Hurricane Irma Reaches 185 MPH, Trailing Only Allen As Strongest Atlantic Storm On Record (arstechnica.com) 318
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: We are quickly running out of adjectives to describe the destructive potential of Hurricane Irma. As of 2pm ET on Tuesday, the National Hurricane Center upgraded the storm's sustained winds to 185mph. This is near-record speed for a storm in the Atlantic basin, which includes the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, and Gulf of Mexico. Such high, sustained winds tie Irma for the second-strongest storm on record in the Atlantic, along with Hurricane Wilma (2005), Hurricane Gilbert (1998), and the 1935 Florida Keys hurricane. Only Hurricane Allen, which reached 190 mph in 1980 before striking a relatively unpopulated area of Texas, reached a higher wind speed. Globally, the all-time record for hurricanes is held by Patricia, which reached a staggering 215 mph in the Pacific Ocean in 2015. Although sustained winds capture the most public attention, meteorologists generally measure the intensity of a storm based upon central pressures, which are considerably lower than sea-level pressure on Earth, 1,013 millibars. Typhoon Tip, in 1979, holds this record at 870 millibars. For now, at least, Irma has a relatively high central pressure of 927 millibars. Why the storm has such an odd wind-speed-pressure relationship isn't entirely clear. According to the National Hurricane Center, Irma is expected to bring catastrophic winds and potential storm surges to the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, and the UK territory of Turks and Caicos this week. The Florida Keys could get hit by late Saturday night or Sunday.
Camille (Score:5, Interesting)
...probably reached 200 MPH, but the instruments at Keesler AFB were blown away when Camille hit Biloxi, so they can't count "sustained wind speed."
Re:Camille (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember Camille. My mom woke me up at 2am, and told me to grab everything I own and take it upstairs. The flood waters from the neighborhood creek were already at our front porch. About 10 minutes later, muddy water started gurgling out of the heater vents on the floor of my bedroom. The water rose another 30cm over the next few hours.
My room was a muddy mess the next morning. But it was worth it because school was cancelled for a week.
This was more than 400 km from landfall.
I happened almost exactly a month after Apollo 11 landed on the moon.
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That could have been a tornado. Same happened with Andrew in 1992 where brief 300 mph winds were reported before instruments got ripped out. That was not counted as it was a tornado spawned draft
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The highest recorded speeds have been just over 300mph.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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the same can also be said for America's deadliest hurricane...which lacks an official name since we weren't doing those back in 1900
"The highest measured wind speed was 100 miles per hour (160 km/h) just after 6 p.m., but the Weather Bureau's anemometer was blown off the building shortly after that measurement was recorded"
the 1900 hurricane hit Galveston, killing between 8 and 12,000 people [wikipedia.org]
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the 1900 hurricane hit Galveston, killing between 8 and 12,000 people
That's a rather large margin of error.
Re:Camille (Score:5, Interesting)
I just moved out of Houston and I was there for Hurricane Harvey. When it hit Corpus Christie, every weather station from there to Galveston was just blown away. And that was "only" a Category Four.
I never want to be near a hurricane like that again. It scared the crap out of me. We were supposed to have moved (driving to the California Central Coast) the day before Harvey hit, and it obliterated our schedule. Couldn't leave town until a week later when the water receded enough off the highways that one lane of traffic could get out. Tons of people were still evacuating, because the "controlled" release of water from the reservoirs was flooding neighborhoods that hadn't flooded during the initial 50+ inches of rain. It took us the entire first day of driving just to get out of Houston city limits and all together, after a day of driving, we only got as far as College Station.
We just arrived in our new place in Cali today. There are wildfires a few hundred miles away, but here where I am, right on the coast, there's no danger of burning. At least that what I'm told. Screw natural disasters. I don't like 'em one bit, no sir. Did you know that the constant sound of heavy rain on the windows for five solid days can make you completely insane?
