El Nino's Absence Is Causing An Active Hurricane Season (mercurynews.com) 148
Dan Drollette writes: Contrary to some items making the rounds of the Twitterverse, El Nino's are "Kryptonite for hurricanes." The Mercury News reports: "Irma has ripped a path of misery through the Caribbean and is aiming at Florida, but the first seed for its monster size and force was planted on the other side of the world more than six months ago. It happened innocently enough, when a widely anticipated El Nino failed to materialize over the Pacific Ocean. In time, that cleared a path for a hurricane to form in the Atlantic that grew to the size of the state of New York with winds topping 185 miles per hour. El Nino occurs when the Pacific heats up and flusters the atmosphere, setting off a chain reaction that causes wind shear across the Atlantic. Shear is wind blowing in different directions or speeds at various altitudes, and it can be Kryptonite for hurricanes. As powerful as they are, tropical cyclones have delicate structures. Shear can tear them apart. A budding storm can't get started and an established storm can't get strong."
El Nino and climate changes (Score:5, Informative)
So what is the relation between El Nino and climate changes already?
http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2... [columbia.edu]
https://www.skepticalscience.c... [skepticalscience.com]
https://e360.yale.edu/features... [yale.edu]
Re: (Score:2)
There is no real relation.
El Ninos and La Ninas and the "neutral phase" where none of them is "active" exist since man kind exists, probably longer.
However with climate change, those phenomena change, too. And change their influence.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe he could explain what he means by "before the first El Nino?" When was that exactly?
Regarding the impact of El Nino on Hurricanes, Dr Trenberth of NCAR responded [youtu.be] to a question about why 2015 - the most active year globally for hurricanes, but mostly in the Pacific and related in no small part to a very active El Nino. What does it say that we are getting this kind of storm in a non El Nino year?
He responded "The action in an El Nino year is in the Pacific... during El Nino years the Atlantic activit
Re: (Score:1)
You forgot the /s
Or you are a bald-faced liar.
If you're looking for the money, it's in the oil industry.
Not that much money for research in Climatology.
Re: (Score:1)
BREAKING NEWS!
Cancer is a scam by big pharma and the Chinese, claims report!
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
I don't think $10 billion is all that much compared to potential effects on our future. It's certainly not making anybody rich.
Re: (Score:2)
You misquoted me. On purpose, I assume.
Re:El Nino and climate changes (Score:5, Informative)
> 40% of NASA's budget was going to global warming research
Where did you get that number, by the way ?
I can't really find it in their 2016 budget. https://www.nasa.gov/sites/def... [nasa.gov]
Re: (Score:1)
Global warming research isnt just big business... its one of the biggest businesses. Imagine if we spent this sort of money on cancer research instead, or helping poor people, or even just taxing people less.
Let's play that game.
Imagine if we spent the sort of money we spend on:
Aid to Israel.
Unnecessary wars.
Unneeded or unwanted aircraft carriers
The crap F-35 program.
Interest on the government debt that has been rung up because of Republican VooDoo economics and their complete lack of understanding of the Laffer curve.
on Cancer research - which is another waste of money because there will NEVER be a cure for cancer.
Re: (Score:1)
Arrhenius! (Score:2)
Follow the money to see who is behind it.
It was Arrhenius! With the lead pipe, in the library!
The AGW deniers beg us to believe in a hundred-year-old financial conspiracy. One assumes they think this started in 2006 rather than 1896 [rsc.org].
Re: (Score:2)
Now that's funny. :)
Re: (Score:2)
you let us know when research is free, and scientists dont also have a need to feed their families like the rest of us.
Re:El Nino and climate changes (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a typical conspiracy theory in that it posits people acting in ways that are against their interests.
If you wanted to make a bundle as a climate scientist, you'd find credible proof that anthropogenic climate change isn't happening. The people who have the most money under the status quo are the ones who profit from the status quo.
Re: (Score:1)
If you wanted to make a bundle as a climate scientist, you'd find credible proof that anthropogenic climate change isn't happening.
Except that nobody ever made money saying "everything is all right, nothing to see here". To make money, real money, you need an emergency, an incoming cataclysm, a "the end of the world is nigh" coupled with "and I am one of the few that can do something about it... for a proper compensation, of course".
Re: (Score:3)
So you are saying that being a climate scientist pays better then being an executive of a fossil fuel extraction corporation or a petroleum engineer? Now, the skill set to being a climate scientist might not intersect with that of a successful (rapacious) corporate exec, but the analytical skills required of a climate scientist and petroleum engineer intersect nicely.
