AND PIGS MIGHT FLY

I follow the report below by the underlying journal article.  It is under the lead-authorship of none other than that dedicated Warmist Kevin Trenberth.  The article is actually a retreat.  The latest schtick from Trenberth and other Warmists is to admit that hurricanes have NOT become more frequent but have become stronger. Global warming sure is selective in its effects!

Some comments from meteorologist Joe Bastardi offering another interpretation of what happened:

The counter to this was written last year,  because it was just a matter of time before this came out.

Harvey could not have dumped that much rain without the major cold trough that trapped it. Also it was not as bad as Flora over eastern Cuba that got blocked in 1963 -- prompting Castro to blame the US.

The point is I wrote this last year, because it was just a matter of time before this started.

They are weaponizing weather, and this is a classic example


AS COASTAL cities brace for the coming hurricane season, the destruction of the last one is still having a big impact, particularly on the hobbled island of Puerto Rico. And scientists are already able to draw some big warnings from last year’s carnage. “Several aspects of the 2017 season were not ‘natural,’ ” a team of researchers wrote in a paper published this week in Earth’s Future, a peer-reviewed journal run by the American Geophysical Union. “The first was the role of human-induced climate change.”

About humanity’s role in worsening the catastrophe, the scientists left little doubt: “While hurricanes occur naturally, human-caused climate change is supercharging them and exacerbating the risk of major damage.”

Noting that 2017 saw three enormous hurricanes, Harvey, Irma and Maria, they focused on Harvey and the intense flooding it caused in Houston. Before Harvey came through, the oceans were the hottest on record. This heat kept the hurricane going — and more. The scientists found that, when Harvey traversed the Gulf of Mexico, it soaked up ocean heat via evaporation, packing more moisture into the atmosphere. Harvey then dumped record amounts of rain on Houston, flooding large swaths of the city. “Record high ocean heat values not only increased the fuel available to sustain and intensify Harvey, but also increased its flooding rains on land,” the researchers found. “Harvey could not have produced so much rain without human-induced climate change.”

Harvey was only a single event. But it was a spectacular one, and a useful case because the researchers could study its before-and-after effects reasonably isolated from other environmental influences.

It is still a matter of debate whether climate change will increase the number of hurricanes, but it is more and more clear that human-caused heating of the planet will boost their severity. “There will be a warmer and wetter world over oceans, and more energy available for evaporation,” the researchers wrote. Nearly all of the extra heat trapped by the greenhouse gases that humans have produced goes into the oceans. More heat in the oceans means more water vapor and, therefore, heavier rain and more flooding.

SOURCE

Hurricane Harvey links to Ocean Heat Content and Climate Change Adaptation

Kevin E. Trenberth et al.

Abstract

    While hurricanes occur naturally, human‐caused climate change is supercharging them and exacerbating the risk of major damage. Here, using ocean and atmosphere observations, we demonstrate links between increased upper ocean heat content due to global warming with the extreme rainfalls from recent hurricanes. Hurricane Harvey provides an excellent case study as it was isolated in space and time. We show that prior to the beginning of northern summer of 2017, ocean heat content was the highest on record both globally and in the Gulf of Mexico, but the latter sharply decreased with hurricane Harvey via ocean evaporative cooling. The lost ocean heat was realized in the atmosphere as moisture, and then as latent heat in record‐breaking heavy rainfalls. Accordingly, record high ocean heat values not only increased the fuel available to sustain and intensify Harvey, but also increased its flooding rains on land. Harvey could not have produced so much rain without human‐induced climate change. Results have implications for the role of hurricanes in climate. Proactive planning for the consequences of human‐caused climate change is not happening in many vulnerable areas, making the disasters much worse.

SOURCE

No comments:

Post a Comment

All comments containing Chinese characters will not be published as I do not understand them