B. McPherson
Killer storm Bopha has left at least 322 people dead in the Philippines. The victims of the category 5 typhoon were hit with winds of 160 mph. High seas, flash floods and landslides all contributed to the carnage. Another 401 people are reporting injuries and 378 are unaccounted for.

The hardest hit island was Mindinao which bore the brunt of the storm. Many of the shelters were simply blown away. A government relief shelter counted soldiers among the dead when a flash flood wiped out their camp.

On Mindinao, water reservoirs dug to catch rainwater failed in the storm’s fury adding more mud and debris to the swollen rivers.

The island nations of Micronesia were also slammed by Bopha.While damage to property was extensive, no fatalities have been reported from those islands.

The superstorm has now set its sights on Vietnam or Southern China.

B. McPherson

A storm dubbed the Frankenstorm is poised to hit the US east coast Sunday night. The storm is expected to be one of those once in a century category as Hurricane Sandy moves closer to the coast. The storm is unusually large. While it probably will lose its hurricane status as it makes landfall, other events are conspiring to make this a real weather maker.

A weather system bearing wind and heavy rains is inching east across the continent bringing floods and washouts to Ontario. This system is expected to slam  into the western edge of Sandy and stall it over the New York area. At the same time, a northern weather system is moving south with is expected to hold the wild weather in place over the coastal areas. As if that weren’t enough of a bad conjunction of weather systems, there will be a full moon during the next few days which is expected to contribute to a greater storm surge.

Major Bloomberg of New York City has not yet issued any evacuation orders, but they could come. This massive storm is expected to bring about a foot of rain, flooding or in colder areas about two feet of snow. Trees are still holding their leaves in many areas and are expected to topple in the combination of wind, snow and softened ground. Flooding will also add to the residents’ woes as electricity over a widespread area will fail. Already, authorities have put out the cry for electrical workers from other states to converge to help fix what will be a major outage.

Last year Hurricane Irene slammed into the eastern seaboard leaving $15 billion in damage. Sandy and friends is expected to be worse. As the Earth's climate changes to a warmer one, we can expect more mega-storms in the future.

Up to date information on this storm is provided by the US Hurricane Center.

 

B. McPherson

Data coming from NASA has let the world know that the sea ice cover in the Arctic is now at its lowest extent since records have been kept, starting in 1979. Thinning of the ice cover has also occurred and the ice has declined by 40%. The sea ice is now only about 30% of what it was in the 1980s. It is expected that this summer’s decline will continue through September.

The summer melting of the Northern Ice Cap sets up a positive feedback situation in which the melting will accelerate, eventually leaving the Arctic Ocean ice free for part of the year. As the white ice melts to expose the darker ocean, more heat is absorbed. The open ocean also allows waves from storms to break up the thinner ice cover exposing more dark ocean, and so on.

The warmer Arctic Ocean waters are starting to melt the ocean bed permafrost which in turn releases large amounts of methane gas trapped below the surface. Methane gas is a powerful greenhouse gas which is at least 20 times more efficient at trapping Sol’s heat, adding to the positive feedback engine.

What do these changes mean to us?

As the sea ice retreats, people move onto the water. Shipping is venturing farther north each year. Oil and gas exploration are poised to move into the Arctic Ocean where a treasure trove of petroleum is believed to be. The boundaries and control of the sea bed are not agreed to in some areas with overlapping claims of jurisdiction. Added to this, the Chinese government has been making noises that they should be allowed to exploit this resource as well. This opens a now pristine area up to pollution by accidents and leaks which even in the best run companies, happen from time to time.

The warming ocean may help the acceleration of the melting of the Greenland ice sheet which is in the process of melting. If the whole of the miles thick ice sheet should be lost, ocean levels will rise inundating many river deltas and farming areas as well as coastal ports.

Wildlife that depends on ‘hauling out’ on the ice to give birth or to hunt is increasingly under pressure. Polar bears will likely go extinct in this century from loss of their unique habitat. Other marine mammals like walruses and seals also need to have stable ice for their nurseries.

As the air over the Arctic warms, the Jet Stream will likely change. In Canada, the Jet Stream rules the weather, bringing in storms or holding them at bay as it circumnavigates the globe. As more cold, fresh water enters the oceans, the salinity of the ocean will change which may lead to the slowing of the Gulf Stream, that river of warm water that circulated up from the Caribbean to modify weather along the east coast of N. America. The warm Gulf Stream is responsible for modifying the weather is S. England before looping south along the coast of France.

So while many of us have not visited the high Arctic and are not likely to do so, events there will have a direct impact on our lives. The debate about climate change has moved to a new phase. The evidence is in and we are in trouble as a species.

B. McPherson

Canada is marking the winter that wasn’t. Today more temperature records are falling from Saskatchewan east. Temperatures in Ottawa and Toronto are expected to hit 30C. That’s a good 20 degrees hotter than normal. This heat wave has persisted for about a week now. Temperature records that date back almost 150 years have been demolished.

Unusually hot air from the Gulf of Mexico has been pushing up the American plains into Canada. At the same time the hot system has pushed the cooler Arctic air westward, giving Alberta and British Columbia cooler than normal temperatures.

While the TV weather prognosticators talk about people getting June weather in July and are giving humidex readings months early it makes me wonder about the effects of this topsy turvy winter.

Cold temperatures in the Great White North serve to kill many insects and their larvae. When we fail to get the deep freeze temperatures that have been normal for many years, these pests overwinter and come back in greater numbers in the spring. In our gardens we might deal with them by picking them off our food and flowers by hand but when they hit our vast forests the situation is quite different. Mild winters have contributed to the devastating spread of the pine beetle infestation. The beetle would normally be killed in great numbers when a quick deep freeze catches them in the autumn. The past decade has seen a slow, much more gentle slide into winter allowing the beetle to survive. They carry a fungus on their bodies which kills the trees. Hugh swaths of forest stand dead and create a massive fire hazard.

Plants get confused when temperatures heat up. They go into growth gear and then get zapped by the cold as it settles back over the country.

Of course one anomalous winter does not prove that our climate is changing. It does alert us to the possibility that it is occurring when we string together several years of odd weather. Climate scientists have told us that we can expect more extreme weather events as more energy(heat) is pumped into the atmosphere. Some areas will be warmer, some cooler, some will have more rainfall, others less.

According to NOAA, February is the 324th consecutive month of temperatures above global average. That is not the whole story of course. February was also cooler in some areas.

“Warmer-than-average conditions occurred across nearly all of Canada and Alaska, the eastern half of the United States, southern Greenland, and north central Russia. Cooler-than-average regions included northeastern Africa, most of Europe and central Asia, and much of Australia.” NOAA

We saw extremely cold weather this winter across much of Europe that resulted in the deaths of at least 650 people. Drought in western Europe marked much of February. In the southern hemisphere torrential rains hit Australia. Tunisia in North Africa experienced flooding from rapid melting of snow pack.

Tornados hit the American mid-west early this year. February 28 and 29th killer tornados struck, killing and injuring people. A category 4 cyclone hit Madagascar on Valentine’s Day.

Last year saw Texas limp through the driest July on record. Massive fires devastated the state and reserves of water for electrical production and consumption fell to dangerous levels. Crop and livestock losses were in the billions of dollars. Heat waves in late summer struck much of Europe.

The back of the heat wave was broken around the globe when torrential rains fell, flooding land and displacing people.

There is an old folk saying, “One swallow does not a summer make”. One anomalous season does not ‘prove’ that our climate is changing. On the other hand it would be folly to ignore the evidence of emerging patterns.