Re: (Score:2)
coupled with "and I am one of the few that can do something about it... for a proper compensation, of course".
Except that the many scientists who do stuff like measuring tree rings, or digging up ice cores in Antarctica are not the people claiming they are "one of the few that can do something about it". All they do is a signal a potential problem.
The contractor on your roof installing solar panels is actually a small part of a solution, but he's not getting rich either, nor is he in a position to direct the scientists.
Re:El Nino and climate changes (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that nobody ever made money saying "everything is all right, nothing to see here".
Right.
The oil industry doesnt benefit at all from trying to bury climate research.
Just like the tobacco industry before them and supressing the link between nicotine and cancer.
Riiiiiight.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I would be VERY careful with that. A couple of hundred milligrams nicotine can be lethal in adults. Children can get very ill from nicotine poisoning by ingesting (eating) only one cigarette. And you should handle any nicotine containing e-cigarette liquid with utmost care (Nicotine transfers through skin very easily).
With caffeine, you can consume several grams before things get ugly - you should not drink more than 50 cups of coffee in one sitting... and don't forget amounts can add up if your liver didn'
Re: (Score:2)
You were right.
Besides, the lethal dose of Nicotine is most likely more around the 500 to 1000mg and not the 60mg in current litterature which is based on 19th century research and wrong, based on post mortem blood tests.
Re: (Score:2)
Except that nobody ever made money saying "everything is all right, nothing to see here".
You don't seriously believe that, do you? Is anyone actually that stupid?
Re: (Score:2)
Are you saying that without the threat of AGW we wouldn't bother studying climate? Don't you think it's worthwhile to study climate regardless of what's happening. Most of the money spent on climate research would be spent regardless of the situation.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If you wanted to make a bundle as a climate scientist, you'd find credible proof that anthropogenic climate change isn't happening.
Actually the onus is on science to prove it is. And conversely, if they could accurately predict the climate on any useful scale they could be a multi billionaires. No evidence of those billionaire scientists so far though.
And Al Gore bilking people for carbon credits certainly does not count.
Billionaires? (Score:2)
Arrhenius provided the mechanism in 1896, and subsequent studies in the middle of the 20th Century excluded scenarios that did not lead to warming. The warming signal began to be detected at the end of the 20th Century, conforming with earlier predictions. The fundamental evidence for AGW can be proven in your basement with technology from the 1850s -- because that's what happened.
Your intentional misunderstanding is that you're focusing on the question of how the warming will happen, rather than whether th
Re: (Score:2)
Your intentional misunderstanding is that you're focusing on the question of how the warming will happen, rather than whether there will be warming. The latter is certain; the former depends on human responses to that fact.
It's an interglacial.
If climate science or people did not even exist I would still bet on warming.
Re: (Score:2)
Okay. So an interglacial means the opposite of what would make that sentence sensible, and do you think maybe sometime in the last 120 years someone may have thought of that objection? Are you able to identify a problem with the chain of evidence, or are we going to watch you flail around your total ignorance of this subject? Not that it matters either way, you just get to choose whether you'd rather be wrong or intellectually dishonest. But I suppose we already know the answer to that.
Re: (Score:3)
It's an interglacial.
If climate science or people did not even exist I would still bet on warming.
Temperatures hit a peak around 6,000 to 8,000 years ago during the Holocene Climatic Optimum [wikipedia.org]. Since then there's been a slow cooling trend as we would expect from an examination of Milankovitch Cycles [wikipedia.org]. This would eventually lead to a new glacial period. I think you would lose that bet.
Re: (Score:2)
yes. those damn thousandaire scientists trying to learn shit.
thank god for those plucky oil billionaires willing to take a stand and expose them.
Re:El Nino and climate changes (Score:4, Insightful)
don't take any tax incentives
you first, obvious oil industry shill,
Re: (Score:3)
You know, I think of "insightful" posts like this when I read the constant grumbling about how Slashdot has become a cesspool of disaffected righties.
Maybe you should dust off your Venn diagram and 'splain to the rest of us how someone who isn't a fan of government subsidies for energy is by definition an "oil industry shill."
Re: (Score:1)
Refined petroleum products is what gave us the gasoline we now use for fuel in the first place. A budding oil industry was overburdened with a highly explosive waste product (gasoline) and convinced Henry Ford and other automakers to use this fuel for their new horseless carriages, instead of batteries or steam power. (It did offer a better range than batteries and less complexity than operating a steam engine.)
