Nation Suddenly Realizes This Is Just Going To Be A Thing That Happens From Now On

The onion, OCTOBER 31, 2012 | ISSUE 48•44 

This, all of this, is just going to be a part of life from here on out, the entire nation now understands.

NEW YORK—Following Hurricane Sandy’s destructive tear through the Northeast this week, the nation’s 300 million citizens looked upon the trail of devastation and fully realized, for the first time, that this is just going to be something that happens from now on.

Gradually comprehending that this sort of thing is now just a fact of life, citizens all across America stared blankly at images of destroyed homes, major cities paralyzed by flooding, and ravaged communities covered in debris, and finally acknowledged that this, apparently, is now a regular part of the human experience.

“Oh, I see—this is just going to be how it is from here on out,” said New York City resident Brian Marcello, coming to terms with the fact that an immense storm that cripples mass transit systems and knocks out power for millions in the nation’s largest metropolitan area can no longer be regarded as an isolated, freak incident, and will henceforth be just a normal thing that happens. “Hugely destructive weather events are going to keep happening, and they are going to get worse and worse, and living through them is something that will be a part of all our lives from now on, whether we like it or not.”

“I get it now,” Marcello added.

Faced with the prospect of long months before any of the widespread damage is truly repaired, the millions who reside along the Eastern Seaboard told reporters today they fully understood, for the first time, that natural disasters killing scores of Americans and costing billions of dollars are going to be routine events, not just in the immediate foreseeable future, but permanently.

Sources added that by early Wednesday morning, it abruptly occurred to millions more citizens that the news stories they’ve been seeing that feature displaced families, photos of debris, shut-down businesses, and government relief efforts have already started to feel “extremely familiar,” because these are things that happen now.

“I was just watching a CNN news story about how much damage Sandy has caused in comparison to Katrina, Ike, or last year’s storm that ravaged the Northeast, and it dawned on me: ‘Ah, okay, being a human being on Planet Earth, pretty much no matter where you are, now involves the threat of one day having your home, city, or country decimated in a matter of hours by a severe weather event,’” Detroit resident Stacy Hillman said. “Looking at images of cities—actual American fucking cities—flooded with water is no longer an incredibly weird, unprecedented thing to see. It has happened before, it happened this week, and it will continue to happen again and again in the future, and to an even greater extent.”

“So, then, I guess that what it means to be a member of human civilization has changed forever, pretty much,” Hillman added. “And that this is the new world we live in.”

A Reuters poll conducted earlier this week found that 43 percent of Americans reported finally accepting the fact that a potentially endless number of increasingly lethal natural disasters would likely occur throughout the coming decades, while as many as 18 percent of respondents said they were “almost relieved” knowing that the possibility of their entire life being washed away in an instant now existed.

“Right now, Americans all across the country are watching the aftermath of this storm and at long last recognizing that this is what life is like now,” said Dr. Richard Morales, a climatologist at the University of Pennsylvania. “Admittedly, it could take a little while for some to fully acknowledge it, but at the end of the day, people will be much happier once they accept that they and their loved ones will likely suffer the consequences of an even stronger, more deadly hurricane at some point very soon. It’s going to happen.”

“I went through something very similar a few years ago when I finally came to terms with the fact that no one would ever listen to anything I said about global warming,” Morales added. “And that it is entirely too late to do anything about it.”

http://www.theonion.com/articles/nation-suddenly-realizes-this-just-going-to-be-a-t,30195
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Kevin Trenberth: Super Storm Sandy

What role did climate change play in this week’s massive hurricane?

by Kevin Trenberth | October 31, 2012

Satellite image of Hurrican SandyNOAA-NASA GOES ProjectSandy started as an ordinary hurricane, feeding on the warm surface waters of the Atlantic Ocean for fuel.  The warm moist air spirals into the storm, and as moisture rains out, it provides the heat needed to drive the storm clouds.  By the time Sandy made landfall on Monday evening, it had become an extratropical cyclone with some tropical storm characteristics: a lot of active thunderstorms but no eye.  This transformation came about as a winter storm that had dumped snow in Colorado late last week merged with Sandy to form a hybrid storm that was also able to feed on the mid-latitude temperature contrasts.  The resulting storm—double the size of a normal hurricane—spread hurricane force winds over a huge area of the United States as it made landfall.   Meanwhile an extensive easterly wind fetch had already resulted in piled up sea waters along the Atlantic coast.  This, in addition to the high tide, a favorable moon phase, and exceedingly low pressure, brought a record-setting storm surge that reached over 13 feet in lower Manhattan and coastal New Jersey.  This perfect combination led to coastal erosion, massive flooding, and extensive wind damage that caused billions in dollars of damage.

In many ways, Sandy resulted from the chance alignment of several factors associated with the weather. A human influence was also present, however.  Storms typically reach out and grab available moisture from a region 3 to 5 times the rainfall radius of the storm itself, allowing it to make such prodigious amounts of rain. The sea surface temperatures just before the storm were some 5°F above the 30-year average, or “normal,” for this time of year over a 500 mile swath off the coastline from the Carolinas to Canada, and 1°F of this is very likely a direct result of global warming.  With every degree F rise in temperatures, the atmosphere can hold 4 percent more moisture. Thus, Sandy was able to pull in more moisture, fueling a stronger storm and magnifying the amount of rainfall by as much as 5 to 10 percent compared with conditions more than 40 years ago.  Heavy rainfall and widespread flooding are a consequence.  Climate change has also led to the continual rise in sea levels—currently at a rate of just over a foot per century—as a result of melting land ice (especially glaciers and Greenland) and the expanding warming ocean, providing a higher base level from which the storm surge operates. 

These physical factors associated with human influences on climate likely contribute to more intense and possibly slightly bigger storms with heavier rainfalls.  But this is very hard to prove because of the naturally large variability among storms.  This variability also makes it impossible to prove there is no human influence.  Instead, it is important to recognize that we have a “new normal,” whereby the environment in which all storms form is simply different than it was just a few decades ago.  Global climate change has contributed to the higher sea surface and sub-surface ocean temperatures, a warmer and moister atmosphere above the ocean, higher water levels around the globe, and perhaps more precipitation in storms.

