Wunderground launches new Local Climate Change section
In honor of Earth Day on Sunday, wunderground has launched a new Climate Change Center, which gives people resources to understand how the climate is changing both globally and in their local neighborhoods. I am particularly pleased with our Local Climate Change feature, which allows one to see how temperature and precipitation have changed over the past 100+ years at the nearest station with a long period of measurements. Predictions from climate models on what the next 100 years may bring are overlaid for each station. Data for most U.S. stations goes back to 1895; we have data for a few stations in Europe that extend back to the 1700s. Berlin has the longest period of record in this database, with data back to 1702.
Figure 1. Screenshot of the Local Climate Change page for Washington, DC. Measured temperatures since 1820 are shown in grey. By clicking on the "Show post-1900 trend:" box, we see that the trend since 1900 has been for an increase in temperature of 1.5°C (2.7°F) per century. Moving the thin vertical red line over the image using the mouse shows that the warmest year on record in Washington D.C. was 1991. Predictions for a future with low emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide are shown in yellow; the high emissions prediction is shown in red. Separate tabs are available to examine precipitation and snow.
Skeptical?
Also included in the new Climate Change Center is a section addressing the common skeptical arguments made against climate change. We offer three levels of explanation. The "Basic" level is the default, but one can also see more technical in-depth discussions by clicking on the "See All Explanation Levels" link. The material was developed by physicist John Cook for his excellent skepticalscience.com web site, which is widely referenced in the climate science communication community.
Video 1. I'm featured in this video on extreme weather and climate change done by veteran videographer Peter Sinclair for the Yale forum on Climate Change and the Media this month. I'm also featured in Part 1 of this series. Our new Climate Change Center has a section for climate change videos, which includes a twice-monthly feature from GreenTV detailing the world's notable wild weather events of the past two weeks.
Earth: the Operator's Manual airs Sunday night
Penn State climate scientist Dr. Richard Alley hosts parts II and III of Earth: the Operator's Manual on PBS beginning at 7pm Sunday, April 22--Earth Day. Part I of this excellent series aired in April 2011. The series gives an overview of climate change, but primarily focuses on what we can do to help slow down climate change though smart energy choices. Dr. Alley, a registered Republican, geologist, and former oil company employee, is the Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences at the Pennsylvania State University, and one of the most respected and widely published world experts on climate change. Dr. Alley has testified before Congress on climate change issues, served as lead author of "Chapter 4: Observations: Changes in Snow, Ice and Frozen Ground" for the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and is author of more than 170 peer-reviewed scientific articles on Earth's climate. He is also the author of a book I highly recommend--The Two Mile Time Machine, a superb account of Earth's climate history as deduced from the 2-mile long Greenland ice cores. Dr. Alley is an excellent and engaging speaker, and I highly recommend listening to his 45-minute keynote speech, "The Biggest Control Knob: CO2 in Earth's Climate History", given at the 2010 American Geophysical Union meeting, via this very watchable recording showing his slides as he speaks in one corner of the video. If you want to understand why scientists are so certain of the link between CO2 and Earth's climate, this is a must-see lecture.
Have a great weekend, everyone, and I'll be back Monday with a new post. I'd like to thank Wunderground meteorologist, Angela Fritz for spearheading the creating the new Climate Change Center; it's a product I'll be referring to frequently in the future, and one we'll be updating in the coming months with data on local sea level rise, fire risk, and drought.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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I don't think Popocatepetl poses the lahar risk.
"They are named Decade Volcanoes because the project was initiated as part of the United Nations-sponsored International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction."
The list:
Avachinsky-Koryaksky, Kamchatka, Russia
Colima, Jalisco and Colima, Mexico
Mount Etna, Sicily, Italy
Galeras, Nariño, Colombia
Mauna Loa, Hawaii, USA
Mount Merapi, Central Java, Indonesia
Mount Nyiragongo, Democratic Republic of Congo
Mount Rainier, Washington, USA
Sakurajima, Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan
Santa Maria/Santiaguito, Guatemala
Santorini, Cyclades, Greece
Taal Volcano, Batangas, Luzon, Philippines
Teide, Canary Islands, Spain
Ulawun, New Britain, Papua New Guinea
Mount Unzen, Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan
Vesuvius, Naples, Italy
Actually it does pose that risk but it probably isn't to the extent of Rainier. But the chance of it happening there are much better. It is already active and there is snow and ice up there. I haven't heard of any reports of anything happening but it may start melting stuff if it keeps throwing lava everywhere.
