[TheClimate.Vote] August 17, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*August 17, 2020*/

[Iowa emergency calls for help]
*We need coordinated federal disaster aid and we need it now. *
@IAGovernor we can't wait until Monday.
https://twitter.com/lyzl/status/1294697720154918914
https://twitter.com/lyzl/status/1294703049202700289

- - -

[see it]
*Cedar Rapids, Iowa - Derecho Caught on Camera*
Aug 16, 2020
Iowa Storm Chasing Network
Winds in excess of 100-mph moved through eastern Iowa Monday, August 
10th, 2020. One of the hardest-hit areas was the Cedar Rapids, Iowa 
metro. This video was filmed in Cedar Rapids and shows just how powerful 
the winds were.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfFghcmGNQ4

- - -

[straight from The Conversation]
*What is a derecho? An atmospheric scientist explains these rare but 
dangerous storm systems*
Updated August 10, 2020
Thunderstorms are common across North America, especially in warm 
weather months. About 10% of them become severe, meaning they produce 
hail 1 inch or greater in diameter, winds gusting in excess of 50 knots 
(57.5 miles per hour), or a tornado.

The U.S. recently has experienced three rarer events: organized lines of 
thunderstorms with widespread damaging winds, known as derechos.

Derechos occur mainly across the central and eastern U.S., where many 
locations are affected one to two times per year on average. They can 
produce significant damage to structures and sometimes cause "blowdowns" 
of millions of trees. Pennsylvania and New Jersey received the brunt of 
a derecho on June 3, 2020, that killed four people and left nearly a 
million without power across the mid-Atlantic region.

In the West, derechos are less common, but Colorado - where I serve as 
state climatologist and director of the Colorado Climate Center - 
experienced a rare and powerful derecho on June 6 that generated winds 
exceeding 100 miles per hour in some locations. And on August 10, a 
derecho rolled across Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana, generating 
rare "particularly dangerous situation" warnings from forecasters and 
registering wind gusts as high as 130 miles per hour.

Derechos have also been observed and analyzed in many other parts of the 
world, including Europe, Asia and South America. They are an important 
and active research area in meteorology. Here’s what we know about these 
unusual storms...

*Walls of wind*
Scientists have long recognized that organized lines of thunderstorms 
can produce widespread damaging winds. Gustav Hinrichs, a professor at 
the University of Iowa, analyzed severe winds in the 1870s and 1880s and 
identified that many destructive storms were produced by straight-line 
winds rather than by tornadoes, in which winds rotate. Because the word 
"tornado," of Spanish origin, was already in common usage, Hinrichs 
proposed "derecho" - Spanish for "straight ahead" - for damaging 
windstorms not associated with tornadoes.

In 1987, meteorologists defined what qualified as a derecho. They 
proposed that for a storm system to be classified as a derecho, it had 
to produce severe winds - 57.5 mph (26 meters per second) or greater - 
and those intense winds had to extend over a path at least 250 miles 
(400 kilometers) long, with no more than three hours separating 
individual severe wind reports.

Derechos are almost always caused by a type of weather system known as a 
bow echo, which has the shape of an archer’s bow on radar images. These 
in turn are a specific type of mesoscale convective system, a term that 
describes large, organized groupings of storms.

Researchers are studying whether and how climate change is affecting 
weather hazards from thunderstorms. Although some aspects of mesoscale 
convective systems, such as the amount of rainfall they produce, are 
very likely to change with continued warming, it’s not yet clear how 
future climate change may affect the likelihood or intensity of derechos.

*Speeding across the landscape*
The term "derecho" vaulted into public awareness in June 2012, when one 
of the most destructive derechos in U.S. history formed in the Midwest 
and traveled some 700 miles in 12 hours, eventually making a direct 
impact on the Washington, D.C. area. This event killed 22 people and 
caused millions of power outages.
Only a few recorded derechos had occurred in the western U.S. prior to 
June 6, 2020. On that day, a line of strong thunderstorms developed in 
eastern Utah and western Colorado in the late morning. This was unusual 
in itself, as storms in this region tend to be less organized and occur 
later in the day.

