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<i><font size="+1"><b>August 17, 2020</b></font></i><br>
<br>
[Iowa emergency calls for help]<br>
<b>We need coordinated federal disaster aid and we need it now. </b><br>
@IAGovernor we can't wait until Monday.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://twitter.com/lyzl/status/1294697720154918914">https://twitter.com/lyzl/status/1294697720154918914</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://twitter.com/lyzl/status/1294703049202700289">https://twitter.com/lyzl/status/1294703049202700289</a><br>
<p>- - -<br>
</p>
[see it]<br>
<b>Cedar Rapids, Iowa - Derecho Caught on Camera</b><br>
Aug 16, 2020<br>
Iowa Storm Chasing Network<br>
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. <br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfFghcmGNQ4">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfFghcmGNQ4</a><br>
<p>- - -<br>
</p>
[straight from The Conversation]<br>
<b>What is a derecho? An atmospheric scientist explains these rare
but dangerous storm systems</b><br>
Updated August 10, 2020<br>
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.<br>
<br>
The U.S. recently has experienced three rarer events: organized
lines of thunderstorms with widespread damaging winds, known as
derechos.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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...<br>
<br>
<b>Walls of wind</b><br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
<b>Speeding across the landscape</b><br>
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.<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
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.<br>
<br>
<b>Damage comparable to a hurricane</b><br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-a-derecho-an-atmospheric-scientist-explains-these-rare-but-dangerous-storm-systems-140319">https://theconversation.com/what-is-a-derecho-an-atmospheric-scientist-explains-these-rare-but-dangerous-storm-systems-140319</a>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[from Phys Org]<br>
<b>How climate change could expose new epidemics</b><br>
by Amélie Bottollier-Depois - Aug 16, 2020<br>
Long-dormant viruses brought back to life; the resurgence of deadly
and disfiguring smallpox; a dengue or zika "season" in Europe.<br>
These could be disaster movie storylines, but they are also serious
and increasingly plausible scenarios of epidemics unleashed by
global warming, scientists say.<br>
- - <br>
"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.<br>
<br>
"But when you warm the earth, the seed will be able to germinate,"
he added. "That is similar to what happens with a virus."<br>
<br>
Claverie's lab has successfully revived Siberian viruses that are at
least 30,000 years old.<br>
<br>
These reanimated bugs only attack amoebas, but tens of thousands of
years ago there were certainly others that aimed higher up the food
chain.<br>
<br>
"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."<br>
<br>
The number of bacteria and viruses lurking in the permafrost is
incalculable, but the more important question is how dangerous they
are.<br>
<br>
And here, scientists disagree.<br>
<br>
"Anthrax shows that bacteria can be resting in permafrost for
hundreds of years and be revived," said Evengard.<br>
<br>
In 2016, a child in Siberia died from the disease, which had
disappeared from the region at least 75 years earlier.<br>
<br>
Two-million-year-old pathogens<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
But they "have probably been inactivated", Romanovsky concluded in a
study published earlier this year.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
In the unlikely event of a local epidemic, a vaccine is available.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
Dengue fever is the world's most common mosquito-borne virus<br>
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.<br>
<br>
"With the industrial exploitation of the Arctic, all the risk
factors are there--pathogens and the people to carry them," Claverie
said.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
"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.<br>
<br>
"They also have longer breeding periods."<br>
<br>
'Climate change aperitif'<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
"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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
"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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
"That said, we're only tasting the aperitif of climate change so
far," he added.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://phys.org/news/2020-08-climate-expose-epidemics.html">https://phys.org/news/2020-08-climate-expose-epidemics.html</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[Arctic reports from Paul Beckwith]<br>
<b>Arctic Sea Ice Status Update, and a Tragedy in Greenland.</b><br>
Aug 14, 2020<br>
Paul Beckwith<br>
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. <br>
<br>
I also discuss the extremely sad, tragic loss of Swiss glaciologist
Konrad Steffen in a Greenland crevasse.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_HvDTU40IQ">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_HvDTU40IQ</a><br>
- - <br>
<b>Fractured, Thin, Broken Arctic Sea Ice Subject to Mercy of Wind,
Waves, Ocean Currents, and Sun</b><br>
Paul Beckwith<br>
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.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5xi7oNBoOg">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5xi7oNBoOg</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
[Obit NYTimes climate scientist]<br>
<b>Konrad Steffen, Who Sounded Alarm on Greenland Ice, Dies at 68</b><br>
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.<br>
By John Schwartz - Aug. 13, 2020<br>
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.<br>
<br>
Police investigators said he had fallen into a crevasse in the ice
and drowned in the deep water below.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
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.<br>
<br>
"In the end," he said, "it looks like climate change actually
claimed him as a victim."<br>
<br>
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."<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
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.<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.)<br>
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."<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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."<br>
He added: "He died in a place he loved, doing what he loved. He died
at home."<br>
<br>
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.<br>
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.<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
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.<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
Simon Steffen was at the Swiss Camp with his father when the
accident occurred.<br>
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."<br>
<br>
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."<br>
<br>
Dr. Box said he wanted to return to the site next year. "We’ve got
to keep the measurements running," he said.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/13/climate/konrad-steffen-dead.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/13/climate/konrad-steffen-dead.html</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
[Digging back into the internet news archive]<br>
<font size="+1"><b>On this day in the history of global warming -
August 17, 2000 </b></font><br>
<p>At the Democratic National Convention, Vice President Al Gore,
the Democratic Presidential nominee, declares:<br>
"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. <br>
<br>
"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.<br>
<br>
"On the issue of the environment, I've never given up, I've never
backed down, and I never will.<br>
<br>
"And I say it again tonight: we must reverse the silent, rising
tide of global warming."<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EbnKxBNcvI">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EbnKxBNcvI</a> <br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
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