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Global Warming Caused Hurricane Sandy

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Robert Tulip

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Global Warming Caused Hurricane Sandy

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Global Warming Caused Hurricane Sandy

Strong evidence links Hurricane Sandy with anthropogenic global warming.

At Huffington Post, Nathan Currier argues that climate change caused this storm, summarised as follows:

1. Physical changes from loss of summer Arctic sea ice include potential impacts on weather at lower latitudes. At this time of year this has the clearest line of causation, since lots of heat and moisture enter the atmosphere from the open waters that had been ice covered.

2. The jet stream is tending to meander more, and hence move more slowly as well. Arctic air came down to hook up with Sandy from the dip of the jet stream.

3. High pressure over Greenland, and the extremely negative state of the North Atlantic Oscillation, created a blocking event that impacted the path of Sandy, sending her back west over the U.S.

4. Sandy only survived as a hurricane so far north, almost in November, because of record high sea surface temperatures off the U.S. East coast.

5. With global warming, the atmosphere can hold more water vapor as it warms and the evaporation rate is also increased by the warming.

6. Thus, all major components of this superstorm show the signature of human-induced climate change to varying degrees.

7. Without global warming the chance of them occurring together like this would have a probability of about zero.


Hurricane Sandy and the Climate Connection:

"Hurricane Sandy was an unprecedented storm in modern times, arriving late in the hurricane season, making landfall abnormally far to the north on the US east coast, with a record-breaking low pressure, and a record-breaking storm surge. The hurricane also had the most kinetic energy of any tropical cyclone on record at 222 trillion Joules (the equivalent of 3.5 Little Boy Hiroshima atomic bombs) - more energy than Category 5 hurricanes like Katrina despite Sandy just being Category 1, because Sandy was spread over a much larger area."

This article also notes that

- sea levels around the New York area are now close to 1 foot higher than they were a century ago - Higher sea level made the storm surge worse than it would have been in the past, thus causing more flooding.
- Atlantic sea surface temperatures (SSTs) are also significantly warmer than they were a century ago as a result of human-caused global warming.
- during the hurricane event, SSTs along the coast were approximately 3°C above average, whereas global warming has increased SSTs by closer to 0.6°C.
- With every degree F rise in temperatures, the atmosphere can hold 4 percent more moisture. Thus, Sandy was able to pull in more moisture, fueling a stronger storm and magnifying the amount of rainfall by as much as 5 to 10 percent compared with conditions more than 40 years ago. Heavy rainfall and widespread flooding are a consequence."
- A warmer world will "load the dice" and make extreme events, including strong hurricanes, more likely to occur.
- Frankenstorm Sandy was put on steroids by climate change

In another article - Scientists look at climate change, the superstorm
- Normally there are 11 named Atlantic storms. The past two years have seen 19 and 18 named storms.
- climate scientists and hurricane experts have concluded that as the climate warms, there will be fewer total hurricanes. But those storms that do develop will be stronger and wetter.
- New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said "Anyone who says that there's not a dramatic change in weather patterns I think is denying reality, I told the president the other day: 'We have a 100-year flood every two years now.'"

thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/10/31/11 ... ?mobile=nc says
- September had the second highest global ocean temperatures on record
- Scientists worst-case scenarios are already happening — so their latest findings deserve attention so that Sandy doesn’t become just another Cassandra whose warnings are ignored. Now climate scientists project that we risk up to 10 times as much warming this century as in the last 50 years — with many devastating consequences
- Munich Re, a top reinsurer, links the rapid rise in North American extreme weather catastrophes to manmade climate change: "Climate-driven changes are already evident over the last few decades for severe thunderstorms, for heavy precipitation and flash flooding, for hurricane activity, and for heatwave, drought and wild-fire dynamics in parts of North America.”
Last edited by Robert Tulip on Fri Nov 02, 2012 7:20 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Global Warming Caused Hurricane Sandy

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Here's a time-lapse video of the hurricane.

That rain we had up in michigan the other day was from Sandy!

http://www.universetoday.com/98300/time ... 3-31-2012/
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Re: Global Warming Caused Hurricane Sandy

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I love your passion towards curbing climate change Robert. What have the CC deniers responded with? Anything yet? I thoroughly enjoy their rationalizations.

Have any of the larger scale projects you've been working on seen success by any measure yet?
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.” - Douglas Adams
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Re: Global Warming Caused Hurricane Sandy

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Interbane wrote:I love your passion towards curbing climate change Robert. What have the CC deniers responded with? Anything yet? I thoroughly enjoy their rationalizations.