The super storm Sandy follows on the heels of Isaac earlier this year and Irene last year, both of which also produced widespread flooding as further evidence of the increased water vapor in the atmosphere associated with warmer oceans. Active hurricane seasons in the North Atlantic since 1994 have so far peaked with three category 5 hurricanes in the record breaking 2005 season, one of which was Katrina.  As human-induced effects through increases in heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere continue, still warmer oceans and higher sea levels are guaranteed. As Mark Twain said in the late 19th century, “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” Now humans are changing the weather, and nobody does anything about it! As we have seen this year, whether from drought, heat waves and wild fires, or super storms, there is a cost to not taking action to slow climate change, and we are experiencing this now.

From New Zealand, Kevin Trenberth is a distinguished senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). He has been heavily engaged in the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), where he currently chairs the Global Energy and Water Exchanges (GEWEX) program, as well as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for which he shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/33084/title/Opinion--Super-Storm-Sandy
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Al Gore: Hurricane Sandy is a global-warming warning

by Andrew Restuccia, Politico Pro, October 30, 2012

Former vice president-turned-climate-change-activist Al Gore warned Tuesday that the storm that ravaged the East Coast Monday is “a disturbing sign of things to come.”

“We must heed this warning and act quickly to solve the climate crisis. Dirty energy makes dirty weather,” Gore said in a statement posted on his blog Tuesday afternoon.

Gore, one of the country’s most high-profile advocates of measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, compared this week's massive storm to 2010 floods that devastated Nashville, Tenn.

“For me, the Nashville flood was a milestone,” he said. “For many, Hurricane Sandy may prove to be a similar event: a time when the climate crisis — which is often sequestered to the far reaches of our everyday awareness became a reality.”

Both natural disasters, Gore said, “were strengthened by the climate crisis.”

“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. Hurricane Sandy, and the Nashville flood, were reminders of just that,” he said.

Activists have criticized President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney for rarely mentioning climate change on the campaign trail. But, in the aftermath of Sandy, some politicians have begun connecting the storm to climate change.

“We have a 100-year flood every two years now,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo told reporters Tuesday. “We have a new reality when it comes to these weather patterns. We have an old infrastructure and we have old systems and that is not a good combination.”

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg added: “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. Whether that’s global warming or what, I don’t know. But we’ll have to address those issues.”

Meanwhile, former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm said Monday: “There’s a clear link to climate change. And, yet, for the first time in over a quarter century, climate change was not brought up even once at the presidential debates.”

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1012/83064.html

Graham Readfearn: Climate of Doubt As Superstorm Sandy Crosses US Coast

Picture NOAA National Hurricane Center shows Sandy as it approaches the eastern seaboard of the United States 

by Graham Readfearn, http://www.readfearn.com, October 29, 2012

A 30-year-old man has just become the first New Yorker to be killed by the destructive force of the super-charged storm Sandy which, as I type, is moving across the eastern side of the United States. The New York Times reported how the man died when a tree fell on his house in Queens. The former Hurricane Sandy has already claimed more than 60 lives in Caribbean countries. There are something like 50 million Americans currently in the storm’s path. It seems inevitable that more people will lose their lives in the coming hours. Whatever transpires we no doubt all hope that the number of fatalities is low. But neither good fortune nor any god will decide. The death toll will be what it is, and families will grieve. 

It seems insensitive to mention the billions of dollars of damage the storm will cause. It might, to some, seem insensitive to mention human-caused climate change at a time like this. 

But given that neither Mitt Romney nor Barack Obama had the courage, the foresight or the necessary leadership qualities to be able to mention the issue in their official debates, I’d say their insensitivity is far greater than any which a freelance journo and blogger across the Pacific may be able to muster. 

But the evidence would suggest that it is reckless to ignore the hand which burning coal (some of it Australia’s), oil and gas and tearing down forests has had on this storm and is having on extreme weather events across the world. Adding billions of tonnes of additional greenhouse gases into the atmosphere each year is loading the climate dice. When you roll the dice, the chances of getting extremes such as droughts, heatwaves and floods increase.

In The Conversation, scientist Gary W Yohe lists some of these recent extremes, we’ve been witnessing, including the super-storm Sandy, and suggests that we’re now living in a climate which is transitioning to something for which we don’t have any yardstick from our recent past. This is, argues Yohe, not so much a “new normal” but more a journey to somewhere much less predictable.

Writing for Mother Jones, Chris Mooney pulls together some of the ways that human activities have likely influenced Sandy, such as the unusually high sea temperatures in the Atlantic. “Warm oceans are jet fuel for hurricanes,” writes Mooney.

Also on The Conversation, climate scientist Kevin Trenberth discusses the contribution of rising sea temperatures to Sandy’s muscular gait while keeping a close eye on his wife and daughter as they evacuate New Jersey.

In an LA Times examination of the role of human-caused climate change in Sandy’s make-up, Trenberth adds that “All weather events are affected by climate change because the environment in which they occur is warmer and moister than it used to be.”

New York’s financial district is also “moister than it used to be” as reports come in of cars floating down Wall Street. The next few days are uncertain. But what you can guarantee is that climate science deniers will seek to downplay the role of climate change in events like Sandy, or in the US droughts, or the floods of recent years in Pakistan, Russia and Australia, or the tumbling of heat records across the US.

Late last week, PBS screened a documentary as part of their Frontline series called “Climate of Doubt,” which looked at the ongoing campaign to demonize and misrepresent the science of climate change. The show used the climate science denying think tank the Heartland Institute’s recent sixth conference on climate change as a hook. The show (watch below) interviewed many of the current protagonists of climate science denial – the “scientists” and professionals who are paid to carry out this work to confuse and fool the public, intimidate climate scientists and push their own political agenda where fossil fuel corporations can operate with near impunity in a “free market.”

I recently catalogued the Australian supporters of Heartland’s climate science conferences for DeSmogBlog. The PBS show also highlighted how rich conservative-leaning free market-loving individuals use a secretive slush fund to pay for the work of the climate denialists, an issue I also covered for DeSmogBlog earlier this ear.

Featured in the show is Dr Fred Singer, a retired physicist and one of the world’s most prominent science contrarians who once helped the tobacco industry to undermine the links between second-hand smoke and cancer.

