Re: Katrina jogs east -- The Big Easy lives to party on
- From: Michael Siemon <mlsiemon@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 01 Sep 2005 16:22:36 GMT
In article <11hdtff4u83g35c@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
bobg@xxxxxxxxx (Robert Grumbine) wrote:
> In article <jtmdnTkOhtyzVIjeRVn-qw@xxxxxxxxxxx>,
> dkomo <dkomo871@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >Robert Grumbine wrote:
> >> In article <df3gme$s32$4@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
> >> Bobby D. Bryant <bdbryant@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >>
> >>>On Wed, 31 Aug 2005, "Dan Luke" <c172rg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>"*Hemidactylus*" wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>>It does seem to me, subjectively, that there's a trend towards more
> >>>>>activity in my neck of the woods too. I vaguely recall David back in
> >>>>>79
> >>>>>and being evacuated for that. I didn't remember David being too bad in
> >>>>>its local aftermath, but there were some branches and trees down. It
> >>>>>was a Cat 2 I think when it hit us. That was a long time ago and the
> >>>>>only storm of note in my childhood.
> >>>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>Same here. Born and raised in Houston, I was at ground zero for one
> >>>>major storm in 43 years, and less than a half dozen minimal hurricanes
> >>>>and tropical storms. In the last 15 years in Mobile, I've experienced
> >>>>five hurricanes and four tropical storms, plus enough wind from storms
> >>>>hitting the Florida panhandle to knock out my power three more times.
> >>>>Something ain't right, I tell ya!
> >>>
> >>>ISTM that more are hitting Florida and the TexMex border than what used
> >>>to happen, and fewer are hitting the mid- and upper Texas coast.
> >>>
> >>>(Anyone have *facts* about the historical distribution, to substitute
> >>>for my ISTMs?)
> >>
> >>
> >> Insofar as you can allow for changes in observing (more people living
> >> on the coast, better comms, better observing methods, etc.) there is
> >> apparently no trend in hurricane frequency or intensity. Bill Gray
> >> and Chris Landsea (a former student of Gray's) are two names to search
> >> on. See also the IPCC report, http://www.ipcc.ch/. The dollar cost
> >> of damage has exploded, but that's mostly a matter of more stuff being
> >> built in easily hurricane-damaged areas.
> >>
> >> For the Florida vs. upper Texas observation, depending on your
> >> time scales you're correct. There is, apparently, an
> >> oscillation as to where the hurricanes tend to aim. Andrew marked
> >> the end (Gray was saying in 1992 or 3, when he was talking at my
> >> work) of an about 25 year period of few or no strong hurricanes
> >> hitting Florida. He expected then that the swing he expected,
> >> correctly as it has developed, towards more Florida hurricanes
> >> would produce tremendous damage totals as so much building had
> >> been done on the expectation from the previous 25 years that
> >> 'hurricanes don't hit Florida any more'.
> >>
> >> The trend, or lack thereof, is a pretty hot matter in the
> >> hurricane community. If you incite my peeve of a previous
> >> note (and this is the source of my peeve) and ascribe all
> >> of hurricane formation to sea surface temperature (sst), then
> >> in a warming world we certainly expect to see more hurricanes
> >> and stronger ones. The warming already observed, if sst were
> >> the be-all end-all of hurricanes, would probably be enough to
> >> have produced a detectable trend. But no trend, so either
> >> sst isn't as overwhelming, our observations aren't as good as we
> >> thought, or 'other'. There are, in truth, a number of other
> >> factors in hurricane formation, and it isn't obvious that they
> >> are necessarily going to change in the direction of increased
> >> hurricane formation.
> >>
> >
> >I caught a brief interview on one of the cable new channels yesterday.
> >The guy being interviewed, whose name I don't recall, was some sort of
> >expert on climate change. He stated that only 10% of the variation in
> >hurricane intensity is due to sea surface temperatures. He also stated
> >that globally there has been no noticeable trend in hurricance/cyclone
> >frequency and intensity over decades.
> >
> >Another tidbit I caught on NPR Monday was that the small rise in sst due
> >to global warming is completely negligible compared to the multi-decade
> >Atlantic hurricane cycle.
> >
> >Still, I'd love to see an explanation of what climatic and oceanographic
> >factors combined to make Katrina such an ass kicker of a hurricane. So
> >far I haven't found one.
>
> You probably won't. She wasn't.
>
> Seriously -- Katrina was a cat 5 hurricane for a while, and
> nudged just under that to a strong cat 4 at landfall. These are
> _normal_ storm levels. cat 4 and 5 hurricanes have struck in the
> Caribbean and central america before, dropped greater rain loads
> before, washed the faces of entire mountain ranges to the sea
> (the one that stalled in recent years and just pounded its area),
> and levelled entire cities and large portions of countries. Such
> things don't make the US news except in the tepid 'something bad
> happened to some country you don't care about' way they cover
> such things (because that's also their market's level of interest).
> _This_ is what has been happening to those other countries,
> minus the stupidity of building the major city below sea level,
> which takes too much money for them to emulate.
>
> Most of the major 'ass kicking' was that people and things were in
> the path waiting to be hit. The storm itself was not particularly
> special, and such storms _will_ happen again. Stronger storms will
> also happen (irrespective of climate change).
>
> Are we, as a nation, going to learn anything from this?
No. We, as a nation, are too much in love with the stupid myth
that "we are different" and can do (and have a "Constitutional
Right" to do) any damned thing we please, and some one _else_
will pay for it.
.
- References:
- Re: Katrina jogs east -- The Big Easy lives to party on
- From: Robert Grumbine
- Re: Katrina jogs east -- The Big Easy lives to party on
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