I don't now if AGW affected Sandy's strength

[MannyIsGod]

In fact I doubt it, but I know for a fact it affected the impact.

[Nbadan]

Whoa.....living life on the edge.......

[DarrinS]

So sea level was rising linearly well before mass production of autos. Thanks

[DarrinS]

Good thing this 1938 storm didn't hit

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1938_...land_hurricane


160 mph winds. 600 to 800 dead

[MannyIsGod]

You can even admit AGW caused sea level rise as a factor in the flooding. So good.

PS Made this thread just for you, Darrin. Thanks for living up to my expectations.

PPS CO2 emissions and AGW didn't begin with the car.

[DarrinS]

That part of the country was overdue for this kind of storm, based on historical data. Did SUV's and cow farts make it worse? Who knows. The error is pretending to know.

[FuzzyLumpkins]

Darrin doesn't deny that the Earth is warming but rather just every logical effect of a warming Earth. What hmmm. more heat applied to ice......

[MannyIsGod]

So predictable.

[Wild Cobra]

Still, nobody has proved the levels of AGW vs. natural warming.

[FuzzyLumpkins]

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/...and-unnatural/

[Wild Cobra]

I hope you aren't responding to me, as saying that a guest blog is proof...

[Jacob1983]

Does this mean Kevin Costner is going to save us?

[Wild Cobra]

Does this mean Kevin Costner is going to save us?

He already has:

[Sec24Row7]

Sea level has been rising certainly since the end of the last ice age...

But It's not just that... It's higher on the east coast by 3 to 4 times than the world average

How all of this relates to people... I have no idea... but whatever... that's never stopped the people that have made these arguments before...

http://www.popularmechanics.com/scie...han-the-worlds

Why New York's Sea Level Is Rising Faster Than the World's
Sea level is rising around the world, but in many places on the U.S. East Coast, it's rising considerably faster than elsewhere. An oceanographer studying this phenomenon explains.
By Amanda DeMatto
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July 9, 2012 12:00 PM TEXT SIZE: A . A . A
A team of U.S. Geological Survey scientists recently discovered that the sea level along the East Coast of the United States, particularly a 600-mile stretch from Cape Hatteras, N.C., to Boston, has risen at an annual rate three to four times faster than the global average since 1990.

When the global sea level rose by 2 inches, Norfolk, Va., saw a rise of 4.8 inches, Philadelphia answered with 3.7 inches, and New York City 2.8 inches, according to the study, which was published in the journal Nature Climate Change. Peter Howd, an oceanographer and co-author of the study for the U.S. Geological Survey, helped illuminate just why the East Coast is in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's complicated, but the short version is: The Gulf Stream might be slowing down.

Ocean Currents

Early European explorers didn't cut straight across the Atlantic Ocean in their quest for the New World because it was impossible, for the same reasons that flight paths destined for the United States from Europe are northward and curvilinear. The Earth's spin and temperature gradients cause the winds that travel over the Northern Atlantic Ocean to move in a clockwise pattern, dragging the waters below along a similar pathway.

Because of the Earth's rotation and friction in the water column, Howd says, water on the ocean's surface is transported approximately 90 degrees to the right of the direction the wind is blowing. This rerouting of the water toward the center of the ocean basin is called Ekman transport. If the wind is blowing to the north alongside the East Coast, for example, the water transport will be to the east. For winds blowing westward from North America to Europe, the water will move to the south. For winds blowing south along the European coastline to Africa, the water moves west, and so on.

The result of this physical churning might defy human imagination: It creates a huge pile of water, roughly 700 miles wide and 2000 miles long, that stands about 3 feet taller than the waters in coastal areas. "This pile of water roughly coincides with the Sargasso Sea," Howd says. The Sargasso, located in the middle of the Atlantic, is the only sea without a shoreline; it's created by these ocean currents and ac ulates a high concentration of non-biodegradable plastic waste, similar to the Great Garbage Patch in the Pacific.

It seems counterintuitive for the ocean to have a big hump out in the middle. So what's keeping that pile of water in the center of the ocean and away from our coastlines is a fine balance between the velocity of the circular ocean currents and the Coriolis effect, which describes how objects move as a result of the earth's spin. "Water likes to be flat," said Dr. Howd. "As gravity pulls that water down and tries to get that bump to smooth out, Coriolis takes over. Water will want to flow downhill to the East Coast, but Coriolis will divert its flow to the north, producing a western boundary current known as the Gulf Stream."



