Maria brushes Bermuda; 24-hour blitz by Climate Reality Project underway
Tropical Storm Maria is roaring past Bermuda, bringing winds near tropical storm force. At 11 am local time, winds at the Bermuda airport were sustained at 36 mph, just below the 39 mph threshold of tropical storm strength. Outer spiral bands of Maria have brought a few brief heavy rain squalls to the island, as seen on Bermuda radar. The core of Maria is now at its closest point of approach to the island, about 150 miles (240 km) to the west, and the island may yet see an hour of two of sustained winds of 40 - 45 mph. Maria is headed north-northeast, and will brush Newfoundland, Canada on Friday afternoon. Since Newfoundland will be on the weak (left) side of a rapidly weakening Maria, I'm not expecting much in the way of wind damage from the storm in Canada, though heavy rains may cause isolated minor to moderate flooding. Top sustained winds in St. Johns will probably be in the 25 - 35 mph range Friday afternoon, though a few hours of tropical storm force winds of 40 - 45 mph are possible if Maria ends up tracking farther west than expected.
Figure 1. Radar image of Tropical Storm Maria taken at 10:13 am EDT September 15, 2011. Image credit: Bermuda Weather Service.
Elsewhere in the tropics
Even the busiest of hurricane seasons have lulls, and we're hitting one this week during what is traditionally the busiest week of hurricane season. A westward-moving tropical wave a few hundred miles south of the Cape Verde Islands, off the coast of Africa, has a modest amount of poorly organized heavy thunderstorm activity. This wave is under a moderate 10 - 20 knots of wind shear, is in a moist environment, and is over warm waters, so has the potential for some development, though NHC is currently not mentioning it in their Tropical Weather Outlook. The UKMET and NOGAPS models predict this wave could develop into a tropical depression 5 - 6 days from now. The NOGAPS model continues to predict the Western Caribbean off the coast of Nicaragua could see the development of a tropical depression 6 - 7 days from now, but the other models are showing little support for this scenario.
Figure 2. Heidi Cullen of Climate Central introduces Boulder, Colorado teacher John Zavalney, one of the presenters of the Climate Reality Project's 24-hour live streaming special.
The Climate Reality Project
The Climate Reality Project (climaterealityproject.org) is a little more than halfway through their live, 24-hour streaming video effort that features 24 different presenters for 24 hours, representing every time zone around the globe. The presentations began last night at 7 pm EDT, and will end tonight at 7 pm EDT. It's worth checking out; there have been some interesting presentations and some dull ones. Interspersed with the presentations are panel discussions with some slick Google Earth graphics; last night's discussions were led by Heidi Cullen of Climate Central, who is a rarity--a very personable and well-spoken scientist, and someone you'll be seeing on TV much more in coming years. The Climate Reality Project showed one excellent video tracking the history of industry-funded denial of science that began with the tobacco industry, something I've discussed as well in post called The Manufactured Doubt Industry and the hacked email controversy. Also shown were two cute 15 - 30 second comedy videos. But while the Climate Reality Project's 24-hour blitz has already gotten 3 million people to tune in, its documentary-style tone and Powerpoint lectures will not be engaging enough to keep most visitors around for more than a few minutes. Ph.D. oceanographer Randy Olson, who left a tenure-track professorship to become a Hollywood film maker, has written an excellent book called Don't be Such a Scientist, about the failure of scientists to communicate in way that will engage people (I thought so highly of the book that I bought 20 copies of the book to give away to students at the University of Michigan's Department of Atmospheric Science this year.) In the latest post in his blog, The Benshi, Olson outlines how the climate community has failed in the main way needed to engage an audience: create a likable voice through the effective telling of stories, which is a less literal means of communication and is less cerebral and thus reaches a mass audience. Future efforts at communication by the climate science community really need to work on using the telling of stories by likable voices in order to get their message across, and I highly recommend that all climate scientists who do public outreach read Olson's book "Don't be Such a Scientist."
Jeff Masters
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Bastrop fire update: Now 85 percent contained. Early estimates on damage $150 million....
I would've thought the estimates would be much higher given over 1300 homes destroyed by this fire. Sad situation and still no precipitation in sight.
AL, 14, 2011091612, , BEST, 0, 428N, 582W, 65, 983, HU
Have some inflow coming off the gulf this morning
I do wish VP Gore did not throw in statements that climate conservatives can latch onto as 'bogus'.
You don't sweat more when it's hot just because the air holds more moisture. You sweat more because you body needs to cool down.
He could say you see your sweat more when it is humid, like Florida vs. Arizona in the same heat because the warm air capacity is full in Florida but that gets complex. If you warm up air and it's capacity increases, you would seem to sweat less since it would evaporate faster... like I said, complex and easily turned around.
It would also help to humanize the opposition against the science to not call them deniers but "climate conservatives" showing their reluctance to change without being pejorative.
We can build a better, cleaner, healthier world together.
Ivan was a classical, long-lived Cape Verde hurricane that reached Category 5 strength three times on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale (SSHS). It was also the strongest hurricane on record that far south east of the Lesser Antilles. Ivan caused considerable damage and loss of life as it passed through the Caribbean Sea. Link
i know were i was and we had a mess to clean up
The comet impacting the sun yesterday was impressive to me.
They were down south last week. Been 1/2 expecting them since the winds from the east came back but hadn't been to the beach since last weekend.
Climate change has favored the jellies the world over. It was one of those predicted things that are happening faster & in more numbers than anticipated. Hardly a week goes by that they don't clog up a nuclear reactor's cooling system somewhere.
39.8n62.2w, 42.8n58.2w are now the most recent positions
Starting 15Sept_6amGMT and ending 16Sept_6amGMT
The 4 southern line-segments represent HurricaneMaria's path,
the northernmost line-segment is the straightline projection for 16Sept_12pmGMT,
the coastline dumbbell at 47.113n54.077w-YYT is the endpoint of the straightline projection
connected to its nearest airport for the 16Sept_6amGMT*mapping,
and the island blob at 46.804n56.361w-FSP is the same for the 16Sept_12amGMT*mapping.
Using straightline projection of the travel-speed&heading derived from the
ATCF coordinates spanning the 6hours between 6amGMT then 12pmGMT :
H.Maria's travel-speed was 49mph(78.9k/h) on a heading of 43.9degrees(NE)
H.Maria was headed toward passing ~39miles(~63kilometres) southeast of Newfoundland ~4&1/2.hours from now
Copy&paste 46.804n56.361w-fsp, 47.113n54.077w-yyt, 31.2n67.8w-33.7n67.0w, 33.7n67.0w-36.8n64.9w, 36.8n64.9w-39.8n62.2w, 39.8n62.2w-42.8n58.2w, yyt, 39.8n62.2w-46.360n52.582w into the GreatCircleMapper for more info
The previous mapping for 16Sept_6amGMT
* The alteration of the endpoint of a TropicalCyclone's previous path also changes its previous travel-speed &heading, and the endpoint of its previous straightline projection...
...but I'm choosing to preserve the historicity of the mappings.
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