Singer, currently an adviser to Australian climate sceptic group the Galileo Movement, was also hosted twice by Australia’s Institute for Public Affairs in the early 1990s as the Melbourne-based free-market think tank began to build its anti-climate science campaign, which continues to this day.

Also featured in the PBS documentary was Myron Ebell, a director at the Competitive Enterprise Institute which was another group active in helping to build early support for climate science denial in Australia.

The Cato Institute’s Pat Michaels, who once admitted that 40% of his funding came from the fossil fuel industry, was also featured. Michaels is currently an advisor to the newly-formed Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance. And of course, no documentary on climate science denial would be complete without a few sage words from the madcap Viscount Christopher Monckton.

Broadly, it’s obvious what effect these orchestrated campaigns of doubt on climate science (and also attacks on renewable energies) are designed to have. They want to delay any laws that will help the developed and developing world to move away from what should be seen as a risk-laden fossil fuel habit. They also have an innate paranoia of socialism and communism.

They claim that environmental legislation is taking away people’s “freedoms.” I wonder if that includes the freedom to be evacuated from a massive storm, the freedom to have your crops wiped out by drought or the freedom to pay increased taxes to pay for clean-ups from “natural” disasters?

Before Hurricane Sandy hit, on Forbes’ Corporate Social Responsibility blog, Gregory Unruh asked if climate denialists would be seen in the future as having committed “climate crimes against humanity.”

In my eyes, the answer to this is no because there are people who have the power to ignore their campaign. As storm system Sandy breaks American hearts, it puts the US Presidential campaigns on hold and brings Wall Street, a spiritual home for capitalism, to a stand still.

Will it be long enough for leaders like Obama, Cameron, Gillard and Jiabao to ask just where their “leadership” is taking us?

Watch Climate of Doubt on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

http://www.readfearn.com/2012/10/climate-of-doubt-as-superstorm-sandy-crosses-us-coast/

Sandy sinks HMS Bounty, Coast Guard rescues 14 crew, captain missing, Claudene Christian unresponsive

by Ben Anderson, Alaska Dispatch, October 29, 2012 

A former Alaskan and West High School graduate was one of two people missing after the tall ship replica HMS Bounty sank off the coast of North Carolina Monday morning, but she was pulled from the water hours later. Fourteen others were rescued from the ship's lifeboats, after the three-masted vessel was thrashed by high seas and winds caused by Hurricane Sandy, pounding the U.S. East Coast Monday.

According to Arkansas television station KFSM, 42-year-old Claudene Christian was one of the crewmembers missing after the ship sank almost 100 miles from the North Carolina coastline. On Monday afternoon, rescuers in a Coast Guard helicopter pulled her body from the water, but she was reported as being "unresponsive." It was unclear if that meant that she had died during her ordeal, but she was reportedly being taken to a hospital in Elizabeth City, N.C.

Christian and her family have ties to Alaska, though her parents now live in Vian, Okla., according to KFSM. 

In 1987, Christian, then 16, was crowned Miss Alaska National Teen-ager in a beauty pageant held in Anchorage. She was a senior at West Anchorage High School at the time, according to an Anchorage Daily News article, and was involved in gymnastics, cheerleading and student government.

Christian also founded the Cheerleader Doll Company in 1988, while a student at the University of Southern California, which replicates cheerleading squads from universities around the country.

Christian joined the crew of the replica 180-foot sailing ship HMS Bounty earlier this year, according to a post in May from her Twitter account.

"My new home 4 a few years!" Christian wrote of her move to Wilmington, N.C. to join the crew. "So excited!" 

The Bounty, a replica vessel built for the 1962 movie starring Marlon Brando, sank in 18-foot seas accompanied by 40 mph winds, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. Two Coast Guard helicopters reached the two drifting lifeboats at about 6:30 a.m., and were able to recover 14 of the 16 reported crew members aboard the Bounty.

Reuters reports that all of the ship's 16 occupants were wearing cold-weather survival suits as they were boarding the lifeboats, but three people were washed overboard. Only one of those washed overboard was able to get safely into a lifeboat. The search was continuing for the other missing crew member, reportedly the captain of the ship, 63-year-old Robin Walbridge.

Contact Ben Anderson at ben(at)alaskadispatch.com

http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/former-alaskan-found-after-being-washed-sinking-hms-bounty-hurricane-sandy

Elizabeth Kolbert: Watching Sandy, Ignoring Climate Change

by Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker, October 29, 2012 

A couple of weeks ago, Munich Re, one of the world’s largest reinsurance firms, issued a study titled “Severe Weather in North America.” According to the press release that accompanied the report, “Nowhere in the world is the rising number of natural catastrophes more evident than in North America.” The number of what Munich Re refers to as “weather-related loss events,” and what the rest of us would probably call weather-related disasters, has quintupled over the last three decades. While many factors have contributed to this trend, including an increase in the number of people living in flood-prone areas, the report identified global warming as one of the major culprits: “Climate change particularly affects formation of heat-waves, droughts, intense precipitation events, and in the long run most probably also tropical cyclone intensity.”

Munich Re’s report was aimed at the firm’s clients—other insurance companies—and does not make compelling reading for a general audience. But its appearance just two weeks ahead of Hurricane Sandy seems to lend it a peculiarly grisly relevance. Sandy has been called a “superstorm,” a “Frankenstorm,” a “freakish and unprecedented monster,” and possibly “unique in the annals of American weather history.” It has already killed 65 people in the Caribbean, and, although it’s too early to tell what its full impact will be as it churns up the East Coast, loss estimates are topping $6 billion.

As with any particular “weather-related loss event,” it’s impossible to attribute Sandy to climate change. However, it is possible to say that the storm fits the general pattern in North America, and indeed around the world, toward more extreme weather, a pattern that, increasingly, can be attributed to climate change. Just a few weeks before the Munich Re report appeared, scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in New York, published a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on the apparent increase in extreme heat waves. Extreme summertime heat, which just a few decades ago affected much less than 1% of the earth’s surface, “now typically covers about 10% of the land area,” the paper observed. “It follows that we can state, with a high degree of confidence, that extreme anomalies”—i.e., heat waves—“such as those in Texas and Oklahoma in 2011 and Moscow in 2010 were a consequence of global warming because their likelihood in the absence of global warming was exceedingly small.” It is worth noting that one of several forces fueling Sandy is much-higher-than-average sea-surface temperatures along the East Coast.

