Extreme Weather: Can we use predictions to plan?
Extreme Weather: Can we use predictions to plan?
Been on an unexpected hiatus and coming back slowly. Thanks to Angela and Jeff for a bit of cover. First I want to regain my blogging legs a little and return to my previous entry on Politics, Events, and the Weather. In that entry I mentioned that Representative Ralph Hall announced that the Science, Space, and Technology Committee will start an investigation into NOAA and whether or not NOAA is forming an “unauthorized” climate service. Many federal agencies have been operating without a current year budget for a long time. I say that so that I can include the whole name of the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act that extends the Fiscal Year 2012 Continuing Resolution. If you want a good summary of budget information that includes climate and weather research then you might try this site. In the final negotiations for this Act, Congress prohibited NOAA from organizing existing resources to form a climate service.
Organizations such as the Reinsurance Association of American recognize the need to address climate change, and in fact they are taking action. Better collection, provision, and interpretation of climate information seem warranted, and that is the main purpose of the climate service reorganization.
At least implicitly, another call for better information comes from Congress - Representative Lynn Jenkins calls hearing on Missouri River Flooding. In 2011 there was an enormous flood of the Missouri River and many of its tributaries. This was one of several Billion Dollar Events during the summer of 2011 (see, Chris Burt, Weather.com, Earth and Sky).
In ClimateWatch Magazine there is a long article on the Missouri River Flood. As with many extreme events, several factors came together to cause this flood. There was large snowpack in both the Rocky Mountains and on the Plains in the Upper Missouri Basin. This was followed by heavy spring rains, that melted the snow yielding flows in May and June that equaled what is normally seen in the entire year. In this article there is also the description of the role of La Nina in the flood. La Nina is often described as the “negative” of El Nino. In the sense that El Nino is a warmer than average eastern Equatorial Pacific Ocean, La Nina is a cooler than average eastern Equatorial Pacific. It is well known that there are changes of weather patterns over the U.S. associated with El Nino and La Nina, but it is not so well known exactly what the impact of those changes might be.
This year we once again have a La Nina forming, and we have the prediction that it is highly likely that the event will persist and, perhaps, intensify. A question that arises is how can we better anticipate and plan for the consequences of the La Nina? Will we face another year of floods in the upper Missouri Valley? Will the drought continue in Texas? (Where I am collecting some El Nino – La Nina references.)
Figure 1. Characteristic position of wintertime jet streams during La Nina. From ClimateWatch Magazine: “The jet streams are high-altitude, racing rivers of air that can influence the path of storms as they track over North America from the Pacific Ocean. The jet streams meander and shift from day to day, but during La Niña events, they tend to follow paths that bring cold air and storms into the Upper Missouri River Basin. Map based on original graphics from NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center. Adapted by Richard Rivera & Hunter Allen.”
As a climate change blogger, I have some responsibility for bringing this blog a bit to climate change. Currently, I think a lot about how to use information from climate models. I argue that thinking about how we can use a 2011 La Nina prediction to assess the risk of 2012 Missouri River flood is a pretty good exercise. Compared to a 100 year projection, this is strong prediction. We need to understand how global models inform regional scales. We have a problem with complex interactions between different features of the Earth’s weather and climate. We learn how to work with people who have to assess risk and make decisions.
OK: Here is the link to the Montana Conservation District's website. And here is a quote from Montana farmer Buzz Mattelin’s testimony to the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. Mattelin’s testimony is a remarkable summary and evaluation of the 2011 flood. Here’s one of Mattelin’s suggestions on how to improve the situation. He refers to the Corps, which is the Army Corps of Engineers who have the mission of managing the Missouri River.
“The Corps’ Annual Operating Plan (AOP) begins each new runoff year at a normal or average starting point when we rarely if ever have an average year. The Corps does a good job of incorporating mountain snowpack, plains snowpack, and short term precipitation into the AOP but falls short in using variables like soil moisture and climatic trends. Soil moisture data is readily available in weekly crop reports that rank soil moisture as short, adequate, or surplus. We should also look at El Nino and La Nina events. When you overlay past La Nina events with high runoff years in the Basin, there are definite correlations during the high runoff years in the 70’, 90’s and this year. Pacific Decadal Oscillation or PDO is another ocean temperature phenomenon that show promise as a predictor of precipitation on the Northern Plains. Incorporation of these types of variables into the AOP could significantly improve flood control.”
