[TheClimate.Vote] October 12, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*October 12, 2020*/

[Papal Ted Talking]
*Pope in TED talk: Earth cannot be squeezed 'like an orange'*
October 10, 2020
VATICAN CITY (AP) -- Pope Francis on Saturday issued an urgent call to 
action to defend the planet and help the poor in his second TED talk.

The pontiff, known for his affinity for social media and technology, 
said in a videotaped message to a TED conference on climate change that 
the coronavirus pandemic had put a focus on the social-environmental 
challenge facing the globe.

"Science tells us, every day with more precision, that it is necessary 
to act with urgency -- I am not exaggerating, science tell us this -- if 
we want to have the hope of avoiding radical changes in the climate and 
catastrophes," Francis said, looking directly in the camera as he looked 
up from his prepared remarks.
He set as a goal for the next decade constructing a world capable of 
responding to current generations, "without compromising the 
possibilities of the future generations." He framed his call with 
references to his 2015 encyclical on climate change, "Laudato Si," (Be 
Praised) and the more recent "Fratelli tutti" (Brothers All) on the 
failure of market capitalism.

Francis laid out three paths of action: promoting education about the 
environment "based on scientific data and an ethical approach," assuring 
drinking water and an adequate food supply through sustainable 
agriculture and promoting the transformation from fossil fuels to clean 
energy sources.

"We have just a few years -- scientists calculate roughly fewer than 30 
-- to drastically reduce the emissions of gas and the greenhouse effect 
in the atmosphere," the pope said, adding that the transition needs to 
take into account the impact on the poor, local populations and those 
who work in the energy sector.

He called on investors to exclude companies that do not taking into 
account the environment, as have many faith-based organizations already 
have.

"In fact, the earth must be taken care of, cultivated and protected; we 
cannot continue to squeeze it like an orange. And we can say this, 
taking care of the Earth is a human right," Francis said.

The six-hour Countdown Global Launch is TED's first-ever free 
conference, featuring as hosts such figures as Jane Fonda, Don Cheadle 
and Al Gore, with speakers including Prince William of Britain and 
Ursula von der Leyen, a leading European Union official.
https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-science-climate-climate-change-environment-496543b1d18d49f072520bdc35011a54 


- -

[Pope speaking with transcript]
*His Holiness Pope Francis | Our moral imperative to act on climate 
change -- and 3 steps we can take*

The global climate crisis will require us to transform the way we act, 
says His Holiness Pope Francis. Delivering a visionary TED Talk from 
Vatican City, the spiritual leader proposes three courses of action to 
address the world's growing environmental problems and economic 
inequalities, illustrating how all of us can work together, across 
faiths and societies, to protect the Earth and promote the dignity of 
everyone. "The future is built today," he says. "And it is not built in 
isolation, but rather in community and in harmony."

A single individual is enough for hope to exist, and that individual can 
be you, says His Holiness Pope Francis in this searing TED Talk 
delivered directly from Vatican City. In a hopeful message to people of 
all faiths, to those who have power as well as those who don't, the 
spiritual leader provides illuminating commentary on the world as we 
currently find it and calls for equality, solidarity and tenderness to 
prevail. "Let us help each other, all together, to remember that the 
'other' is not a statistic, or a number," he says. "We all need each other."

https://www.ted.com/talks/his_holiness_pope_francis_why_the_only_future_worth_building_includes_everyone/transcript?language=en



[NYTimes]
*Florida Sees Signals of a Climate-Driven Housing Crisis*
Home sales in areas most vulnerable to sea-level rise began falling 
around 2013, researchers found. Now, prices are following a similar 
downward path.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/12/climate/home-sales-florida.html



[educated conjecture from Yale Climate Connections]
*Multiple extreme climate events can combine to produce catastrophic 
damages*
Concurrent extreme climate events can amount to a challenging 'two-fer' 
or even a 'three-fer' in terms of adverse impacts.
By Gary Yohe, Henry Jacoby, and Richard Richels | October 9, 2020

Wildfires in California, Oregon, and Washington are this year's poster 
children for extreme natural disasters. Hardly a day passed in August 
and September without disturbing pictures of heart-wrenching damages and 
loss of life. Even worse, this summer's hurricanes became major flooding 
events as the storms themselves stalled over populated areas along the 
Gulf coast.