Re:Camille (Score:4, Funny)
Did you know that the constant sound of heavy rain on the windows for five solid days can make you completely insane?
Sure do. I live in the Netherlands. Why do you think they have coffee shops..
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I thought that was why you had hashish bars.
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I can live with rain for 5 days. Wait until you don't see direct sunlight for 2 months because you're either too far north, or it's always overcast. The kicker is it'll occasionally be clear at night, not that it really helps when night is 20 hours long.
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Forget natural disasters, I'm going to where they only have earthquakes and landslides! ;-)
Local meterologist (Score:2)
Re:Local meterologist (Score:5, Interesting)
Uh, that's not quite the way hurricanes work. They don't "slam into" something and stop. Caribbean islands are small compared to hurricanes!
They stop when they traverse a region where they are separated from the warm ocean, which is (in essence) their power source.
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Are you honestly hoping it slams into your area rather than somewhere else, to spare those other people the pain? That'd be mighty magnanimous. Except for your neighbors, of course.
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Two storms of unusual magnitude .... (Score:2, Insightful)
Two storms of unusual magnitude, exceptional temperatures in parts of CA, but hey, climate change is worldwide con, right?
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After 12 uneventful years, clearly global warming now!
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Uneventful in the USA?
You know the world id actually a little bit bigger?
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Oh, and I forgot to mention: biggest atlantic storm ever recorded: winter 2015/2016.
Did not make landfall though, so except for nautic enthusiasts it made no news.
Both storms were usual in magnitude (Score:5, Informative)
So far this season [wikipedia.org], we've had 9 named storms, 4 of which have become hurricanes, 2 major hurricanes. While we've still got 3 more months, but the end of September is the end of the peak [noaa.gov], with a few storms in October, and almost none in November. Predictions at the start of the season were for about 14 named storms, 6-7 hurricanes, and 3 major hurricanes. So we're on track for a really boring, average year in terms of Atlantic hurricanes.
The only reason both storms seem unusual is because until Harvey, the U.S. hadn't been hit by a major hurricane since 2005. Contrary to the doom and gloom scenario painted by climate change alarmists after Katrina, Rita, and Wilma, who warned us that 2005 was going to become the new norm for Atlantic hurricanes. Sometimes outliers are nothing more than outliers.
Re:Winter is coming (Score:5, Informative)
I think that the prediction is actually for fewer storms, but greater magnitude..... .... [noaa.gov]
C. Model simulations of greenhouse warming influence on Atlantic hurricanes
Our regional model projects that Atlantic hurricane and tropical storms are substantially reduced in number, for the average 21st century climate change projected by current models, but have higher rainfall rates, particularly near the storm center."
I guess you will also have an explanation for the fact that there is less ice in the Arctic?
Summary: climate change denier detected.
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I guess you will also have an explanation for the fact that there is less ice in the Arctic?
Well, it is an interglacial......
Even if there was no such thing as climate science slow warming would be a safe bet.
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But how convenient that a new study came out just as Hurricane Harvey, a storm that will prove to be the most expensive in U.S. history, was petering out. Hurricanes are back on the global warming bandwagon at such a convenient moment.
Fixed link (Score:4, Interesting)
Sorry, here is a link to the many, many people who claimed Global Warming would cause more hurricanes [duckduckgo.com].
It's also funny how the GFDL used to claim [noaa.gov] global warming would neither make hurricanes more frequent nor more powerful...
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I know that nobody is going to see this, but it should still be pointed out..
Your "link" is just a web serach. Looking at the actual articles linked, and going beyond the news outlet articles that talk about it to the actual papers, they do indeed say the same thing. In fact, it looks like the news outlets are using technically correct wording, but it's misleading, something like: "There will be more, powerful storms" as in "There will be a larger number of powerful storms" not that there will be a
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Knowing the limitations of your computations is a sign have some idea what you are doing (though it's not a certainty of course). It's the people who don't understand the limits that tend to now know what they are doing.