You've no doubt seen the Gulf Stream on TV weather maps. It's a fast plume of warm water that moves from its starting point in the Caribbean northward along the eastern coast of the United States and tapers out near Newfoundland, heading in the general direction of Europe. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Gulf Stream flows 300 times faster than the Amazon River. The flow is fastest near the surface, peaking at 5.6 mph, and reaching 4 mph on average. It transports 4 billion cubic feet of water per second, surpassing all the rivers in the world combined.

The Gulf Stream is a powerful shield for the East Coast. The faster it moves, the more water will get deflected to the Sargasso Sea and sucked away from the coast. But if the Gulf Stream slows down—and scientists believe this is happening as climate change progresses—then more water will travel down from the Sargasso Sea to that 600-mile swath of coastline from North Carolina to Boston. Howd says the slowing of the Gulf Stream is a major reason East Coast sea levels have been rising at an annual rate three to four times faster than global averages.

The pile of water in the center of the North Atlantic Ocean Basin is more or less at the mercy of global temperature distribution, which drives wind speeds and wind circulation patterns, Howd says. "If the temperature goes up, it results in enough changes that the Gulf Stream slows down, surprisingly enough, and sea level will rise on the East Coast as a result."

Bouncing Back

Another reason that the East Coast is a victim of accelerated sea level rise is because the land is still readjusting from the Last Glacial Maximum. About 20,000 years ago, an ice sheet that was up to 2 miles thick in some places covered most of Canada, extended over much of the Midwest, and stretched east all the way to New York City. "The weight of that ice pushed coastal New England down. When it went down, the area to the south went up. It's kind of like squeezing a water balloon," Howd says.

Relieved of that ice-sheet load, the land is puffing itself back out in some regions north of New York City and settling back down in locales south of the city. Howd says this glacial isostatic adjustment is still occurring along the East Coast, inviting accelerated sea level rise, "stress on salt marshes and on areas with chronic beach erosion problems," and more frequent "winter storm flooding from the ocean." The simultaneous rise in sea level and sinking of the landmass south of New York City may account for this accelerated rate of change.


Read more: Why New York's Sea Level Is Rising Faster Than the World's - Popular Mechanics

[boutons_deux]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/1...=Daily%20Brief

[MannyIsGod]

Its pretty much impossible to say that a good amount of sea level rise is not the direct result of anthropogenic heating due to melting of land ice and thermal expansion of the seas. Sandy was a strong - and probably once in a lifetime - storm but as sea level rises you will get Sandy type flooding with even weaker storms. This is a very real aspect of climate change that has serious implications for coastal cities going forward. You can talk all you want about global climate models and what the changes will actually be but this one is absolutely undeniable.

[SnakeBoy]

Whoa.....living life on the edge.......

Yeah it's pretty scary. At the current rate New York city will be underwater in 3500 years.

[MannyIsGod]

Dupe.

[leemajors]

He already has:

that's Nick Cage.

[DarrinS]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...googlenews_wsj

Hurricane Sandy left in its path some impressive statistics. Its central pressure was the lowest ever recorded for a storm north of North Carolina, breaking a record set by the devastating "Long Island Express" hurricane of 1938. Along the East Coast, Sandy led to more than 50 deaths, left millions without power and caused an estimated $20 billion or more in damage.

But to call Sandy a harbinger of a "new normal," in which unprecedented weather events cause unprecedented destruction, would be wrong. This historic storm should remind us that planet Earth is a dangerous place, where extreme events are commonplace and disasters are to be expected. In the proper context, Sandy is less an example of how bad things can get than a reminder that they could be much worse.

In studying hurricanes, we can make rough comparisons over time by adjusting past losses to account for inflation and the growth of coastal communities. If Sandy causes $20 billion in damage (in 2012 dollars), it would rank as the 17th most damaging hurricane or tropical storm (out of 242) to hit the U.S. since 1900—a significant event, but not close to the top 10. The Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 tops the list (according to estimates by the catastrophe-insurance provider ICAT), as it would cause $180 billion in damage if it were to strike today. Hurricane Katrina ranks fourth at $85 billion.

To put things into even starker perspective, consider that from August 1954 through August 1955, the East Coast saw three different storms make landfall—Carol, Hazel and Diane—that in 2012 each would have caused about twice as much damage as Sandy.

While it's hardly mentioned in the media, the U.S. is currently in an extended and intense hurricane "drought." The last Category 3 or stronger storm to make landfall was Wilma in 2005. The more than seven years since then is the longest such span in over a century.