That does not mean, of course, that all see climate change as playing a 
significant role in determining the strength, frequency, or behavior of 
either of these climate risks.
What it does mean is that the scientific community must explain more 
clearly why the recent spate of extraordinary natural disasters can be 
understood only with reference both to impacts of climate change as we 
have come to know them, and now something more complex: concurrent 
impacts amplifying themselves in real time
Figure 2 of our September 18th essay in this series showed how global 
warming can push aspects of the environment toward greater extremes and 
higher damages.
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/0920_Fig2_increase_in_average.png
More specifically, it teaches us how trends that increase damages can, 
over time, make high-damage futures more likely while reducing the 
chances of more benign possibilities.

Recent events have taught us more than that, though. They have 
demonstrated a troubling propensity for several climate change impacts 
to show up at the same place at the same time, feeding on each other, 
combining forces and leading to still greater extremes. To be clear, 
they do not necessarily arrive at the same time and/or leave at the same 
time; but they do spend a significant amount of time together 
compounding their extreme impacts on a specific location.

The California fires are a perfect example of this phenomenon. Only 
three of the state's largest 20 fires (in terms of acres burned) had 
burned prior to 2000, but nine of the biggest 10 have occurred since 
2012. That is, extremes are becoming more likely. And they are growing 
larger too. In 2017, 9,270 fires burned a record 1.5 million acres. The 
Mendocino Complex fire the next year became the "largest wildfire in 
California history." And soon came 2020.

A new largest fire in California history, the Complex fire, got started 
in August 2020. Soon came the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th largest in history. 
By October 3, these five conflagrations had combined with nearly 8,000 
other more "ordinary" fires to kill 31 people and burn more than 
four-million acres, and, on that day, all five of those fires were still 
burning.

Why is this happening? Wildfire is a natural part of the forest 
environment. But by the early 1950s, these fires were causing sufficient 
damage with sufficient frequency to provoke efforts to reduce what was 
seen as the main cause, human behavior. "Only you can prevent forest 
fires" was the mantra of the times.

Only a few decades later, however, changes in the climate had begun to 
contribute to increased fire risk. More intense droughts played a role 
in some years, as did extra strong heat waves. Also, milder winter 
temperatures were fostering the expansion of a major forest pest, the 
Pine Bark Beetle, which was killing large areas of forest and thereby 
further increasing the supply of ready fuel.

Of course, part of the increased fire risk is still the result of human 
actions. Damage to life and property has increased markedly as more 
people have moved into vulnerable forested areas, and more people in the 
woods means more inadvertent blazes. Changes in forest management 
contributed, too, because fire suppression policies on federal land 
reduced the brush-clearing value of deliberately set control blazes 
(sometimes known as "good fires").

But these non-climate causes of increased fire danger have not increased 
so much over the decades to account for the devastation of the last few 
years. There is more to explain, and it comes in understanding how, in 
responding to rising global temperatures, nature can produce "2-fer" or 
even "3-fer" combinations of influences on local environmental conditions.

The western U.S. is, unfortunately, a clear example of this effect. Many 
of the fires were caused by literally thousands of dry lightning 
strikes. These strikes aren't the result solely of climate change, but 
it is clear that they fed into a witches' brew of conditions that are 
all linked to global warming:

    1. the lightning strikes and other points of ignition in the midst
    of a record drought;
    2. record heat for days on end in July and August;
    3. infestations of bark beetles producing large stands of dead
    trees; and
    4. decades of gradual warming extending the western fire season by
    some 75 days.

