A Tough Winter?
It's human nature to compare and contrast. Yes,
after March 2012 - the warmest March on record for Minnesota and the USA
- 2013 has featured an old fashioned March: nearly 14 inches of snow,
with temperatures 6.3F colder than average. But the claim of a tough
winter? Not so much.
Your Honor, look at the evidence in Exhibit A:
49.3 inches of snow so far. Average for an entire winter is 54". Based
on Heating Degree Days we've actually saved 1.5 percent on heating costs
this winter season. Subzero nights in the metro: 9. The latest 30 year
average is 22.5.
Truth? We've been so pampered and spoiled since roughly 1998 - even an "average winter" seems like a cold slap across the face.
Highs approach 50 today (I may take off my shirt
and fire up the grill - just to annoy the neighbors) before a half inch
of rain falls Saturday morning. A colder front arrives Easter Sunday on
gusty winds. Expect bright, ineffective sun and wind chills of 15-20F
for Monday's Twins Home Opener. Hey, who needs a retractable roof?
The sun angle is similar to mid-September, so it
can't stay chilly for long. With our reluctant spring I wouldn't be
surprised to see a few more slushy inches in April, but highs approach
50 next Wednesday, again the first weekend of April. Slow, tentative
signs of a tardy spring.
Big Swings. After peaking near 50 today,
temperatures cool off Easter Sunday; highs holding near freezing Monday
and Tuesday. Some moderation is likely again the middle of next week, a
mix of rain and wet snow possible by Friday of next week, according to
ECMWF model data.
20-Degree Temperature Drop. After climbing to near
50 today, temperatures fall off late Sunday into Monday; wind chills
early next week dipping into the teens at times. Don't retire the coats
and heavy jackets just yet - but some moderation is likely by the middle
of next week. Graphic: Iowa State.
Significant Storm April 7-8? It's still early, but
GFS data shows nearly 2" of liquid precipitation falling around April
7-8, mostly rain - possibly ending as a little slushy snow. Colder air
follows the storm; temperatures not rebounding into the 50s until late
in the second week of April.
More Hints The Drought May Be Easing. Here's the GFS
solution for early in the day, April 8, showing an intense storm
tracking just south/east of Minnesota; a shield of potentially heavy
rain and some wet snow from the Dakotas into Wisconsin. We'll see.
Fascinatingly Morbid. Here's an interesting infographic looking at snow and ice-related accidents in the USA, courtesy of
graphs.net.
Upended: The Deadly Odds Of Slipping On Ice. Here's an excerpt of a relevant article from
Book of Odds, focused on the risk of death from slipping on ice (or any hard surface): "...
The odds of dying from a fall on ice or snow in a year are 1 in 4,908,000.
The US population hovers around 304,000,000, which means roughly 60
people die from slipping on ice or snow every year. But wintry
conditions are only involved in about 10% of deaths stemming from an
accidental tumble. The overall odds a person will die from an accidental
fall in a year are 1 in 435,800.
According to the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS),
accidental falls are the leading cause of non-fatal injuries in the
US, and the primary cause of fatal injuries for Americans 65 and older.
Most injuries come from striking a hard floor..."
Extreme Weather: The New Normal? Here's a clip of a terrific article from my friend, Bob Ryan, at
WJLA-TV in Washington D.C.: "
Is
the weather really going to extremes, or are we just more aware or
hear more about “extreme weather” on the news and in blogs? Well, March
2013 has sure been an extreme change from March 2012. March 2012, the
warmest March on record here in Washington and across the United States,
at the same time across the globe March 2012 was the coolest since
1999...."
Graphic above: Climate Central.
Which Is The Safest Seat On An Aircraft? Personally, I want a seat inside the "black box", which is almost always recovered intact. After reading this article from the
U.K. Telegraph
I won't be quite as upset if I'm not upgraded on my next Delta flight.
Economy class, a window seat, near an exit, toward the rear of the
plane, is just fine. Here's an excerpt: "...
The producers of the
documentary, The Crash, arranged for a Boeing 727 carrying cameras,
sensors and crash test dummies with breakable “bones” to be
deliberately crashed into the Sonoran Desert in Mexico. After hitting
the ground, the front of the plane and the first 11 rows of seats –
usually reserved for first-class, business-class or premium-economy
passengers – were ripped off. A force of 12G was recorded in this
section of the aircraft. Further back, the force fell to around 6G.
Experts concluded that none of the plane’s first-class passengers
would have survived, but 78 per cent of the other passengers would
have, with the chance of survival increasing the closer they were
sitting to the rear of the aircraft..."
