Watt light bulbs -- or 24 compact fluorescents.

He calls his system sprayLD, a play on the manufacturing process called ALD, short for atomic layer deposition, in which materials are laid down on a surface one atom-thickness at a time.

Temperature anomalies are warming faster than Earth's average, study finds

t's widely known that the Earth's average temperature has been rising. But new research finds that spatial patterns of extreme temperature anomalies -- readings well above or below the mean -- are warming even faster than the overall average. It may seem counterintuitive that global warming would be accompanied by colder winter weather at some locales. But scientists say the observation aligns with theories about climate change, which hold that amplified warming in the Arctic region produces changes in the jet stream, which can result in extended periods of cold weather at some locations in the mid-northern latitudes.

2014-2015 Winter Forecast

The Weather Channel has issued its winter forecast for 2014-2015, and it looks a bit different from last winter.

Compared to 2013-14, which was one of the coldest winters in recent memory in the Upper Midwest, this winter the chill looks to be more focused on the East Coast and Gulf Coast, according to the winter forecast prepared by WSI, which along with The Weather Channel is part of The Weather Company.

The forecast, which looks ahead to temperatures from Dec. 1, 2014 through Feb. 28, 2015, is based on an analysis of several large-scale factors in the land-ocean-atmosphere system.

One factor is, as you might expect, the presence or absence of El Nino -- an area of warmer-than-average water in the eastern Pacific Ocean near the equator.

While El Nino has not developed yet, WSI forecasters expect a weak to moderate El Nino to emerge over the winter months and potentially persist into the spring.

Lake-Effect Snow Hammers South Buffalo, New York, Great Lakes

A serious lake-effect snow event dumped incredible snow totals on the Great Lakes region, particularly south of Buffalo, New York, where seven feet of snow fell in parts of the southtowns. The snow lasted much of the week before Thanksgiving 2014.

On Nov. 21, when all was said and done, a new Buffalo-area snowfall record of 88 inches was set in Cowlesville, New York,shattering the previous high tally of 81.5 inches set in December 2001.  

Just days after the lake-effect snow event, warmer temperatures swept across the area, causing a rapid snow melt.  The melt prompted fears of a major flooding event as the fluid ran off into creeks and streams, but luckily only minor flooding was reported.

Dallas Fog Creates Incredible Morning Scene Across North Texas; Dozens of Flights Canceled

Dense fog created a unique scene in downtown Dallas Tuesday morning, where visibilities dropped significantly and only the tallest buildings in the city's skyline could be seen above the low clouds.

"Widespread dense fog developed early Tuesday morning across the Dallas area, as temperatures cooled to the dew point overnight, allowing fog to form," said weather.com meteorologist Linda Lam. "Winds were very light through the morning as well, which helped in preventing the fog from dissipating. The dense fog is expected to dissipate by early afternoon due to the sun warming the air at the surface."

On a flight from Tampa to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, Mike Alvstad took a picture of the skyline from high in the air. The photo, which Alvstad posted to Twitter, was first spotted by the Dallas Morning News:

California Flood Threat: Pineapple Express to Bring Heavy Rain, Sierra Snow, High Winds

Thanks to an atmospheric river known as the Pineapple Express, more soaking rain and mountain snow is on the way for California, the epicenter of the nation's most widespread exceptional drought.

Last week, Los Angeles County dams and spreading ground captured 1.8 billion gallons of water, enough to meet the needs of 44,000 people in one year. That's a relative drop in the multi-year drought bucket, but a start.

While this all sounds like good news, more flooding, rock/mudslides, debris flows and even damaging winds are possible with this upcoming storm. The National Weather Service in Monterey, California, said Monday that this storm is "expected to be one of the strongest storms in terms of wind and rain intensity" since storms in October 2009 and January 2008.

Huge Rainstorm Poised to Ease California's Thirst

The wettest storm to affect the U.S. West Coast since 2009 is gathering strength over the Pacific Ocean, and promises to bring much-needed drought relief to thirsty California Wednesday through Friday. Rainfall amounts of 3 - 8 inches are expected over most of Northern California, with snowfall amounts of 1 - 3 feet predicted in the Sierra Mountains. As noted by Wunderground weather historian Christopher C. Burt in his Monday post, California Drought Situation Improves, this week’s storm may be the strongest and wettest storm to hit the region since October 2009, when the last major ‘pineapple express’ soaked the state. California is already benefiting from widespread heavy rains that fell November 29th through December 6th, and most of California is now running a seasonal precipitation surplus—the first time they’ve seen such since December 2012. 