Taken together, these contemporaneous impacts make it clear that the 
issue is not just what sparks the fires. The larger problem is the 
context in which they start, and how quickly they spread once started, 
especially when several intensifying influences are also present.
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/1020_4_day_precip_events.png
Figure 1. Heavy precipitation events in the contiguous United States. 
Averaged over four days and over 50,000 square kilometers through 2019. 
Hurricane Harvey produced the most precipitation by far, while Florence 
ranked seventh (and 2nd among tropical cyclones). Other categories 
include fronts associated with an extratropical cyclone (FRT), 
extratropical cyclones not colocated with fronts (ETC), fronts with an 
associated atmospheric river (AR FRT), and subtropical lows (STL). 
(Source: North Carolina Institute for Climate Studies)
A similar story can also be told about damages from tropical storms. As 
shown in Figure 1, hurricanes Harvey and Florence dropped historic 
amounts of rain after making landfall and then stalling over Houston and 
New Orleans, respectively. This summer, hurricanes Laura and Beta 
followed suit and dumped extreme rainfall totals and caused substantial 
damage from storm surge.

Here is another example of a climate change induced compound effect - a 
"3-fer":

    1. Near record-warm ocean temperatures allowed many tropical
    depressions and non-tropical low pressure systems to develop into
    dangerous hurricanes;
    2. A decrease in the summer temperature difference between the
    Arctic and the tropics that is strongly suspected to have weakened
    atmospheric steering currents and created more slowly moving storms.
    3. Sea-level rise, one of the most obvious results of decades of
    rising temperatures, compounded risks posed by storm surge.

The expanding consequences of compound fire and flood events are also 
getting harder to control and survive. For example, many of the worst 
fires and hurricanes have exploded so quickly and spread so erratically 
that human evacuations have become "moment's notice" emergencies. Just 
as with residents of the southeastern and Gulf coasts, residents from 
California and Oregon must retreat from harm's way as quickly as 
possible, and hope that conditions will soon change back to something 
more benign.

Over time, the weather eventually becomes more favorable. Unfortunately, 
the climate is not going to change back to what used to be, certainly 
not on a human time scale. So, when they have a chance, perhaps 
vulnerable residents should just try to move as far from harm's way as 
possible.

That might be a good idea for the short-run, but lest we forget: None of 
us can move to a different planet.

Gary Yohe is the Huffington Foundation Professor of Economics and 
Environmental Studies, Emeritus, at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. 
He served as convening lead author for multiple chapters and the 
Synthesis Report for the IPCC from 1990 through 2014 and was vice-chair 
of the Third U.S. National Climate Assessment.

Henry Jacoby is the William F. Pounds Professor of Management, Emeritus, 
in the MIT Sloan School of Management and former co-director of the MIT 
Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, which is 
focused on the integration of the natural and social sciences and policy 
analysis in application to the threat of global climate.

Richard Richels directed climate change research at the Electric Power 
Research Institute (EPRI). He served as lead author for multiple 
chapters of the IPCC in the areas of mitigation, impacts and adaptation 
from 1992 through 2014. He also served on the National Assessment 
Synthesis Team for the first U.S. National Climate Assessment.
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/10/multiple-extreme-climate-events-can-combine-to-produce-catastrophic-damages/



[wildfires in the Levant]
*Wildfires erupt in Mount Lebanon area after heatwave hits country - video*
Firefighters in Lebanon have been battling fierce wildfires across the 
Mount Lebanon area and along the country's border with Israel. The 
Lebanese Civil Defense said rising temperatures and high wind speeds 
were contributing to the spread of the fires.
https://youtu.be/LfLcdTEInLk
https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2020/oct/10/wildfires-erupt-in-mount-lebanon-area-after-heatwave-hits-country-video



[drought to deluge and back]
OCTOBER 9, 2020
*Droughts are threatening global wetlands*
by University of Adelaide

University of Adelaide scientists have shown how droughts are 
threatening the health of wetlands globally.

Published in the journal Earth-Science Reviews, the scientists highlight 
the many physical and chemical changes occurring during droughts that 
lead to severe, and sometimes irreversible, drying of wetland soils.

