Hurricane Sandy Reiterates Scientists’ Observation And Questions Conservatives
By Countercurrents.org
31 October, 2012
Countercurrents.org
Hurricane Sandy has reiterated observation scientists made while has challenged “assertion” of a section of conservative politicians.
An AP news story [1] by Seth Borenstein, AP Science Writer, said:
Climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer stood along the Hudson River and watched his research come to life as Hurricane Sandy blew through New York.
Just eight months earlier, the Princeton University professor reported that what used to be once-in-a-century devastating floods in New York City would soon happen every three to 20 years. He blamed global warming for pushing up sea levels and changing hurricane patterns.
New York ‘‘is now highly vulnerable to extreme hurricane-surge flooding,’’ he wrote.
For more than a dozen years, Oppenheimer and other climate scientists have been warning about the risk for big storms and serious flooding in New York. A 2000 federal report about global warming’s effect on the US warned specifically of that possibility.
Still, they say it’s unfair to blame climate change for Sandy and the destruction it left behind. They cautioned that they cannot yet conclusively link a single storm to global warming, and any connection is not as clear and simple as environmental activists might contend.
‘‘The ingredients of this storm seem a little bit cooked by climate change, but the overall storm is difficult to attribute to global warming,’’ Canada’s University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver said.
Some individual parts of Sandy and its wrath seem to be influenced by climate change, several climate scientists said.
First, there’s sea level rise. Water levels around New York are a nearly a foot higher than they were 100 years ago, said Penn State University climate scientist Michael Mann.
Add to that the temperature of the Atlantic Ocean, which is about 2 degrees warmer on average than a century ago, said Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University. Warm water fuels hurricanes.
And Sandy zipped north along a warmer-than-normal Gulf Stream that travels from the Caribbean to Ireland, said Jeff Masters, meteorology director for the private service Weather Underground.
Meteorologists are also noticing more hurricanes late in the season and even after the season. A 2008 study said the Atlantic hurricane season seems to be starting earlier and lasting longer but found no explicit link to global warming. Normally there are 11 named Atlantic storms. The past two years have seen 19 and 18 named storms. This year, with one month to go, there are 19.
After years of disagreement, climate scientists and hurricane experts have concluded that as the climate warms, there will be fewer total hurricanes. But those storms that do develop will be stronger and wetter.
Sandy took an unprecedented sharp left turn into New Jersey. Usually storms keep heading north and turn east harmlessly out to sea. But a strong ridge of high pressure centered over Greenland blocked Sandy from going north or east, according to the National Hurricane Center.
Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University, an expert in how a warming Arctic affects extreme weather patterns, said recent warming in the Arctic may have played a role in enlarging or prolonging that high pressure area. But she cautioned it’s not clear whether the warming really had that influence on Sandy.
While components of Sandy seem connected to global warming, ‘‘mostly it’s natural, I'd say it’s 80, 90 percent natural,’’ said Gerald North, a climate professor at Texas A&M University. ‘‘These things do happen, like the drought. It’s a natural thing.’’
On Tuesday, both New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Gov. Andrew Cuomo said they couldn’t help but notice that extreme events like Sandy are causing them more and more trouble.
‘‘What is clear is that the storms that we've experienced in the last year or so, around this country and around the world, are much more severe than before,’’ Bloomberg said. ‘‘Whether that’s global warming or what, I don’t know. But we'll have to address those issues.’’
Cuomo called the changes ‘‘a new reality.’’
‘‘Anyone who says that there’s not a dramatic change in weather patterns I think is denying reality,’’ Cuomo said. ‘‘I told the president the other day: ‘We have a 100-year flood every two years now.'’’
For his published research, Oppenheimer looked at New York City’s record flood of 1821. Sandy flooded even higher. This week’s damage was augmented by the past century’s sea level rise, which was higher than the world average because of unusual coastal geography and ocean currents. Oppenheimer walked from his Manhattan home to the river Monday evening to watch the storm.
‘‘We sort of knew it could happen, but you know that’s different from actually standing there and watching it happen,’’ Oppenheimer said from a cell phone. ‘‘You don’t really imagine what this looks like until you see it.’’
Conservatives challenged
Political analyst Meghan McCain, daughter of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), is challenging widespread GOP skepticism about climate change in the wake of Hurricane Sandy [2].
“So are we still going to go with climate change not being real fellow republicans [sic]?” McCain wrote, via Twitter, around midnight as the storm was slamming ashore.
McCain’s father has advocated for curbing greenhouse gas emissions and co-sponsored cap-and-trade bills several years ago.
However, substantial numbers of Republicans now dispute widely held scientific views about global warming and the extent of humans’ contribution.
Scientists urge caution about attributing specific weather events to climate change. But experts warn that warmer ocean waters, greater atmospheric moisture and other factors are fueling the intensity of storms, and that rising sea levels will make coastal impacts worse.
A number of science writers in recent days have pointed to research on Atlantic cyclones published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by the University of Copenhagen’s Aslak Grinsted.
Al Gore
Al Gore said on October 30, 2012 that Hurricane Sandy is a “disturbing sign of things to come” in a warming world and should prompt action to curb greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels [3].
“We must heed this warning and act quickly to solve the climate crisis. Dirty energy makes dirty weather,” the former vice president said in a statement on his website.
“Scientists tell us that by continually dumping 90 million tons of global warming pollution into the atmosphere every single day, we are altering the environment in which all storms develop. As the oceans and atmosphere continue to warm, storms are becoming more energetic and powerful,” he said.
Gore said: “Scientists tell us that if we do not reduce our emissions, these problems will only grow worse.”
Environmentalists and a number of scientists, as Sandy menaced the East Coast, have highlighted the nexus between global warming and extreme weather such as heat waves, droughts and powerful storms.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) also sees the hand of climate change in Sandy, a storm that caused widespread flooding, power outages and a number of deaths in the Empire State.
“Anyone who says there's not a dramatic change in weather patterns I think is denying reality,” Cuomo said at a press conference on October 30, 2012.
“There is no weather pattern that could shock me at this point,” he said.
Source:
[1] boston.com, “Scientists look at climate change, the superstorm”, Oct. 30, 2012, http://www.boston.com/news/science/2012/10/30/scientists-look-climate-change-the-superstorm/GERaLIPs4sfgrbcfBX8OAJ/story.html
[2] The Hill, Ben Geman, “Meghan McCain to GOP after Sandy: Do you still doubt climate change?”, Oct. 30, 2012, http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/264755-meghan-mccain-to-gop-do-you-still-doubt-climate-change
[3] The Hill, Ben Geman, “Al Gore calls Sandy a ‘disturbing sign of things to come,’ urges climate action”, Oct. 30, 2012, http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/264871-al-gore-sandy-a-disturbing-sign-of-things-to-come
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