Re:Winter is coming (Score:4, Interesting)
Human industrial activity within the past 300 years, especially with the most significant of it happening only within the past 100 years, is not responsible for the ice sheets retreating. This most recent cycle of retreating glaciation has been going on for over 10,000 years now, and started well before humans were engaging in any sort of notable industrial activity.
The more recent cycle of retreating glaciation started over 20,000 years ago and was largely over by the Holocene Climatic Optimum [wikipedia.org] 5,000-9,000 years ago. Since then temperatures have generally been declining and glaciers growing ... until recently when anthropogenic global warming has taken over.
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Well thank Man for staving off the ice age!
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Weather may not be climate, but the statistical behavior of weather certainly is.
Re:Winter is coming (Score:5, Insightful)
Who is doing that? We have the entire history of recorded meteorology to draw upon; it's quite easy to identify a single storm as a statistical outlier.
Generally any data point more than 1.5 IQRs above the third quartile is an outlier, and should be a rare bird. Of course you do on occasion run into a rare bird, but if you start seeing them on a regular basis that means either you are having implausibly strange luck or something underlying has changed.
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I was going to mod you up, but then I found out my mod points expired last night. Anyway, good point.
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Why do so many of the same people who don't believe in climate change believe that illegal immigrants commit felonies at a greater rate than American citizens?
Aren't they on the side of science and reason?
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before posting again, i suggest learning the definitions of the words you use.
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We'll all remember your instance that weather is climate the furst extreme cold snap that occurs this winter
That would be a valid argument if "cold snaps" were becoming statistically more likely or more severe. They are not. Instead we have a million square miles of open water where we used to have ice pack.
But hurricanes are becoming more intense. Ocean surface temperatures have risen 0.7C, which has lead to about a 10% rise in max wind speed.
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That would be a valid argument if "cold snaps" were becoming statistically more likely or more severe.
Not really. Global warming will rearrange climate patterns, so we should expect that some regions will begin to have more severe winters, with longer and more severe cold snaps, etc. even as the global average increases.
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We'll all remember your insistence that weather is climate the first extreme cold snap that occurs this winter, which by your logic utterly disproves global warming...
Individual, localized events are weather. Widespread patterns of events are climate. It's really not hard. And we have a pattern of increases in severe storms. This storm by itself is not evidence, but the larger pattern it fits into is.
Also, note that you should expect global warming to produce extreme cold weather in some locations, where "extreme" is compared to local historical records. Global warming is going to significantly alter weather patterns, and that will result in some areas getting colder,
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We'll all remember your instance that weather is climate the furst extreme cold snap that occurs this winter, which by your logic utterly disproves global warming...
I guess to you it's just an "inconvenient truth" how long it's been since we've even had any serious hurticanes hit the US.
Part of the reason why the hurricanes were absent was because of an unusual prolonged el Nino in the Pacific. The duration and severity of the typhoons in the Eastern Pacific during the el Nino years were also effected. But because typhoons do not directly effect North Americans by and large they are ignored. Now the situation is doing a wild swing in the other direction. Now we see the jet stream taking a long sweep to the north all summer pumping moisture eastward like a vacuum cleaner gone mad. All indic
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None of your rant is actually relevant. The problem wasn't "weather pumping anything all summer. it was the fact that we got an oddball hurricane that decided to linger a bit. If not for this peculiar bit of movement it would have been much less interesting and damaging.
Your narrative doesn't explain what happened.
> Right now large areas of Southern California are experiencing temps that are marginal for human survival.
You mean the desert? It's always been like that. Just ask anyone that's ever lived in
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There are none so dumb as the wilfully ignorant:
An epic heat wave that swept through the Bay Area on Friday smashed records -- including the all-time recorded high in San Francisco -- and promises more of the same on Saturday, with places like Livermore and Concord perhaps seeing the mercury rise even higher. [mercurynews.com]
See that: "all-time recorded high in San Francisco"
So, no. Not the desert.
