Words on Weather & Climate

August 26, 2010 · Filed Under Weather and Climate · Comment 

 

Weather is not climate

 

by CRAIG JAMES

Everybody please repeat after me: weather is not climate, weather is not climate. It seems all the rage now days to blame every extreme weather event on what is called climate change (if it is a cold event) or global warming (if it is a warm event). But you simply cannot blame any one weather event, or even a short series of events, on climate change.

Meteorologist Craig James, new Squire columnist

 

The big news this summer was the heat wave in Moscow and the flooding in Pakistan. What actually caused these events to happen? Very simply, the weather systems got stuck, or blocked from their normal west to east movement for a while. Here is the meteorological explanation:

“The immediate cause of the problem is the behavior of the jet stream, a band of high-level wind that travels east around the world and influences much of the weather below it. Part of the jet stream’s meandering is tied to regular shifts of air towards and away from the pole, called Rossby waves. The Rossby waves set up wiggles in the jet stream, wiggles, which left to themselves, would move westward. Since the jet stream is flowing eastward, though, the net effect of the Rossby waves varies. When the waves are short, they go with the jet’s flow and the resultant wiggling heads downstream to the east. When they are long they go against the flow, and the jet’s wiggling is transmitted upstream to the west. In between, there is a regime in which the waves move neither west nor east, and the weather stays put.”

When weather patterns get stuck, extremes of temperature and precipitation always occur. It is not, as an article in last Sunday’s Grand Rapids Press stated “a sign of troubling climate change already under way.”

Even NOAA, one of the world’s biggest promoters of global warming said on August 13: “…greenhouse gas forcing fails to explain the 2010 heat wave over western Russia. The natural process of atmospheric blocking, and the climate impacts induced by such blocking, are the principal cause for this heat wave.”

Also, “The extreme surface warmth over western Russia during July and early August is mostly a product of the strong and persistent blocking high. The indications are that the current blocking event is intrinsic to the natural variability of summer climate in this region.” It was a NATURAL occurrence, not a result of increasing carbon dioxide.

The rush to blame every weather pattern on climate change is ridiculous. Many people have no sense of the history of severe weather events. They proclaim that everything happening now is the worst ever.

I urge you to look up some of the web sites I’ve listed below in order to understand we have had many greater disasters in the past than what we see happening recently.

• The world’s worst natural disasters going back 900 years

http://across.co.nz/WorldsWorstDisasters.html

• Top ten world’s worst natural disasters http://www.dailycognition.com/index.php/2009/01/29/top-ten-worst-natural disasters.html

• The world’s the deadliest natural disasters recorded http://www.armageddononline.org/the-worst-disasters.html

• Famines since 440 BChttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki List_of_famines

• Epic disasters http://www.epicdisasters.com/

• Ten worst floods in history http://library.thinkquest.org/C003603/english/flooding/tenworst.shtml

• Ten worst hurricanes in history http://library.thinkquest.org/C003603/english/hurricanes/tenworst.shtml

I love the comment made by the late Michael Crichton: “Is this the end of the world? No, this is the world. And I think it’s time we knew it.”

Craig James has been retired since July 1, 2008, after 40 years of broadcasting television weather. He was chief meteorologist at WZZM-TV for 12 years and chief meteorologist at WOOD-TV for 24 years. He is a graduate of Penn State University, where he received a Centennial Fellowship Award. He was also honored as a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society.

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Words on Weather and Climate — July 15, 2010

July 15, 2010 · Filed Under Weather and Climate · Comment 

Heat Wave 2010

by CRAIG JAMES

Meteorologist Craig James, new Squire columnist

According to the National Weather Service, in our part of the country a heat wave is defined as a period of at least three consecutive days of temperatures at 90F or warmer. The period July 4 through July 7 had high temperatures each day of 92 degrees both in Grand Rapids and Lansing. The last heat wave was only three years ago, in 2007, when we had five days in a row of 90-degree weather with highs of 93, 97, 96, 94 and 91 between July 30 and August 3.

What is amazing to me is not that we had four days in a row of temperatures in the 90s during the first week of July, but that all four days had exactly the same high temperature. Now that is a very rare event. In fact, it has only happened once before in Grand Rapids since records began back in 1892. I doubt it has ever happened in both Grand Rapids and Lansing at the same time with exactly the same temperatures.