Also, the Great Chicago Fire was likely accelerated because the kerosene used for lighting lamps
Re: (Score:2)
Re:El Nino and climate changes (Score:4, Informative)
Most experts I've heard from don't claim there will be more hurricanes, only that hurricanes may do more damage because first, rising sea levels makes for more coastal flooding; and second, warm oceans evaporate more water into the storms such that they rain down harder over land.
Re: (Score:2)
Rising sea levels ? We're talking millimeters here caused by the sinking of continents due to their weight, and erosion. Surges are meters. More evaporation from warmer oceans ? Negligible, because the heat of condensation of water is orders of magnitude larger than it's specific heat capacity times dT, where dT is a few Kelvin at most, even in the most alarmist scenarios.
You know they're measuring sea level from satellites now. They don't measure sea level in reference to the land surface but rather from the center of the Earth. Since they went up in the early 1990s the rate of sea level rise has been over 3 mm/year which is well over an inch per decade. It has nothing to do with sinking continents.
As far as evaporation it has more to do with the fact that a warmer atmosphere is able to carry more water vapor (over 6% more per degree Celcius IIRC). It is impossible for
What are they talking about? (Score:5, Interesting)
It happened innocently enough, when a widely anticipated El Nino failed to materialize over the Pacific Ocean.
El Nino and La Nina cycles are typically an average of 5 years(2-7ish years). The last El Nino was in 2015-2016. We are currently in a La Nina. I'm not sure what El Nino they were expecting but it isn't due for at least a little while longer.
Re:What are they talking about? (Score:5, Informative)
The cycles aren't regular, though. It's perfectly possible for an El Nino to come back at any time. We are currently in a neutral zone.
Re: (Score:1)
It happened innocently enough, when a widely anticipated El Nino failed to materialize over the Pacific Ocean.
El Nino and La Nina cycles are typically an average of 5 years(2-7ish years). The last El Nino was in 2015-2016. We are currently in a La Nina. I'm not sure what El Nino they were expecting but it isn't due for at least a little while longer.
Mid/late spring the equatorial surface temperatures in the Pacific were above average and most of the models were predicting we'd go back into El Nino later this year. It looks like that has changed back to a neutral prediction according to NOAA.
Re: (Score:2)
You can have two or more El Ninos in a row, same for La Ninas.
There is no real "cycle", it is more like a see saw. It can hang at the balancing point for quite a while and then go back to the point it came from.
So: there is no "due date" either. Both phenomena start from the "neutral" phase. And can establish themselves into a strong position over a month or so.
Re: (Score:1)
Wow, slashdot has gone down hill (Score:5, Insightful)
This used to be a place for eccentric and intelligent people to talk about technology and science. But this sounds more like a pub discussion of ignorant backwater folks now.
Re: (Score:2)
That's no way to talk about the Floridians :-)
Besides there are practically no hills in Florida to go down anyway.
Re: Wow, slashdot has gone down hill (Score:4, Insightful)
The alt-right infested Slashdot not long ago. You can imagine what that did to the average intelligence level here.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
"(usually downvoted by people on the left,) ... and you most certainly don't know if the down voter is left, right or what ever ...
You don't know who down voted what
Re: (Score:2)
What the fuck are you even talking about? I don't see any Trump supporters. Hell we were getting several stories daily about how terrible Trump is right after the election. Please post some sources before spewing garbage.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Honestly, is there a difference? ... they are just as retarded as anyone else.
Watch some scientists talking in a pub about anything which is not their main topic
Re: (Score:2)
It's so bad that even the trolls moved on.
Re: (Score:2)
And that is exactly what I mean. Some science words thrown in, spiced with insults, thrown from a bubble of ignorance.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually I was a lurker in Slashdot almost from the beginning. It hasn't changed that much. What's changed is us as individuals. Many of us get crankier and more cynical as we get older. All of us have begin to have trouble adapting to changes in state human knowledge sooner or later, and generally with changes in mores and tastes sooner. That's the cycle of life: you become what you despised as a young man and in turn get to be despised.
Now as for El Nino, poster is right; it is a natural phenomenon th
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
This entire Slashdot post looks absolutely retarded without the popper spelling of El Nino. Yeah, you're an american based site. Is that an excuse to be stuck in 1990? There are other languages, and apparently americans sometimes use them. Fix your fucking shit.
