“Connecting the Dots”: August 2024
On this month’s edition of Connecting the Dots (August 2024):
“These 10 US States are Least Prepared for Climate Change and Extreme Weather”
Does your state make the cut? Here’s an excerpt from a post at CNBC:
“…We looked at factors including state-level figures provided by First Street for properties at risk of major damage from flooding, extreme heat, wildfires and wind in the next 30 years. We also considered National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) data on extreme weather for the primary geographic regions in which states are situated, and U.S. Department of Energy data on renewable power…”
Meanwhile… it’s not your imagination, it’s getting smokier out there:
Meteorologist DJ Kayser at Praedictix informs me that Vermont has experienced two separate 500-year-plus floods in the last 12 months.
“…This also qualifies as a “thousand-year rain event” for St. Johnsbury, meaning that rain that heavy has only a 0.1 percent chance of falling in any given year, according to data from the National Weather Service. The threshold for a thousand-year rain event in St. Johnsbury is 4.32 inches in three hours, or 5.43 inches in six hours. St. Johnsbury got 5.8 inches in three hours and 7.96 inches in six hours, outpacing even those extreme thresholds. “It’s off the charts,” Banacos said…”
Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2024/07/30/flood-emergency-vermont-johnsbury-record/
“…In a webinar with journalists last month, Burt argued that US homeowners’ wildfire and flood risks are underinsured by $28.7 billion a year. As a result, more than 17 million homes, representing nearly 19% of total US home value, are at risk of suffering what could total $1.2 trillion in value destruction. “This is not a ‘global financial crisis’ kind of event,” Burt said, noting the total housing market is worth about $45 trillion. “But in the communities where the impacts are happening, it will feel like the Great Recession.” Burt’s estimate may actually be on the conservative side. The climate-risk research firm First Street Foundation last year estimated that 39 million US homes — nearly half of all single-family homes in the country — are underinsured against natural disasters, including 6.8 million relying on state-backed insurers of last resort…”
Image above courtesy of NOAA
“…Ground temperatures in East Antarctica have soared more than 50 degrees (28 Celsius) above normal in the second major heat wave to afflict the region in the past two years. This historic warm spell could persist for another 10 days and is an ominous example of the major temperature spikes this polar climate could experience more frequently in a warming world...”
“Antarctic Temperatures Soar 50F Above Norm in Long-Lasting Antarctic Heat Wave.” Excerpt from a post at MSN.com
“With near-constant reports of wildfire catastrophes in the media, it seems like extreme fires are occurring more regularly. And a recent study in Nature Ecology and Evolution confirms it—showing that intense wildfires are now twice as common as they were 2 decades ago. Many scientists had suspected that extreme fires were getting worse, said Calum Cunningham, a pyrogeographer from the University of Tasmania who led the study. “But we’ve not had the evidence to prove this at a global scale before,” he said...”
EOS.org: https://eos.org/articles/extreme-wildfires-are-getting-more-extreme-and-occurring-more-often
“…During the storm, the team was concerned only with acquiring good data. When they actually looked at the Greenfield readings, however, they were surprised to note winds of around 270 miles per hour, with gusts well above that. These one-second wind speeds are difficult to pinpoint exactly, said Kosiba, as the particles measured by radar — “debris, raindrops, grass, two-by-fours” — are all moving differently through the air and at different angles to the radar beam. “We’re trying to give a range, which puts this event at 309–318 mph.” The two strongest known tornadoes, El Reno in 2013 and Bridge Creek in 1999, both had DOW-measured wind speeds within that range…”
“BEST: Capturing the Worst Tornado Winds“. More on the Greenfield, Iowa tornado from the American Meteorological Society
Photo credit above: Dr. Karen Kosiba reading the radar screen in a DOW vehicle. Photo credit: Jen Walton/FARM Facility.
Heatwave baking Paris Olympics ‘impossible’ without climate change, study says.
Heatwave blanketing Olympics ‘impossible’ without climate change.
Mediterranean heat wave ‘virtually impossible’ without climate change: Scientists
Cerrado’s current drought impossible without human-caused climate change: Study
Some July Heat: ‘Virtually Impossible’ Without Climate Change, Analysis Finds
Typhoons forming closer to coast due to climate change: Study.
