4 posts tagged “climate”
Climate report:
Droughts in the southeast and the west, recrod rainfall in the middle of the country. same as last year and the year before. Result: massive flooding in the middle of the country. Widespread wildfires in the west. There have also been wildfires in the east. Lightning seems to be the main culprit.
Math lesson for Monday:
loads and loads of CO2 and methane in the atmosphere = global warming faster than would normally happen
runaway global warming = more severe storms, droughts, and / or flooding or more flooding than normal (aka climate gone bonkers, and those are just a few of the issues)
more severe storms = more lightning strikes
drought = dry forests
lightning strikes + dry forests = wildfires
massive flooding = dead crops, dead animals and dead people
CO2 + CH4 = R
R = a, b, c
a = x
b = y
c = we're f*cked
x + y = oh sh*t
R = Right. Not actually funny. It sucks. R is for reality check.
(last night we had storms in the southeast and the lightning was phenomenal. This after no rain for nearly all of June.I miss gentle rains; where did they go?)
Cyclones, another word for hurricanes (as well as typhoons), do normally occur in the Bay of Bengal. On this planet, in most cases, warm water + wind blowing the right way = tropical storms. The average occurrence of tropical storms is 4 to 6 storms with only 2 reaching cyclone status per year, and the season runs from the spring through fall, going to sleep from June til September, being influenced by such factors as monsoons when the ITCZ moves over land. The peak number normally occur in October. They form in the ITCZ (Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone), the same wind belt where storms form in the Atlantic. The frequency of storms has been found to be increasing during ENSO (El Nino) years (according to the SAARC Meteorological Research Centre). The powerful cyclone Nargis hit Myanmar, formerly Burma, on May 2, 2008. At its peak it was a Category 4 hurricane, with sustained winds of 195 kilometers per hour (kmh). Highest recorded winds were 220 kmh. The storm surge caused a large tidal wave 12 feet in height that washed out entire villages. UN officials report that hundreds of thousands of people are now homeless. There is massive price gouging of food, water and fuel.
The death toll now stands at 15,000 people, with 30,000 still missing. (May 5) UPDATE MAY 7: OVER 22,000 DEAD, 41,000 MISSING, 1 MILLION HOMELESS. The UN has consulted with many scientists and last year issued a report which included the statement, that the intensity of tropical storms and hurricanes/cyclones/typhoons is increasing, and is directly related to global warming. If as you read this, you sit on your sofa, or computer chair, or on the grass of the park, and feel helpess, you are not. You care enough to read this, and you can care enough to unplug your clothes dryer, or increase the temp so the air conditioning is not so low you can sleep beneath a blanket in the hot of summer; you can shop with your carbon footprint in mind; you can ride a bike to work; you can vote. We are not helpless. We have enough will and brain power to make change. Peace out.
Northern Nevada: Over 12 wildfires that encompass 55 square miles, one of which was 33 square miles alone, scorched the land and forced evacuations and highway closings. The area was already dry and a persistent heat wave with temps over 100 degrees Farenheit has managed to evaporate even more moisture from the thirsty land and plant life was all that was needed to encourage the blaze.
Utah, near Salt Lake City: A lightning strike was responsible for a wildfire that has dibs on a large geothermal power plant, homes, farms and campsites. Three people were killed in the fire when they tried to help a fellow farmer save his hay crop from it with sprinklers. The fire also downed power lines. It used drought-dried pinion trees as its fuel.
Inyo National Forest, near Yosemite National Park, California: the million-acre park as of today has lost over 17,000 acres to wildfire. Over 400 firefighters have been called to battle the blaze. Campers and people in a lodge have been evacuated.
Great Falls and Billings, Montana: Record temperatures were set Saturday in the persistent heat wave. Temps soared to 104. Cows outnumber people in the area two to one. (Hint: cows are big producers of methane, a very potent greenhouse gas that outpowers CO2 by 10 to 20 times. How? They fart alot. Guess that means my ex husband is a big contributor too.) One farmer complained that his hay crop was in danger of "disintegrating" in the heat.
Other baked Montana cities: Havre,105 degrees F, Bozeman, 106 and 107 in Missoula.
Cooking the residents of Idaho and setting more records: Boise, 105 F, Pocatello, 102 and Lewiston, 101, on Friday. The biggest producer of electricity in the state, Idaho Power, reported record consumption since they have kept records, which would be for the past 90 years, of electricity on Friday as people cranked up the air conditioners and glued themselves to their television sets to wait out the heat wave. The last record usage for the power company was set in 2006.
Phoenix, Arizona was in trouble as temps reached 115 on Wednesday. It dropped to 112 on Thursday.
Eastern Oregon: Record high temps were set on Thursday.
California cities: Needles, 115. San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, 100. Wildfires burn from Santa Barbara to San Diego, fueled by the drought and high temps. One fire burned in Los Padres National Forest, where it has claimed nearly 500 acres so far. Another fire rages near San Diego and has charred 110 acres at the time I wrote this. In Kern County, a fire that has been burning sine June 24 and burned over 19 square miles has destroyed 13 homes and 18 outbuildings. Lake Tahoe: Over 200 homes were destroyed in a wildfire that burned 3,100 acres.