Coming as it is just a week before Election Day, Sandy makes the fact that climate change has been entirely ignored during this campaign seem all the more grotesque. In a year of record-breaking temperatures across the U.S., record drought conditions in the country’s corn belt, and now a record storm affecting the nation’s most populous cities, neither candidate found the issue to be worthy of discussion. Pressed about this finally the other day on MTV, President Obama called climate change a “critical issue” that he was “surprised” hadn’t come up during any of the debates, a response that was at once completely accurate and totally disingenuous. (As one commentator pointed out, he might have brought up this “critical” issue on his own since “he is the friggin’ POTUS.”)

It is, at this point, impossible to say what it will take for American politics to catch up to the reality of North American climate change. More super-storms, more heat waves, more multi-billion-dollar “weather-related loss events”? The one thing that can be said is that, whether or not our elected officials choose to acknowledge the obvious, we can expect, “with a high degree of confidence,” that all of these are coming.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/10/watching-hurricane-sandy-ignoring-climate-change.html

June wind shift a little something extra behind recent Arctic sea ice losses

by Rebecca Lindsey, ClimateWatch Magazine, October 22, 2012

A graph of the long-term trend in summertime Arctic sea ice extent for the past few decades could double as a highway sign warning drivers that the road is heading downhill. Even against that backdrop, however, the annual summer thaws beginning in 2007 have been unusual.

For James Overland, an Arctic oceanographer at NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, these six exceptionally slushy summers demanded an explanation that went beyond the obvious: that global warming is raising the Arctic’s temperature.

Average June wind vectors in 2007-2012 (orange) compared to 1981-2010 average (white) based on NCEP reanalysis data provided by the Physical Sciences Division at NOAA ESRL. Map by Dan Pisut, NOAA Environmental Visualization Lab.

These maps document what Overland and several colleagues say is the “something extra” behind the record ice retreats of the past 6 years: each June, the prevailing winds shifted from their normal west-to-east direction and instead blew strongly from the south across the Bering and Chuchki Seas (image left), over the North Pole, and out toward Fram Strait. (The length of the lines is qualitative: longer lines mean stronger winds.)

Average geopotential height anomaly at 700 millibar pressure level in Junes from 2007-2012 compared to the long-term average (1981-2010) based on NCEP reanalysis data provided by the Physical Sciences Division at NOAA ESRL. Orange colors are higher-than-average pressure; blue is lower-than-average pressure. Map by Dan Pisut, NOAA Environmental Visualization Lab.

The second map shows the unusual air pressure patterns that gave rise to the wind shift. Air pressure across the Arctic in Junes from 2007-2012 was completely lopsided, with two pockets of higher-than-average pressure sprawled across the North American Arctic and Greenland. These areas of high pressure act like boulders in a river. They slow and disrupt the normal westerly flow of the wind, forcing it to make, large, meandering detours to the north or south.

Overland and his colleagues think these “blocking highs” on the North American side of the Arctic created the unusually strong southerly flow that brought warm air into the central Arctic and over Greenland. The persistent southerly winds would help explain both the record low sea ice extent in summer 2012, as well as the island-wide melting of the surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet, which satellites detected in July.

“This story started with us trying to figure out why the sea ice extents of the past 6 years or so have been so much lower than we would expect based on the long-term warming trend alone,” says Overland, “and we think this unusual circulation of the Arctic atmosphere is major part of it.”

The question now, says, Overland is why have these high pressure patterns have been forming so consistently each June for the past six years. The repeated appearance of these atmospheric features each June is so unusual that it’s the equivalent of a 1-in-a-1000 event. Is it just the natural variability of Earth’s chaotic weather, or is it something more—a change in the atmosphere that is itself connected to climate change in some way?

Overland’s hunch is that it’s the latter, possibly linked to record and near-record low June snow cover in the Canadian Arctic in recent years. “We don’t know that part of the story yet,” he says, “but this would certainly be the type of amplification of climate change [warming triggers changes that lead to more warming] we have been expecting to see in the Arctic.”

Reviewer: James Overland, NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory.

Reference

Overland, J. E., Francis, J. A., Hanna, E., & Wang, M. (2012). The recent shift in early summer Arctic atmospheric circulation. Geophysical Research Letters, 39(19), L19804. doi:10.1029/2012GL053268

Do Bayer's Neonicotinoid Pesticides Make Worker Bees Lazy?

by Tom Philpott, Mother Jones, October 24, 2012

Must. Avoid. Corn. Spacial Awareness/Flickr

Corn prices remain quite high, driven up by the summer's prolonged drought. And since the United States is by far the globe's largest corn producer, prices will likely stay high until the next bumper crop in the Midwest replenishes global corn reserves. To take advantage of high prices, US farmers will likely plant a whole lot of corn in spring 2013—at least as much as they did in 2012, whichmarked a 75-year high in corn acreage. And that could be bad news for bees, commercial honey-producing ones and wild bumblebees alike, both of which have experienced severe declines in recent years.

What does the health of bees have to do with the corn crop? A growing weight of evidence links a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids, which areused on nearly the entire US corn crop, to declining bee health. In March, Ilooked at three studies that had just been released, two of them published in the prestigious journal Science, making the link. Those papers came on the heels of a damning one from Purdue University researchers (which I discussed here). And now comes yet another, this one (abstract; I have the full study but can't upload it because of copyright issues) published by UK researchers in another prestigious publication, the British journal Nature.

The researchers treated 40 colonies of bumblebees over four weeks as follows: 10 got exposed to tiny doses of a common neonicotinoid pesticide (10 parts per billion, a level within a range of what bees experience in corn fields); 10 got exposed to small doses of another common pesticide, this one of the pyrethroid class; 10 were exposed to both pesticides; and 10 served as the control group, and were kept free of pesticides. The bees were tracked with radio frequency identification (RFID) tagging technology.