There are a few on this list that are active.
April 19, 2012
Here is the wiki page for that Volcano. It says that lahars have happened before. But they do have a system in place to clear the area before it goes.
Why isn't the NHC talking about the blob over NW Florida?
Sarcasm Flag: On
The Three Big Ones
The last three volcanic eruptions to cause major loss of life were Krakatoa, Indonesia, where 32,000 were killed in 1883; Mt. Pelee, Martinique, where 29,000 were killed in 1902; and Nevada del Ruiz, Colombia, where 23,000 were killed in 1985. Fiery lava was not the culprit in any of these disasters.
Krakatoa, a small island, exploded catastrophically. The resulting sea wave washed whole villages on nearby Java and Sumatra away. A cloud of super-heated rock particles and poisonous gases known as a pyroclastic eruption rushed down the volcano's slope destroying the town of Saint-Pierre on Martinique. Unlike lava, it travels so fast that it cannot be outrun.
Like Grimsvatn, Nevada del Ruiz in the Andes Mountains is also covered by a glacier. A small eruption melted part of this ice, and the melt water produced a mud flow that inundated the town of Armero, located in a valley below the volcano. Interestingly, none of these three volcanoes had been active in the century prior to their eruption, although all had some historic activity.
The eruptions of Ruiz and Pelee were moderate-to-large in size, not gigantic. Their effects were confined to a ten-to-twenty kilometer radius around the volcano. The large death toll was the result of a moderate hazard combined with a moderately sized town.
Recipe for Risk
The first criterion for identifying the Most Dangerous Volcano in the World is to decide whether an eruption would endanger a nearby population center. To threaten a population, the geography must be right for the potential hazard; the mudflow, pyroclastic cloud, or lava, must be able to travel from volcano to town.
The Most Dangerous Volcano need not have been recently active. With the mean time between major eruptions at a given volcano hundreds to thousands of years, even geological evidence of eruptions of the last few tens of thousands of years is not enough to classify it as hazardous. If we were to consider only volcanoes that endanger small towns of a few thousands or tens of thousands of people, there would be literally hundreds of candidates. The Most Dangerous Volcano in the World has to be chosen from amongst the ones that neighbor major cities.
City Clastics
Four such cities come to mind: Seattle, which is endangered by Mt. Rainier; Tokyo by Fuji; Mexico City by Popocatepetl and Naples by Vesuvius. All of these cities are fortunately far (50-100 km) from their respective volcanoes, so only a large eruption would cause major damage. But as these cities grow, their suburbs crowd ever closer to the volcano.
We know so little about the cause of volcanic eruptions that it is difficult to rank their relative danger. (That's right, volcanologists have been studying volcanoes for maybe two hundred years and still they don't understand the cause for eruptions.) Are Rainier and Fuji, which have erupted only minimally in historic times, less dangerous than Popocatepetl and Vesuvius, which “burp” more often? Has Vesuvius proven itself the Most Dangerous, because of a 79 A.D. eruption that totaled Pompei and Herculaneum? We simply don't know. The simplistic sort of volcanic monitoring performed by most “volcano observatories” isn't going to answer these questions. But, since most major eruptions are preceded by a “warm-up” period of weeks to months long, monitoring of this signal will probably save lives.
Any successful forewarning presumes a city of millions of people can be evacuated. No one had the guts to try with Saint-Pierre or Armero even though the possibility was discussed.
The rarity of gigantic explosions like Krakatoa presents us with an even greater problem. Although they occur perhaps once per century, they are most dangerous because they have the potential to cause massive destruction over a wide area. The great Santorini Island eruption of 1627 B.C generated a sea wave in the Mediterranean that has been implicated in the fall of the Minoan civilization. The 1815 eruption of Tambora in Indonesia killed 50,000 Sumbawa Islanders and threw so much dust into the upper atmosphere that it caused the so-called Year Without a Summer.
The Most Dangerous Volcano in the World is the next to have a gigantic explosion. We just don't know which one it will be. But don't hold your breath, it may not be for a while.
Nothing tropical in nature.....it would be a subject from the SPC tho
Link to Washington Post article...... on Volcano
That was cool. Thanks for that link and video.
good night pedley
Really!
Look at your graph that shows a flat pattern from 1950 that you posted.......
Are you going to ask vague, cryptic questions as a substitute for discussion?
Take your time answering. I'm out for the night.
Just look at the graph provided and ignore the imposed line of increase that does not match.
LOL ,,, how about that cherry picking?
Have a look > That is laughable........ gnight
...the latencies of the long-haul international fiber connections are something of an issue...
