Another Year of Weather Extremes: Outliers...Or Omens?

Dr. Jeff Masters

Meteorologist for Yale Climate Connections

Co-founder, The Weather Underground

https://yaleclimateconnections.org/section/eye-on-the-storm/

weatherman.masters@gmail.com

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My Job From 1986 – 1990: Scientist With the

NOAA Hurricane Hunters

The story of my near-fatal flight into Cat 5 Hurricane Hugo:

https://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/articles/hunting-hugo-part-1

I co-founded The Weather Underground in 1995…

…And wrote one of the Internet’s most popular extreme weather and climate change blogs from 2005 – 2019,

http://www.wunderground.com/cat6

Background image: Landslide on Highway 1 near Big Sur, CA on Jan. 27, 2021. Image credit: Heath Johnson, Caltrans)

Billion-Dollar Weather Disasters Are Increasing,

and Set a Record in 2020 (50 Disasters)

Europe’s Most Expensive Weather Disaster on Record ($30 Billion) Kills 240

WorldWeatherAttribution.org: “The likelihood of such an event to occur today compared to a 1.2 °C cooler climate has increased by a factor between 1.2 and 9 for the 1-day event in the large region.” 

Background image: 2021 Belgium Floods, Régine Fabri, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=107637907

Background image: Flooding from Typhoon Hagibis in Japan, 2019.

Hurricane Ida : a Double Mega-Disaster ($27-40 Billion in LA/MS/AL, $16-24 Billion From Flooding in Mid-Atlantic and Northeast U.S.)

Source: https://nca2014.globalchange.gov/report/our-changing-climate/heavy-downpours-increasing

Concerning new paper: Satellites observed a 21% global increase in tropical cyclone rainfall rates from 1998-2016, for a .21°C increase in temperature. Modeling projects a +14% increase for 2°C of global warming.

Deadliest global weather disaster of 2021, with 1037 deaths (808 in Canada, 229 in the U.S.) WorldWeatherAttribution.org: “Western North American extreme heat was virtually impossible without human-caused climate change.” 

Above: Farm machinery lies buried in dust in Dallas, South Dakota, on May 13, 1936, encapsulating the destruction of the 1930s Dust Bowl across the Great Plains. This photo was taken just weeks before the extreme heat of summer 1936 enveloped large parts of North America. Image credit: U.S. Department of Agriculture, via Wikimedia Commons.

Summer of 2021 Ties With Dust Bowl Summer of 1936 as Hottest in U.S. History;

July 2021 Was Earth’s Hottest Month in Recorded History

Wildfires in U.S. and Globally Set All-Time Emission Records in 2021

Short term (<2 days) exposure to wildfire smoke killed 3,173 people per year in the U.S. from 2000-2016:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(21)00200-X/fulltext#sec1

A Wildly Oscillating Jet Stream Key to Extreme Weather in 2021

Human-caused climate change is making extreme heat waves more probable not just by increasing the background temperature, but also by inducing changes to the atmosphere’s general circulation.

Image courtesy of Stefan Rahmstorf, https://twitter.com/rahmstorf/status/1405202170597806081

Rain at Greenland Summit Station,

August 14, 2021 Credit: Alicia Bradley, NSF

Good and Bad News From the Arctic: Lowest Sea Ice Loss Since 2014, But

a Big Melt Year in Greenland, With First-Ever Rain at the Summit Station

Atlantic Hurricane Activity Has Gone Berserk! 50 Named

Storms in 2020/2021, With 19 U.S. Landfalls

A Rogues’ gallery of the 30 storms of 2020

Source: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/global/time-series/atlanticMdr/

Ocean Temperatures in the Atlantic Main Development

Region for Hurricanes Have Warmed 1°C in Past 100 Years

Murakami et al., 2020, “Detected climatic change in global distribution of tropical cyclones”,

PNAS May 19, 2020, 117:20, 10706-10714)

Air pollution particles over the North Atlantic have dropped by nearly a factor of two since

the early 1970s, primarily due to more stringent air pollution regulations in the U.S.

A 2019 paper, “Recent increases in tropical cyclone intensification rates”, found that Atlantic hurricanes showed “highly unusual” upward trends in rapid intensification from 1982 – 2009 that can be explained only by including human-caused climate change as a contributing cause. The largest change occurred in the strongest 5% of storms: for those, 24-hour intensification rates increased by about 3 – 4 mph per decade between 1982 – 2009.

Rapid Intensification of Atlantic Hurricanes is Happening More Often

Background image: Hurricane Patricia at peak intensity, October 23, 2015

Hurricane Gilbert, Sep. 13, 1988: 185 mph

winds, 888 mb central pressure

Climate Change’s Biggest Threat: Drought & Food System Shock

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“It is estimated that there is now a one-in-twenty chance per decade that heat, drought, and flood events will cause a simultaneous failure of maize production in the world’s two main growers, China and the U.S. This would cause widespread famine and hardship.” Kent et al., 2017, “Using Climate Model Simulations to Assess the Current Climate Risk to Maize Production”

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A "Food System Shock" report issued in 2015 by insurance giant Lloyds of London gave a >18% chance in 40 years of an extreme shock to global food production that could cause rioting, terrorist attacks, civil war, mass starvation and severe losses to the global economy.