How The Internet Is Making Us Poor. Is "software
eating the world"? How many information-related jobs will be replaced by
software, automation and even robotics in the years to come. Will we be
competing with other people for jobs, or machines? Here's an excerpt of
a thought-provoking story at
Quartz: "
Everyone knows the story of how robots replaced humans on the factory floor.
But in the broader sweep of automation versus labor, a trend with far
greater significance for the middle class—in rich countries, at any
rate—has been relatively overlooked: the replacement of knowledge
workers with software. One reason for the neglect is that this trend is
at most thirty years old, and has become apparent in economic data
only in perhaps the past ten years. The first all-in-one commercial
microprocessor went on sale in 1971,
and like all inventions, it took decades for it to become an ecosystem
of technologies pervasive and powerful enough to have a measurable
impact on the way we work..."
Photo credit above: "
Librarians are being replaced by vast
systems for automatically storing books—but it's Wikipedia and the
internet that are the real threat." AP/Uncredited.
Climate Stories....
Buzzkill? How Climate Change Could Eventually End Coffee. This is the last straw - PLEASE don't take away my coffee!
US News has the article; here's the intro: "
Millions
around the world wake up and brew a cup of coffee before they start
their day. But for many involved in the industry, a caffeine buzz isn't
keeping them up at night—instead, what's causing insomnia is the
increasing difficulty that climate change causes coffee farmers. Coffee
is one of the world's most traded commodities. Each year, more than $15
billion worth of coffee is exported from 52 countries—many of which
are still developing and rely on the crop to buoy their economies. The
industry employs some 26 million people worldwide...
The
problem has gotten so bad that on March 18, Starbucks bought its first
ever coffee farm, specifically to research new climate change-resistant
coffee varieties..."
Poll: Americans Favor Adapting To Global Warming, But Not To Save Beaches For Coastal Dwellers. Here's an excerpt of a story at
The Washington Post: "...
When
it came to the general question of who should pay to protect the
coast, 60 percent of the public said it should be paid for by local
property owners and businesses, not the general taxpayers. And when it
comes to specific solutions, about 80 percent of those surveyed said the
money should come from local property taxes, not federal or state
income taxes. Nearly half, 47 percent, said the government should
prohibit people from rebuilding structures damaged by storms. The
survey also found that 82 percent of the public believes global warming
is already happening. About 3 out of 4 people said rising sea levels
caused by global warming is a serious problem."
Surprising Depth To Global Warming's Effects. Over
90% of the warming has gone into oceans, some of that warming into deep
ocean layers, below 700 meters. Here's an excerpt from
Live Science: "
The
oceans are the flywheel of the climate system. As atmospheric
concentrations of greenhouse gases increase, the Earth system is
warming, and over 90 percent of that increase in heat goes into the
ocean. Knowing how much heat the ocean absorbs is vital to understanding
sea level rise (the oceans expand as they warm), and predicting how
much, and how fast, the atmosphere will warm. Most estimates of ocean
warming have been limited to the upper 700 meters of water, owing to
the limited availability of ocean-temperature data below that depth.
Since about the turn of the millennium, the Argo array, an
international system of robotic profiling floats, has massively
increased ocean sampling to 2,000 meters, and allowed scientists to
show conclusively that ocean warming extends below 700 meters.."
Photo credit above: "
The researchers compared
ocean-temperature data collected in the 1870s by the Challenger vessel
with modern data collected by the Argo Project, which uses 3,500
free-drifting floats (one of which is shown here) to measure temperature
and salinity." Credit: Argo Project.
New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated. Following up on the article above, here's an excerpt from
Skeptical Science: "
A new study of ocean warming has just been published in Geophysical Research Letters by Balmaseda, Trenberth, and Källén (2013). There are several important conclusions which can be drawn from this paper.
- Completely contrary to the popular contrarian myth,
global warming has accelerated, with more overall global warming in
the past 15 years than the prior 15 years. This is because about 90%
of overall global warming goes into heating the oceans, and the oceans
have been warming dramatically.
Poll Questions Shift Public Views On Global Warming.
A majority of Americans acknowledge that our climate is shifting, but
how the questions are posed can shape the ultimate outcome (and
certainty) of the answers. Nothing new there, but here's an excerpt of
an interesting article at
USA Today: "...
Belief
that global warming is happening has been mostly stable and increasing
for the last thirty years," says social scientist Orie Kristel
of The Strategy Team, an applied social science company based in
Columbus, Ohio. The agreement has approached 75%, and although it dipped
in recent years, that consensus has since resumed its upward march,
according to a just-released report sponsored by the Skoll Global Threats Fund,
a foundation founded by eBay billionaire Jeff Skoll that looks for
solutions to global problems such as pandemics, nuclear proliferation
and environmental challenges. In it, Kristel and his colleagues weigh
together public opinion polls dating back to 1986, from more than 150
nationwide questionnaires in all..."