...right now, round-trip travel times between London and Tokyo are taking about 265milliseconds, with routing that runs on the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean bottoms and (effectively) along Route 66.
[Over] a quarter of a second round-trip is pretty slow. [snip] Things should get better in 2013, however, when the Arctic Link cable connects Japan to Britain via the Northwest Passage. This line will run at 170milliseconds round trip.
* ie The ArcticCableCompany is betting the farm that they'll be able to run cable-laying ships through enough of the NorthwestPassage in the Summer of 2012 (and possibly the Summer of 2013) to have their system operating in the Fall of 2013 (or earlier).
Not to worry. One of these decades, West Central Florida will see a genuine, full-blown, severe weather outbreak again.
And when that happens, South Florida will just have to sit on the sidelines and watch from afar. ;-)
Meanwhile, several of the local TV mets have mentioned the possibility of large hail at some point this weekend in our area. Paul Dellegatto of Fox 13 said that hail might fall from small showers on Sunday, after the frontal passage, as a result of diurnal heating of the land combined with the unusually cold pool of upper air passing directly overhead.
Some history.. In late April of 1973, nearly the whole of Western Pasco County and parts of Pinellas County experienced dramatic hailstorms which left golf ball-sized hailstones as much as 8 inches deep on the ground, in some places. It was a the result of part of a weather system not unlike this one that is approaching now. And it happened during the 3AM hour.
Well I had damage to my car from half dollar size hail last year in Fort Myers, so I can only imagine what golf ball size hail would do..
Interesting I was not aware we had such a crazy hail event! Hail has been very rare in my area since I've lived here, I've lived in Northern Pinellas County now for 16 years and I've only seen hail twice! Both times it was only about nickel sized or so. Other than that I've seen every other type of severe weather imaginable numerous times over accept maybe a high end tornado and a hurricane eye wall :)
It would be interesting if I do see hail tomorrow.
BTW I've changed my mind about what I said earlier, I was at work all NIght so I was unable to assess the situation. Upon further examination. All the thunderstorms over Florida today were ude to instability soaring above what is what expected for this point in time as a result this combined with a weak impulse from the washed out front that stalled in the eastern gulf on Thursday sparked today's thunderstorms. When I first got back from work I thought what was coming in was the low developing ahead of schedule so I was worried when I saw everything collapsing but now I know its not. The NWS in Ruskin actually predicted the activity to die down around midnight and that it did.
After further examination the forecast for tomorrow looks in good shape and if anything looks a bit more likely for severe weather as models have placed the low again a little ways north of the Tampa putting us near the greatest lift and spin from the low but also still in the warm sector. Also, the air is even colder aloft with that upper low than I first thought. When that passes overhead the deep tropical moisture and we get heating, powerful thunderstorms should explode, some super cells.
Oh I didn't know he was doing a 1 AM chat, darn!
Yeah if we get any breaks in the clouds it will make a huge difference!
I better get to bed now, we shall see how things are tomorrow. There should be a low by morning with a tong of thunderstorms associated, you can see the low taking shape now in the Central gulf with convection firing and the rotation taking shape.
I'm bored. I'll bite.
I think the 1.5 C line could be explained better, but it appears to be a linear regression on the observed temps for Washington D.C. since 1900. It looks like a pretty good fit to me. I wonder what the correlation coefficient is.
Your comment about cherry picking seems nonsensical. What was cherry picked? Were you a bit tired and perhaps punchy when you made your post? It happens.
The weather extremes we are now experiencing, the observed rise in sea levels and the loss of Arctic sea ice are definitely not laughable. I'm not sure where your animus comes from.
Oh yes. It can happen, rare though it is. And it is just the sort of setup that we are seeing coming together now which can produce it.
BTW, I like you updated assessment of the situation. And of course, if there are super cells with this cold air aloft then obviously we could see large hail. It likely won't be widespread but it will happen with some of the super cells, most likely.
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE TAMPA BAY RUSKIN FL
602 AM EDT SAT APR 21 2012
FLZ039-042-043-048>052-055>057-060>062-065-211800 -
LEVY-CITRUS-SUMTER-HERNANDO-PASCO-PINELLAS-HILLSB OROUGH-POLK-
MANATEE-HARDEE-HIGHLANDS-SARASOTA-DE SOTO-CHARLOTTE-LEE-
602 AM EDT SAT APR 21 2012
THIS HAZARDOUS WEATHER OUTLOOK IS FOR WEST CENTRAL AND SOUTHWEST
FLORIDA.