"Wetlands around the world are incredibly important for maintaining our 
planet's biodiversity and they store vast amounts of carbon that can 
help fight climate change," says project leader Associate Professor Luke 
Mosley, from the University's Environment Institute and School of 
Biological Sciences. Globally, wetlands cover an area greater than 12.1 
million square kilometers and deliver at least A$37.8 trillion (Int$27 
trillion) in benefits per year, such as for flood mitigation, food 
production, water quality improvement and carbon storage."

Wetlands can suffer "water droughts" both from the effects of a drier 
climate, and also when excessive water is extracted or diverted that 
would normally flow into them.

The review paper describes how drought often leads to severe cracking 
and compaction, acidification, loss of organic matter, and enhanced 
greenhouse gas (for example methane) emissions. In some cases droughts 
can lead to very long-term (>10 years) and irreversible soil changes, 
with major impacts on water quality when soils are rewet after the 
drought ends.
"We have seen many examples of how drought in the Murray-Darling Basin 
has caused major issues including acidification of soil and water due to 
acid sulfate soils exposure in wetlands. This review highlights 
substantial gaps in our global understanding of the effects of drought 
on wet soils and how they will respond to increasing drought," says 
Associate Professor Mosley, who is also Deputy Director of the Acid 
Sulfate Soils Center.

Effects can be different in different soil types and different regions 
of the world. The spatial distribution of drought studies shows there 
has been limited assessment in a large number of regions, including 
south and central America, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Oceania. 
Many of these regions are predicted to be vulnerable to drought impacts 
due to climate change.
https://scx1.b-cdn.net/csz/news/800/2020/5f802d3c9c765.jpg
Dried and cracked soils in the Lower Lakes region of South Australia 
during the Millennium Drought. Credit: University of Adelaide
Lead author Dr. Erinne Stirling, from Zhejiang University (China) and 
the University of Adelaide, says one of the most pressing findings from 
this review is that there are huge swaths of the world where there is no 
readily available published research on drought-affected wet soils.

And secondly, she says, there is effectively no applied research into 
water management outcomes for wetlands and wetland soils.

"At a global level, wet soils are highly vulnerable to the effects of 
climate change and need to be protected given the very high 
environmental and socio-economic values they support. It is our sincere 
hope that the information in this review contributes to protecting these 
valuable ecosystems," says Dr. Stirling.
https://phys.org/news/2020-10-droughts-threatening-global-wetlands.html


[Alarmed, Concerned, Cautious, Disengaged, Doubtful, Dismissive]
*Global Warming's Six Americas*
Our prior research has found that Americans can be categorized into six 
distinct groups--Global Warming's Six Americas--based on their beliefs 
and attitudes about climate change.

The Alarmed are the most engaged, are very worried about climate change, 
and strongly support actions to address it. The Concerned think global 
warming is a significant threat, but prioritize it less and are less 
motivated to take action. The Cautious are aware of the warming but are 
uncertain about its causes and are not worried about it. The Disengaged 
are largely unaware of global warming, while the Doubtful doubt it is 
happening or human-caused and perceive it as a low risk. The Dismissive 
do not believe the planet is warming or that it is human-caused. They 
oppose most climate policies.
-
https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/about/projects/global-warmings-six-americas/
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*Want to know which of the Six Americas you are in?
Take the short Six Americas Quiz!*
http://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/sassy/
The Alarmed are fully convinced of the reality and seriousness of 
climate change and are already taking individual, consumer, and 
political action to address it. The Concerned are also convinced that 
global warming is happening and a serious problem, but have not yet 
engaged the issue personally.
Three other Americas - the Cautious, the Disengaged, and the Doubtful - 
represent different stages of understanding and acceptance of the 
problem, and none are actively involved. The final America - the 
Dismissive are very sure it is not happening and are actively involved 
as opponents of a national effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The six audiences were first identified using a large nationally 
representative survey of American adults conducted in the fall of 2008. 
The survey questionnaire included extensive, in-depth measures of the 
public's climate change beliefs, attitudes, risk perceptions, 
motivations, values, policy preferences, behaviors, and underlying 
barriers to action. The Six Americas are distinguishable on all these 
dimensions, and display very different levels of engagement with the issue.
The Six Americas Over Time
There has been a significant change in the distribution of the Six 
Americas over the past five years. The Alarmed segment has more than 
doubled in size (from 11% to 26% of the U.S. adult population) between 
2015 and 2020, while the Dismissive segment has decreased by nearly half 
(from 12% to 7%). Overall, Americans are becoming more worried about 
global warming, more engaged with the issue, and more supportive of 
climate solutions.

