11 January 2018, Yale Climate Connections, Bomb-cyclone’ weather in a warming world. This month’s Yale Climate Connections ‘This is not Cool’ video offers a plain-English science-based response to the inevitable ‘So much for climate change’ weather riddle. With New England, much of the middle Atlantic region, and parts of the southeast extending well into Florida suffering through late December-, early January-punishing cold temperatures, and in a number of places, record night-time lows and heavy snowfalls – the inevitable “so much for global warming” argument seemed certain to arise. On the one hand there were analytical news stories such as The Washington Post’s Capital Weather Gang’s story headlined “Historic ‘bomb cyclone’ unleashes blizzard conditions from coastal Virginia to New England. Frigid air to follow.” There also was President Trump’s “we could use a little more of that good old global warming” tweet from his “balmy Mar a Lago” residence looking forward to a frigidly cold New Years Eve dropping of the 2018 ball at Times Square in New York City. So how then to explain such not-at-all-unusual experience of cold weather temperatures even as the global temperatures continue rising? (One can safely anticipate having to explain cool summer-time daily temperatures in some places as the world continues warming.) To some extent, it’s a simple question of needing to repeatedly explain the difference between weather (short term and local) and climate (long term and global). Read More here
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11 January 2018, The Conversation, Explainer: ‘bomb cyclones’ – the intense winter storms that hit the US (and Australia too). The eastern United States experienced a very severe winter storm last week, which caused damaging winds, heavy snow and the highest tide on record for Boston. Meteorologists call this type of storm a “bomb cyclone”, or simply a “bomb”. But what is it? A “bomb” is an old meteorological term for a low-pressure system outside the tropics (that is, an extratropical cyclone) that intensifies very rapidly, based on how fast the atmospheric pressure drops at the centre of the storm. A common benchmark is a drop of 24 hectopascals (hPa) over 24 hours, although this varies slightly with latitude. The recent bomb in the US had a reported pressure drop of 59hPa over 24 hours, making it one of the strongest such storms ever recorded. Read More here
11 January 2018, Arctic cause of loopier cold weather? A QUICK SUMMARY: The Science Linking Arctic Warming to This Crazy-Cold Winter: It’s well known that the rapidly warming Arctic is melting sea ice, thawing permafrost, and accelerating sea-level rise. But a growing body of research suggests, counter intuitively, that it could also be amplifying cold snaps, much like the brutal one now freezing the East Coast. ANOTHER VIEW: US cold snap was a freak of nature, quick analysis finds. The cold snap that gripped the East Coast and Midwest region was a rarity that bucks the warming trend, said researcher Claudia Tebaldi of the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the private organization Climate Central.
10 January 2018, CSIRO-ECOS, Scientist’s 30-year search for Southern Ocean climate secrets. After more than 24 hours the ice breaker still hadn’t managed to break through the heavy sea ice and Chief Scientist Dr Steve Rintoul had secretly given up hope. All that would change in seconds though, leading to the senior scientist’s greatest but most disturbing discovery of his 30 year career. It was January 2015 when Rintoul and his team aboard the RSV Aurora Australis achieved what no others had managed – reaching the front of the Totten Glacier. They found that warm water was flooding into the cavity beneath the floating ice, melting what was thought to be a stable area of East Antarctica. The sea level rise problem had just got worse. wo years on, Rintoul will return to the Southern Ocean aboard CSIRO’s research vessel Investigator, this time further east towards the Mertz Glacier, on an expedition to piece together some of the remaining unknowns of the climate-critical region. With a physics degree from Harvard, post-graduate qualifications from MIT and Woods Hole, a post-doctorate from Princeton, and decades of experience in Southern Ocean research, Rintoul is more than qualified to lead the voyage. Read More here