Note: See bottom of link for short video of the moving storm.]
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/10/05/satellite-image-shows-south-carolinas-once-in-a-thousand-years-flood-was-due-to-a-complex-meteorological-event/
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Satellite image shows South Carolina’s ‘Once-in-a-Thousand-Years Flood’ was due to a ‘complex meteorological event’
Posted by Anthony Watts
From the “more facts against the Mann” department. While claims of climate change swirl about from the usual doomsayers, such as this one from Time Magazine:
Climate change is making rare weather events less rare
At least nine people have died in flooding across South Carolina that has left city streets submerged in water, destroyed homes and closed more than 100 bridges. Nikki Haley, the state’s governor, described the disaster as one of such an epic scale http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/10/05/satellite-image-shows-south-carolinas-once-in-a-thousand-years-flood-was-due-to-a-complex-meteorological-event/ that science suggests it would only occur once every 1,000 years.
A flooding disaster of this scale was unlikely to be sure, scientists say, but climate change has transformed once-in-a-lifetime events into periodic occurrences. The flooding may have been hard to predict, but it should no longer come as a surprise.
And everybody’s favorite poster boy for disaster, Michael E. Mann, says at the Washington Post:
This is yet another example, like Sandy, or Irene, of weather on “steroids,” another case where climate change worsened the effects of an already extreme meteorological event. In this case, we’re seeing once-in-a-thousand year flooding along the South Carolina coastline as a consequence of the extreme supply of moisture streaming in from hurricane Joaquin. Joaquin intensified over record warm sea surface temperatures in the tropical Atlantic, which both allowed it to intensify rapidly despite adverse wind shear, and which provided it with unusually high levels of moisture — moisture which is now being turned into record rainfall.
Really? As Bob Tisdale pointed out here a few days ago:
In fact, the sea surfaces along the {hurricane Joaquin] storm track were regularly warmer in the 1940s and 50s than they have been recently.
Clearly, Dr. Mann is all wet.
There is also the claim being tossed about that there’s more water vapor in the air due to global warming. There’s no support for this idea in the satellite data:
The NVAP-M project shows total precipitable water (TPW) data is shown in Figure 4, reproduced from the paper Vonder Haar et al (2012) here. There is no evidence of increasing water vapor to enhance the small warming effect from CO2.
Instead of “steroids”… a more mundane explanation has emerged from satellite imagery: a river of moisture, aka an “atmospheric river” much like we get in California from time to time, which we call the “pineapple express” due to the origin of the river of air near Hawaii. Wikipedia defines it as:
Pineapple Express is a non-technical term for a meteorological phenomenon characterized by a strong and persistent flow of atmospheric moisture and associated with heavy precipitation from the waters adjacent to the Hawaiian Islands and extending to any location along the Pacific coast of North America.
A Pineapple Express is an example of an atmospheric river, which is a more general term for such narrow corridors of enhanced water vapor transport at mid-latitudes around the world.
Early in 1862, extreme storms riding the Pineapple Express battered the west coast for 45 days. In addition to a sudden snow melt, some places received an estimated 8.5 feet of rain, leading to the worst flooding in recorded history of California, Oregon, and Nevada. Known as the Great Flood of 1862, both the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys flooded, and there was extensive flooding and mudslides throughout the region.
Get that?
A “meteorological phenomenon” not a climate phenomenon.
And, the confluence of meteorological events that led to that situation happened well before “climate change” was a glimmer in Jim Hansen’s eye.
Even the normally pro-warming Capital Weather Gang say the flooding in South Carolina is a “very complex meteorological event “.
“At least eight key elements conspired to create a highly efficient, small-scale rain machine centered on South Carolina,”
Some meteorologists have been calling this plume of rain a predecessor rain event, or “PRE,” which sometimes occurs ahead of tropical storms that interact with separate areas of low pressure and lingering surface fronts — exactly what Hurricane Joaquin did. – Jeff Halverson at Capital Weather Gang
Water vapor satellite image on Sunday, showing the non-tropical low pressure vortex and Hurricane Joaquin well-offshore. (NASA, modified by CWG)
The reason things get complicated is that the heavy rains over South Carolina are a confluence of multiple causes, that low to the left, Hurricane Joaquin to the right; the atmospheric river tapped some of its tropical moisture and the low spun it right into South Carolina.