Have any of the larger scale projects you've been working on seen success by any measure yet?
You would probably consider me a climate denier, Interbane. I do think our weather is a bit whacked out and it's probably related to human emissions. While I and many other "climate deniers" accept that the earth has warmed, we tend to differ on potential solutions. The government can only do so much and I've said many times here that the problem is far more complex than many people choose to understand. Saying this one storm is smoking gun evidence of global climate change seems like post ad hoc rationalization for climate change. One storm is a single data point and does not itself constitute much in the way of evidence.

The problem is that many "climate changers," if you will, would use global climate change as a vehicle for taxes and larger government without any discussion whether such measures would actually do any good. Anyway, I support the development of green energies, and I actually think a gasoline tax is a good idea. But because I don't support wholesale some of the potential political solutions being floated about, and I don't really think one storm can be used as a barometer for the actual state of climate change, many would brand me heretically as a "climate denier."

Anyway, just adding my two cents. A major factor of this storm had to do with coincidence of two systems colliding. You're going to get a whopping storm every now and then, global warming or not. What about all the big storms that came in the 1700s and 1800s? Are these to be attributed to global warming as well?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ne ... hurricanes
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Re: Global Warming Caused Hurricane Sandy

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Actually I came here tonight to find that post by Robert about Australia's proposed tax for corporations that make over a certain $ profit. Can anyone help me find it? Was it in one of the Ayn Rand discussions?

Another side note of much significance for me is that I recently switched to cable internet. Not only is it about 30 times faster than DSL, but for the first time in many years I can actually sign on to Booktalk and not get logged off automatically (usually within seconds). I can actually post something without having to go through the rigamarole of signing back on and hitting the back button to post what I have written. Amazing.
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Re: Global Warming Caused Hurricane Sandy

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geo wrote:Actually I came here tonight to find that post by Robert about Australia's proposed tax for corporations that make over a certain $ profit. Can anyone help me find it? Was it in one of the Ayn Rand discussions?
Google is your friend http://www.booktalk.org/post109201.html#p109201

Now it turns out the mining tax has raised zero revenue in its first quarter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minerals_Resource_Rent_Tax
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Re: Global Warming Caused Hurricane Sandy

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Thanks!
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Robert Tulip

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Re: Global Warming Caused Hurricane Sandy

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Here are two charts that illustrate how Hurricane Sandy was caused by global warming.
Image
What this shows is that scientists average prediction of sea ice in the Arctic this September was about seven million square kilometres, but the observed extent was less than half the average, and below the lowest scientific prediction. Scientists were too conservative, and climate change is happening faster than they imagined, apparently with unknown feedback loops. It appears the Arctic is twice as sensitive to the CO2 drivers as the rest of the planet.

The link of this material to Hurricane Sandy is that the unprecedented Arctic ice melt caused ripple effects, changing the path of the jet stream and creating a blocking high over Greenland that pushed Sandy on to the US coast, whereas without the Arctic global warming effect Sandy would have headed out to sea.

Image
Here is a chart showing worldwide percentage changes by type of event since 1980, indicating that number of climate related events has tripled while other events have been fairly stable.Source

The Executive Summary of the October 2012 Munich Re report on Severe Weather in North America states "Tropical cyclones (hurricanes) are among the most devastating weather events in North America. Hurricane indices may be useful for initial loss estimates. Off shore platforms and a possible scenario on the northeast coast constitute extraordinary risks." As well, Munich Re says "anthropogenic climate change is believed to be a significant loss driver."

When the insurance industry makes such a commercial assessment, it illustrates that climate denial is very stupid. Infrastructure maintenance does seem a rather humdrum topic, but global warming is elevating it to a matter of national security. Large resources are devoted to hypothetical threats while real natural threats to citizen safety are neglected. The destruction of New Orleans by Katrina, and now the devastation of the North East by Sandy, actually do affect the security of people as much as or even more than a bomb would.

Footage of Sandy reminded me of the movie The Day After Tomorrow, where a giant hurricane was formed by the confluence of global events resulting from climate change, and a storm surge flooded Manhattan. You would have thought that after such fictional predictions, people would have been better prepared for the real thing.
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Re: Global Warming Caused Hurricane Sandy

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Further to the natural loss events trend chart posted above, here is a chart of catastrophe trends based on data from Munich Re, the global reinsurer, showing that over the last thirty years the number of non-climate related major events (ie volcanoes and earthquakes) has been stable, but the number of climate related events has exploded, from about 300 in 1980 to 800 in 2010, growing at an average rate of 3.3% per year.

The only plausible reason for this growth is anthropogenic climate change.

If this growth rate continues, under the pressure of exponential increase in human CO2 emissions, which now stand at 34 gigatonnes per year, the annual global number of major natural insurance events will grow over the next four decades to more than 3000.

No wonder we are seeing freak superstorms such as Hurricane Sandy.
Natural Catastrophes Worldwide 1980 to 2010.gif
Natural Catastrophes Worldwide 1980 to 2010.gif (30.18 KiB) Viewed 4009 times
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