Changing the Conversation: Extreme Weather and Climate
Changing the Conversation: Extreme Weather and Climate
It has been an exceptional year of tornadoes in the U.S. Hundreds have died and several cities have been especially hard hit(Jeff Masters on Living on Earth). Ultimately, I will talk about these tornadoes and climate change and bring, at least temporarily, closure to my discussion on event attribution and climate change. (First in Series, Second in Series)
First, I want to write a couple of casual observations about forecasts and warnings. In 1953 there was a tornado in Flint, Michigan that killed more than 100 people. Many comparisons have been made between that 1953 tornado and the 2011 tornado in Joplin, Missouri. One of the comments that I have heard is that comparing 2011 to other years in terms of risk to human health, we can say that the health risk is less in 2011 than 60 years ago. The logic in the argument is that we have many more people in the U.S. today, and hence, if the risk was the same, then more people would have died in 2011. Standing alone, this is a peculiar argument, but it got me to thinking about risk.
Several times this year I have heard mayors of towns say that the warnings they had received for either tornadoes or floods have saved many lives and property. If you go back and check the forecasts, there are cases when a high probability of tornado activity has been predicted several days in advance. When it gets down to actual tornado warnings, the mayors in interviews say that people had 25-30 minutes to prepare, to take cover. Compared with the 1953’s state of knowledge and the ability to forecast both these long-term forecasts and short-term warnings are stunning advances. What stands at the basis of these advances? Observations, predictive models, and the ability of models to ingest and use those observations in forecasting. There is technology, and there is a lot of scientific theory and plain smartness tied up in those models and their interpretation. When we talk about federal science budgets for weather and climate, we are talking about predictions and risk assessment and warnings and knowledge which provide the opportunities for individuals and organizations to make good decisions.
If there is less risk to human health in 2011 than in 1953, then much of that risk reduction is due to improvements in model-based predictions.
Back to climate change. In my previous entries on event attribution I argued that the media discussion of the attribution of specific extreme events, primarily, contributed to the political argument rather than to the communication of scientific knowledge. As such, the primary product of this media discussion is to build and maintain doubt. Since that last blog, Christine Shearer and I completed and published an article in IEEE Earthzine, called Changing the Media Discussion on Climate and Extreme Weather. All I will do here is to highlight some of the arguments that we made:
1) We assert that a journalist’s question that asks a scientist to provide a yes-or-no answer to whether or not an extreme event is “caused” by climate change is, scientifically, ill posed.
2) That scientists are part of the conversation, and it is their role to participate in such a way that leads to a scientifically correct question.
3) The question in number 1 is ill posed for a number of reasons, but at the top of the list is because it requires the scientist to suppose there are two climates: one with and one without anthropogenic warming. We only have one climate, and we see the warmer climate, the moisture air, and the extreme weather evolving in that warming climate.
If you’re interested read the article. More generally, there are some very good articles in IEEE Earthzine. Christine Shearer and I have gotten a number of good comments on the paper, and through it all, I was interviewed by Tony Wood of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who wrote a nice story. This led to me getting an email from a Hal Hartung who maintains a web site on Anthropogenic Peat. Mr. Hartung made an interesting comment to me concerning the discussion of global warming which is: given that greenhouse gases are well known to hold energy close to the Earth, those who deny an anthropogenic impact on weather, need to pose a viable mechanism of how the Earth can hold in more energy and the weather not be changed. Think about it.
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P.S. One of my former students, Amanda Graor, wrote me to correct an error in the original posting of this blog. Here is her blog on volunteering in Joplin.
Reader Comments
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what design? ManBearPig?
nor with the AIDS victims.
Ummm, I didn't. Ya might want to check it again :)
My father was in the Marines, and fought in Korea. Four uncles on both sides were in the Marines, as well. Two of my brothers were in the Navy, and another was in the Army and served in Iraq I. Two of my nephews are in the Army, and two more nephews--and a niece--are or were in the Marines (one is still in Afghanistan in the infantry). My son was in Marine DEP until a few months ago when a sports injury got him booted out. And my older brother is working in Kabul as a private contractor, mostly dealing with the Marines. I would have gone that route, too, but I wanted to work in intelligence, and the best way to start was as a voice processing specialist (flying around in an AWACS transcribing foreign broadcasts), and the Marines didn't have that spec--at least not then--so I went with the Air Force. Needless to say, the spirit of the USMC runs deep in my family. And I mean this sincerely: thank you for your service. It's not always an easy way to go, and I wish more people knew just how hard it can be at times. And I don't just mean the lousy pay at the lower levels. ;-)
(I think I used a poor choice of words on the Vietnam thing; I meant to say that I was so young that it was over before I was old enough to participate. I joined the Air Force in 1981.)
Ch. 4 data is completely knocked out, however.
Wrong...consider health care professionals with accidental needle sticks. Consider folks who receive blood products, and the donors are in the 6 month conversion period, thus testing negative. Consider the unborn who get it from their mothers, or consider a rape.
On another note, I thank you very much for your service to this country, also.