NASA Photo Illuminates Florida's Risk For Sea Level Rise, Deadly Tropical Cyclones

The photo, taken by astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) in October 2014, shows Florida's peninsula illuminated at night. As NASA notes, the brightest areas in the photo indicate the most populous areas in the state. Notably, the Miami-Fort Lauderdale metro area, home to 5.6 million people, is the most noticeable blip on the landscape, lighting up the entire southeastern coast of Florida a brilliant white.

Other noticeable cities include the Tampa metro area (2.8 million people), the brightest area on the Gulf Coast, the Orlando metro area (2.3 million people), which lights up a chunk of central Florida and the Jacksonville metro area (1.3 million people) in the far northeastern corner of the state.

More importantly, as you can tell from the bright spots in the photo, most of Florida's nearly 20 million people live along the coast. And even though Florida hasn't had a hurricane make landfall on the state in more than nine years, the risk for a potentially deadly tropical cyclone only increases as more people flock to Florida's coasts.

The most notorious example might just come from Hurricane Andrew, which made landfall as a Category 5 hurricane in the Miami metro area in 1992. When Andrew came ashore in the Homestead, Florida, area it shredded homes and caused an estimated $23 billion in damage, killing 23 people.

Record-Breaking Arctic cold round two

A second push of bitterly cold air has blasted its way south and east, bringing extremely cold temperatures for millions of Americans who have already endured nearly a week of January-like chill. There have been more than 350 record lows and record cool highs set, covering 42 states, since Sunday.

On Wednesday morning record lows were broken or tied from New York to New Orleans and more record lows and record cool high temperatures are possible.

20 countries most at risk from sea level rise.

Every global shore touches the same ocean, and the ocean is rising.

Climate Central just completed a novel analysis of worldwide exposure to sea level rise and coastal flooding. We found that 147 to 216 million people live on land that will be below sea level or regular flood levels by the end of the century, assuming emissions of heat-trapping gases continue on their current trend.

By far the largest group — 41 to 63 million — lives in China. The ranges depend on the ultimate sensitivity of sea level to warming.

But even these figures may be two to three times too low, meaning as many as 650 million people may be threatened.

Our analysis relied on global data on elevation and population, but our experience using similar data in the U.S. strongly suggests that this global data is not as accurate or precise as more modern data sources. 

Comparing results for U.S. vulnerability using global data and state-of-the-art domestic data, we found that global elevation data led to major underestimates compared to modern U.S. elevation data (by a factor of 3 to 4), whereas global population data led to overestimates by a factor of 1.6 to 1.8. The net effect of global data was underestimation by a factor of 2 to 3.

http://www.wunderground.com/news/20-countries-most-risk-sea-level-rise-20140924

Scientist hope to uncover hidden text on 500 year old martellus map that guided Christopher Columbus

n August, a group of researchers gathered at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library to scan the only remaining copy of the map in hopes that new technology can reveal text that is faded and illegible after five centuries years of wear and tear, NPR reports. 

PHOTO: CHET VAN DUZER

The Martellus map during preparations for multispectral imaging.

“If you look at the map under natural light, you can see some hints that there is a lot of text on the map, but you can't read it,” lead researcher and independent map scholar Chet Van Duzer told NPR. “If you look at the map with, for example, ultraviolet light, you start to perceive that yes, there is a lot of text on this map.”

So what is so fascinating about an old map?

Henricus Martellus, a German cartographer based in Florence, created the 4 x 6.5-foot tableau around 1491, according to Wired.com. The map, which shows the Earth from the Atlantic to Japan, represents how Europeans during the age would have understood geography just before Columbus discovered the New World. According to NPR, it is almost certain that Columbus used this very map to plot his voyage across the Atlantic.

http://www.weather.com/news/uncovering-hidden-text-martellus-map-20140922