The thunderstorms continued to organize and moved northeastward across 
the Rocky Mountains. This was even more unusual: Derecho-producing lines 
of storms are driven by a pool of cold air near the ground, which would 
typically be disrupted by a mountain range as tall as the Rockies. In 
this case, the line remained organized.

As the line of storms emerged to the east of the mountains, it caused 
widespread wind damage in the Denver metro area and northeastern 
Colorado. It then strengthened further as it proceeded 
north-northeastward across eastern Wyoming, western Nebraska and the 
Dakotas.

In total there were nearly 350 reports of severe winds, including 44 of 
75 miles per hour (about 34 meters per second) or greater. The strongest 
reported gust was 110 mph at Winter Park ski area in the Colorado 
Rockies. Of these reports, 95 came from Colorado - by far the most 
severe wind reports ever from a single thunderstorm system.
Coloradans are accustomed to big weather, including strong winds in the 
mountains and foothills. Some of these winds are generated by flow down 
mountain slopes, localized thunderstorm microbursts, or even "bomb 
cyclones." Western thunderstorms more commonly produce hailstorms and 
tornadoes, so it was very unusual to have a broad swath of the state 
experience damaging straight-line winds that extended from west of the 
Rockies all the way to the Dakotas.

*Damage comparable to a hurricane*
Derechos are challenging to predict. On days when derechos form, it is 
often uncertain whether any storms will form at all. But if they do, the 
chance exists for explosive development of intense winds. Forecasters 
did not anticipate the historic June 2012 derecho until it was already 
underway.

For the western derecho on June 6, 2020, outlooks showed an enhanced 
potential for severe storms in Nebraska and the Dakotas two to three 
days in advance. However, the outlooks didn’t highlight the potential 
for destructive winds farther south in Colorado until the morning that 
the derecho formed.

Once a line of storms has begun to develop, however, the National 
Weather Service routinely issues highly accurate severe thunderstorm 
warnings 30 to 60 minutes ahead of the arrival of intense winds, 
alerting the public to take precautions.

Communities, first responders and utilities may have only a few hours to 
prepare for an oncoming derecho, so it is important to know how to 
receive severe thunderstorm warnings, such as TV, radio and smartphone 
alerts, and to take these warnings seriously. Tornadoes and tornado 
warnings often get the most attention, but lines of severe thunderstorms 
can also pack a major punch.
https://theconversation.com/what-is-a-derecho-an-atmospheric-scientist-explains-these-rare-but-dangerous-storm-systems-140319 




[from Phys Org]
*How climate change could expose new epidemics*
by Amélie Bottollier-Depois - Aug 16, 2020
Long-dormant viruses brought back to life; the resurgence of deadly and 
disfiguring smallpox; a dengue or zika "season" in Europe.
These could be disaster movie storylines, but they are also serious and 
increasingly plausible scenarios of epidemics unleashed by global 
warming, scientists say.
- -
"When you put a seed into soil that is then frozen for thousands of 
years, nothing happens," said Jean-Michel Claverie, an emeritus 
professor of genomics at the School of Medicine of Aix-Marseille 
University in France.

"But when you warm the earth, the seed will be able to germinate," he 
added. "That is similar to what happens with a virus."

Claverie's lab has successfully revived Siberian viruses that are at 
least 30,000 years old.

These reanimated bugs only attack amoebas, but tens of thousands of 
years ago there were certainly others that aimed higher up the food chain.

"Neanderthals, mammoths, woolly rhinos all got sick, and many died," 
said Claverie. "Some of the viruses that caused their sicknesses are 
probably still in the soil."

The number of bacteria and viruses lurking in the permafrost is 
incalculable, but the more important question is how dangerous they are.

And here, scientists disagree.