InsuranceJournal.com has more details here: https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2024/08/02/786459.htm
“…Nearly all of the spending on climate change has gone to prevention, including reducing fossil-fuel use and developing technologies to lower carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Those mitigation efforts haven’t been enough. Funds aimed at addressing the effects of climate change recently accounted for about 5% of the roughly $1.3 trillion spent annually on all climate efforts, according to a report from the Global Center on Adaptation and the Climate Policy Initiative, a pair of nonprofits…”
“Climate Cash Pivots to New Reality of a Hotter, Wetter Planet”. The Wall Street Journal has details: https://www.wsj.com/us-news/climate-environment/climate-cash-pivots-to-new-reality-of-a-hotter-wetter-planet-f0554119?mod=hp_lead_pos11
And then there was Hurricane Debby, which soaked Florida and the East Coast with excessive rains in early August:
Flash Flood Warnings issued by local National Weather Service offices with “Debby”:
Climatologist Brian Brettschneider invites us all to step back and look at the trends since 1940. Too short a timeline to be statistically significant? The releaes of man-made, climate-warming GHG gasses is cumulative, a near-doubling since the mid 1800s. But much of that man-made warming has kicked in since the middle of the 20th century.
First: snowfall trends across the entire lower 48 states since 1940:
Dew point, an absolute measure of water in the air, has been increasing since 1980. Summers are more humid east of the Rockies:
Roughly 93% of the additional man-made warming from the release of greenhouse gases is going into the world’s oceans:
Another signal of ongoing warming: the Meditteranean Sea is the rough equivalent of bathwater as of mid-August, 2024:
“American Cities are Becoming Unbearably Hot. Here These Ones are Roasting the Most” CNN has the story here
“Unprecedented Number of Heat Records Broken Around the World This Year”. Here is an excerpt from The Guardian:
“A record 15 national heat records have been broken since the start of this year, an influential climate historian has told the Guardian, as weather extremes grow more frequent and climate breakdown intensifies. An additional 130 monthly national temperature records have also been broken, along with tens of thousands of local highs registered at monitoring stations from the Arctic to the South Pacific, according to Maximiliano Herrera, who keeps an archive of extreme events. He said the unprecedented number of records in the first six months was astonishing. “This amount of extreme heat events is beyond anything ever seen or even thought possible before,” he said. “The months from February 2024 to July 2024 have been the most record-breaking for every statistic…”
Graphic credit above: Des Moines National Weather Service
“The Surprising Factor Making The United States a Tornado Hot Spot.” Here’s an excerpt from an interesting post at Eos:
“…Geography can explain the liveliness of the United States’ “tornado alley.” Dry winds deflected by the Rocky Mountains and the warm, moist air coming from the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea set the stage for tornado genesis. However, central South America also has similar conditions, with dry air from the Andes meeting moist air from the Amazon basin. So why aren’t the flatlands of Bolivia, Argentina, and Paraguay tornado hot spots? A new study reveals another key geographic factor: the terrain hundreds of kilometers upwind from where a tornado forms. The authors of the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, found that central North America’s high tornado potential is partly due to the smooth, flat expanse of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea from where easterly winds flow toward the Great Plains...”
Credit: Climate Central
“Are You Sure Your House is Worth That Much“? Spiking insurance rates may still be underestimating risk caused by climate-fueled disasters, according to The Atlantic:
“…By some estimates, the risks to the housing market are very near at hand. David Burt, the CEO of DeltaTerra Capital, an investment-research firm that specializes in climate risks, told Congress last year that, for communities at risk of wildfire, his firm’s models pointed to a 20 percent loss in home value on average in the next five years, and that a fifth of U.S. communities could experience a “Great Recession–like” loss in the value of their greatest asset even under a moderate climate-change scenario. (Burt, notably, correctly predicted the subprime-mortgage crisis of 2008.) Private insurers have a clear-enough picture of climate risks—and their growing losses—that they’re leaving California as well as Florida, where 2022’s Hurricane Ian brought $112 billion in damages. Five private insurers liquidated before the storm that year, and more have left the state since…”
Credit: NOAA
“Grapefruit Size Hail? Climate Change Could Bring Giant Ice Stones“. The link is just emerging, but a warmer climate may lead to more (large) hailstones, and fewer small hailstones. USA Today has the post here:
“A new study published this week may cause a collective groan among those who have had a car dented or a windshield shattered by large hailstones. Expect to see larger hail and more intense hailstorms as the world warms, especially in the eastern U.S., according to a study published Wednesday in the Nature journal npj Climate and Atmospheric Science. The study modeled how hailstones of the past could compare with those of the future, using two scenarios for potential greenhouse gas emissions. The result? “Hailstones larger than 2 inches get larger,” said study co-author Victor Gensini, an associate professor and meteorologist at Northern Illinois University and one of the nation’s leading experts on storms and tornadoes. The higher the emissions, he said, the greater the size of the hailstones, and the hail is largest and most frequent in the worst-case scenario…”
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