Clearly from this NOAA GOES satellite image of water vapor content, we have a meteorological phenomenon that is a rare confluence of meteorological events that resulted in an atmospheric river:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/10/...od-was-due-to-a-complex-meteorological-event/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/10/05/satellite-image-shows-south-carolinas-once-in-a-thousand-years-flood-was-due-to-a-complex-meteorological-event/
====
Satellite image shows South Carolina’s ‘Once-in-a-Thousand-Years Flood’ was due to a ‘complex meteorological event’
Posted by Anthony Watts
From the “more facts against the Mann” department. While claims of climate change swirl about from the usual doomsayers, such as this one from Time Magazine:
Climate change is making rare weather events less rare
At least nine people have died in flooding across South Carolina that has left city streets submerged in water, destroyed homes and closed more than 100 bridges. Nikki Haley, the state’s governor, described the disaster as one of such an epic scale http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/10/05/satellite-image-shows-south-carolinas-once-in-a-thousand-years-flood-was-due-to-a-complex-meteorological-event/ that science suggests it would only occur once every 1,000 years.
A flooding disaster of this scale was unlikely to be sure, scientists say, but climate change has transformed once-in-a-lifetime events into periodic occurrences. The flooding may have been hard to predict, but it should no longer come as a surprise.
And everybody’s favorite poster boy for disaster, Michael E. Mann, says at the Washington Post:
This is yet another example, like Sandy, or Irene, of weather on “steroids,” another case where climate change worsened the effects of an already extreme meteorological event. In this case, we’re seeing once-in-a-thousand year flooding along the South Carolina coastline as a consequence of the extreme supply of moisture streaming in from hurricane Joaquin. Joaquin intensified over record warm sea surface temperatures in the tropical Atlantic, which both allowed it to intensify rapidly despite adverse wind shear, and which provided it with unusually high levels of moisture — moisture which is now being turned into record rainfall.
Really? As Bob Tisdale pointed out here a few days ago:
In fact, the sea surfaces along the {hurricane Joaquin] storm track were regularly warmer in the 1940s and 50s than they have been recently.
Clearly, Dr. Mann is all wet.
There is also the claim being tossed about that there’s more water vapor in the air due to global warming. There’s no support for this idea in the satellite data:
The NVAP-M project shows total precipitable water (TPW) data is shown in Figure 4, reproduced from the paper Vonder Haar et al (2012) here. There is no evidence of increasing water vapor to enhance the small warming effect from CO2.
Instead of “steroids”… a more mundane explanation has emerged from satellite imagery: a river of moisture, aka an “atmospheric river” much like we get in California from time to time, which we call the “pineapple express” due to the origin of the river of air near Hawaii. Wikipedia defines it as:
Pineapple Express is a non-technical term for a meteorological phenomenon characterized by a strong and persistent flow of atmospheric moisture and associated with heavy precipitation from the waters adjacent to the Hawaiian Islands and extending to any location along the Pacific coast of North America.
A Pineapple Express is an example of an atmospheric river, which is a more general term for such narrow corridors of enhanced water vapor transport at mid-latitudes around the world.
Early in 1862, extreme storms riding the Pineapple Express battered the west coast for 45 days. In addition to a sudden snow melt, some places received an estimated 8.5 feet of rain, leading to the worst flooding in recorded history of California, Oregon, and Nevada. Known as the Great Flood of 1862, both the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys flooded, and there was extensive flooding and mudslides throughout the region.
Get that?
A “meteorological phenomenon” not a climate phenomenon.
And, the confluence of meteorological events that led to that situation happened well before “climate change” was a glimmer in Jim Hansen’s eye.
Even the normally pro-warming Capital Weather Gang say the flooding in South Carolina is a “very complex meteorological event “.
“At least eight key elements conspired to create a highly efficient, small-scale rain machine centered on South Carolina,”
Some meteorologists have been calling this plume of rain a predecessor rain event, or “PRE,” which sometimes occurs ahead of tropical storms that interact with separate areas of low pressure and lingering surface fronts — exactly what Hurricane Joaquin did. – Jeff Halverson at Capital Weather Gang
Water vapor satellite image on Sunday, showing the non-tropical low pressure vortex and Hurricane Joaquin well-offshore. (NASA, modified by CWG)
The reason things get complicated is that the heavy rains over South Carolina are a confluence of multiple causes, that low to the left, Hurricane Joaquin to the right; the atmospheric river tapped some of its tropical moisture and the low spun it right into South Carolina.
Clearly from this NOAA GOES satellite image of water vapor content, we have a meteorological phenomenon that is a rare confluence of meteorological events that resulted in an atmospheric river:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/10/...od-was-due-to-a-complex-meteorological-event/
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