It still looks to me as if the entire summer is going to end up a little warmer than average, but it won’t produce many, if any, records for heat. The greatest number of consecutive 90-degree days on record is 11, set way back in 1901 when it was supposed to be cooler than now. How about the heat wave of 1936 when, between July 7 and July 14, high temperatures in Grand Rapids were 98, 101, 101, 102, 99, 106, 108 and 102. Several of those nights had lows around 80 and there was no air conditioning. What do you think the media would do if another heat wave like that occurred again today?

The hottest weather of this heat wave was from Boston through New York City to Washington, D.C., where temperatures did hit 100 degrees or higher, but fortunately without the high humidity so common in heat waves in that part of the country.

On Tuesday, July 6, the official high temperature in Baltimore, recorded at the Baltimore-Washington International airport, was 105 degrees, a new record for the date and just one degree shy of the all-time record high set in 1930. However, could the location of the thermometer now be producing an inflated temperature reading?

This picture is of the temperature sensor, called Automated Surface Observing System (ASOS), and shows the temperature is now taken between concrete runways, near asphalt and also an exhaust vent from an air conditioner unit. It is interesting to note that the temperature in downtown Baltimore was two degrees cooler than the official reading at the airport. Traditionally, it has been warmer at city locations, but that is frequently only the case now at night.

An experiment was done at the Albany, New York airport on the same day as the Baltimore record high. The Albany air temperature never got higher than 96 degrees, but the temperature on the tarmac there climbed to 192 degrees, just 20 degrees shy of the boiling point of water.

Do you think the Baltimore temperature sensor located between two hot runways, near asphalt and an air conditioner vent may give an artificially high temperature? How can this temperature be used to compare with a temperature taken 80 years ago? How can it be used to produce a climate record? Airport temperature readings were designed specifically for aviation interests, not for climate trends. Most official temperature readings across the United States, and increasingly across the world, are now taken near airport runways, which has produced an artificial warming trend in recent years. It is man-made, but it has nothing to do with carbon dioxide.

Craig James has been retired since July 1, 2008, after 40 years of broadcasting television weather. He was chief meteorologist at WZZM-TV for 12 years and chief meteorologist at WOOD-TV for 24 years. He is a graduate of Penn State University, where he received a Centennial Fellowship Award. He was also honored as a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society.

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Words on Weather & Climate

June 17, 2010 · Filed Under Weather and Climate · Comment 

Putting things in perspective 

by CRAIG JAMES 

Meteorologist Craig James, new Squire columnist

Technology has developed some wonderful tools that truly boggle the mind. One of them is a new satellite system called GRACE, which stands for Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment. It is composed of two satellites flying in formation. Measuring the distance between the two satellites to the nearest micron (a hundredth of the width of a hair) allows scientists to calculate the weight of things on the earth very accurately. To get an idea of how this works, you can find an article about it at www.grist.org/article/2010-05-13-weighing-greenland/.

One of the things being calculated is the ice loss from the Greenland Ice Cap. The article states:  “the island has been losing weight, an average of 183 gigatons (or 200 cubic kilometers)—in ice—annually during the past six years. That’s one-third the volume of water in Lake Erie every year. Greenland’s shrinking ice sheet offers some of the most powerful evidence of global warming.”

Sounds pretty scary doesn’t it? But to get a proper perspective of just how much ice is melting and how significant the ice loss is, a scientist by the name of Willis Eschenbach has written an article, which can be found at wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/23/on-being-the-wrong-size/.

He first determined the total mass of the ice on Greenland from a fascinating book called “The Physics Handbook” and found there are approximately three million cubic kilometers of ice covering Greenland. So the annual loss of 200 cubic kilometers represents just 0.007% of the total mass each year. That is just seven thousandths of one percent each year. Which means, of course, if that terrifying rate of loss continues unabated it will all be gone in a mere 15,000 years—by the year 17,010!

What is occurring is actually a trivial change in a huge block of ice made to sound like an imminent catastrophe. If this is “some of the most powerful evidence of global warming,” I think we can sit back and relax a bit.

There is another item of perspective I want to mention. You’ve probably seen a graphic like the one here of how much carbon dioxide has been increasing in the atmosphere.