I will confess sitting in my office today talking about this problem, and we came pretty much to the same conclusion as Mattelin. Mattelin, many academic papers, and common sense say that if there are better forecasts, or perhaps more appropriately, longer lead times, then risk, damage, and cost can be reduced. We, the collective we, have much of the information that is required, but it is not all in one place. It is not all provided by a single agency. It is not integrated together towards a specific application like flooding in of the Missouri River. That service is not provided.
I am, let’s say, a minor participant in a project where over the next few months we will try to pull together this information and see if we can use this data better (initial link. If we can do it for a seasonal climate prediction, then we will learn to do it better for decadal climate projections. Stay tuned.
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Here is a link to a new series on Green.TV on extreme weather. Let me know what you think.
And since people mentioned it ... Shearer and Rood on the media and extreme weather.
Reader Comments
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Climate change considerations have historically had a difficult time getting on the agenda of many public and private institutions for a wide variety of reasons, including:
Resource constraints and issue fatigue
Decision makers are often juggling multiple issues of immediate importance at any given time, making it difficult to take on "new" issues such as climate change. Decision makers may also face financial and/or human resource constraints that limit their organization's ability to address climate change impacts. In many cases, however, climate change will not manifest itself as a new and independent challenge. Instead, climate change will likely exacerbate existing management concerns that are already of immediate importance, such as conflicts over water supplies during the summer low streamflow period.
Working to decrease vulnerability to existing problems that are likely to be affected by climate change may help reduce vulnerability to future climate change. For this to happen most effectively, however, the potential impacts of climate change must be recognized and considered as existing management concerns are being addressed.
Differing planning horizons
Climate change concerns are often perceived as issues to address later when we see that climate change is occurring.
Given that some adaptive strategies may require years or even decades to implement, deferring consideration may increase vulnerability to climate impacts and the costs associated with responding to those impacts.
The need for more specificity
Many decision makers indicate that they will plan for climate change when researchers can provide information specific to the decision makers area of interest (a particular river reach, for example). While scale still remains a factor in conducting climate change assessments, recent advances in down-scaling techniques have improved the overall accuracy of smaller scale climate change impacts assessments used to guide local policies and infrastructure choices.
Perceptions that climate change can only be addressed at the global scale
The highly publicized debates on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions reduction strategies (e.g., the Kyoto Protocol) may contribute to perceptions that climate change is an international scale problem that will be handled through federal policies and international agreements. The impacts of climate change will be felt most acutely at the local scale, however. Consequently, decision makers may mistakenly dismiss the need to develop locally-based adaptive management strategies. This perception also overlooks the fact that even if CO2 emissions were halted tomorrow, warming is expected through the 21st century due to the persistence of existing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. Some degree of adaptation will be required at the local level, therefore, even if emissions reduction objectives are achieved.
The need for more certainty
While there is scientific consensus about climate change and its causes, some decision makers are waiting for more certainty about projected climate impacts. Decision makers are regularly called upon to make decisions based on uncertainty (e.g., assumptions about population growth or economic development) with an overall goal of managing future risk from a variety of different factors.
Uncertainty over how to plan for climate change
General uncertainty regarding how to plan for climate change can create barriers to planning. Some decision makers may be hesitant to discuss planning for climate change given the expectation that the issue requires developing substantially different policies and planning approaches. Often times, however, the tools that would be used to develop adaptive capacity for climate change are the same or similar to those used in current management practices.
Planning now to better predict where and when extreme weather events will occur and how extensive they may become seems to be the only option left for us. Let us hope that are we able to accomplish this.
You are correct, overwash12. This would be a great place to start and a practice that has been in effect for several years now. This step alone amounts to repairing a scratch on a yacht. The steps we need to take, and soon, will need to be much more drastic than this. Time, is the least quantity we have available to us now. We will run out of time, to circumvent a climate disaster, before we run out of anything else.