The results: Both groups of neonic-treated bees saw sharp declines in overall worker bee productivity. The bees treated with only pyrethroids fared a little worse than the control, but not much. The ones treated with both pesticides fared worst of all—suggesting a possible cocktail effect, meaning that pesticides combinations may work in ways that mutually amplify the effects of the individual pesticides.

Pesticide-treated forager bees brought back significantly less pollen in each forage run, and took significantly longer on each run, than those in the control group.

Among the neonic-treated bees, foragers—the ones that go out in search of pollen to bring back—were much less successful than their counterparts in the control group: They brought back significantly less pollen in each forage run, and took significantly longer on each run. As a result of lower per-forager pollen intake, the treated hives recruited more workers to go out and forage than the control hives—and even with more foragers on the hunt for pollen, they still managed to get less pollen than the controls, meaning less food for the hive.

The reduced worker efficiency had two other "knock on" effects for overall hive health. The first is that recruiting more foragers to collect pollen is a risky strategy—individual bees can get lost. The treated colonies paid the price—the neonic-only colonies experienced 50 percent more lost workers than the control, and the colonies exposed to both pesticides lost 55 percent more.

The other effect has to do with brooding—raising the next generation of bees for the hive. The treated hives showed significantly lower production of new bees—probably, the researchers suggest, because they had to divert bees from brooding duties to foraging duties, and also because of less overall availability of pollen.

All of these factors, the researchers conclude, lead to colonies that are less resilient to the many stresses that confront bees in the field: loss of habitat, parasites, and viruses. Two of the 40 colonies involved in the study collapsed over its four-week course, both from the hives treated with the combined pesticides. The clear takeaway is that neonic pesticides, both alone and in combination with another pesticide, significantly damage bee health. To grow our massive corn crop, we're killing our bees.

So where does this leave us? Well, the EPA stubbornly maintains its registration of neonic pesticides, the main maker of which is the German chemical giant Bayer. The agency does so, as I have written before, even though the registration hinged on a Bayer-funded study its own scientists have criticized as worthless.

And they aren't the only government scientists who have concerns. In March, after the previous round of damning research, USDA's bee researcher Jeff Pettis made a statement to the New York Times that I only caught while doing background research for this article. In the past, Pettis' own research has suggested that neonics do harm, but he has stopped short of directly blaming them for bee decline. That seems to have changed. The Times quotes Pettis calling one of the Science studies "alarming," and then goes on:

Dr. Pettis is also convinced that neonicotinoids in low doses make bees more vulnerable to disease. He and other researchers have recently published experiments showing that neonicotinoids make honeybees more vulnerable to infections from parasitic fungi.

"Three or four years ago, I was much more cautious about how much pesticides were contributing to the problem," Dr. Pettis said. "Now more and more evidence points to pesticides being a consistent part of the problem."

http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/10/yet-another-study-links-bayer-pesticide-bee 

Jeff Masters: Massive Hurricane Sandy building a huge and destructive storm surge

by Jeff Masters, wunderground, October 28, 2012 (2:34 p.m., GMT)
Massive and dangerous Hurricane Sandy has grown to record size as it barrels northeastwards along the North Carolina coast at 10 mph. At 8 a.m. EDT, Sandy's tropical storm-force winds extended northeastwards 520 miles from the center, and 12-foot-high seas covered a diameter of ocean 1,030 miles across. Since records of storm size began in 1988, no tropical storm or hurricane has been larger (though Hurricane Olga of 2001 had a larger 690-mile radius of tropical storm-force winds when it was a subtropical storm near Bermuda).

Sandy has put an colossal volume of ocean water in motion with its widespread and powerful winds, and the hurricane's massive storm surge is already impacting the coast. A 2' storm surge has been recorded at numerous locations this morning from Virginia to Connecticut, including a 3' surge at Virginia's Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel and Sewells Point at 9 a.m. EDT. Huge, 10-15 foot-high battering waves on top of the storm surge have washed over Highway 12 connecting North Carolina's Outer Banks to the mainland at South Nags Head this morning. The highway is now impassable, and has been closed. The coast guard station on Cape Hatteras, NC, recorded sustained winds of 50 mph, gusting to 61 mph, at 5:53 a.m. EDT this morning. In Delaware, the coastal highway Route 1 between Dewey Beach and Bethany Beach has been closed due to high water. 

Even though Sandy is a minimal Category 1 hurricane, its storm surge is extremely dangerous, and if you are in a low-lying area that is asked to evacuate, I strongly recommend that you leave.


Figure 1. A fright to behold: morning satellite image of massive Hurricane Sandy.

Sandy's death toll now at 65
Sandy was a brutal storm for the Caribbean, the storm's death toll now stands at 65. The death toll is highest in Haiti, with 51 deaths. Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe told the Associated Press that "This is a disaster of major proportions. The whole south is under water." Approximately 8-10" of rain (200-250 mm) fell in the capital of Port-au-Prince. Eleven people were killed in Cuba, where 35,000 homes were damaged or destroyed. Sandy is also being blamed for 1 death in Jamaica, 1 in Puerto Rico, and 1 in the Bahamas. 


Figure 2. A resident carries a metal sheet from a house after heavy rains damaged by Hurricane Sandy in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2012. Sandy is being blamed for 51 deaths in Haiti. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)


Figure 3. Satellite-estimated rainfall amounts from NASA's TRMM satellite show that portions of Haiti received over 12.75" (325 mm) of rain (pink colors) from Hurricane Sandy. The capital of Port-au-Prince received 8-10" (200-250 mm.) Image credit: NASA.

Intensity and Track Forecast for Sandy
Sandy has a rather unusual structure, with the strongest winds on the southwest side of the center, but a larger area of tropical storm-force winds to the northeast of the center. Most of the storm's heavy thunderstorm activity is on the storm's west side, in a thick band several hundred miles removed from the center, giving Sandy more the appearance of a subtropical storm rather than a hurricane. 

Satellite loops show that the low-level center of Sandy is no longer exposed to view, and heavy thunderstorms are increasing in areal extent near the center, due to a reduction in wind shear from 35-40 knots last night to 25-30 knots this morning. Wind shear is expected to drop another 5 knots today, which may allow the storm to build an increased amount of heavy thunderstorms near its center and intensify by 5-10 mph over the next 24 hours. 

