Lightning a tip-off for hurricane intensity?

Scientists have discovered a link between increased lightning and the strongest winds in hurricanes, a study reports online this week in the British journal Nature Geoscience. Lead author Colin Price of Tel Aviv University in Israel and colleagues found a significant increase in lightning about a day before the most intense winds in the hurricanes they studied. The authors say this bit of advance warning could lead to better intensity forecasts.
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(Paul: NHC hurricane forecasters in Miami do a pretty good job predicting WHERE a hurricane will come ashore, certainly within 36-48 hours of landfall. What is more problematic and often not caught in advance is sudden weakening or intensification of a hurricane before it hits land. Why is this a potential nightmare? Many residents living along the coast may feel a false sense of security if a Category 1 hurricane threatens. But if, overnight - unexpectedly - the hurricane explodes in intensity to a Category 3 or 4, that could leave little or no time for last-minute evacuations, increasing the potential for loss of life).

Click onto the complete USA Today article.

Good news for the flood-weary Red River Valley

One-week estimated precipitation map of the Upper Midwest (courtesy of intellicast.com). A few towns in far southwestern Minnesota, closer to the storm track, have seen over 1" of rain since last weekend but the northern 1/2 to 1/2 of Minnesota has been bone-dry, with no rain in the forecast until next Thursday at the earliest.

Our dry atmospheric "holding pattern" comes as very good news for residents living along the raging Red River. A gradual warming trend and lack of rain has allowed snow to melt gradually over far northern Minnesota and North Dakota, reducing the potential for flooding disaster. That said, a second crest along the Red River is likely within the next 1-2 weeks; residents living in flood-prone areas should stay alert and still be prepared to evacuate to higher ground if conditions deteriorate.

Tornado warning system has come a long way since '79

Photo of the devastating 1979 Wichita Falls, Texas "wedge" tornado (copyright Pat Blacklock) before it hit the city, killing 42, injuring 1,700, leaving 20,000 local residents homes (roughly 1/4 the town's population at the time). The F4 tornado (winds estimated from 207-260 mph.) was on the ground for 47 minutes. Warnings were issued 30 minutes before the tornado hit the city, causing many residents to get into their cars and try to make it home to be with family. More than half the fatalities were people stranded in their cars, stuck in traffic when the tornado passed overhead. The 5th worst tornado in Texas history renewed efforts by the National Weather Service to warn Americans to avoid vehicles during tornado events (the risk of injury and death rises exponentially in a car or truck). Wichita Falls is observing the 30th anniversary of the tornado today, April 10, 2009.

The full text of the article is here.

Click here for a comprehensive USA Today article on the Wichita Falls tornado.

Minnesota's ice-covered lakes from space

Mid afternoon GOES Visible image showing a storm passing south of the region. Look carefully and you can still see ice on lake across central and northern Minnesota, especially the larger lakes like Mille Lacs, Gull, Pelican and the Whitefish Chain. Ice is coming off Twin Cities area lakes, and most central Minnesota lakes should be ice-free within 5-7 days, a couple days ahead of schedule in most counties. (courtesy: WeatherTap Inc.)

What will global warming look like? Scientists point to Australia

Drought, fires, killer heat waves, wildlife extinction and mosquito-borne illness -- the things that climate change models are predicting have already arrived there, they say. Reporting from The Murray-Darling Basin, Australia -- Frank Eddy pulled off his dusty boots and slid into a chair, taking his place at the dining room table where most of the critical family issues are hashed out. Spreading hands as dry and cracked as the orchards he tends, the stout man his mates call Tank explained what damage a decade of drought has done ."Suicide is high. Depression is huge. Families are breaking up. It's devastation," he said, shaking his head. "I've got a neighbor in terrible trouble. Found him in the paddock, sitting in his [truck], crying his eyes out. Grown men -- big, strong grown men. We're holding on by the skin of our teeth. It's desperate times."

The full text of the article in the Los Angeles Times is here.

Paul's Links

What will global warming look like? Scientists point to Australia

Drought, fires, killer heat waves, wildlife extinction and mosquito-borne illness -- the things that climate change models are predicting have already arrived there, they say. Reporting from The Murray-Darling Basin, Australia -- Frank Eddy pulled off his dusty boots and slid into a chair, taking his place at the dining room table where most of the critical family issues are hashed out. Spreading hands as dry and cracked as the orchards he tends, the stout man his mates call Tank explained what damage a decade of drought has done ."Suicide is high. Depression is huge. Families are breaking up. It's devastation," he said, shaking his head. "I've got a neighbor in terrible trouble. Found him in the paddock, sitting in his [truck], crying his eyes out. Grown men -- big, strong grown men. We're holding on by the skin of our teeth. It's desperate times."

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Polar Regions feel the heat of Climate Change Both the Arctic and Antarctic are experiencing noticeable changes in climate attributed to human induced climate change and global warming. The Arctic Sea Ice extent is still shrinking according to NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center. While the collapse in early April of an ice bridge of the Wilkins Ice Shelf in the Antarctic Peninsula has raised the growing impact of global warming on polar regions.