"Anthrax shows that bacteria can be resting in permafrost for hundreds 
of years and be revived," said Evengard.

In 2016, a child in Siberia died from the disease, which had disappeared 
from the region at least 75 years earlier.

Two-million-year-old pathogens

This case has been attributed to the thawing of a long-buried carcass, 
but some experts counter that the animal remains in question may have 
been in shallow dirt and thus subject to periodic thawing.

Other pathogens--such as smallpox or the influenza strain that killed 
tens of millions in 1917 and 1918--may also be present in the sub-Arctic 
region.

But they "have probably been inactivated", Romanovsky concluded in a 
study published earlier this year.

For Claverie, however, the return of smallpox--officially declared 
eradicated 50 years ago--cannot be excluded. 18th- and 19th-century 
victims of the disease "buried in cemetaries in Siberia are totally 
preserved by the cold," he noted.

In the unlikely event of a local epidemic, a vaccine is available.

The real danger, he added, lies in deeper strata where unknown pathogens 
that have not seen daylight for two million years or more may be exposed 
by global warming.

Dengue fever is the world's most common mosquito-borne virus
If there were no hosts for the bugs to infect there would not be a 
problem, but climate change--indirectly--has intervened here as well.

"With the industrial exploitation of the Arctic, all the risk factors 
are there--pathogens and the people to carry them," Claverie said.

The revival of ancient bacteria or viruses remains speculative, but 
climate change has already boosted the spread of diseases that kill 
about half a million people every year: malaria, dengue, chikungunya, zika.

"Mosquitoes moving their range north are now able to overwinter in some 
temperate regions," said Jeanne Fair, deputy group leader for 
biosecurity and public health at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in 
New Mexico.

"They also have longer breeding periods."

'Climate change aperitif'

Native to southeast Asia, the tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus)--which 
carries dengue and chikungunya--arrived in southern Europe in the first 
decade of this century and has been moving rapidly north ever since, to 
Paris and beyond.

Meanwhile, another dengue-bearing mosquito, Aedes aegypti, has also 
appeared in Europe. Whichever species may be the culprit, the Europe 
Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) has registered 40 cases 
of local transmission of dengue between 2010 and 2019.

"An increase in mean temperature could result in seasonal dengue 
transmission in southern Europe if A. aegypti infected with virus were 
to be established," according to the Europe Centre for Disease 
Prevention and Control.

As for malaria--a disease that once blighted southern Europe and the 
southern United States and for which an effective treatment exists--the 
risk of exposure depends in large part on social-economic conditions.

More than five billion people could be living in malaria-affected 
regions by 2050 if climate change continues unabated, but strong 
economic growth and social development could reduce that number to less 
than two billion, according to a study cited by the IPCC.

"Recent experience in southern Europe demonstrates how rapidly the 
disease may reappear if health services falter," the IPCC said in 2013, 
alluding to a resurgence of cases in Greece in 2008.

In Africa--which saw 228 million cases of malaria in 2018, 94 percent of 
the world's total--the disease vector is moving into new regions, 
notably the high-altitude plains of Ethiopia and Kenya.

For the moment, the signals for communicable tropical diseases "are 
worrying in terms of expanding vectors, not necessarily transmission," 
said Cyril Caminade, an epidemiologist working on climate change at the 
Institute of Infection and Global Health at the University of Liverpool.

"That said, we're only tasting the aperitif of climate change so far," 
he added.
https://phys.org/news/2020-08-climate-expose-epidemics.html



[Arctic reports from Paul Beckwith]
*Arctic Sea Ice Status Update, and a Tragedy in Greenland.*
Aug 14, 2020
Paul Beckwith
We are 4-5 weeks away from our yearly Arctic Sea Ice mid-September 
minimum. I chat on present Arctic sea ice status and loss trends. Gone 
are days of thick, solid, contiguous ice. We now have a regime where sea 
ice is fractured, broken, thin, and easily jostled around by wind, ocean 
currents, and waves. Sensors measuring ice extent, area, and thickness 
struggle to provide accurate info in this new fractured regime.