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San Francisco is is classed in either desert, mild desert, or semi-arid climate depending on which classification scale you want. So yeah, the desert. A few scales classify it as "arid-mediterranean."
The only reason it looks so pretty and green is because of all the water used to make it look like that.
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Whether it is desert or not isn't really relevant to the issue of all-time record high temperatures.
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Thing is, BC and Alberta need those dryer conditions as well as the forest fires. Flood and drought cycles are also cyclical in those regions. So do many northern states, it's one of the few things that actually kill the problems they're having with pine beetle infestations. The trees that the beetles kill as well, are basically kindling to boot and nobody really wants to use it for anything. It's too expensive for the pulp industry to double bleach, even then it doesn't get the "blue" fecal colouring o
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'ER', excuse me but no record cold snaps, there were record snow falls. How here is how that works, once it is cold enough to freeze water it is cold enough, the critical point how much water in the atmosphere to freeze. So whether it is -10 C or -8 C because it is 2 degrees warmer will not affect snow falls, how much water there is in the atmosphere after evaporating over warmer oceans, will. So during the last round of bullshit, this was covered, yes, expect much worse snow storms, they'll be a little war
Ignoring History, sad. (Score:2)
'ER', excuse me but no record cold snaps
Ahh, typical revisionist liberal ignores history [weather.com]. And that was just last year alone...
Don't you get tired of lying and lying to try and protect your death cult? I can only imagine imagine the horror it wreaks on your psychology after a while. You must be fifty shades of fucked up by now, which I guess we can all see from your response...
*shakes head*
I'll let you have the last response, I don't think at this point you can even see reality any more, not even with "co
Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... (Score:5, Informative)
What fell flat on its face is your knowledge of history. In fact, scientists did not predict cooling: that was only the media. [skepticalscience.com]
Let me suggest that you crawl back under your bridge.
Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... (Score:5, Insightful)
Doctor A: If you don't stop smoking, you'll die within 10 years.
Doctor B: If you don't stop smoking, you'll die within 5 years.
Patient: "Sheesh, I knew all the smoking paranoia was hokum... the doctors can't even agree"
You tell me, how does a scientist describe increased variability in climate changes? Yes, it's still going to rain, it's still going to snow. There will be hurricanes. But long-term trend changes are observable and they are alarming. The highs get higher and severity of events will increase. And even when models are inaccurate, they are consistently inaccurate pointing to the same concern. No, humans can't destroy the earth, but we can make it a pretty damn difficult place for us to live on.
Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... (Score:5, Interesting)
The only question you need to ask the pseudoskeptics is "Where do you think all the extra energy is going?"
That CO2 absorbs solar radiation and traps it in the lower atmosphere is not debatable. These absorption patterns of CO2 have been known since the 19th century. So, increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, increase the amount of energy (heat) being trapped.
That CO2 interacts with ocean water and alters its pH has been known probably even longer. Increase the amount of CO2 in the lower atmosphere, increase the amount of absorption of CO2 in salt water.
So we can dicker about which storms are being made more powerful by climate change, we can dicker about whether a colder winter in one part of the world or a warmer winter in another part is caused by climate change, but the fact is that the steady increase in CO2 concentration inevitably, by the physical laws of nature, will increase the amount of energy trapped in the lower atmosphere (increase overall surface temperatures as a mean) and increase the acidity of the oceans. There is no questioning this, unless one wishes to throw out well over a century of physics and chemistry.
Now, if these folks have some magic heat sink that blasts all that energy off into space, then by all means, point to where it is, otherwise all we're doing in debating with these liars and idiots is dignifying their fraud and stupidity. They are the Creationists of the 21st century; not pseudoscientists, no pseudoskeptics, just plain old morons and liars.
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Wake me up when your understanding of AGW isn't just a series of strawmen.