I never said that all of the skeptics are pure. I'm sure that there are some wacko skeptics out there throwing death threats at some climate scientists.
However, the skeptics also get death threats as well. One said, "you will not live to see Global Warming."
What I mean, is that there is no ORGANIZED effort of skeptics to try and throw advocates into jail, or put tatooes on the advocates. Unlike team AGW, there are also no campaigning organizations on the skeptic side, as well.
Why is this so?
5th largest? Oh boy!
Could the Net be killing the planet one web search at a time?
Hmmm...I see that. I wonder if that data will be available going forward.
2 common materials pose cancer risk, government says
Warnings issued for formaldehyde and styrene; main threat is to workers in manufacturing
By Gardiner Harris
updated 6/10/2011 11:58:34 PM ET
WASHINGTON %u2014 The government issued warnings on Friday about two materials used daily by millions of Americans, saying that one causes cancer and the other might. Government scientists listed formaldehyde as a carcinogen, and said it is found in worrisome quantities in plywood, particle board, mortuaries and hair salons. They also said that styrene, which is used in boats, bathtubs and in disposable foam plastic cups and plates, may cause cancer but is generally found in such low levels in consumer products that risks are low.
Story: Why being pregnant with cancer is so dangerous
Frequent and intense exposures in manufacturing plants are far more worrisome than the intermittent contact that most consumers have, but government scientists said that consumers should still avoid contact with formaldehyde and styrene along with six other chemicals that were added Friday to the government%u2019s official Report on Carcinogens. Its release was delayed for years because of intense lobbying from the chemical industry, which disputed its findings.
John Bucher, associate director of the National Toxicology Program, which produced the report, said evidence of formaldehyde%u2019s carcinogenicity was far stronger than for styrene and that consumers were more likely to be exposed to potentially dangerous quantities of formaldehyde.
The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration warned in April that a hair-care product, Brazilian Blowout Acai Professional Smoothing Solution, contained unacceptable levels of formaldehyde, and salon workers have reported headaches, nosebleeds, burning eyes, vomiting and asthma attacks after using the product and other hair-straighteners.
Studies of workers like embalmers exposed to high levels of formaldehyde have found increased incidences of myeloid leukemia and rare cancers of the nasal passages and upper mouth.
Formaldehyde inescapable
Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer at the American Cancer Society, said that formaldehyde is both worrisome and inescapable. %u201CIt%u2019s the smell in new houses, and it%u2019s in cosmetics like nail polish,%u201D he said. %u201CAll a reasonable person can do is manage their exposure and decrease it to as little as possible. It%u2019s everywhere.%u201D
Link
BBC Article...
More like ENSO indicator #1. The reason why the trend became statistically signficiant, was because the data now includes 2010, an El Nino year! I'm sure that when 2011 is finished, the trend since 1995 will become statistically insignificant again.
So show where the snow pack is here?
OUCH!
He can't do it cause he is just running his mouth! Blah! Blah! Blah!
Link
Is it more snow or less snow?
I have no horse in this game,just curious.
Study of 800-year-old tree rings backs global warming
"The decline in recent decades of the mountain snows that feed the West's major rivers is virtually unprecedented for most of the past millennium, according to new research published today."
El Nino dominates Climate Variability, yet it is virtually impossible to forecast ENSO in the Climate Models.
Doesn't that cast at least some doubt on the Climate Models, which all CAGW Predictions are based off of?
Quote:
A high-resolution sediment core from the Vøring Plateau has been studied to document the centennial to millennial variability of the surface water conditions during the Holocene Climate Optimum (HCO) and the late Holocene period (LHP) in order to evaluate the effects of solar insolation on surface ocean climatology. Quantitative August summer sea surface temperatures (SSSTs) with a time resolution of 2–40 years are reconstructed by using three different diatom transfer function methods. Spectral- and scale-space methods are applied to the records to explore the variability present in the time series at different time scales. The SSST development in core MD95-2011 shows a delayed response to Northern Hemisphere maximum summer insolation at ∼11,000 years B.P. The record shows the maximum SSST of the HCO to be from 7.3 to 8.9 kyr B.P., which implies that the site was located in the regional warm water pool removed from the oceanic fronts and Arctic waters. Superimposed on the general cooling trend are higher-frequency variabilities at time scales of 80–120, 210–320, 320–640, and 640–1280 years. The climate variations at the time scale of 320–640 years are documented both for periods of high and low solar orbital insolation. We found evidence that the submillennial-scale mode of variability (640–900 years) in SSST evident during the LHP is directly associated with varying solar forcing. At the shorter scale of 260–450 years, the SSST during the LHP displays a lagged response to solar forcing with a phase-locked behavior indicating the existence of a feedback mechanism in the climate system triggered by variations in the solar constant as well as the role of the thermal inertia of the ocean. The abruptness of the cooling events in the LHP, especially pronounced during the onsets of the Holocene Cold Period I (approximately 2300 years B.P.) and the Little Ice Age (approximately 550 years B.P.), can be explained by a shutdown of deep convection in the Nordic Seas in response to negative solar insolation anomalies. These cooling events are on the order of 1.5°C.
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