The NOAA Hurricane Hunters noted this morning that Sandy had a partial eyewall on the west through SE sides of the center, and the storm may be able to build a nearly complete eyewall by Monday morning. By Monday afternoon, though, Sandy will be moving over cool 25°C waters, which should slow down this intensification process. However, the trough of low pressure that will be pulling Sandy to the northwest towards landfall on Monday will strengthen the storm by injecting "baroclinic" energy (the energy one can derive from the atmosphere when warm and cold air masses lie in close proximity to each other). Sandy should have sustained winds at hurricane force, 75-80 mph, at landfall. 

Sandy's central pressure is expected to drop from its current 951 mb to 945-950 mb at landfall Monday night. A pressure this low is extremely rare; according to wunderground weather historian Christopher C. Burt, the lowest pressure ever measured anywhere in the U.S. north of Cape Hatteras, NC, is 946 mb (27.94") measured at the Bellport Coast Guard Station on Long Island, NY, on September 21, 1938, during the great "Long Island Express" hurricane. 

The latest set of 00Z (8 p.m. EDT) and 06Z (2 a.m. EDT) computer model runs are in agreement that Sandy will make landfall between 10 p.m. Monday night and 4 a.m. Tuesday morning in New Jersey.


Figure 4. Predicted maximum storm surge from Hurricane Irene. There is a 10% chance that the storm surge could exceed the heights given here, so most regions will receive a surge lower than this forecast. The greatest surge is expected in the waters surrounding New York City, since the shape of the bays will act to funnel the water to higher levels.

Sandy's storm surge a huge threat
Last night's 9:30 p.m. EDT H*Wind analysis from NOAA's Hurricane Research Division put the destructive potential of Sandy's winds at a modest 2.6 on a scale of 0 to 6. However, the destructive potential of the storm surge was exceptionally high: 5.7 on a scale of 0 to 6. This is a higher destructive potential than any hurricane observed between 1969 and 2005, including Category 5 storms like Katrina, Rita, Wilma, Camille, and Andrew. The previous highest destructive potential for storm surge was 5.6 on a scale of 0 to 6, set during Hurricane Isabel of 2003. Sandy is now forecast to bring a near-record storm surge of 6-11 feet to Northern New Jersey and Long Island Sound, including the New York City Harbor. 

While Sandy's storm surge will be nowhere near as destructive as Katrina's, the storm surge does have the potential to cause many billions of dollars in damage if it hits near high tide at 9 p.m. EDT on Monday. The full moon is on Monday, which means astronomical high tide will be about 5% higher than the average high tide for the month. This will add another 2-3" to water levels. Fortunately, Sandy is now predicted to make a fairly rapid approach to the coast, meaning that the peak storm surge will not affect the coast for multiple high-tide cycles. 

Sandy's storm surge will be capable of overtopping the flood walls in Manhattan, which are only 5 feet above mean sea level. On August 28, 2011, Tropical Storm Irene brought a storm surge of 4.13' to Battery Park on the south side of Manhattan. The waters poured over the flood walls into Lower Manhattan, but were 8-12" shy of being able to flood the New York City subway system. According to the latest storm surge forecast for NYC from NHC, Sandy's storm surge is expected to be several feet higher than Irene's. If the peak surge arrives near Monday evening's high tide at 9 p.m. EDT, a portion of New York City's subway system could flood, resulting in billions of dollars in damage. I give a 50% chance that Sandy's storm surge will end up flooding a portion of the New York City subway system.

An excellent September 2012 article in the New York Times titled, "New York Is Lagging as Seas and Risks Rise, Critics Warn," quoted Dr. Klaus H. Jacob, a research scientist at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, on how lucky New York City was with Hurricane Irene. If the storm surge from Irene had been just one foot higher, "...subway tunnels would have flooded, segments of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive and roads along the Hudson River would have turned into rivers, and sections of the commuter rail system would have been impassable or bereft of power," he said, and the subway tunnels under the Harlem and East Rivers would have been unusable for nearly a month, or longer, at an economic loss of about $55 billion. Dr. Jacob is an adviser to the city on climate change, and an author of the 2011 state study that laid out the flooding prospects. “We’ve been extremely lucky,” he said. “I’m disappointed that the political process hasn’t recognized that we’re playing Russian roulette.” 

Sandy's winds
Sandy will bring sustained winds of tropical storm-force to a 1000-mile swath of coast on Monday and Tuesday. Winds of 55-75 mph with gusts over hurricane force will occur along a 500-mile-wide section of coast. With most of the trees still in leaf, there will be widespread power outages due to downed trees, and the potential for several billion dollars in wind damage. A power outage computer model run by Johns Hopkins University predicts that 10 million people will lose power from the storm.

Sandy's rains
Sandy's heavy rains are going to cause major but probably not catastrophic river flooding. If we compare the predicted rainfall amounts for Sandy (Figure 5) with those from Hurricane Irene of 2011 (Figure 6), Sandy's are expected to be about 30% less. Hurricane Irene caused $15.8 billion in damage, most of it from river flooding due to heavy rains. However, the region most heavily impacted by Irene's heavy rains had very wet soils and very high river levels before Irene arrived, due to heavy rains that occurred in the weeks before the hurricane hit. That is not the case for Sandy; soil moisture is near average over most of the mid-Atlantic, and is in the lowest 30th percentile in recorded history over much of Delaware and Southeastern Maryland. 

One region of possible concern is the Susquehanna River Valley in Eastern Pennsylvania, where soil moisture is in the 70th percentile, and river levels are in the 76th-90th percentile. This area is currently expected to receive 3-6 inches of rain (Figure 4), which is probably not enough to cause catastrophic flooding like occurred for Hurricane Irene. I expect that river flooding from Sandy will cause less than $1 billion in damage.


Figure 5. Predicted 5-day rainfall for the period ending Friday morning, November 2, 2012, at 8 a.m. EDT. Image credit:NOAA/HPC.


Figure 6. Actual rainfall for 2011's Hurricane Irene, which caused $15.8 billion in damage, most of it from river flooding due to heavy rains. Sandy's rains are predicted to be about 30% less than Irene's. Image credit: NOAA/HPC.