However, let’s change the graphic just a little. Since carbon dioxide represents about 0.0039% of the atmosphere, let’s change the “y,” or vertical, axis on the graphic from parts per million to percentage of the atmosphere and see how big the change looks since 1958.

Now that’s not so scary looking, is it? The carbon dioxide percentage of the atmosphere since 1958 has changed from 0.0030% to 0.0039%. That’s an increase of a whopping 0.0009%. Little wonder you never hear it expressed this way by the alarmists, is there?

For additional perspective, don’t forget, carbon dioxide is plant food. It is necessary for life to exist on Earth. Yet, the EPA has declared it a pollutant. Carbon dioxide is responsible for just 3.6% of the greenhouse effect, while water vapor is responsible for 95% of the greenhouse effect. Logically, then, will the EPA soon declare humidity to be a pollutant, too?

Craig James has been retired since July 1, 2008, after 40 years of broadcasting television weather. He was chief meteorologist at WZZM-TV for 12 years and chief meteorologist at WOOD-TV for 24 years. He is a graduate of Penn State University, where he received a Centennial Fellowship Award. He was also honored as a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society.

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Words on Weather & Climate — June 10, 2010

June 10, 2010 · Filed Under Weather and Climate · Comment 

The 2010 Hurricane Season

by CRAIG JAMES

Most of the forecasts I have seen for this hurricane season are indicating a very active season may be on tap. In fact, if the final numbers reach the upper end of many forecasts, this will be one of the most active seasons on record.

Meteorologist Craig James, new Squire columnist

The Atlantic hurricane season officially begins June 1 and ends November 30. There have certainly been named storms before and after those dates, but this is when the majority occur, with the greatest concentration August through October. All of the forecasts I have seen except one are calling for an above-normal season this year.

The National Hurricane Center has just recently released its outlook, which calls for “an 85% chance of an above-normal season. The outlook indicates only a 10% chance of a near-normal season and a 5% chance of a below-normal season.” With the majority of the forecasts indicating an active year, I’d be little nervous if I lived in Florida.

There are three main reasons for this year’s forecast:

1. an expected la niña condition, which favors little wind shear in the Tropical Atlantic;

2. the current warm phase of the Tropical Atlantic, which has contributed to the high-activity era in the Atlantic basin since 1995;

3. exceptionally warm sea surface temperatures in the tropical Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea.

You can see on the map here all the warm colors indicating above average sea surface temperatures around Central America, the Gulf of Mexico and the Tropical Atlantic. You can also see the cooler-than-average sea surface temperatures in the Eastern Pacific and the Central Atlantic. The band of cool water along the Equator in the Pacific is the developing la niña.

This season’s setup is quite the opposite of last year’s season and I am very glad to see that the Hurricane Center did not mention global warming once in their forecast discussion, which can be found at www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/outlooks/hurricane.shtml.

The Hurricane Center home page at www.nhc.noaa.gov/ contains a great “frequent questions” section. One of the more interesting answers deals with how tropical storms, or tropical cyclones, are named. Here is a sample:

The first use of a proper name for a tropical cyclone was by an Australian forecaster early in the 20th century. He gave tropical cyclone names “after political figures whom he disliked. By properly naming a hurricane, the weatherman could publicly describe a politician (who perhaps was not too generous with weather-bureau appropriations) as ‘causing great distress’ or ‘wandering aimlessly about the Pacific’.”

During World War II, tropical cyclones were informally given women’s names by U.S. Army Air Corps and Navy meteorologists (after their girlfriends or wives) who were monitoring and forecasting tropical cyclones over the Pacific. From 1950 to 1952, tropical cyclones of the North Atlantic Ocean were identified by the phonetic alphabet (Able, Baker, Charlie, etc.), but in 1953 the U.S. Weather Bureau switched to women’s names. In 1979, the WMO and the U.S. National Weather Service (NWS) switched to a list of names that also included men’s names.

Tropical storms in most ocean basins are now given men’s and women’s names. However, since the year 2000, storms in the Northwest Pacific Basin (near Indonesia and Asia) have been given names of flowers, animals, birds, trees, or even foods, etc., while some are descriptive adjectives. And just to confuse things, the names are not allotted in alphabetical order, but are arranged by contributing nation with the countries being alphabetized.