You mean like La Niña? All they need to do is only allow posting on slashdot from kosher systems like linux that support cut and paste utf8 without stripping the bit code spacing and fucking it up.
Re: (Score:2)
Hey, facts only get in the way of a good discussion.
Re: (Score:2)
"el niño" and "la niña".
Actually, ENSO is generally how the scientists refer to this single phenomenon - El Niño Southern Oscillation.
Another similar view.. (Score:1)
And whose fault is this? (Score:5, Funny)
It's fairly obvious that el niño has been deported to Mexico due to the takedown of the DACA.
If you like your DACA you can (Score:1)
keep your DACA...
flusters? (Score:2)
Don't anthropomorphize the atmosphere. It hates when you do that.
Huh? (Score:2)
I thought we did get El Niño last year, but it didn't come south enough like in Southern California.
Re:NO! NO! NO! IT'S GLOBAL WARMING!!!!! (Score:5, Informative)
People assume that we'll have more hurricanes because they assume every consequence of AGW will be predictably catastrophic. That may not be a bad rule of thumb, but IIRC IPCC models are actually mixed as to the frequency of hurricanes. That's because hurricanes are the product of chaos; minor changes in initial conditions can tip the result one way or the other. It could be that we have some years with more hurricanes and some with less.
The one things the model runs are consistent about is that hurricanes under AGW will pack more precipitation, which is kind of an obvious result, but it's nice to have your intuition confirmed every so often. On the other hand, as we saw with Harvey, rain can be a significant component of a hurricane's destructive power.
Re: (Score:2)
This is correct. Hurricanes are small scale, short term, chaotic events. Climate models don't really deal with things on that level because that's not what they do. They're models are for climate, not weather.
That being said, the climate models show that there will be no shortage of energy for such storms to tap into. More heat, warmer ocean temperatures, more water vapor. The quantity of storms is kind of irrelevant.
Re: (Score:2)
You know, this same mathematical ignorance comes up repeatedly in denialist thinking. It is possible for an average to increase without that increase being evenly distributed over the sample. In fact it is possible for an average to increase while some sample points decrease.
Re: (Score:2)
"El Nino occurs when the Pacific heats up and flusters the atmosphere,"
Thats wrong.
What? (Score:2)
What the hell is AGW, IIRC, and IPCC? English motherfucker do you speak it?
Re: (Score:2)
IIRC is web shorthand for "If I Recall Correctly". As for the other two if you don't understand what they are then you're not informed enough to be in on this conversation.
Re: (Score:2)
"It could be that we have some years with more hurricanes and some with less."
Huh, so it will be an average number, just like it is now?
Did you fail at reading, or at logic? If half the years had twice as many storms, and half the years had half as many, would we have more or less storms?
Even if we did have the same number of storms, the total amount of precipitation will be higher, so your answer doesn't actually matter — things would get worse even if we didn't get any more storms, because they would be heavier.
Re: (Score:2)
what lack of hurricanes?
also, the only ones who argue over the terms are conservatives in these little rants like yours.
Re: (Score:2)
There was no "lack of hurricanes" in the last decade. ... and btw: Irma is 4 times a big as Andrew was.
It was more or less like always, except for the 5 hard hits the US got. Andrew, Katrina, Sandy etc.
Now they get hit 2 times in a row
However the most astonishing thin in international news is, no one is talking about stuff like this: https://www.theguardian.com/wo... [theguardian.com]
Re: (Score:1)
It impedes IR by capturing it, retard.
Re: (Score:2)
exactly.
keep going and you'll see the light.
here, ill help:
-energy from the sun, in various wavelengths, including IR, impacts the earth's surface
-in turn, some portion of that is converted into heat (IR) in the process.
-the surface then re-radiates that heat into the atmosphere and ultimately space
-additional CO impedes that IR retransmission into space, preventing that energy loss
-net energy increases, temps go up.
Impedence / Insulation (Score:2)
additional CO impedes that IR retransmission into space, preventing that energy loss
Well, yes and no. "impede" is not a great verb for that. One of the reasons Arrhenius was originally discredited is that there's already many times more CO2 floating around than it takes to make the Earth opaque to IR. The "impedence" is that a higher partial pressure of CO2 increases the extent of the CO2-rich layer of the atmosphere, raising the effective "top of atmosphere", or the level at which the IR photons are statistically more likely to escape to space than to hit another CO2 molecule. The energy
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)