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For an in-depth analysis, see my 2016 post, https://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/food-system-shock-climate-changes-greatest-threat-to-civilization.html

Global food prices are higher than 2011, when drought in Russia contributed to food shortages and Arab Spring revolts

Global Food Prices are Currently Higher Than in 2011

Food riots in Tunisia in 2011 after cut-off of Russian grain exports due to drought

Mean drought conditions averaged over 2090–2099 computed using the 14-model ensemble mean

climate done for the 2014 IPCC report under a moderate global warming scenario (RCP4.5).

The drought index plotted is a modified version of the Palmer drought severity index (PDSI)

called the sc_PDSI_pm. An sc_PDSI_pm of -3.0 corresponds to severe drought in the present

climate. However, a 2018 review of climate change drought literature by Cook et al. warned that the relatively simple sc_PDSI_pm drought index may overestimate drought in the future climate.

Credit: Aiguo Dai, Increasing drought under global warming in observations and models, Nature Clim Change 3, 52–58 (2013) doi:10.1038/nclimate1633

Future Drought: We’re in Big

Trouble if This Forecast Verifies

Rodrigue, J.-P., Comtois, C. and Slack, B., 2017, “The Geography of Transport Systems” 

Global Trade is Vulnerable to Weather-Related Disruptions at Key Chokepoints

Was There a Climate Change Connection to the

Blockage of the Suez Canal by the Ever Given?

Near-record March heat preceded the March 23, 2021 sandstorm

Sentinel-2 satellite image of the Ever Given stuck in the Suez Canal on March 24, 2021. The stern of the ship was lodged against the west bank of the canal. (Photo credit: Pierre Markuse)

Major Food Supply Disruption: Port of South Louisiana, largest bulk cargo port in the

world, getting pounded by the strong right front eyewall of category 3 Hurricane Ida

Most Concerning Research of 2021: A Collapse of the AMOC May be Imminent

Jackson et al. (2015) Global and European climate impacts of a slowdown of the AMOC in a high resolution GCM, Climate Dynamics.

Jackson et al. (2015) Global and European climate impacts of a slowdown of the AMOC in a high resolution GCM, Climate Dynamics.

“We are already observing signs of instability within the climate system. There is no assurance that the rate of greenhouse gas buildup will not force the system to oscillate erratically and yield significant and punishing surprises.”

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-- Harvard climate scientists Paul Epstein and James McCarthy in “Assessing Climate Instability", Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 2004.

Hurricane Sandy, Oct 28, 2012

My Climate Change Retreat: Property on the

Hurricane River in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula

Solution to the Climate Crisis:

1: Reduce Emissions (Mitigation)!

2: Adapt to a New Climate of Mega-Disasters

Good Adaptation News: Major Reforms to the National

Flood Insurance Program Went Into Effect Today

Mitigating Climate Change Will Reduce Air Pollution

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8.7 million premature air pollution deaths per year occur globally due to burning of fossil fuels, said a 2021 study, “Global mortality from outdoor fine particle pollution generated by fossil fuel combustion: Results from GEOS-Chem”. A 2016 World Bank study estimated that in the year 2013 alone, the U.S. suffered over half of a trillion 2019 dollars in health-related damages from air pollution--about 3% of the GDP.

We Must Reduce Emissions (Mitigate)! Reason for Hope: The Renewable Energy Revolution is Here

Source: https://www.lazard.com/media/451086/lazards-levelized-cost-of-energy-version-130-vf.pdf

When talking about climate change, audience

research shows that it is most important to

emphasize that based on the evidence,

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1) Earth's climate is warming.

2) This time, humans are mostly responsible.

3) 97% of climate scientists agree.

4) The warming climate is already causing significant

impacts to people and ecosystems.

5) There are choices we can make now to reduce the

severity of future impacts.

1. Global drought losses are near average so far in 2021 ($11 billion), and drought has not led to sharp rises in grain prices.

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2. It’s been a record-long period without an EF5 tornado: over 8 years. Last EF5: Moore, Oklahoma, on May 20, 2013. (However, 2021 was another bad year for severe thunderstorms, with 8 billion-dollar severe weather outbreaks in the U.S. and 2 in Europe.)

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3. No major bad news from Antarctica. (However, the stability of the Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers remains a concern.)

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4. No evidence that the Arctic “methane bomb” is going off, where melting permafrost causes a mass release of greenhouse gases.

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5. No mass coral bleaching events. (However, we’ve lost 50% of Earth’s corals since the 1950s, and the next El Niño may bring another mass bleaching event.)

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6. Highest arctic sea ice extent at the September minimum since 2014; Northwest Passage remained closed to ice-free navigation. (However, sea ice thickness was the 2nd-lowest on record in August.)

Good Climate News in 2021 (with caveats):

Thanks for Listening!

Resources:

Good climate scientist Twitter feeds to follow: Michael Mann, https://twitter.com/MichaelEMann (read his 2021 book, The New Climate War); Katherine Hayhoe, https://twitter.com/khayhoe (read her 2021 book, Saving Us).

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Good website for climate science analysis:

Carbon Brief, https://www.carbonbrief.org/

�Best website to counter climate science denial arguments:

https://www.skepticalscience.com/, https://www.desmog.com/databases/

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Dr. Jeff Masters

Meteorologist for Yale Climate Connections

Co-founder, The Weather Underground

https://yaleclimateconnections.org/section/eye-on-the-storm/

weatherman.masters@gmail.com