A look back at how the Six Americas have changed over the past decade 
(see animation) shows that the largest group, the Concerned, grew 
quickly from 2013 to 2015, but has declined slightly since then. The 
Alarmed, in contrast, experienced more rapid growth during the past five 
years than any of the other groups. Meanwhile, the Cautious, Doubtful, 
and Dismissive have been shrinking in recent years...
llhttp://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/sassy/
- - -
Animated GIF
http://climatecommunication.yale.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/sa_2020_NewColor_v2.gif



[Hurricane data]
*Delta is record-setting 10th named storm to make U.S. landfall in a season*
Torrential rains and hurricane-force gusts mark fourth named storm to 
make Louisiana landfall this season. Quiet Atlantic period ahead.By Jeff 
Masters, Ph.D. | Saturday, October 10, 2020...
- -
The top three models for predicting tropical cyclone genesis show 
nothing popping up over the next week, and the Madden Julian Oscillation 
(MJO) - a pattern of increased thunderstorm activity near the equator 
that moves around the globe in 30 to 60 days - is weak, and is not 
expected to be in a phase that will enhance Atlantic activity during the 
coming week. However, with ocean temperatures still much above average 
in the Caribbean and in waters surrounding Florida and the Bahamas 
(Figure 4), and in a season with a track record for spitting out record 
numbers of named storms, at least one or more likely will form in 
October. The next name on the Atlantic list of storms is Epsilon.

If the tropics remain quiet, as expected, our next post in this series 
will be on Wednesday, October 14.
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/10/delta-is-record-setting-10th-named-storm-to-make-u-s-landfall-in-a-season/



[New position for Jeff Masters]
*Masters is now at Yale Climate Connections*
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/section/eye-on-the-storm/
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/10/delta-is-record-setting-10th-named-storm-to-make-u-s-landfall-in-a-season/ 


- -

[Jeff Masters "retires". Now charts a category 7 hurricane]
*Hurricane Dorian Was Worthy of a Category 6 Rating*
The Category-1-to-5 Saffir-Simpson scale for rating hurricanes is inadequate

By Jeff Masters on October 3, 2019 (Scientific American Opinion)
Category 5 Atlantic hurricanes are rare. Only 7% of the 243 hurricanes 
observed since accurate satellite measurements began in 1983 have 
reached that catastrophic intensity. And it is truly exceptional to see 
a category 5 hurricane as strong as Hurricane Dorian, which powered 
ashore on Great Abaco Island in The Bahamas on September 1, 2019, with 
sustained winds of 185 mph and gusts up to 220 mph. Winds of this 
strength would make Dorian worthy of a category 6 rating, if it existed. 
(For those of you unfamiliar with me, know that there is already a 
Category 6--it's the name of a blog I co-author with Bob Henson over at 
Weather Underground, specializing in daily updates of global tropical 
cyclone activity).

The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, which is used to rank hurricane 
winds on a scale of one to five, stops at category 5: sustained 1-minute 
average wind speeds of at least 157 mph (70 m/s). If we were to add a 
category 6 to the scale, we must consider that the scale is not quite 
linear. Winds for a category 2 hurricane span a range of just 15 mph, 
for example, but winds for a category 4 storm span a range of 27 mph. 
Regardless of this non-linearity, a one-category increase in intensity 
on the scale results in approximately four times more wind damage, 
according to the National Hurricane Center.

