Author: postMigrator

2008 Hurricane Season a Record-Breaker

  By

on the net
The National Hurricane Center: www.nhc.noaa.gov/

WASHINGTON — The 2008 Atlantic hurricane season, which ends Sunday, seemed to strike the United States and Cuba as if on redial, setting at least five weather records for persistence and repeatedly striking the same areas.

“It was pretty relentless in a large number of big strikes,” said Georgia Tech atmospheric sciences professor Judith Curry. “We just didn’t have the huge monster where a lot of people lost their lives, but we had a lot of damage, a lot of damage.”

Continue reading

Study: A Good Climate for Extreme Storms?

  By Uncategorized

This is significant. Bear-in mind-if increasing SSTs (sea-surface temps) in the tropics bring more clouds/rain in general (a very distinct probability), such an upward trend in DCC storm frequency/intensity could be aborted-or (perhaps more likely) become cyclic. Either way-be ready for Katrina & Rita’s siblings…

ASW

GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS
VOL. 35, L19805, doi:10.1029/2008GL034562, 2008

Frequency of severe storms and global warming

Hartmut H. Aumann et al

Abstract

We use five years of data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder
(AIRS) to develop a correlation between the frequency of Deep
Convective Clouds (DCC) and the zonal mean tropical surface
temperature. AIRS data show that the frequency of DCC in the tropical
oceans is very temperature sensitive, increasing 45% per 1 K increase
of the zonal mean surface temperature. The combination of the
sensitivity of the DCC frequency to temperature indicates that the
frequency of DCC, and as a consequence the frequency of severe
storms, increases at the rate of 6%/decade with the current +0.13
K/decade rate of global warming. This result is only qualitatively
consistent with state-of-the-art climate models, where the frequency
of the most intense rain events increases with global warming.

Received 2 May 2008; accepted 18 August 2008; published 3 October 2008.

Keywords: Deep Convective Clouds; AIRS; atmospheric sounding;
hyper-spectral; infrared.

Index Terms: 1610 Global Change: Atmosphere (0315, 0325); 1616 Global
Change: Climate variability (1635, 3305, 3309, 4215, 4513); 3314
Atmospheric Processes: Convective processes; 1817 Hydrology: Extreme
events; 3362 Atmospheric Processes: Stratosphere/troposphere
interactions.

—————————————————————————————————————-

Chinese Research: Forests, Weather, and Eco-Restoration

  By

This is a critical aspect of the climate-ecosystem relationship that receives very little attention. There is much more to the equation than carbon sequestration/release: forests (& vegetative ecosystems in general) have direct impacts on temperature, humidity, wind, and precipitation. Eco-restoration is vital to both surviving and mitigating anthropogenic climate change!

ASW

——————————————————–
” … could lead to an increase in precipitation by up to 20 percent …”

“The results show that, in addition to precipitation and temperature
changes, the project also will improve relative humidity, soil moisture
and reduce prevailing winds and air temperature.”
—————————————————-

Public release date: 24-Nov-2008
Journal of the American Water Resources Association

Contact: Sean Wagner
swagner@wiley.com
781-388-8550

Chinese forest project could reduce number of environmental disasters
‘Great Green Wall’ may be a model for worldwide conservation

Continue reading