Slowest start to Atlantic hurricane season…

[JoeWeber 2,521]

Just now, billvon said:

As of this morning, Beryl will hit Jamaica as a Cat 4 and Belize as a Cat 2 - and it looks likely to hit Texas (around Brownsville) as a Cat 1 or close to it.

Too bad it didn't swing up and hit the Dominican Republic. Clorox makes bleach there, that'd knock it out.

[billvon 2,684]

8 minutes ago, JoeWeber said:

Should've nuked it. 

Just get a Sharpie and steer it into China.

[SkyDekker 1,271]

16 minutes ago, JoeWeber said:

Should've nuked it. 

no need to be that drastic, just alter the route with a sharpie on a map. Typical lieberal, using the most expensive and government intrusive option.....

[JoeWeber 2,521]

Just now, SkyDekker said:

no need to be that drastic, just alter the route with a sharpie on a map. Typical lieberal, using the most expensive and government intrusive option.....

Okay, so I suck at hurricanes. Maybe I can be in charge of those Haboob things, that sounds fun.

[SkyDekker 1,271]

4 minutes ago, JoeWeber said:

Okay, so I suck at hurricanes. Maybe I can be in charge of those Haboob things, that sounds fun.

Sure thing, couple more years and New Mexico, California, Nevada will have fun with those

[normiss 718]

2 hours ago, JoeWeber said:

Okay, so I suck at hurricanes. Maybe I can be in charge of those Haboob things, that sounds fun.

It has to be better than raking forests.

[JoeWeber 2,521]

Just now, normiss said:

It has to be better than raking forests.

Biggest patch I've raked was to put up an Army tent for Elk hunting. Maybe I didn't have the right rake but my impression was an entire forest would take a while.

[billvon 2,684]

The path of Beryl has now shifted towards Houston, and should hit Texas as a level 1.  It's enough of a concern that Ted Cruz was seen making Cancun reservations.

[brenthutch 416]

13 hours ago, billvon said:

The path of Beryl has now shifted towards Houston, and should hit Texas as a level 1.  It's enough of a concern that Ted Cruz was seen making Cancun reservations.

Like Gretchen Whitmer did during COVID?

[lippy 855]

21 minutes ago, brenthutch said:

Like Gretchen Whitmer did during COVID?

That’s pretty fucking weak dude….both from the ‘hey, look over there’ angle when your hurricane prediction absolutely shit the bed and also for attempting to conflate a trip she took to help her sick father with Cruz’s vacation getaway (for which he subsequently tried to throw his family under the bus)….just fucking weak, even for you

[brenthutch 416]

1 hour ago, lippy said:

That’s pretty fucking weak dude….both from the ‘hey, look over there’ angle when your hurricane prediction absolutely shit the bed and also for attempting to conflate a trip she took to help her sick father with Cruz’s vacation getaway (for which he subsequently tried to throw his family under the bus)….just fucking weak, even for you

I never made a prediction, I made an observation. Slowest start to hurricane season in a decade. Five weeks into hurricane season and only two named storms.

Edited July 7 by brenthutch

[Phil1111 1,050]

2 hours ago, brenthutch said:

I never made a prediction, I made an observation. Slowest start to hurricane season in a decade. Five weeks into hurricane season and only two named storms.

Which season are you talking about? Do you get your news from a monthly magazine that arrives via pony express?

[brenthutch 416]

1 hour ago, Phil1111 said:

Which season are you talking about? Do you get your news from a monthly magazine that arrives via pony express?

2024, only two named storms, Alberto and Beryl, 5+ weeks into the season. As I said slowest start to hurricane season in more than a decade.

[Phil1111 1,050]

3 minutes ago, brenthutch said:

2024, only two named storms, Alberto and Beryl, 5+ weeks into the season. As I said slowest start to hurricane season in more than a decade.

Once a storm becomes a hurricane it is given a name to identify it.

[brenthutch 416]

27 minutes ago, Phil1111 said:

Once a storm becomes a hurricane it is given a name to identify it.

Wrong! It’s when it becomes a tropical storm (sustained winds of 39 mph)

[Phil1111 1,050]

35 minutes ago, brenthutch said:

Wrong! It’s when it becomes a tropical storm (sustained winds of 39 mph)

You're right, congratulations.

[lippy 855]

6 hours ago, brenthutch said:

Wrong! It’s when it becomes a tropical storm (sustained winds of 39 mph)

I hope the people of Jamaica, Venezuela and the Grenadines (and maybe soon we’ll add Houston to the list) appreciate your nuance, cause nobody here does. 

[brenthutch 416]

7 minutes ago, lippy said:

I hope the people of Jamaica, Venezuela and the Grenadines (and maybe soon we’ll add Houston to the list) appreciate your nuance, cause nobody here does. 

You must be living in anecdotalville 

[wolfriverjoe 1,449]

8 minutes ago, lippy said:

I hope the people of Jamaica, Venezuela and the Grenadines (and maybe soon we’ll add Houston to the list) appreciate your nuance, cause nobody here does. 

And don't forget all the people in southern Florida who had to deal with severe flooding last month..
None of the storms were 'tropical storms', let alone 'hurricanes'.