And finally, tropical storms or tropical cyclones are called hurricanes in the Atlantic and Eastern Pacific east of the International Dateline. Storms west of the dateline are called typhoons. Occasionally a storm will cross the dateline west of Hawaii. When that happens, the hurricane is given a new name and called a typhoon, even though it is the same storm. Whatever they are called, I’m glad they don’t occur in Michigan.

Craig James has been retired since July 1, 2008, after 40 years of broadcasting television weather. He was chief meteorologist at WZZM-TV for 12 years and chief meteorologist at WOOD-TV for 24 years. He is a graduate of Penn State University, where he received a Centennial Fellowship Award. He was also honored as a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society.

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Words on Weather & Climate by Craig James

June 3, 2010 · Filed Under Weather and Climate · Comment 

The 2010 Hurricane Season

Most of the forecasts I have seen for this hurricane season are indicating a very active season may be on tap. In fact, if the final numbers reach the upper end of many forecasts, this will be one of the most active seasons on record.

Meteorologist Craig James, new Squire columnist

The Atlantic hurricane season officially begins June 1st and ends November 30th. There have certainly been named storms before and after those dates but this is when the majority occur, with the greatest concentration August thru October. All of the forecasts I have seen except one are calling for an above normal season this year.

The National Hurricane Center has just recently released its outlook, which calls for “an 85% chance of an above normal season. The outlook indicates only a 10% chance of a near-normal season and a 5% chance of a below-normal season.”  With the majority of the forecasts indicating an active year, I’d be little nervous if I lived in Florida.

There are three main reasons for this year’s forecast: 1) An expected La Nina condition, which favors little wind shear in the Tropical Atlantic; 2) The current warm phase of the Tropical Atlantic, which has contributed to the high-activity era in the Atlantic basin since 1995; 3) Exceptionally warm sea surface temperatures in the tropical Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea. You can see on the map below all the warm colors indicating above average sea surface temperatures around Central America, the Gulf of Mexico and the Tropical Atlantic.

You can also see the cooler than average sea surface temperatures in the Eastern Pacific and the Central Atlantic. The band of cool water along the Equator in the Pacific is the developing La Nina.

This season’s setup is quite the opposite of last year’s season and I am very glad to see that the Hurricane Center did not mention global warming once in their forecast discussion, which can be found here: http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/outlooks/hurricane.shtml

The Hurricane Center home page: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/ contains a great “frequent questions” section. One of the more interesting answers deals with how tropical storms (or tropical cyclones) are named. Here is a sample:

The first use of a proper name for a tropical cyclone was by an Australian forecaster early in the 20th century. He gave tropical cyclone names “after political figures whom he disliked. By properly naming a hurricane, the weatherman could publicly describe a politician (who perhaps was not too generous with weather-bureau appropriations) as ‘causing great distress’ or ‘wandering aimlessly about the Pacific.”

During World War II, tropical cyclones were informally given women’s names by US Army Air Corp and Navy meteorologists (after their girlfriends or wives) who were monitoring and forecasting tropical cyclones over the Pacific. From 1950 to 1952, tropical cyclones of the North Atlantic Ocean were identified by the phonetic alphabet (Able-Baker-Charlie-etc.), but in 1953 the US Weather Bureau switched to women’s names. In 1979, the WMO and the US National Weather Service (NWS) switched to a list of names that also included men’s names.

Tropical storms in most ocean basins are now given men’s and women’s names. However, since the year 2000, storms in the Northwest Pacific Basin (near Indonesia and Asia, have been given names of flowers, animals, birds, trees, or even foods, etc, while some are descriptive adjectives. And just to confuse things, the names are not allotted in alphabetical order, but are arranged by contributing nation with the countries being alphabetized.

And finally, tropical storms or tropical cyclones are called hurricanes in the Atlantic and Eastern Pacific east of the International Dateline. Storms west of the dateline are called typhoons. Occasionally a storm will cross the dateline west of Hawaii. When that happens, the hurricane is given a new name and called a typhoon, even though it is the same storm. Whatever they are called, I’m glad they don’t occur in Michigan.

Craig James has been retired since July 1, 2008, after 40 years of broadcasting television weather. He was chief meteorologist at WZZM-TV for 12 years and chief meteorologist at WOOD-TV for 24 years. He is a graduate of Penn State University, where he received a Centennial Fellowship Award. He was also honored as a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society.

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