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I personally attend conferences where climate change is debated, there is no squashing of debate that I have observed. In addition, there is a large number of independent measurements and data that are generally painting the same picture. Theorizing that it has all been manipulated for political gain is not to be taken seriously; if a political actor, even with colluding scientists, could do that it would be the mother of all hoodwinks, bigger than a fake moon landing, closer to our President is a robot a
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Not really. How many climate scientists have access to this data, who funds them and who will challenge their data "corrections"?
Most climate data is available online if you care to take the time to look for it and there are papers available that describe the methodology used to correct the data. If you think they are wrong you are free to write a paper that contradicts them.
"Climategate" was much ado about nothing.
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The information in that link is confined to the Continental US, only 3% of the surface area of the Earth. You need to broaden your horizons.
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Perhaps you could provide some links to your accusations. I heard about the Australian accusation and looked into it and it was BS.
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All government funded data regarding climate research is world wide free to download.
AFAIK, even North Korea signed the contract.
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Okay, mate, where is the extra energy that physical laws make inevitable going? Unless you're prepared to deny everything physicists and chemists have known about carbon dioxide since the 19th century, it's up to you explain how increased CO2 concentrations inevitably lead to more energy (heat) being trapped in the lower atmosphere. Go ahead, explain where it is.
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No problem. As I corrected you in this same topic earlier, the earth is not a perfect black body. Go see my other reply to your black body first semester physics nonsense for details. You're not very smart so I'm sorry if you don't understand where the heat goes.
Hint: the earth is surrounded by this thing called "outer space".
Perhaps you could explain to us your understanding of the subject in more detail.
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Well, the science is not settled [breitbart.com], the "all scientists agree" is taken out of context and doesn't refer to what you think it does, the data has been manipulated, and most importantly critique and debate are not allowed.
Critique and debate are certainly allowed. But you have to bring real science and empirical evidence to the debate which few climate science deniers are willing to do.
If climate science is a religion then it's an awesome one because it has actual evidence to back it up.
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So I have looked at your c3headlines link and cnsnews link.
The c3headlines link is only about the Continental US which is about 3% of the surface of the Earth, a very small part of the whole picture.
the cnsnews link is a story from 2014 about Don Easterbrook predicting 20 more years of cooling*. I guess the cooling hasn't started yet because 2014, 2015 and 2016 consecutively set new global temperature records. 2017 will not be as warm as 2016 because the El Nino of 2015/2016 ended but it has a good chance
Not always (Score:2)
No, you were not. You read Breitbart, which clearly indicates your PoV.
Yeah, but before about a year ago I *didn't*.
Today I go to Breitbart first, to find out what's going on.
Then I check the MSM, to find out why it's Trump's fault.
If you want people to start believing in climate change, you should start using logic and science in your arguments.
Instead of, you know, insults.
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So you consider being called a Breitbart reader an insult? You said it, not me.
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No, you were not. You read Breitbart, which clearly indicates your PoV.
Yeah, but before about a year ago I *didn't*.
Today I go to Breitbart first, to find out what's going on.
[...]
If you want people to start believing in climate change, you should start using logic and science in your arguments.
You can't use logic or science with people who think that anything that's happened in the past year justifies going to Breitbart to "find out what's going on", as opposed to disqualifying it as a potential source of useful information. They have already proven that they are not interested in such things.
Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually it appears the past decade has been pretty normal for the number of major hurricanes. It's just that when they don't hit the Continental United States nobody here pays much attention to them.
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And to lamely reply to myself here are tables that show statistics for Atlantic hurricanes:
Hurricane season statistics by year. [wikipedia.org]
And here is a nice bar chart [wikipedia.org] that shows the number of named storms and hurricanes by year since 1851.
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Actually the first weather satellites went up in the early 1960s but with the increase in naval traffic starting in the 1940s with WW II I doubt we missed much since then.
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12 years of no hurricane hits only counts if all you care about is the Continental US. Other places certainly have had hurricane hits.