.DAY ONE...TODAY AND TONIGHT.
...THUNDERSTORM IMPACT...
THERE WILL BE STRONG TO SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS ACROSS THE AREA TODAY
AS A STRONG LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM APPROACHES THE AREA TODAY AND THEN
MOVES ACROSS THE AREA TONIGHT. A STRONG LOW LEVEL JET AND VERY
COLD AIR ALOFT WILL ALLOW STRONGER THUNDERSTORMS TO PRODUCE
DAMAGING WINDS...LARGE HAIL AND POSSIBLY ISOLATED TORNADOES. THE
BEST CHANCES FOR THIS WILL BE LATER THIS AFTERNOON AND TONIGHT AS
DAYTIME HEATING ADDS TO THE INSTABILITY AND THEN THE UPPER LOW
MOVES OVER THE AREA. IN ADDITION...HEAVY RAINFALL IS EXPECTED WITH
THIS SYSTEM AND A WIDESPREAD 1 TO 3 INCHES WILL BE POSSIBLE WITH
LOCALLY HEAVIER AMOUNTS. THIS MAY CAUSE SOME MINOR FLOODING OF
ROADWAYS...LOW LYING AREAS AND SMALL STREAMS. RESIDENTS AND
VISITORS SHOULD MONITOR CONDITIONS CLOSELY TODAY AND TONIGHT FOR
ANY POSSIBLE WATCHES OR WARNINGS.
...RIP CURRENT IMPACT...
THERE IS A MODERATE RISK OF RIP CURRENTS TODAY FROM TARPON SPRINGS
SOUTH AS WINDS INCREASE AND BECOME SOUTHWESTERLY THROUGH THE LATE
MORNING AND AFTERNOON. A RIP CURRENT IS A 10 TO 30 YARD WIDE
CHANNEL OF WATER THAT CAN PULL EVEN A STRONG SWIMMER INTO DEEPER
WATER.
TO AVOID GETTING CAUGHT IN A RIP CURRENT...SWIM AT GUARDED
BEACHES AND HEED THE ADVICE OF THE BEACH PATROL. AT UNGUARDED
BEACHES AND NEAR PIERS...JETTIES...AND INLETS...DO NOT GO INTO THE
SURF MUCH ABOVE YOUR KNEES.
IF CAUGHT IN THE SEAWARD PULL OF A RIP CURRENT...DO NOT ATTEMPT
TO MOVE DIRECTLY TOWARD SHORE. INSTEAD...MOVE SIDEWAYS ACROSS THE
RIP CURRENT UNTIL THE PULL EASES. ANOTHER METHOD OF ESCAPE IS TO
LET THE RIP CURRENT PULL YOU SEAWARD 50 TO 100 YARDS...WHERE THE
FORCE WEAKENS. THEN...SWIM TOWARD THE BEACH AT AN ANGLE AWAY FROM
THE CURRENT.
...WIND AND SEA IMPACT...
WINDS AND SEAS WILL BE INCREASING BRIEFLY THROUGH THE AFTERNOON
AND SMALL CRAFT OPERATORS SHOULD TAKE CAUTION IF TRAVELING
OFFSHORE. WINDS AND SEAS WILL THEN INCREASE TO 20 TO 25 KNOTS WITH
HIGHER GUSTS OVERNIGHT WITH SEAS GRADUALLY BUILDING UP TO 8 FEET.
FISHERMEN AND OTHER SMALL CRAFT OPERATORS MAY WANT TO POSTPONE
TRIPS UNTIL CONDITIONS IMPROVE.
.DAYS TWO THROUGH SEVEN...SUNDAY THROUGH FRIDAY.
...THUNDERSTORM IMPACT...
A FEW LINGERING SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS WILL BE POSSIBLE THROUGH
SUNDAY AFTERNOON AS THE COLD FRONT PUSHES THROUGH THE AREA. GUSTY
WINDS AND DEADLY LIGHTNING WILL BE POSSIBLE WITH THE STORMS.
...RIP CURRENT IMPACT...
STRONG ONSHORE FLOW WILL CAUSE RIP CURRENTS ALONG AREA BEACHES. IN
ADDITION...HIGH SURF MAY OCCUR WITH WAVE HEIGHTS OF 3 TO 5 FEET.
...WIND AND SEA IMPACT...
WINDS AND SEAS WILL REMAIN ABOVE ADVISORY LEVELS THROUGH MONDAY
NIGHT. SMALL CRAFT OPERATORS SHOULD USE EXTREME CAUTION OR
POSTPONE TRIPS UNTIL CONDITIONS IMPROVE.