I also discuss the extremely sad, tragic loss of Swiss glaciologist 
Konrad Steffen in a Greenland crevasse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_HvDTU40IQ
- -
*Fractured, Thin, Broken Arctic Sea Ice Subject to Mercy of Wind, Waves, 
Ocean Currents, and Sun*
Paul Beckwith
The state of Arctic Sea Ice this 2020 summer is that of an ocean of ice 
cubes. The ice is very fractured, essentially broken up into small ice 
chunks and tossed around at the mercy of the wind and waves (and ocean 
currents). The ice loss is occurring on many fronts. There is ongoing 
export from the Arctic Ocean via the Fram Strait, and through the 
Canadian archipelago. Melting from above is still intensive via solar 
radiation which is at about half the summer peak. Extremely warm water 
temperatures at the ice fringes and below the ice are also very significant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5xi7oNBoOg



[Obit NYTimes climate scientist]
*Konrad Steffen, Who Sounded Alarm on Greenland Ice, Dies at 68*
A renowned researcher on rising sea levels, he died after falling into 
the kind of crevasse that warming has created. "It looks like climate 
change actually claimed him as a victim," a colleague said.
By John Schwartz - Aug. 13, 2020
Konrad Steffen, an Arctic scientist whose work showed that climate 
change is melting Greenland’s vast ice sheet with increasing speed, died 
on Saturday in an accident near a research station he created there 30 
years ago. He was 68.

Police investigators said he had fallen into a crevasse in the ice and 
drowned in the deep water below.

A fellow scientist at the station, Jason Box, said the crevasse, or 
large crack, was a known hazard. But he added that high winds and recent 
snowfall had made visibility poor and landmarks harder to spot.

The small group at the site -- christened Swiss Camp by Dr. Steffen -- 
was installing new equipment when he walked off to perform another task. 
Over the next few hours, Dr. Box said, they assumed that Dr. Steffen had 
gone back to his tent for a nap. But when they finished their work he 
was nowhere to be found.
Ryan R. Neely III, a climate scientist at the University of Leeds who 
studied under Dr. Steffen, said that not long ago crevasses in the area 
where Dr. Steffen was working "were unheard-of," but that they had begun 
emerging with the stresses on the ice sheet created by warming.

"In the end," he said, "it looks like climate change actually claimed 
him as a victim."

Dr. Neely called his old mentor ("Koni" to his friends) a "larger than 
life explorer-scientist that you typically only get the chance to read 
about."

Understanding Greenland’s ice sheet is crucial to understanding climate 
change and sea level rise. Current projections say that if the planet 
warms by two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over preindustrial 
times, average sea levels will rise by more than two feet, and 32 
million to 80 million people will be exposed to coastal flooding.

Greenland’s ice sheet, more than a mile thick, is the second largest 
mass of freshwater ice on the planet, after Antarctica. It is already a 
major contributor to the sea level rise.
Richard B. Alley, a professor of geosciences at Pennsylvania State 
University, called Dr. Steffen "a giant in the field," although his 
scientific work was not, he allowed, "sexy." Dr. Steffen focused on such 
tasks as measuring the balance of snowfall and ice melt and maintaining 
weather stations.
He had a gift for translating that science for nonspecialists, including 
journalists, "letting the public and policymakers know what we know," 
Dr. Alley said. Dr. Steffen served on influential bodies like the United 
Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Dr. Steffen built the Greenland outpost in 1990, choosing a spot on the 
ice sheet’s barren reaches at an elevation of about 3800 feet. Over 
time, he developed a network of monitoring stations and made the camp a 
destination for journalists, political leaders and other dignitaries to 
see climate change from the front row. (He crowed over small luxuries 
like his bread maker.)
One visitor, former Vice President Al Gore, posted a tweet on Monday 
stating that "Koni’s renowned work as a glaciologist has been 
instrumental in the world’s deepened understanding of the climate crisis."
Waleed Abdalati, a former graduate student under Dr. Steffen and his 
successor as the current head of the Cooperative Institute for Research 
in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder, 
recalled his first trip to Swiss Camp, where, riding with Dr. Steffen, 
he set down on the ice in a helicopter.