Graphic credit above: "
U.S. belief that global warming is occurring weighed over all polls since 1986 to 2012.
" (Photo: The Strategy Team)
New Video: Hunters, Anglers And Climate Change. Here's a video and excerpt from
Climate Denial Crock of the Week: "
Todd Tanner has an offer for you. Convince him that climate change is not real, and he’ll give you his gun.
Field and Stream: The Conservation Hawks is
a new group dedicated to harnessing the power of sportsmen to address
climate change. Stop. Before you give in to anger, or to the
“conservation fatigue” that can fall upon us like a giant wet carpet
whenever climate change is mentioned, consider this: If you can
convince Conservation Hawks chairman Todd Tanner that
he’s wasting his time, that he does not have to worry about climate
change, he will present to you his most prized possession: A Beretta
Silver Pigeon 12 gauge over/under that was a gift from his wife, and has
been a faithful companion on many a Montana bird hunt. I know the gun,
and I’ve hunted and fished with Todd for years. He’s not kidding. You
convince him, he’ll give you the gun..."
How To Abuse Statistics: Claim Global Warming Stopped In 1998. My friend, Dr. Jeff Masters at
Wunderground,
has a great post on a common denier theme making the rounds these days,
the result of cherry-picking data. Here's an excerpt: "
One
often hears the statement in the media that global warming stopped in
1998, or that there has been no global warming for the past 16 years.
Why pick 16 years? Why not some nice round number like 20 years? Or
better yet, 30 years, since the climate is generally defined as the
average weather experienced over a period of 30 years or longer?
Temperatures at Earth's surface undergo natural, decades-long warming
and cooling trends, related to the La Niña/El Niño cycle and the
11-year sunspot cycle. The reason one often hears the year 1998 used as
a base year to measure global temperature trends is that this is a
cherry-picked year. An extraordinarily powerful El Niño event that was
the strongest on record brought about a temporary increase in surface
ocean temperatures over a vast area of the tropical Pacific that year,
helping boost global surface temperatures to the highest levels on
record (global temperatures were warmer in both 2005 and 2010, but not
by much.) But in the years from 2005 - 2012,
La Niña events have been present for at least a portion of every
single year, helping keep Earth's surface relatively cool. Thus, if one
draws a straight-line fit of global surface temperatures from 1998 to
2012, a climate trend showing little global warming results. If one
picks any year prior to 1998, or almost any year after 1998, a global
warming trend does result. The choice of 1998 is a deliberate abuse of
statistics in an attempt to manipulate people into drawing a false
conclusion on global temperature trends..."
Graphic above: Skeptical Science.
Keeping The Cork In The Oil Sands Bottle. Here's a snippet from a story at
Planet 3.0: "
Are
the bitumen deposits in NE Alberta the biggest carbon bomb on the
planet or will their exploitation have hardly any effect on the
climate? Will the Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline accelerate development of
the oil sands or will it make little difference? I have attempted to
answer the first question previously in a Skeptical Science post that discussed the 2012 Nature Climate Change article by Neil Swart and Andrew Weaver.
The oil sands, even in the worst case (assuming constant production
rates of coal, gas and conventional oil, with accelerated bitumen
production), will only contribute a small proportion, about 3%, to
fossil-fuel emissions over this century. However, when framed in terms
of the steps we need to make to stabilize the climate, the oil sands
loom larger, comparable in size to one of the Princeton wedges.
In this view, exploiting the oil sands would be like taking a stride
closer to the brink, whereas prudence requires us instead to take
several steps back..."
Opinion: Life As A Target. Penn State climate
scientist Michael Mann has become a target of climate change deniers,
many funded by fossil fuel interests. He's the researcher who first
published the "hockey stick", showing a sharp, upward spike in
temperature - and he has the arrows in his back to prove it. Here's an
excerpt from
TheScientist: "...
Meanwhile,
I’ve also been subject to a constant onslaught of character attacks
and smears on websites, in op-eds, and on right-leaning news outlets,
usually by front groups or individuals tied to fossil fuel interests
like ExxonMobil or the petrochemical tycoons, the Koch Brothers. As the
journal Nature put it a March 2010 editorial,
climate researchers are in a street fight with those who seek to
discredit the accepted scientific evidence simply because it is
inconvenient for some who are profiting from fossil fuel use. But being
the focus of such attacks has a silver lining: I’ve become an
accidental public figure in the debate over human-caused climate
change. Reluctant at first, I have come to embrace this role, choosing
to use my position in the public eye to inform the discourse surrounding
the issue of climate change..."
Photo credit above: "
Michael Mann testifying before Congress, with National Academies of Science Chair Ralph Cicerone (July 27, 2006)." National Academy of Sciences.