If we graph the scale (Figure 1 below), it is apparent that a category 6 
should probably start at winds of 180 - 185 mph. A category 7 hurricane 
would have winds of at least 210 - 215 mph. By this logic, Hurricane 
Dorian would rate as a category 6 hurricane. Only one hurricane in world 
history would rank as a category 7: Hurricane Patricia of 2015, which 
peaked with 215-mph sustained winds off the Pacific coast of Mexico.
https://static.scientificamerican.com/blogs/assets/Image/DORIAN6-1.png
If one uses 185-mph winds as the threshold for category 6, only five 
Atlantic hurricanes in recorded history would qualify. If we lower the 
threshold to 180 mph, there are a total of eight that would rate as a 
category 6:

    - 190 mph: Allen 1980
    - 185 mph: Dorian 2019, Labor Day 1935, Gilbert 1988, Wilma 2005
    - 180 mph: Mitch 1998, Rita 2005, Irma 2017

It is truly rare for a hurricane of this hypothetical category 6 
intensity to make landfall. Dorian's 185-mph winds over Great Abaco and 
Grand Bahama islands tied it with the 1935 Labor Day hurricane in the 
Florida Keys as the strongest landfalling Atlantic hurricane on record. 
Expanding the definition of category 6 to include winds of 180 mph or 
higher would add just one additional Atlantic landfalling category 6 
hurricane: Hurricane Irma of 2017, which made landfall on Barbuda, St. 
Martin, and the British Virgin Islands with maximum sustained winds of 
180 mph.

Dorian caused catastrophic damage, thanks in great part to its very slow 
motion of less than 5 mph over The Bahamas for the 27 hours it spent at 
category 5 strength. This slow motion and extreme intensity allowed 
Dorian to subject The Bahamas to the most fierce and prolonged battering 
by an Atlantic hurricane of any populated place in recorded history. 
Preliminary damage estimates in The Bahamas are $7 billion--over 50% of 
their $12 billion GDP. The death toll as of this writing is 56, with 
approximately 600 people still missing.

SHOULD THE SAFFIR-SIMPSON SCALE BE EXPANDED TO INCLUDE A CATEGORY 6?
Unfortunately, global warming is making ultra-intense hurricanes like 
Dorian more likely to occur (a subject I will take up in a future post). 
Thus, it makes sense from a climate change communication point of view 
to expand the Saffir-Simpson scale to include a category 6--and category 
7--to call attention to this new breed of ultra-intense catastrophic 
hurricanes that will likely grow increasingly common in the coming 
decades. Since there would be so few of these category 6 and 7 
hurricanes, though, it would be difficult to do any kind of meaningful 
statistical study of how they might be changing with the changing climate.

Any move to expand the Saffir-Simpson scale would have to come from the 
National Hurricane Center (NHC), though, and there is little support for 
such a move from the experts there. From a public safety/warning 
standpoint, NHC experts I've heard from believe that including a 
category 6 would do little good, since a category 5 hurricane is already 
considered catastrophic. In the continental U.S., for example, there 
have only ever been four category 5 hurricanes to make landfall (in 
1935, 1969, 1992, and 2018). News that a category 6 storm was heading 
towards them would probably not motivate people to take action to 
protect lives and property any more than if a category 5 storm was coming.

SHOULD THE SAFFIR-SIMPSON SCALE BE REPLACED?
Some hurricane experts believe that the Saffir-Simpson scale should be 
scrapped entirely. The original scale, introduced in 1971, included both 
wind speeds and typical storm surge for each category. Over time, it 
became apparent that the magnitude of the storm surge threat often did 
not correlate well with a hurricane's Saffir-Simpson category. For this 
reason, NHC removed the storm surge values in 2010, resulting in a 
wind-only scale.

A big problem remains: most of the loss of life in hurricanes is from 
water--storm surge and freshwater flooding--not from wind. We need to 
come up with a system that alerts people in a concise way of the 
magnitude of the threat to life and property due to winds, storm surge, 
and inland flooding, and not just the magnitude of the winds.