As soon as it was safe to leave the craft, Dr. Steffen leapt out. "He 
opened his arms wide and looked up at the sky with a huge grin on his 
face, and was just drinking in the Arctic air," Dr. Abdalati said. "I 
looked at him and saw a man at home."
He added: "He died in a place he loved, doing what he loved. He died at 
home."

Dr. Steffen returned to the camp almost every year, maintaining it as 
the ice melted beneath; it has had to be rebuilt repeatedly and was 
again in precarious condition this year.
In his book "The Ice at the End of the World," the journalist Jon 
Gertner wrote that by 2017, Dr. Steffen’s measurements suggested that 
the ice had dropped by nearly 40 feet at Swiss Camp. In lectures, he 
would joke that he would sell the station for a dollar.
Conditions were spartan. "Since we all shared the same tent for 
sleeping, it was a challenge for me because of the snoring," said 
Julienne Stroeve, a professor at the University of Manitoba in Canada 
and the first woman to be invited to the camp, in 1993. When she 
returned to the site in 2000, she said, she brought her own tent.

Konrad Steffen was born on Jan. 2, 1952, in Zurich to Ernst and Maria 
(Kurzinski) Steffen. His mother ran an accounting firm; his father was a 
fashion designer.

Growing up, he told Mr. Gertner in 2015, "I wanted to become an actor, 
actually. But my dad said, You get a profession first, then I’ll pay for 
acting school." He studied engineering instead. "I just loved what I 
did," he said.
He received his undergraduate degree in 1977 and a Ph.D. in natural 
sciences in 1984, at E.T.H. Zurich, the Swiss Federal Institute of 
Technology.
Dr. Steffen went to the United States in 1986 as a visiting fellow at 
the Cooperative Institute in Boulder. He rose to director in 2005 and 
served in that post until 2012, when he became director of the Swiss 
Federal Research Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL.

In 1984 he married Regula Werner, who died in 2011. They had two 
children, Anico Tabea and Simon Alexander. In 2017 he married Bianca 
Perren, who survives him, as do his children and a sister, Rose Marie 
Stouder.

Simon Steffen was at the Swiss Camp with his father when the accident 
occurred.
Dr. Steffen told Mr. Gertner that the accumulating risks of climate 
change had not yet sunk in. If people hear that scientists have 
projected that warming will increase by two degrees by the year 2100, he 
said, they might dismiss it, saying "two degrees is not so bad."

But that is only the start, he warned. "Sorry," he said. "It won’t stop 
there. The melting won’t stop there. The curve gets steeper and steeper."

Dr. Box said he wanted to return to the site next year. "We’ve got to 
keep the measurements running," he said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/13/climate/konrad-steffen-dead.html


[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - August 17, 2000 *

At the Democratic National Convention, Vice President Al Gore, the 
Democratic Presidential nominee, declares:
"In my first term [in Congress], a family in Hardeman County, Tennessee 
wrote a letter and told how worried they were about toxic waste that had 
been dumped near their home. I held some of the first hearings on the 
issue. And ever since, I've been there in the fight against the big 
polluters.

"Our children should not have to draw the breath of life in cities awash 
in pollution. When they come in from playing on a hot summer afternoon, 
every child in America, anywhere in America, ought to be able to turn on 
the faucet and get a glass of safe, clean drinking water.

"On the issue of the environment, I've never given up, I've never backed 
down, and I never will.

"And I say it again tonight: we must reverse the silent, rising tide of 
global warming."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EbnKxBNcvI


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