Flood damage has decreased as a proportion of the economy since reliable records were first kept by the National Weather Service in the 1930s, and there is no evidence of increasing extreme river floods. Historic tornado damage (adjusted for changing levels of development) has decreased since 1950, paralleling a dramatic reduction in casualties. Although the tragic impacts of tornadoes in 2011 (including 553 confirmed deaths) were comparable only to those of 1953 and 1964, such tornado impacts were far more common in the first half of the 20th century.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports that drought in America's central plains has decreased in recent decades. And even when extensive drought occurs, we fare better. For example, the widespread 2012 drought was about 10% as costly to the U.S. economy as the multiyear 1988-89 drought, indicating greater resiliency of American agriculture.

There is therefore reason to believe we are living in an extended period of relatively good fortune with respect to disasters. A recurrence of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake today, for example, could cause more than $300 billion in damage and thousands of lives, according to a study I co-published in 2009.

So how can today's disasters, even if less physically powerful than previous ones, have such staggering financial costs? One reason: There are more people and more wealth in harm's way. Partly this is due to local land-use policies, partly to incentives such as government-subsidized insurance, but mostly to the simple fact that people like being on the coast and near rivers.

Even so, with respect to disasters we really do make our own luck. The relatively low number of casualties caused by Sandy is a testament to the success story that is the U.S. National Weather Service and parallel efforts of those who emphasize preparedness and emergency response in the public and private sectors. Everyone in the disaster-management community deserves thanks; the mitigation of the impacts from natural disasters has been a true national success story of the past century.


But continued success isn't guaranteed. The bungled response and tragic consequences associated with Hurricane Katrina tell us what can happen when we let our guard down.

And there are indications that we are setting the stage for making future disasters worse. For instance, a U.S. polar-satellite program crucial to weather forecasting has been described by the administrator of the federal agency that oversees it—the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—as a "dysfunctional program that had become a national embarrassment due to chronic management problems." The lack of effective presidential and congressional oversight of this program over more than a decade can be blamed on both Republicans and Democrats. The program's mishandling may mean a gap in satellite coverage and a possible degradation in forecasts.

Another danger: Public discussion of disasters risks being taken over by the climate lobby and its allies, who exploit every extreme event to argue for action on energy policy. In New York this week, Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared: "I think at this point it is undeniable but that we have a higher frequency of these extreme weather situations and we're going to have to deal with it." New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg spoke similarly.

Humans do affect the climate system, and it is indeed important to take action on energy policy—but to connect energy policy and disasters makes little scientific or policy sense. There are no signs that human-caused climate change has increased the toll of recent disasters, as even the most recent extreme-event report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change finds. And even under the assumptions of the IPCC, changes to energy policies wouldn't have a discernible impact on future disasters for the better part of a century or more.

The only strategies that will help us effectively prepare for future disasters are those that have succeeded in the past: strategic land use, structural protection, and effective forecasts, warnings and evacuations. That is the real lesson of Sandy.

Mr. Pielke is a professor of environmental studies and a fellow of the Cooperative Ins ute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado.

[ChumpDumper]

While it's hardly mentioned in the media, the U.S. is currently in an extended and intense hurricane "drought." The last Category 3 or stronger storm to make landfall was Wilma in 2005. The more than seven years since then is the longest such span in over a century.

Yes, the absence of hurricanes is big news. Romney should be reminding us every day. It's a winning strategy.

[boutons_deux]

"Humans do affect the climate system, and it is indeed important to take action on energy policy"

oops, did Darrin mean to post this?

"effective forecasts"

For Representative Ryan’s plans for NOAA in the FY 2013 budget, see here:

NOAA’s programs are in function 300, Natural Resources and Environment, along with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and a range of conservation and natural resources programs. In the near term, function 300 would be 14.6 percent lower in 2014 in the Ryan budget according to the Washington Post. It quotes David Kendall of The Third Way as warning about the potential impact on weather forecasting: “‘Our weather forecasts would be only half as accurate for four to eight years until another polar satellite is launched,’ estimates Kendall. ‘For many people planning a weekend outdoors, they may have to wait until Thursday for a forecast as accurate as one they now get on Monday. … Perhaps most affected would be hurricane response. Governors and mayors would have to order evacuations for areas twice as large or wait twice as long for an accurate forecast.’”

http://www.economonitor.com/blog/201...fema-and-noaa/

[MannyIsGod]

Humans do affect the climate system, and it is indeed important to take action on energy policy

Oops

[DarrinS]

[COLOR=#000000]"Humans do affect the climate system, and it is indeed important to take action on energy policy"

oops, did Darrin mean to post this?

Who says humans DON'T affect the climate system?

[Wild Cobra]

that's Nick Cage.

Ooops. Shows how much I watch movies.