With this in mind, NHC made storm surge watches and warnings operational 
during the 2017 hurricane season. However, these storm surge advisories 
do not give quantitative measures of storm surge or its potential 
damage. A better solution might be the introduction of a storm surge 
scale. One such scale, named the Kuykendall scale or K scale, was 
proposed in 2018 by Penn State scientists Amanda Walker and David 
Titley. The logarithmic basis of the scale, which runs from zero to ten, 
makes communication of the scale's meaning straightforward: every 
integer increase in K leads to a tenfold increase in per capita damage 
losses. RMS.com has another way to quantify storm surge damage 
potential, using Integrated Kinetic Energy (IKE), that is also promising.

But this still leaves us without a good way to communicate the inland 
flooding threat from a slow-moving hurricane that dumps catastrophic 
amounts of rainfall. Unfortunately, this threat is growing, since the 
forward speed of tropical cyclones (which includes all hurricanes, 
tropical storms, and tropical depressions) has decreased globally by 
about 10% since 1949, according to a 2018 paper in the journal Nature by 
NOAA hurricane scientist Dr. Jim Kossin. As a result of their slower 
forward motion, tropical cyclones are now more likely to drop heavier 
rains, increasing their flood risk. Heavy rains are also increasing due 
to the extra amount of moisture that evaporates into the air due to 
global warming. category 4 Hurricane Harvey in Texas/Louisiana in 2017 
($128 billion in damage) and category 1 Hurricane Florence in the 
Carolinas in 2018 ($24 billion in damage) were both examples of 
slow-moving storms whose fresh-water flood risk was not adequately 
represented by their Saffir-Simpson rating. So, perhaps a new scale for 
inland flood risk is needed.

Local National Weather Service offices already provide detailed, 
color-coded maps that show the relative threat levels from four 
different hurricane hazards: winds, storm surge, flooding rains, and 
tornadoes. But having three separate scales for the risk from wind, 
storm surge, and rainfall might be too complicated for many people to 
digest. Some nations in Europe have a simple system of yellow, orange 
and red alerts that convey the magnitude of storm threat; perhaps that 
should be used for hurricanes. That may be too simple, but we need 
something different than the current system.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jeff Masters worked as a hurricane scientist with the NOAA Hurricane 
Hunters from 1986-1990. After a near-fatal flight into category 5 
Hurricane Hugo, he left the Hurricane Hunters to pursue a safer 
passion--a 1997 Ph.D. in air pollution meteorology from the University 
of Michigan. In 1995, he co-founded the Weather Underground, and served 
as its chief meteorologist until the company was sold to the Weather 
Company in 2012. Since 2005, his Wunderblog (now called Category 6) 
/[has just been shutdown by IBM] /has been one of the Internet's most 
popular sources of extreme weather and climate change information, and 
he is one of the most widely quoted experts in the field. He can be 
reached at weatherman.masters at gmail.com.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/eye-of-the-storm/hurricane-dorian-was-worthy-of-a-category-6-rating/
- -
[Changes to weather information sources]
*Weather Underground co-founder Jeff Masters leaving company*
By Kimberly Miller
Updated Oct 4, 2019

*Jeff Masters is leaving Weather Underground, the company he co-founded 
nearly a quarter century ago.*

Jeff Masters, a co-founder of the popular Weather Underground 
forecasting operation and website, is leaving the company to write for 
Scientific American.

Masters planted the seeds for Weather Underground as a doctoral 
candidate in meteorology at the University of Michigan.

It became an incorporated company in 1995 and has since gained a 
worldwide following including devoted weather geeks who tie their 
backyard weather stations to the site, increasing the weather data 
available to the public.

Masters announced his departure this week on his Category 6 blog with 
Weather Underground. He said he will continue to write for the blog 
until the end of the month.
"This year's hurricane season will be my final one with 
wunderground.com.," Masters wrote. "After co-founding the company 24 
years ago and writing over 3000 blog posts during a 14-year writing 
career, I am parting ways with Weather Underground. At the end of 
October I will be leaving IBM, which has owned wunderground.com since 2016."