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The difference between weather and climate is one of scale. Either in area or time. Hurricanes and their affects are sufficiently large enough and long lasting enough to count as both weather AND climate.
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There hasn't been a single year without at least a couple of North Atlantic hurricanes.
Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, but when the prediction in the late 1990s was "we're going to have several large, Category 4, landfalling hurricanes hit the East Coast each year due to global warming," the relative drought in them for the last decade or so is pretty embarrassing for the people trying to pretend otherwise.
There isn't an upward trend, overall. If anything, we've been seeing fewer such nasty storms than there were during the first half of the 20th century.
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the relative drought in them for the last decade or so is pretty embarrassing for the people trying to pretend otherwise.
What drought of hurricanes? Seems like we've had plenty. [wikipedia.org] Yes, there has not been the huge uptick of category 4 storms, but casting this as a "drought" is disingenuous at best.
Climate is complex. Nobody disputes that. The trouble is that when best-guess efforts turn out to be wrong, there seems to be a knee-jerk reaction to leap to the conclusion that all of climate science and measures of climate change must be wrong.
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Wrong.
The predictions FAILED. Read that word again. FAILED.
No, you don't get to predict something, get it wrong for a couple of decades, then pretend you got it right when a couple of big storms finally pop up in one season.
This isn't about "scatter" or "statistical flukes." This is year after year after year of failed predictions, which are not made correct by one year of slightly-worse tropical weather.
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You're condensing all climatology into a couple of unsourced predictions, and drawing a conclusion. How is anyone supposed to take that seriously?
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How many hurricanes every "single year" drop 50+ inches of rain?
Gas prices will go up! (Score:2)
Gas prices will go up!
Do we really know this? (Score:2)
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Yes.
How long have we been measuring winds in storms that are still this far out?
About 70 years.
Would we have known if a storm was this strong at its current location 50 years ago?
Yes.
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The first TIROS satellite was launched in 1960, although it failed shortly thereafter. We've had continuous photographic satellite coverage of Atlantic hurricanes since TIROS-3 in 1961.
So we've had a geographically comprehensive, detailed, reliable record of hurricane winds speeds for the past 56 years.
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[snark] Too bad it's 56 years of fake science, who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes? [/snark]
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If wind speeds could be fully and accurately determined by satellite, the hurricane hunters wouldn't be bothering to measure them. Doppler radar can measure wind speeds, but I don't know how long that has been deployed extensively and whether there is a land based station that can reach out to the distances from land at which this storm was just measured. I just spent a few hours looking at historical data and see that even Andrew in 1992 had to be reclassified years later because the data collected at the
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Sure they can *accurately* be measured by remote sensing. They just can't be measured as *precisely*.
irma is a racist name (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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Actually it's been stuck there for weeks now. No, I have no idea why Slashdot thinks it's related.
I've been noticing it for a long time now because I submitted that story. Granted, they didn't actually accept my submission, they instead wrote a new story out of my submission and credited me for some reason.
How exciting... (Score:2)
Difficult to forecast Irma (Score:5, Informative)
This is a really difficult forecast for a number of reasons.
Most major hurricanes don't just gradually intensify to a category 3 or 4, let alone well into category 5. They undergo periods of rapid intensification, due to bursts of thunderstorms in the core of the storm with lots of hot towers developing. Harvey did this before making landfall in Texas. Irma has done this twice. However, forecasting when this will happen is generally beyond the current limits of meteorology. The Ships statistical model only called for a gradual intensification of Irma. Some of the dynamical models like the GFS, HWRF, and HMON did predict rapid intensification. However, they have been predicting that it was imminent for days, without actually happening. It's obvious when rapid intensification is occurring because the hot towers show up in infrared satellite imagery. But there's very little skill in predicting rapid intensification before it starts. It's related somewhat to ocean heat content, but it doesn't explain when there's high ocean heat content but rapid intensification doesn't occur. Most major hurricanes do undergo rapid intensification at some point, and it's very hard to predict.
