Daily Archives: March 7, 2011

USC California superstorm would be costliest US disaster

A hurricane-like superstorm expected to hit California once every 200 years would cause devastation to the state’s businesses unheard of even in the Great Recession, a USC economist warns.

Researchers estimate the total property damage and business interruption costs of the massive rainstorm would be nearly $1 trillion. (USC)

Note that such storms are neither implausible nor unprecedented. In fact you can see a great example of tropical moisture transport to higher latitudes in a series of 93 satellite images selected by Warwick Hughes here (or you can be kind to Warwick’s bandwidth and download the series with player here). There is no suggestion these are other than common or garden weather events that make up this planet’s climate – if conditions are right then whoever happens to be on the receiving end of such an event can expect to get really wet. It’s a pretty nifty of example of an “atmospheric river” though.

Written by William M. Gray and Barry Schwartz

We have analyzed a wide variety of albedo and IR differences which are associated with rainfall variations on many different space and time scales. Our goal is to determine the extent to which we are able to accept or reject the reality of the Global Climate Model (GCM) simulations. The following analysis indicates that the GCM simulation of the influence of a doubling of CO2 give far too much global warming. We anticipate that a doubling of CO2 will act in a way to cause the global hydrologic cycle to increase in strength by approximately 3-4 percent. Our analysis indicates that there will be very little global temperature increase (~0.3oC) for a doubling of CO2, certainly not the 2-5oC projected by the GCMs. Science and Public Policy Institute

This is a week old but the linked presentation could be of interest:

On Tuesday, February 22, 2011, David Archibald, an Australian scientist working in the fields of oil exploration, medical research, climate science and energy, spoke at IWP on “Climate and U.S. Energy Security.”

He started his presentation by putting current climatic conditions within the context of recent and historic records, and asked the question, “Is the world warming?”

Through various graphs showing temperature trends up to millions of years ago, Mr. Archibald showed that there has not been a change in average temperature since 1976, when the Great Pacific Climate Shift triggered the normal thirty-year cycle of warmer weather from colder temperatures. In fact, he explained, it was much warmer 1000 years ago – so much so that the sea level was a meter higher than it is at present.

Mr. Archibald then posed the question, for which he is famed in the climate debate, of whether carbon dioxide was linked to global warming. While the carbon dioxide heating effect is real and related to warming, it is minuscule and logarithmic.

Mr. Archibald said the logical reason for temperature increase is the sun. Predicted solar activity is used to predict climate, and the current prediction is for a 24-year cold period similar to that experienced at the beginning of the 19th century. In turn, the agricultural consequences of that cold period will be significantly reduced Canadian and other high-latitude grain production, drought in East Africa and South America, and reduced monsoonal strength in Asia. Institute of World Politics