Masters said he will miss the community he helped create, but leaving is 
also a "relief" as writing daily about the weather and climate change is 
a "burn-out job - particularly during the heat of an intense hurricane 
season."

Bob Henson, a meteorologist and writer for Weather Underground, will 
continue writing for the Category 6 blog.
"Working with Jeff on Category 6 over the last five years has been one 
of the great privileges and joys of my career," Henson said in a comment 
on the blog. "I can't imagine a greater collaborator than Jeff, and I've 
learned a phenomenal amount about hurricanes from him (as we all have)."

Masters raised important questions during the recent spat of busy 
hurricane seasons, including whether there should be a Category 6 
hurricane after 2015′s Hurricane Patricia reached wind speeds of 214 
mph. He revisits the idea in an Oct. 3 column for Scientific American...
In addition to writing for Scientific American, Masters said he would 
like to write a fiction novel called "Eye of the Superstorm."

Masters flew as a hurricane hunter flight meteorologist for NOAA's 
Aircraft Operations Center for several years, but left in 1990 after 
nearly getting killed flying into Hurricane Hugo.

"Jeff is one of the pioneers of the weather blog format. His writings 
have informed a generation of scientists, students, and citizens," said 
Marshall Shepherd, a University of Georgia atmospheric sciences 
professor and former president of the American Meteorological Society. 
"His voice is critical so I am pleased that he will be around and I know 
my colleague Bob Henson, an outstanding meteorologist and writer in his 
own right, will carry the Weather Underground brand forward."

Kmiller at pbpost.com
@Kmillerweather



[ethical plea]
Opinion
*Three Rockefellers Say Banks Must Stop Financing Fossil Fuels*
JPMorgan Chase and other big banks should use their lending power to 
force cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
By Daniel Growald, Peter Gill Case and Valerie Rockefeller
The writers are fifth-generation members of the Rockefeller family.
- -
On Tuesday, JPMorgan Chase made an announcement that appeared to align 
its activities with the Paris Climate Agreement without actually 
committing to curtail its lending activities to the fossil fuel sector, 
its major lever for change.

The bank's plan to "establish intermediate emission targets for 2030" in 
its loan portfolio is a welcome gesture, and we look forward to further 
details promised by the bank in the spring. Those targets must include 
specific plans to end support for the expansion of fossil fuel 
infrastructure and set a timeline for phasing out support of companies 
that lack adequate plans to move away from fossil fuels.

Otherwise, Tuesday's announcement amounts only to deftly passing the 
buck to the companies in the bank's loan book...
- -
Our grandfather and great-uncle David Rockefeller spent 35 years at 
Chase Manhattan Bank -- a predecessor of JPMorgan Chase -- where he was 
chairman, chief executive officer and the bank's largest single 
shareholder. He lived his life with a belief that business success and 
social responsibility go hand in hand. Like many in our generation 
today, we believe that service to humanity is the bedrock of profit.

Fossil fuels have been essential to the development of the modern world 
and its widespread, though unequal, prosperity. The next generation of 
innovators, working in low- and zero-carbon technologies and in high 
finance, will prosper from the greatest business and technological 
revolution in history.

Under the leadership of its current chairman and chief executive, Jamie 
Dimon, JPMorgan Chase became the United States' most profitable bank. 
Yet short-term profitability alone is not equal to a transformational 
legacy. It is Mr. Dimon's response to fossil fuels and the climate 
emergency that will determine his lasting reputation. Unlike businessmen 
of 100 years ago, leaders today cannot claim they didn't know.

Daniel Growald, Peter Gill Case and Valerie Rockefeller are co-founders 
and co-chairs of BankFWD.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/11/opinion/banks-climate-change-rockefeller.html



[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - October 12, 2004 *

In a sentence that speaks volumes, Wall Street Journal columnist Brendan 
Miniter, discussing the October 8 debate between President Bush and 
Democratic opponent John Kerry, observes:

"On the one issue in the debate in which Democrats hold the natural 
advantage, the environment, Mr. Kerry came out on top."

http://web.archive.org/web/20041120230653/http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/bminiter/?id=110005744


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