Roger Pielke Sr. Was Right
if you want to see where the energy is look in the oceans. Albatross in the comments points to an analysis by the NOAA Environmental Visualization Lab of the engine room for Super Typhoon Haiyan below the surface of the ocean.
Greg Laden goes through this layer by layer from the surface down
The intensification of Super Typhoon Haiyan is being fueled by "ideal" environmental conditions - namely low wind shear and warm ocean temperatures. Maximum sustained winds are currently at 195 mph, well above the Category 5 classification used for Atlantic and East Pacific hurricanes. Plotted here is the average Tropical Cyclone Heat Potential product for October 28 - November 3, 2013, taken directly from NOAA View. This dataset, developed by NOAA/AOML, shows the total amount of heat energy available for the storm to absorb, not just on the surface, but integrated through the water column. Deeper, warmer pools of water are colored purple, though any region colored from pink to purple has sufficient energy to fuel storm intensification. The dotted line represents the best-track and forecast data as of 16:00 UTC on November 7, 2013.
The IPCC has a comment about storm surge, or at least the base upon which the surge was built. The Western Pacific is one of the places where the sea level has been rising fastest.
Jeff Masters, at Weather Underground compiles the rankings and Haiyan comes first at 195 mph at landfall.
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13 comments:
Argh, Eli should know that from this graphic, certain people will happen to select Stockholm as a fair sample to show sea level is not rising at one of the places with long records.
Somebody did that a few years ago in an OpEd in San Jose newspaper.
Hi Eli,
Thanks. I actually owe a tip of my bunny ears to Doug Bostrom for bringing that image to my attention.
More carrots for Doug please :)
Roger Rabbit junior cannot seem to explain how 70% of the strongest TCs to make landfall have all done so since 1990, 50% since 2000, or that globally the strongest TCs are indeed getting stronger.
Maybe the continents are rapidly expanding and getting in the way of the TCs... ;)
Big Bird, IEHO landfall is a mugs game, about as bad as economic damage which inherently disparages poorer people. How much is a shack in the Bayou worth compared to a house in Southampton?
Hi Eli,
Right you are re looking only at landfalling TCs and "normalized" economic damage being a mugs game.
There are more really cool data to look at NOAA:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/GODAS/
THeir subsurface water anomalies agree largely with those for the JMA that Greg Laden showed.
Greg Laden's rather understated comment:
"One final map. This is the actual temperature (not anomaly) at the 100 meter level. Notice the purple area.
[Pacific_sst_100m_TEMP inserted here]
At 100 meters depth, the sea was warm enough to form a typhoon. That, dear reader, is extreme. "
deserves attention drawn to it - in case anyone is still wondering where the the "hiatus" is, it's here.
And it's not a hiatus. It's a gathering of breath...
Bernard J.
The extension of maximum storm intensity Greg proposes has long been embodied in the Modified Beaufort Scale used by cruising sailors the world over:
Force 0 Smoke rises vertically , sea a mirror for miles around. Hand helmsman full bottle of Demerara rum
Force 1 Sails slack, sea surface barely undulates
Give helmsman second bottle of Barbados rum
Force 2 Sails begin to fill, ripples appear astern
Offer helmsman a lime to put in second bottle of rum.
Force 3 Bow wave appears, slack lines tighten
Place cup of ice at helmsman’s disposal
Force 4 Whitecaps appear, winch handle needed to trim sail
Start adding cola to helmsman’s rum.
Force 5 Whitecaps begin to shed spray and salt water ruins helmsman’s Cuba Libre
Force 6 Waves lengthen, helmsman requests beer
Force 7 Helmsman relieved after mistaking streaks of blowing foam for head on navigator’s beer
Force 8 Waves heighten and new helmsman switches to shandy
Force 9 Overhanging crests appear on waves, new helmsman switches to ice tea
Force 10 Breaking waves interfere with steering. Helmsman requests black coffee
Force 11 Violently agitated sea surface disappears beneath
blowing foam, hand helmsman irish coffee after he agrees to set storm trysail
Force 12 . Hurricane. Bow invisible from stern. Give all hands bottles of Demerara rum.
Force 13 Existential Threat: St. Elmo’s fire ignites emergency cask of grog stored in bilge.
Thanks for the chuckle-inducing headline, Eli!
Re your own comment, note than the bunnies' perception of reality is directly linked to the experience of weather and/or media 'events' - note in particular acceptance of AGW increasing in 'Red' states following recent record temperatures and drought.
The visible signifies more than the invisible, even when it is coincidental.
You can also see the 'hotspot' on the monthly average SSTA charts..
Meanwhile, back on earth, 2013 may set a new record low Accumulated Cyclone Energy total.
Eunice
Eunice, Dear, thank you so much for the weather report.
Eunice's BS detector is malfunctioning.
Eunice said:"Meanwhile, back on earth, 2013 may set a new record low Accumulated Cyclone Energy total."
That page she links says:"The minimum and maximum values of ACE per year are respectively 416.2 and 1145.0 "
Ryan Maue's web page:"519.4220"
Oops!
Southern hemisphere results not in much, because season is Oct - June. I wonder if Eunice understands why.
Rib Smokin' Bunny
Good eye smoker - 2013 may not be a record low ACE ( according to Maue ) - just below average.
Eu
Say, Eli, I came across this bit on satellite validation (posted it to a thread at RC) and have wondered whether it's useful and being used:
-----
http://www.remss.com/measurements/upper-air-temperature
-----excerpt-----
Why study the uncertainty?
Without realistic uncertainty estimates we are not doing science!
... Here we describe a comprehensive analysis of the uncertainty in the RSS MSU/AMSU products. The results can be used to evaluate the estimated uncertainty on all relevant temporal and spatial scales.
Issues
Our MSU/AMSU products use data from 14 different satellites. The data need to be intercalibrated before being merged together. This is a complex process …
…
… Available Uncertainty Information and Recommendations
We have constructed a 100 realization uncertainty ensemble for each of the MSU/AMSU products we produce…. available in netCDF, with exactly the same form as the baseline temperature data. We recommend that researchers evalutate the uncertainty in any results they obtain using our MSU/AMSU data by re-running their analysis using each member of the uncertainty ensemble, and then evaluating the spread in the distribution of results obtained...."
Below average for what period?
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