Sandy's snows
You can add heavy snow to the list of weather frights coming for the Eastern U.S. from Sandy. A Winter Storm Watch is posted for much of southeastern West Virginia for Sunday night through Monday, when 2-6 inches of wet, heavy snow is expected to fall at elevations below 2000 feet. At higher elevation above 3,000 feet, 1-2 feet of snow is possible. With high wind gusts of 35-45 mph and many trees still in leaf, the affected area can expect plenty of tree damage and power outages. Lesser snows are expected in the mountains of Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina. 

Sandy's tornado threat is minimal
The severe thunderstorm and tornado threat from Sandy Sunday and Monday looks low, due to minimal instability.

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Jeff Masters: Sandy likely to be a multi-billion dollar disaster for the U.S.

by Dr. Jeff Masters, 5:28 p.m. GMT on October 27, 2012

Hurricane Sandy is holding its own against high wind shear of 30-40 knots, and has regained its Category 1 strength after falling to tropical storm strength early this morning. Sandy is a massive storm, with tropical storm-force winds that span a 660-mile diameter area of ocean from a point even with central Florida northwards to a point off the central North Carolina coast. Twelve-foot high seas cover a diameter of ocean 1,000 miles across. A buoy 150 miles east of Cape Canaveral, Florida, reported sustained winds of 63 mph, gusting to 76 mph, at 9:43 a.m. EDT. Another buoy about 100 miles east of the coast of Georgia reported sustained winds of 69 mph at 11:52 a.m. EDT. Due to the high wind shear and interaction with a trough of low pressure to Sandy's west, the storm has a rather unusual structure, with the strongest winds on the southwest side of the center, but a larger area of tropical storm-force winds to the northeast of the center. Satellite loops show that the low-level center of Sandy is partially exposed to view, with a small clump of heavy thunderstorms near the center. Most of the storm's heavy thunderstorm activity is on the storm's west side, in a thick band several hundred miles removed from the center, giving Sandy more the appearance of a subtropical storm rather than a hurricane.


Figure 1. Early afternoon satellite image of Sandy.

Sandy's death toll at 48
Sandy was a brutal storm for the Caribbean, with a total death toll that now stands at 48. The death toll is highest in Haiti, with 34 dead. The toll will likely rise as remote areas cut off from communications are reached. Cuban state media is reporting that 11 people were killed on Cuba, and damage was heavy, with 35,000 homes damaged or destroyed. Cuba is probably the most hurricane-prepared nation in the world, and it is unusual for them to experience such a high death toll in a hurricane. Sandy was Cuba's deadliest hurricane since Category 4 Hurricane Dennis killed 16 people in 2005. Sandy is also being blamed for 1 death in Jamaica, 1 in the Bahamas, and 1 in Puerto Rico.

Forecast for Sandy
Wind shear is expected to remain a high 30-40 knots for the next two days, as Sandy interacts with a trough of low pressure to its west. The high shear should keep Sandy from intensifying the way most hurricanes do -- by pulling heat energy out of the ocean. However, a trough of low pressure approaching from the west will inject "baroclinic" energy -- the energy one can derive from the atmosphere when warm and cold air masses lie in close proximity to each other. Sandy's drop in central pressure from 969 mb at 5 a.m. to 960 mb at 8 a.m. this morning may be due, in part, to some baroclinic energy helping intensify the storm. This sort of effect helps spread out the storm's strong winds over a wider area of ocean; Sandy's diameter of tropical storm-force winds are predicted to expand from 660 miles to 760 miles by Sunday afternoon. This will increase the total amount of wind energy of the storm, keeping the storm surge threat very high. This morning's 9:30 a.m. EDT H*Wind analysis from NOAA's Hurricane Research Division put the destructive potential of Sandy's winds at a modest 2.3 on a scale of 0 to 6, However, the destructive potential of the storm surge was exceptionally high: 5.2 on a scale of 0 to 6. Sandy's large wind field will drive a damaging storm surge of 3-6 feet to the right of where the center makes landfall. These storm surge heights will be among the highest ever recorded along the affected coasts, and will have the potential to cause billions of dollars in damage. The latest set of 00Z (8 p.m. EDT) and 06Z (2 a.m. EDT) computer model runs have come into better agreement on the timing and landfall location of Sandy. Our two top models, the ECMWF and GFS, both call for landfall between 10 pm Monday night and 4 am Tuesday morning, with the center coming ashore between Delaware and New York City. 

A multi-billion dollar disaster likely in the U.S.
I expect Sandy's impacts along the mid-Atlantic coast and New England coasts to cost at least $2 billion in insured damage and lost business, and there is a danger the storm could cost much more. Steve Bowen, meteorologist for insurance broker AON Benfield, put it this way for me this morning: "Given the level of losses associated with Irene last year and the current projections of extended high wind, heavy rainfall, coastal surge and an inland flooding threat for many of the same areas with Sandy, it would not come as a complete surprise to see a multi-billion dollar economic loss." Sandy should bring sustained winds of 50-70 mph with gusts over hurricane force to a large section of coast. With most of the trees still in leaf, there will be widespread power outages due to downed trees, and the potential for a billion dollars in wind damage.

Figure 3. Predicted storm surge for Hurricane Sandy at The Battery on the south shore of Manhattan, New York City, from the experimental Extratropical Storm Surge model, run by NOAA's Meteorological Development Laboratory. This model used winds from this morning's 12Z (8 a.m. EDT) run of the GFS model, and predicts that the peak storm surge from Sandy will reach 5.5' on Monday night October 29, which is 1.4' higher than Irene's storm surge. This forecast has the peak surge occurring near high tide, bringing the maximum storm tide -- the water level reached as a result of the combined action of the tide and the storm surge -- to 10.5', a foot higher than Irene. At this level, water will very likely pour into the Lower Manhattan subway system, unless efforts to sandbag the entrances are successful. Notice: this is not an official NHC storm surge forecast, and the storm surge may be higher or lower than this, depending upon the strength, track, and timing of Sandy.