It's very likely that Irma will take a hard right turn in a few days and move north. There is very good agreement among the models that this will occur. However, it's not clear exactly when this will happen. If it happens sooner, Irma could miss Florida entirely and move toward the Carolinas. This isn't especially likely, but it's possible. It could turn north a bit later and move across the Florida Keys into South Florida. There are also model solutions that bring Irma into the eastern Gulf of Mexico. This last situation also isn't especially likely, but is definitely possible. This doesn't include true outlier model forecasts, such as missing the United States entirely. Irma will also get close to Cuba, and moving over mountainous land for an extended period of time could wake Irma substantially. It just isn't clear yet whether this will happen or not. Hurricanes are steered by winds in the upper atmosphere around areas of high pressure (ridges) and low pressure (troughs). There are currently special upper air observations being taken every six hours in the central United States to help with forecasting Irma. There's an upper level trough over its area, that will interact with a ridge to the east, which has an impact on steering Irma. It's not clear whether these extra observations are helping with the forecasting of Irma, but it's definitely possible. Maybe these types of special observations well over a thousand miles from a storm have been taken before, but I don't recall seeing it. It's a very interesting idea for sure, to try to help improve forecasting of the storm's track in the 3-7 day time frame. Even though we know Irma will very likely take a hard turn to the north, relatively small differences in where this occurs will have a big difference on the impacts to the United States. And this is not at all unusual in hurricane forecasting.
Despite running tens of different computer models every six hours, it's really hard to predict where the storm is going to go. And yet the track forecasting has improved quite a bit over the past couple of decades, definitely outpacing intensity forecasts.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Erase Miami (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yeah well sensible people who live in Hurricane country build using Concrete not wood and they build on Stilts. Bemuda is right in the middle of the Atlantic but they dont panic when they see a hurricane coming
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Ok, time to MAN UP... (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you willing to go on the PERMANENT record (thanks to the never forgetting Internet) so that people you care about (friends, spouses, children, grandchildren) know that you:
Denied the overwhelming scientific consensus on Climate Change?
Thought Obamacare was a disaster?
Refused to believe in Evolution? (This is my particular interest, I am a genetic engineer. Now that we can see Evolution happening right down to the molecular level, disputing it is laughable. Not to mention "Nothing in Biology makes sense without it").
Or for that matter:
Think the Federal Government was planning to take over Texas in 2015 (The "Jade" something or other exercise)?
Believe that there is a Pizza parlor in Washington D.C. that was a front for Democratic pedophiles?
Think that because Trump criticized Clinton on Goldman Sachs he wouldn't end up in their pocket?
I could go on but you get the picture. How many times do you have to be proven WRONG and been a victim of FAKE NEWS before you learn some critical thinking? Not only are you hurting the republic by voting for idiots (Bush) or frauds (Trump) but you are really hurting yourselves by believing that these leaders will help you (the working class) instead of just making them and their super rich friends richer, and by making stupid decisions like buying waterfront property in places like Texas and Florida.
Anyway, if thinking won't get you to reflect on your positions; maybe shame will. How about you tell the ones you care about the social media accounts like slashdot where you post things? Assuming you at least have the balls to not post Anonymously, tell them your username. Let them see what you really think. (I have, in fact I'm proud to show them).
Of course if Climate Change really is a hoax, and the Republicans come up with a much better replacement to Obamacare and God LITERALLY created the animals in one go (and forever fixed their attributes), then your friends and children and grandchildren will see you as the genius you are!
Re:Ok, time to MAN UP... (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, until I see a double-blind study on climate change, I'm not going to believe it either. If it's real science they should be able to do proper tests to prove it. Otherwise, the only possible explanation that makes any sense is that it's bullshit - even the scientists can't agree, so it must all be make-believe.