California Rain: Only 3.21 inches of precipitation downtown between July 1, 2006, and June 30, 2007, the driest year on record, and 12 inches short of the norm.
Meanwhile, there is flooding in China, India, England, Italy, Spain, and other countries.
John Jakes said, "Be yourself. Above all, let who you are, what you are, what you believe, shine through every sentence you write, every piece you finish."
I believe that global warming is real, and that humans have created a mess that we may not be able to get out of. As a Geologist and Earth Scientist, I am educated and informed and I know that even though we ARE coming out of an ice age and the earth is warming on its own, it has been warming at a pace far beyond geologically historical precedence. Also I know enough about chemistry that I can say with certainty, you put a bunch of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, you will make the earth warm up faster. Also if you cause the ocean currents to change, and it is happening in the Arctic from the ice melt, you will further cause climate change, because the Gulf Stream warms western Europe and it will be disrupted and cause, we believe, cooling there. All this will be bad news. All this will create havoc in that it will interrupt crop production, cause some lifeforms to go extinct while others flourish like insects, and disease and death will ensue. And how 'bout that extreme weather stuff.
I am not a pessimist. I am an optimist. But I am also a realist. And a mother. I want my son to have a world to live in that is not in chaos or misery. I want my grandchildren to have it too. Also I love, love, love creatures and plants(except maybe lice, ticks and fleas and mosquitos). And even the lowly dung beetle has its place in the grand scheme of things. They all have the right to be here and not be destroyed because Joe Yuppie in his 3200 square foot house with a big green grass lawn and sprinkler system wanted a Nissan SUV that gets 18 mpg for his gym bunnie wife to drive his soccer champ son around in because it is "safer". Really?
Safer? Will his children have food to eat in ten years? Or will they die from exposure because heating their house cost too much? Or will they get killed running from gunfire because of massive political chaos from people being furious at their government for screwing them over for a hundred years?
Neil Young sang:
I was lying in a burned out basement
With the full moon in my eyes.
I was hoping for replacement
When the sun burst thru the sky.
There was a band playing in my head
And I felt like getting high.
I was thinking about what a
Friend had said
I was hoping it was a lie.
Thinking about what a
Friend had said
I was hoping it was a lie.
Look at Mother Nature on the run.
In Bangladesh today (technically today is tomorrow in Asia) in the city of Chittagong, 62 people so far have lost their lives from mudslides caused by torrential rainfall. Included in the dead are a young mother and her toddler whose house collapsed beneath the mud and buried them alive, as well as 39 bodies including those of students at Chittagong University. Eight and a half inches of rain fell in 3 hours. Mofizur Rahman, who is seventy-five years old, said, "I have never seen so much water in my life." Electricity, gas and water connections have been disconnected from the mudslides and torrential rains.
Bangladesh is a country built in a delta floodplain area, so monsoon** like rains happen there, but not on this scale. Also receiving record amounts of rainfall in Bangladesh were the capitol city of Dhaka, and the northern areas were impacted by flash flooding. Officials warned of rising river levels.
In case you are unaware, the worst usually comes after the rain has stopped, when the water has drained from the land into the rivers. Then they rise and flood the areas downstream.
As I have already written in April and May :
China: Gansu Province
Morocco: droughts are increasing. Beginning in the 1970s and through the '80s and '90s the trend has been on the rise, and increasing more rapidly in the '90s and beyond. Reduction of 9.3 million tons of cereal crops had been produced, now 2.05 million tons. This is causing the Moroccan farmers, including cattle farmers, to have difficulty surviving.
Spain:
over 250,000 acres of crops have been destroyed or damaged by floods from heavy rains as well as destruction of olive and cherry trees. Alcazar de San Juan, normally dry climate, had to be evacuated as the waters pushed at the dike. More rain has fallen in the past few days than in the entire year of 2005.Australia: "food bowl" region where they grow a third of the country's crops, under a drought so terrible that they are now being forced to halt irrigation if heavy rain does not come soon to replenish the water supply.
Ethiopia : Dire Dawa, last summer, some of the heaviest rains ever caused massive flooding in the middle of the night and killed over 300 people. 5000 are still homeless. There has been flooding in Ethiopia before, in fact; but in the past few years, it has been much more devastating. The Omo River, also in southern Ethiopa, also flooded in August and killed 364 people, leaving 6000 homeless. Outlook for this summer is more of the same. Climate change is being blamed for this disaster. In recent years, incessant droughts as well as unusually heavy flooding in Ethiopia have been caused by the warming of the Indian Ocean.
I know this too: here where I live, it used to rain on a regular basis, and we would have nice gentle rains, sometimes storms, but it was pleasant. Now for the past several years, we have droughts in the summer sometimes a month long, and even the past two years in spring too; and when it does rain, it's a deluge often with tornados and other tasty treats like high winds at 40 mph and massive lightning that hits things and sets them on fire.
** When the continent of India crashed into Asia in the Eocene Epoch, it cahnged the climate there and caused monsson -- in other words seasonal ---rains to come to the area. Sorry, love the Eocene.