There's also the issue of larger-picture adaption, i.e. to long-term changes rather than season-to season ones. For example, if it's the case that bigger floods (or, more precisely, more extreme precipitation/melt events leading to floods given the present basin configuration) can be expected for the Missouri, even if not more frequent ones, that would imply a certain set on long-term adaption measures (e.g. getting your farm buildings out of the flood plain rather than pre-positioning a bunch of sand bags). This seems to me to be a better approach, although it's probably fair to say the the political push-back against it would be greater.
I'd be very interested to hear your opinion of Jim Hansen's approach to extreme event attribution (see his latest article). He seems to want to keep things simple by going with a three sigma standard.
On another subject, I hadn't realized you'd been on hiatus, although the post from Angela should have been a hint. I sincerely hope there'll be some attention to the quality of the comments section. The "hide" button is entirely inadequate when it comes to new visitors, which I would think would be a concern.
Finally, you don't seem to have linked your excellent related EarthZine article in this post. Maybe stick a note on the end with that.
And smarter farms, as opposed to the dumber ones we seem to prefer.
Exactly!
Yes if outcome = cooler planet then you are correct.
Link
Link
LOL!
Snort! LOL!
Keep trying. I'm sure there will be some out of context quote that can be used to climate scientists look bad to some.
However, I fail to see how such antics stop the GHG properties of CO2? Little help?
Perhaps some should pay attention to that of which they provide over the internet.
Scary eh?
Simply sends a message to incorporate policy that dictates an old saying......
If you always tell the truth, you never have to remember what you said.
The science is explaining shortfalls.
I feel a Dr. Smith moment, but will not post it.
How long do you think it will take to crack the password on the rest?
Fun for the holidays.
Well, maybe not
One of the emails has Phil Jones stating the the US Dept. of Energy is complicit in hiding temperature station data. That, in itself, is unethical and probably illegal. They work for us.
Emissions have increased six percent in this year alone which is greater than any time in the past. Temperatures have been stagnant. If GHGs were directly correlated with temperature increase, don't you think we would have seen a pronounced increase? How do you explain the discrepancy? I'm sure you'll find a way.
Feel free to let me know the minute something relevant appears in any of these emails. (Difficulty: facts and quotes should be fully in context)
Further note that the following aren't relevant:
- one or more climatologists are mean
- one of more climatologists disparage denialists
- one or more climatologists don't want to cooperate with harassing FOIA requests (since virtually all data was online even prior to Slimategate I)
- one or more climatologists had gas (unless it was the direct result of fossil fuel consumption)
- one or more climatologists confess to murder (though such confessions should be reported to the police, they have no bearing on the science)
Happy hunting!
Science? These emails demonstrate fabrications, exclusions, and outright lying by these so-called "scientists." Perhaps you should read them before you speak. These people are the leaders of the field. Most everything we assume about climate "science" is garnered from them. They are a bunch of frauds bent on pushing ideology.
LOL, segmenting the impacts of indoctrination is a good thing for all to see. The infection becomes obvious..........
It is no longer tolerable, period.
Translation: Ya got nuttin'.
Noted.
So much FUD! Should we call you "Elmer?" LOL
Howsa about you produce some actual evidence of:
-fabrications
-exclusions
-outright lying?
Got anything beside assertion?
Tell me how the climate models handle cloud formation and or even an easier answer, , , , how they have done in review with respect to observations?
Yup, pitiful on any scale.
That is what you all push down our throats every day and it does not carry any verifiable legitimacy.
Check it before you sink in the quicksand.
L8R >.>>>>>>
Cloud formation is indeed a problem for the models at this point. No model is perfect --and that doesn't just apply to climate science, as I'm sure you know. So pointing out something that is a problem is legitimate.
However, what isn't legitimate is any implication that because we can't model everything that means we can't model anything. Climate models work pretty well --some better than others, of course.
Just for the hell of it, tell me, just how much of the current warming do you think is due to cloud formation? Are clouds a positive feedback, a negative feedback, or neutral climatically? On what science do you base your answer?
We have no clue at this point. Which is my point!
Do some regression testing to see for yourself :)
out>
No clue at all? There are no constraints on how much warming or cooling clouds have caused in the current warming? I mean, is it possible physically that without clouds we would be 300C warmer or 600C cooler than present?