I'lll quite happily live in the upstairs of my house because the floods are 5 feet deep, I know there'll be no power or water, but hey, I've got some gas canisters and I've filled up the bath tub with fresh water. I won't be able to get anywhere because I'm too lazy to row my boat and I won't be able to get any fuel for the outboard. I'll happily watch thousands of my less-'manned-up' neighbours become displaced and subsequently destitute, because I'm still waiting on that double-blind study before I'll take any sort of action at all.
As Richard Attenborough said on the subject "[whether it's true or not] that's sort of not the point".
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, if the winds were responsible for the majority of damage and lives lost. But they're not, so it is just as bad as it sounds.
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Basically a really large EF4 tornado, however these speeds are only found in the eyewall so it's not as bad as it sounds.
Plenty bad enough. The eye of Irma is currently 40 km across, which means when the eye sweeps over some place a zone 40+ km is getting hit with the maximum wind speed. I don't want to meet up with any ~50 km wide tornado.
But people get fixated on the wind speeds. Throw in a 3-4 m storm surge and torrential rain, all at the same time...
Bad but not as bad is a Haiyan (Score:2)
Basically a really large EF4 tornado, however these speeds are only found in the eyewall so it's not as bad as it sounds. The problem is a lot of these islands are mostly third world shitholes with shoddily built buildings that are going to get blown into kindling. This could wind up being the single most deadly disaster directly attributable to AGW that we have seen yet.
I dunno. Super Typhoon Haiyan [wikipedia.org] killed 6300 in the Philippines alone and had sustained winds of 195mph. That's a pretty hard act to follow.
Re: (Score:2)
Basically a really large EF4 tornado, however these speeds are only found in the eyewall so it's not as bad as it sounds.
No, this is like a tornado 100 miles in diameter, moving at a walking pace.
You're right to note that the winds actually aren't the biggest danger. That prize goes to the ocean surge. Water is a little denser than air, so it tends to require less movement to do a lot more damage. But don't discount what winds like that can do.
Here's one projection [windy.com], showing Irma impacting south Florida pretty hard. Luckily for the USA, in this model it drags itself along the length of Cuba, which impedes its wind speeds signi
Re: (Score:2)
Harvey lost speed very quickly after making landfall. The problem is it also dumped all that moisture it picked up from the warm Gulf waters.
Hurricanes may be defined by their wind speeds, but wind speed is only one of the ways they can kill you. There's rainfall and storm surge, too.
Hurricane Sandy had the lowest central pressure of any hurricane ever to make landfall north of North Carolina. It had a massive extent and came with huge storm swells that were guaranteed to coincide with local high tide.
Re: (Score:3)
Just how many nukes do you think NK has, and why would you think the US would even need to use nukes if it came to attacking NK? The US's conventional weapons are more than adequate to knock down pretty much every major structure in NK.
I'd say the people who need to worry are the South Koreans and Japanese.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd say the people who need to worry are the South Koreans and Japanese.
You mean because the vast majority of the semiconductor industry is based in both countries? Or the number of companies that directly operate out of those regions for trans-pacific and trans-atlantic shipping? Yeah, that won't impact your life at all.
Let's not even go nuclear. Let's say China puts the pressure on N.Korea, and N.Korea responds by directly shelling S.Korea in retaliation or starts firing medium range missiles at S.Kore and Japan. Wanna guess what happens? The entire semiconductor industr
Re: (Score:2)
Anthropogenic global warming is still a useful term. Much of the climate change we are seeing is a result of global warming. The term "climate change" just encompasses all of the effects that include things besides warming.
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Yep.
I was there, sheltering in our apartment as far away from the windows as we could get. While the telco had the sense to take down their giant dish in a hurry (and managed to put it back up again afterward in an equally big hurry), the management of our apartment complex went up to the roof and tightened all the bolts on their dishes. All were trashed; one of them made a lovely noise when it broke loose, flew clean across the complex, and took out five floors' worth of windows on its way to earth...
Didn'