...FIRE WEATHER IMPACT...
DRIER AIR WILL MOVE INTO THE AREA BEHIND THE COLD FRONT FOR MONDAY
AFTERNOON AND CAUSE SEVERAL HOURS OF CRITICAL HUMIDITIES. IN
ADDITION WINDS WILL BE NEAR 15 MPH. THIS WILL ALLOW FOR THE RAPID
SPREAD OF WILDFIRES. DRY CONDITIONS WILL CONTINUE THROUGH MID-WEEK
WITH A FEW HOURS OF CRITICAL HUMIDITIES POSSIBLE.
.SPOTTER INFORMATION STATEMENT...
SPOTTERS SHOULD MONITOR THE WEATHER. FORMAL ACTIVATION MAY BE
NEEDED.
$$
COLSON
Looks like Central Florida will get some much needed rain this weekend. Hopefully this will bring our wildfire index down.
Excerpt:
AFTER AN EXTENDED STRETCH OF DRY WEATHER OVER THE EASTERN THIRD OF
THE COUNTRY FOR MUCH OF APRIL...A WIDESPREAD RAINFALL EVENT IS
EXPECTED FROM FLORIDA TO NEW ENGLAND AS A SLOW MOVING COLD FRONT
INTERACTS WITH A MOISTURE RICH AIR MASS FROM THE GULF OF MEXICO.
THE HEAVIEST RAIN IS FORECAST OVER FLORIDA ON SATURDAY...AND FOR
LOCATIONS EAST OF INTERSTATE 95 ON SUNDAY AS A NEW SURFACE LOW
FORMS ALONG THE COAST. THIS LOW WILL LIKELY HAVE CHARACTERISTICS
OF A NOR'EASTER BY SUNDAY NIGHT FOR THE NEW ENGLAND COAST AS HEAVY
RAIN AND GUSTY ONSHORE WINDS AFFECT THAT AREA. A BAND OF LIGHT TO
MODERATE SNOW IS LIKELY ON THE NORTHERN PERIPHERY OF THE
PRECIPITATION SHIELD OVER SOUTHERN ONTARIO AND QUEBEC.
HPC Excessive Rainfall Discussion
COASTAL SOUTHEAST FL...
CONCERNS FOR RUNOFF ISSUES OVER URBANIZED AREAS OF COASTAL
SOUTHEAST AND POSSIBLY COASTAL NORTHEAST FL THIS PERIOD. ABOVE
AVG PW VALUES...1-2 STD ABOVE THE MEAN...FCST TO REMAIN PLACE ACRS
THE ERN GULF OF MEXICO THROUGH FL AHEAD OF THE DEVELOPING CLOSED
LOW FCST TO PUSH ESEWD INTO THE NRN GULF TODAY AND THEN MORE ENEWD
INTO CNTRL FL SAT NIGHT/EARLY SUN. MOISTURE FLUX VALUES ARE FCST
TO BECOME ANOMALOUS ACRS MOST OF FL THIS PERIOD...WITH MAX
ANOMALIES OF 4-5 STD ABOVE THE MEAN ACRS THE CNTRL AND SRN PORTION
OF FL. THE ANOMALOUS PW/MOISTURE FLUX VALUES AND OVERALL STRONG
LARGE SCALE DYNAMICS AHEAD OF THIS CLOSED LOW WL SUPPORT
WIDESPREAD HEAVY RAIN POTENTIAL FOR MOST OF THE FL PENINSULA.
WHILE FFG VALUES ARE VERY HIGH ACRS FL GIVEN ONGOING
DROUGHT...INTENSE RAINFALL RATES COULD PRODUCE RUNOFF ISSUES IN
URBANIZED AREAS...ESPECIALLY ACRS COASTAL SOUTHEAST AND POSSIBLY
COASTAL NORTHEAST FL. ISOLATED SHRT TERM PCPN AMTS OF 1-2"+ AND
ISOLATED TOTALS OF 4-6" POSSIBLE.
wow this low is coming together nicely, the upper low looks really impressive! It looks like the low will be nearly vertically stacked as it comes across Florida. Powerful MCS is developing in the Central gulf and racing toward Florida. Oone thing I've noticed is that MCS getting stuck down in the keys, if convection continues to fire down there it will spread high clouds and more stable air northward towards us and severe will be limited. However, if it breaks up enough to channel more surface instability northward and allow more heating, uh oh, look out...
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