I find that hard to believe.
Same lack of substance or relevance.
Same wishful thinking by denialists.
Meanwhile, the observations keep supporting the science. Presumably, Nature itself is in the scam, right? LOL
The IPCCs new paper will state that there will be climate (temperature) stagnation for the next 20-30 years. As if they would know what will happen beyond that. Does that statement appear to demonstrate that temperatures are increasing? Observations have shown no measurable temperature increase globally for more than ten years. About what observations are you speaking?
No, it won't. You are misinformed.
See? I told you were misinformed. (Actually, you have been informed that ten years is insufficient to separate the signal of climate from the noise of weather. But, hey, you got a story to push, so to hell with reality, right? LOL)
Of course, it has warmed in the last ten years (according to GISTEMP). But the warming is not statistically significant. Nor should it be expected to be statistically significant over such a short time period. Why you engage in this deception is a mystery known only to yourself, though others might hazard a guess. ;)
05:38 AM GMT am 23. November 2011
That radical eco-nut magazine, "The Economist", recently published this article:
http://www.economist.com/node/21533360
Just more foolish nonsense from the Koch brothers who financed this study?
Why is it that when you or your heros (Kock, Watts, etc.) lie, distort the truth, etc. you don't seem to care.
Why don't you set forth an objective criteria then we keep a tally of lies published?
You'll find that your posts, the posts of your heros and those of Oss fall far more on the side of lies than any scientists do.
s'matter? scared?
You shouldn't post stuff like that on open wiebsites. This is a good idea and works to help the planet. I think that is neutral.
However, it opposes big business. Posting something like that alerts the new tea party / republicans that the goernment is trying to do something that takes away profit from the huge multinationals. Sure as bears poop in the forest, someone like JB will see a new lobbying oportunity and the tea party will see a new contribution possibility and soon it will be outlawed.
Silly denialists.
It remains to be see whether the major media will again fail to do their jobs as they did after the first release and, instead of doing some actual research, simply repeat the Koch Brothers talking points they've been given. If so, they can expect harsher recriminations from the world of science.
There's a great piece in The Australian about this entire subject:
There is a real climategate out there
Remember "climategate"? The illegal hack of personal emails released just before the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009 that some columnists pronounced to be the (approximately 132nd) "final nail in the coffin" of global warming?
Remember the "errors" in the IPCC’s 2007 report? "Amazongate", "Himalayagate", and so on?
What has happened to "climategate"?
What’s happened is this.
First, the UK Parliament’s Science and Technology Committee exonerated the scientist at the centre of the tempest, Professor Phil Jones, finding he has "no case to answer" and that his reputation "remains intact."
Then Lord Oxburgh (former chairman of Shell-UK) and his panel likewise exonerated the researchers, finding their "work has been carried out with integrity, and that allegations of deliberate misrepresentation" are "not valid."
Another enquiry, chaired by Sir Muir Russell, found the scientists’ "rigour and honesty" to be beyond doubt.
Two enquiries by his university also cleared Professor Michael Mann – who presented the first of now innumerable "hockey stick" graphs – of all allegations.
Ultimately the (conservative) UK Government concluded "the information contained in the illegally-disclosed emails does not provide any evidence to discredit … anthropogenic climate change."
Not one, not two, but by now nine vindications.
- - - - - - - - - -
[But] there are too many real climategates that must not escape attention.
First, there was another batch of private emails posted by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a "think" tank notorious even by American standards. Those emails — yes, a second hack — revealed the real climategate by being truthful, with one scientist stating: "Those who deny the biophysical facts of the world would deny … gravity" and "we’re not in a gentlepersons' debate, we’re in a street fight against … merciless enemies. Colleagues … are getting threatened with prosecution by … [US Senator James M.] Inhofe."
That is the second real climategate: the McCarthyite attempts by Senator Inhofe to criminalise climate scientists — attempts to criminalise those who, 35 years ago, predicted the temperature rise by century’s end to within 1/10th of a degree.