Sandy's storm surge may flood New York City's subway system, costing billions
Sandy is expected to have tropical storm-force winds that extend out more than 400 miles from the center, which will drive a much larger storm surge than its peak winds would ordinarily suggest. The full moon is on Monday, which means astronomical tides will be about 5% higher than typical, increasing the potential for damaging storm surge flooding. Fortunately, Sandy is now predicted to make a fairly rapid approach to the coast, meaning that the storm surge will not affect the coast for multiple high tide cycles. If Sandy hits near New York City, as the GFS model predicts, the storm surge will be capable of overtopping the flood walls in Manhattan, which are only five feet above mean sea level. On August 28, 2011, Tropical Storm Irene brought a storm surge of 4.13' to Battery Park on the south side of Manhattan. The waters poured over the flood walls into Lower Manhattan, but came 8-12" shy of being able to flood the New York City subway system. However, the town of Lindenhurst (population 28,000), on the south side of Long Island, was mostly under water due to the storm surge, and fresh water run-off from Irene's torrential rains, riding on top of a 3 to 4-foot storm surge, allowed the swollen East and Hudson Rivers to overflow at the edges of Manhattan. New York was not as lucky on December 12, 1992, when a 990-mb Nor'easter drove an 8-foot storm surge into Battery Park, flooding the NYC subway and the Port Authority Trans-Hudson Corporation (PATH) train systems in Hoboken, New Jersey. FDR Drive in lower Manhattan was flooded with 4 feet of water, which stranded more than 50 cars and required scuba divers to rescue some of the drivers. Mass transit between New Jersey and New York was down for ten days, and the storm did hundreds of millions in damage to the city. The highest water level recorded at the Battery in the past century came in September 1960 during Hurricane Donna, which brought a storm surge of 8.36 feet to the Battery and flooded lower Manhattan to West and Cortland Streets. According to the latest storm surge forecast for NYC from the experimental Extratropical Storm Surge model, run by NOAA"s Meteorological Development Laboratory, Sandy's storm surge may be higher than Irene's and has the potential to flood New York City's subway system (Figure 4.) The amount of water will depend critically upon whether or not the peak storm surge arrives at high tide or not. If the peak surge arrives near Monday evening's high tide near 9 p.m. EDT, a portion of New York City's subway system could flood, resulting in billions of dollars in damage. I give a 30% chance that Sandy's storm surge will end up flooding a portion of the New York City subway system.

An excellent September 2012 article in the New York Times (titled "New York Is Lagging as Seas and Risks Rise, Critics Warn") quoted Dr. Klaus H. Jacob, a research scientist at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, on how lucky New York City got with Hurricane Irene. If the storm surge from Irene had been just one foot higher,"...subway tunnels would have flooded, segments of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive and roads along the Hudson River would have turned into rivers, and sections of the commuter rail system would have been impassable or bereft of power," he said, and the subway tunnels under the Harlem and East Rivers would have been unusable for nearly a month, or longer, at an economic loss of about $55 billion. Dr. Jacob is an adviser to the city on climate change, and an author of the 2011 state study that laid out the flooding prospects. “We’ve been extremely lucky,” he said. “I’m disappointed that the political process hasn’t recognized that we’re playing Russian roulette.” A substantial portion of New York City's electrical system is underground in flood-prone areas. Consolidated Edison, the utility that supplies electricity to most of the city, estimates that adaptations like installing submersible switches and moving high-voltage transformers above ground level would cost at least $250 million. Lacking the means, it is making gradual adjustments, with about $24 million spent in flood zones since 2007. At a conference I attended this summer in Hoboken on natural hazards on urban coasts, I talked to an official with Consolidated Edison who was responsible for turning off Lower Manhattan's power if a storm surge floods the subway system. He said that he was ready to throw the switch during Irene, but was glad it turned out not to be needed. 

Sandy's rains
Sandy is expected to dump 5-10 inches of rain along the coast near the point the center comes ashore, and 3-4 inches several hundred miles inland. Higher isolated rainfall amounts of 15 inches are likely. Rains of this magnitude are going to cause trouble. If we compare the predicted rainfall amounts for Sandy (Figure 4) with those from Hurricane Irene of 2011 (Figure 5), Sandy's are expected to be about 20% less. Hurricane Irene caused $15.8 billion in damage, most of it from river flooding due to heavy rains. However, the region most heavily impacted by Irene's heavy rains had very wet soils and very high river levels before Irene arrived, due to heavy rains that occurred in the weeks before the hurricane hit. That is not the case for Sandy: soil moisture is near average over most of the mid-Atlantic and is in the lowest 30th percentile in recorded history over much of Delaware and Southeastern Maryland (Figure 6).

One region of possible concern is the Susquehanna River Valley in Eastern Pennsylvania, where soil moisture is in the 70th percentile, and river levels are in the 76th-90th percentile. This area is currently expected to receive 2-4 inches of rain (Figure 4), which is not enough to cause catastrophic flooding like occurred for Hurricane Irene. However, it is quite possible that the axis of heaviest rains will shift northwards from this forecast. I expect that river flooding from Sandy will cause less than $1 billion in damage.

Links
To find out if you need to evacuate, please contact your local emergency management office. They will have the latest information. People living in New York City can find their evacuation zone here or use this map. FEMA has information on preparing for hurricanes.

People with disabilities and caregivers seeking information on accessible shelter and transportation can contact portlight.org

Our Weather Historian, Christopher C. Burt, has an excellent post on Late Season Tropical Storms that have affected the U.S. north of Hatteras. He also has a post, Historic Hurricanes from New Jersey to New England.

Joe Romm at climateprogress.org has a thoughtful piece called, How Does Global Warming Make Hurricanes Like Irene More Destructive?

For those of you wanting to know your odds of receiving hurricane force or tropical storm force winds, I recommend the NHC wind probability product.

Wunderground has detailed storm surge maps for the U.S. coast.

The National Hurricane Center's Interactive Storm Surge Risk Map, which allows one to pick a particular Category hurricane and zoom in, is a good source of storm surge risk information.

Research storm surge model run by SUNY Stonybrook for New York City.

Climate Central has a nice satellite image showing which parts of New York Harbor are below five feet in elevation.

Five-minute video of Hurricane Sandy on Thursday as seen from the International Space Station.

I'll probably leave this post up until late morning Sunday, unless there are some significant changes to report.

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