But something in the neighborhood of 20" of rain in a fairly short time frame.

[brenthutch 416]

3 minutes ago, wolfriverjoe said:

And don't forget all the people in southern Florida who had to deal with severe flooding last month..
None of the storms were 'tropical storms', let alone 'hurricanes'.

But something in the neighborhood of 20" of rain in a fairly short time frame.

OMG, bad weather has never happened before until the last several years. You guys are reminding me of…. Never mind 

[billvon 2,684]

10 minutes ago, wolfriverjoe said:

And don't forget all the people in southern Florida who had to deal with severe flooding last month..
None of the storms were 'tropical storms', let alone 'hurricanes'.

But something in the neighborhood of 20" of rain in a fairly short time frame.

The evidence for climate change causing more hurricanes is there, but it's not very strong.  In the language of climate modelers, the signal there is weak.  The strength of evidence for climate change causing bigger rain events, however, is very strong.

[olofscience 456]

9 hours ago, billvon said:

The evidence for climate change causing more hurricanes is there, but it's not very strong.  In the language of climate modelers, the signal there is weak.  The strength of evidence for climate change causing bigger rain events, however, is very strong.

Wind is driven not by absolute temperature, but by temperature gradients.

So generally, heating up the world with more CO2 won't necessarily cause more hurricanes IF you heat it up evenly, but the earth is a big planet.

There are so many variables involved that it's far, far (more complex), plus the fact that the Navier-Stokes equations don't have an analytical solution so it's really hard to tell if climate change will result in more hurricanes.

 

But remember my quote from Bertrand Russell - wise men are full of doubts, while only a fool is certain. Brent will certainly look at scientists struggling to make predictions and think his confidence makes him know better.

 

One last thing though - while hurricanes get their energy from temperature gradients, heating up the planet, on average, makes more energy available when those gradients do occur. It's like giving it ammunition to shoot us with. It might or it might not, but I'd rather not take chances.

(edited. Don’t do that)

Edited July 8 by wmw999

[brenthutch 416]

9 hours ago, billvon said:

The evidence for climate change causing more hurricanes is there, but it's not very strong.  In the language of climate modelers, the signal there is weak.  The strength of evidence for climate change causing bigger rain events, however, is very strong.

It’s also weak regarding droughts, floods, tornadoes and wildfires but that won’t stop you from attributing all of these to rising CO2.

[kallend 1,799]

6 hours ago, olofscience said:

 

There are so many variables involved that it's far, far (more complex), plus the fact that the Navier-Stokes equations don't have an analytical solution   

Boeing seems to be telling us that on a regular basis.

[billvon 2,684]

6 hours ago, olofscience said:

So generally, heating up the world with more CO2 won't necessarily cause more hurricanes IF you heat it up evenly, but the earth is a big planet.

It will definitely cause stronger gradients.

Remember that the Earth is a semi-closed system.  It gets a fairly constant level of energy from the Sun; it retains some, reflects some, and re-radiates some as longwave IR.  The balance of all of those determines the temperature.  And if you are re-radiating less IR because of increasing CO2 levels, then the upper atmosphere will tend to cool since there's less IR coming from beneath it - even as the surface warms.

In fact, stratospheric cooling was one of the big predictions that early climate-change models made.  If the theory held you'd pretty much have to see stratospheric cooling, so they looked very hard for that.  They weren't able to make accurate, reliable measurements all over the world for a long time, since balloons couldn't be launched frequently enough, or over enough area, to get a good view of the entire stratosphere.  Now with better satellites (AIM, TIMED and UARS) they are able to see most of the world's stratosphere and measure its temperature through IR means.  And they did indeed see that cooling.

What does that mean for hurricanes?

The driver for very large storms is, as you mentioned, temperature gradients.  Specifically, vertical temperature gradients that set up a heat engine:
- Warm waters cause evaporation; warm humid air rises
- As the air rises it hits colder air that causes precipitation
- Precipitation falls downwards and sets up downdrafts that bring the air back down to surface level
- Coriolis forces cause the rising and falling air to deflect to one side or the other, causing rotation of the storm
- The inner updrafts and the outer downdrafts start drawing more warm surface air towards the center, intensifying the cycle

So as the gradient between surface and upper atmosphere becomes larger, the biggest storms get stronger.

The uncertainty comes about because the stratosphere doesn't start to show a cooling signal until about 57.000 feet.  And monster storms do indeed get that big (the record is 70,000 feet) but most hurricanes top out around 50,000 feet.

So if you have a hurricane that's hitting 60,000 feet it's absolutely going to be more intense.  However, its effect on smaller storms is not clear.  The gradient is still stronger, because even if the air at 50,000 feet is the same temperature, the lower atmosphere is still warmer.  But does that mean that more storms with less energy form, and peter out sooner?  Or do you get more monster storms and less smaller ones?  That's still up in the air - and is the subject of very intense research right now.

https://www.nasa.gov/general/nasa-satellites-see-upper-atmosphere-cooling-and-contracting-due-to-climate-change/

https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/stratospheric-cooling-vertical-fingerprinting