This is no isolated incident: Virginia’s Attorney General, Ken Cuccinelli, has launched several frivolous lawsuits — despite losing an earlier one — against the University of Virginia in what the Washington Post called a "war on the freedom of academic inquiry"". And Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman evoked Pastor Niemoeller’s cry against the erosion of humanity under the Nazis: "First, they came for the climate scientists…".
The real climategate involves active censorship within NASA by Bush appointees, which the agency’s Inspector General later found to have "reduced, marginalized, or mischaracterized climate change science".
The real climategate involves Bush White House staff replacing assessments of the National Academy of Sciences with a discredited paper by two individuals with no expertise in climatology. This paper, funded by the American Petroleum Institute, was so flawed its appearance in a peer-reviewed journal led to the resignation in protest by three editors and the publisher’s unprecedented acknowledgement of mishandling.
- - - - - - - - - -
In Canada, the real media climategate involves the ongoing list of defamatory articles by the "National Post." The tabloid is finally being sued by Professor Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria.
In Australia, the real media climategate involves the national daily newspaper, whose misrepresentations of science are legendary and, sadly ongoing.
I heard someone liken this whole thing to "that part in a western where the bank robber, knowing he's lost the gunfight, grabs the nearest child and heads for the door, using her as a human shield." Fitting analogy, if you ask me.
"That radical eco-nut magazine, 'The Economist'" ;-)
I've been wondering these past few weeks what the Kochs think about the BEST project's corroboration of warming, then all the other news stories showing continued validation of AGWT. Oh, how I'd love to be a fly on the wall in some of the closed-door meetings...
The abrupt warming around the world seems to have increased since the invention of the internet.
I'll buy that. Next year should be very telling; the huge recent losses of multi-year ice is gonna make massive summer melts in '12, '13, and so on far easier. Of course, there'll be those desperately shouting that "We've only been measuring ice since 1979; who's to say the Arctic wasn't ice-free in, for example, the 1950s?" or "So what? Antarctic ice is growing!!!". But we've come to expect that. And at any rate, they'll do that until they realize that Big Oil is beginning to plunder the newly iceless Arctic; then they'll come around, I'm sure. :-\
That is not quite correct, PurpleDrank. The Internet has caused an abrupt awareness, among the masses, that we are seeing an abrupt warming. This would be a more correct statement.
No, I do not think they over built their fleet of ice breakers. The Arctic will still have winters and and the Arctic will still freeze during the winter months.
They are impressive. They are amazing to watch in action.
This is last year's news, although I'm confident Prof. Wadhams still thinks the projection is good. I'd be a little less confident than he's quoted to be regarding 2015 specifically, but the research he's relying on (from the U.S. Navy's sea ice modeler) actually says 2016 plus or minus 3 years. Soon enough.
Re the icebreakers, as summer sea ice disappears there's actually a greater need for them, as more and more ships try to transit the Arctic.
That's not a maybe. The type of global climate associated with varying levels of CO2 is quite well-known from paleoclimate studies. At this point we've probably added enough CO2 to prevent the next ice age (glaciation) from occurring when it would have, i.e. in about 40,000 years.
Take away *all* the CO2 at once (not physically possible, fortunately) and the Earth would freeze over entirely. Interestingly, such a "snowball" state (still with some CO2, although not much) has happened in the very distant past. The last one ended about 650 million years ago. A repeat is no longer possible (due to the warmer sun and the biosphere), but the consequences of our present course of action may make our descendants, and perhaps even some of us, wish otherwise.
Link
Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) today called on the United States intelligence community to join the British and others in rooting out the hackers who have stolen emails from climate scientists and released them in advance of two major climate negotiations, including the upcoming talks in Durban, South Africa.
"This is clearly an attempt to sabotage the international climate talks for a second time, and there has not been enough attention paid to who is responsible for these illegal acts," said Rep. Markey, who is the top Democrat on the Natural Resources Committee and is the co-author of the only climate bill to pass a chamber of Congress.
"If this happened surrounding nuclear arms talks, we would have the full force of the Western world's intelligence community pursuing the perpetrators. And yet, with the stability of our climate hanging in the balance with these international climate treaty negotiations, these hackers and their supporters are still on the loose. It is time to bring them to justice."
Exactly. It's time to bring these hackers and their supporters to justice.
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