28 August 2017, Climate Home, Link between Hurricane Harvey and climate change is unclear. Reports the devastating storm was made worse by humanity’s carbon emissions fail to grasp climate change is not just about warming. The unprecedented amount of rainfall accompanying Hurricane Harvey immediately raised the question whether and to what extent climate change is to blame. In a warming world the vapour capacity of the atmosphere increases, and more extreme rainfall, like Texas is witnessing right now, is to be expected as a result. This leads many to conclude that climate change exacerbated the impacts of hurricane Harvey. It is very appropriate to highlight that this is the kind of event we expect to see more of in a warming world. However, to apply this argument directly and attribute (and quantify) the impacts from Harvey itself to human-induced climate change, neglects that climate change is not just about warming. In a changing climate, two effects come together: not only does the atmosphere warm up (thermodynamic effect) but the atmospheric circulation, which determine where, when, and how weather systems develop, can change as well (dynamic effect). Read More here
Monthly Archives: August 2017
28 August 2017, Desmog, 12 Years After Katrina, Hurricane Harvey Pummels Gulf Coast and Its Climate Science-Denying Politicians. As the remnants of Hurricane Harvey (now a tropical storm) continue to flood Houston — just days before the 12th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina — I visited Shannon Rainey, whose house was built on top of a Superfund site in the Upper Ninth Ward of New Orleans. Rainey is worried about family members in Houston. She knows all too well how long it can take to get back what is lost in a storm. “I still live with Katrina every day,” she told me. New Orleans remains threatened by bands of rain extending from Harvey, causing many residents with fierce memories of Katrina to remain on edge. Earlier this month, the city proved it was ill-prepared for hurricane season nearly a year after Baton Rouge’s 1,000-year flood. Rain inundated New Orleans, with more than nine inches falling in only three hours, exposing that the city’s pump system could not operate at full capacity. The city is still scrambling to make the needed repairs and clean the sewer system’s catch basins, which remain clogged in many places. Read More here
28 August 2017, Climate Home, Link between Hurricane Harvey and climate change is unclear. Reports the devastating storm was made worse by humanity’s carbon emissions fail to grasp climate change is not just about warming. The unprecedented amount of rainfall accompanying Hurricane Harvey immediately raised the question whether and to what extent climate change is to blame. In a warming world the vapour capacity of the atmosphere increases, and more extreme rainfall, like Texas is witnessing right now, is to be expected as a result. This leads many to conclude that climate change exacerbated the impacts of hurricane Harvey. It is very appropriate to highlight that this is the kind of event we expect to see more of in a warming world. However, to apply this argument directly and attribute (and quantify) the impacts from Harvey itself to human-induced climate change, neglects that climate change is not just about warming. In a changing climate, two effects come together: not only does the atmosphere warm up (thermodynamic effect) but the atmospheric circulation, which determine where, when, and how weather systems develop, can change as well (dynamic effect). Changes in the atmospheric circulation can increase the thermodynamic effect (as we saw during floods Louisiana in 2016) or act in the opposite direction to the thermodynamic effect, leading to locally decreasing the risk of extreme rainfall or canceling the effect of the warming alone (examples here). Dynamical factors and thermodynamic aspects of climate change can interact in complex ways and there are many examples where the circulation is as important as the thermodynamics. Read More here
24 August 2017, DESMOG, Retired General: ‘Our Bases and Stations on the Coast Are Going Underwater’. This past July, in a Congressional hearing on “The Status and Outlook for U.S. and North American Energy and Resource Security,” retired Marine Brigadier General Stephen A. Cheney offered a dire warning for many current military bases in coastal locations.“From the tactical side our bases and stations on the coast are going underwater. Norfolk [in Virginia] is the prime example. It’s closed dozens of times a year now because of flooding both from rain and sea level rise,” Cheney explained. “We’re going to have to talk about relocation of our bases and stations that are on the coast.” Cheney also made it clear that he believes in climate change.“Climate change is already affecting security both at home and around the world, so we must make sure that we take the greenhouse gas emissions from energy into account, lest we trade increased energy security today for a warmer, more unstable world in the future.” General Cheney certainly isn’t the first to warn of the security implications of climate change. Trump’s Secretary of Defense James Mattis admitted as much in written testimony to Democratic Senators, writing, “Climate change is impacting stability in areas of the world where our troops are operating today.” An article in Navy Times last year noted that 128 military bases are at risk from sea level rise. Sea level rise and coastal flooding represent a well-documented threat to national security. Yet less than a month after General Cheney’s testimony in Congress, the Trump administration rolled back an Obama-era regulation designed to “improve the resilience of communities and federal assets against the impacts of flooding.” Rafael Lemaitre was the the public affairs director for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in the Obama administration and criticized this latest regulatory rollback in comments to The Hill. “Eliminating this requirement is self-defeating,” Lemaitre said. “We can either build smarter now, or put taxpayers on the hook to pay exponentially more when it floods. And it will.” Read More here