According to NASA Arctic Sea Ice extent is still showing a shrinking trend. The thickness of Arctic ice is also reducing. Over the 2009 winter the Arctic had the fifth lowest maximum ice extent on record. The six lowest maximum events since satellite monitoring began in 1979 have all occurred in the past six years (2004-2009).

The composition of the sea ice continues to change. Thin seasonal ice that melts and re-freezes every year now makes up about 70 percent of the Arctic sea ice in wintertime, up from 40 to 50 percent in the 1980s and 1990s. Thicker ice, which survives two or more years, now comprises just 10 percent of wintertime ice cover, down from 30 to 40 percent. The maximum sea ice extent for 2008-09, reached on Feb. 28, was 5.85 million square miles. That is a reduction of 278,000 square miles from the average extent for 1979 to 2000. (See Arctic Sea Ice News for more info)

The full text of the article is here.

Paul's Links

The temperature curve through the Greenland inland ice sheet shows 26 dramatic and abrupt climate shifts during the last ice age that lasted more than 100.000 years. This curve shows the climate shifts during 40,000 years. The climate shifts appear to be periodic, but mathematical computer simulations shows that they are probably chaotic and random. (Credit: Peter Ditlevsen)

ScienceDaily (Mar. 10, 2007) — Severe climate changes during the last ice-age could have been caused by random chaotic variations on Earth and not governed by external periodic influences from the Sun. This has been shown in new calculations by a researcher at the Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen University.

Several large international projects have succeeded in drilling ice-cores from the top of the Greenland inland ice through the more than 3 km thick ice sheet. The ice is a frozen archive of the climate of the past, which has been dated back all the way to the previous interglacial Eem-period more than 120.000 years ago.

The ice archive shows that the climate has experienced very severe changes during the glacial period. During the glacial period there were 26 abrupt temperature increases of about 7-10 degrees. These glacial warm periods are named Dansgaard-Oeschger events after the two scientists first observing them.

This thought-provoking article can be read in its entirety here.

Paul's Links

Climate Change To Spur Rapid Shifts In Wildfire Hotspots, Analysis Finds

ScienceDaily (Apr. 8, 2009) — Climate change will bring about major shifts in worldwide fire patterns, and those changes are coming fast, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, in collaboration with scientists at Texas Tech University. These preliminary results show hotspots of fire invasion forming in parts of the western United States and the Tibetan plateau, while regions including northeast China and central Africa may become less fire-prone in the coming decades.

Read the entire article here.

Paul's Links

The latest and most detailed climate model of the continental U.S. predicts temperatures so extreme by the end of the century they could substantially disrupt the country's economy and infrastructure. The climate simulation, churned out by supercomputers at Purdue University, factors in dynamic environmental variables previously unaccounted for and analyzes them at a resolution twice as fine as previous models. The results indicate an increase in heat, heavier rainfalls and shorter winters, which could strain water resources for people and crops and cause a catastrophic loss of life and property, among other things. Click here for the complete story.

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A nearly ice-free Arctic Ocean in the summer may happen three times sooner than scientists have estimated. New research says the Arctic might lose most of its ice cover in summer in as few as 30 years instead of the end of the century. The amount of the Arctic Ocean covered by ice at the end of summer by then could be only about 1 million square kilometers, or about 620,000 square miles. That's compared to today's ice extent of 4.6 million square kilometers, or 2.8 million square miles. So much more open water could be a boon for shipping and for extracting minerals and oil from the seabed, but it raises the question of ecosystem upheaval.

The complete (eye-opening) article can be found here.

Paul's Links

A new satellite set to launch later this month from Cape Canaveral will help weather forecasters better predict hurricanes and assist in pinpointing distress signals to trigger search-and-rescue operations.

The $499 million GOES-O (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite) will orbit about 22,000 miles above Earth, sending back high-resolution images for the next 10 years.

''This is really exciting. Hopefully, we'll see marked improvements in our ability to forecast,'' said Joe Schaefer, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Storm Prediction Center.

``It's going to guarantee the availability of state-of-the-art satellite data for the next decade.''

The complete article is here.

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Paul's Links

That's a mighty "purdy" iceberg in that photo, don't you think. Just imagine the margarita you could make with that hunk of ice? Boggles the mind.


Test. This is a test. The red ellipse shows the area where aliens have landed. Do not be afraid. They are really just Canadians who have lost their way...

No, Minnesota is NOT the most dangerous state to live in. Check out this NOAA map, listing billion dollar disasters in the recent past. The greatest risk: the southeastern U.S. Not only do residents from Texas to North Carolina see floods and tornadoes, but they get bullied by monster-hurricanes as well. Suddenly the arctic fronts don't look quite so bad - they seem to repel storms (big & bad enough to have their own name!)