Tropical Storm Fay Clarifies Global Warming Future

News headlines surrounding Tropical Storm Fay were as much a study in contrast as was the storm itself. Reports of flooding and wind damage were accurate but the overall effects were unexpected. No fewer than 4 members of my circle of family and friends contacted me to ask how bad the flooding was. In reality, even though many areas near the Edgewood section of Orlando where Cat and I live were flooded very badly, Tropical Storm Fay was largely beneficial to the Kroehler household because of the foot of rain which our parched lawn needed desperately.

This apparent disconnect between meteorological expectation and fact is poised to widen broadly as global warming further destabilizes our atmosphere and our biosphere attempts to compensate for the millions of tons of pollution which we continue to spew each and every day. That, my friend, is arguably the most lasting and significant legacy of a storm which set new records during her historically long life.

Tropical Storm Fay entered the record books with no fewer than 3 shocking feats:

1) She gathered strength over land – while not constituting a large increase in wind speed, Tropical Storm Fay actually became more powerful after making landfall in southwest Florida, an event never recorded in the annals of weather history;

2) She dumped the equivalent of 6 months of rainfall accumulation on the central Atlantic coast of Florida in a single day, more than 2 feet in just 24 hours; and

3) She made landfall over the state of Florida 4 times in total.

Now, before the age of global warming, whenever the weather did something never before witnessed, the most common expression was, There’s one for the record books. Alas, because global warming has a direct effect on the frequency and strength of tropical wind storms, the record books soon will become mere anachronisms. So, if you have wondered how global warming will affect the weather or how life will be in a chaotic future when we pass the tipping point of planetary habitability, you need look no further than news reports and eye witness testimony from the Sunshine State as of August 2008.

Tropical Storm Fay was a terrifyingly unique and deadly phenomenon. In Florida, tropical storms and hurricanes seldom last more than a day or two but Tropical Storm Fay lasted more than a week. In Florida, tropical storms and hurricanes generally make landfall once or twice. Katrina only made landfall twice, once in the southeast and once in the far northwest. Tropical Storm Fay doubled that pattern. In Florida, tropical storms and hurricanes always lose strength once they make landfall but Tropical Storm Fay not only retained her wind speeds but even gained a notch or two on the anemometer.

One for the record books? Perhaps but, more importantly, one for a new global warming almanac. I lived through Tropical Storm Fay. She was something else and I attest that we truly have entered new territory. More and more, people will pay for the experience of climate change with their lives.

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

Giant Wind Storm Incubators

Everyone can be grateful that Hurricane Gustav and Hurricane Ike left in their wake a death toll well below that of Hurricane Katrina. However, the similarities remain quite destructive. Hurricane Gustav gave us widespread flooding, displaced more than 1 million people and left more than 2 million homes without electrical service for weeks. At its worst, Hurricane Ike covered an area roughly equal in size to the unified nation of Germany and erased entire towns along the Texas coast rendering more than 100,000 people permanently homeless.

As regards global warming, Gustav’s acceleration from a relatively weak storm to a powerhouse category 4 hurricane in under 3 days’ time points us back to the contemporary effects of abnormally high water temperatures. Hurricane Ike approached the Caribbean Basin as a strong storm before raining down death and destruction on Hispaniola and Cuba. When it was done killing islanders, it took its dear, sweet time gathering ferocity on its way to shred Galveston and immerse Houston.

I have written about Katrina’s record acceleration. Frightening as it was, the record was broken just 2 years later by Hurricane Felix. Then, Gustav came along and nearly entered itself in the record books. When Gustav failed to break the record, residents of the Gulf Coast region of the United States breathed a sigh of relief. It lasted just a few days, though, because in crossing from the Atlantic Ocean to the Caribbean Sea, Hurricane Ike went from a category 1 to a category 4 in just 6 hours – 6 hours!

To global warming skeptics, I ask: how can you explain away these statistics? Atlantic hurricanes form in 2 two general ways:

1) When prevailing winds of central Africa meet the ocean; and

2) When tropical waves spawned by equatorial wind patterns are nourished by the recycling currents of the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico.

Hence, if the prevailing winds of Africa accelerated because of deforestation and desertification (both of which are ameliorated by a proper response to global warming), how can we ignore the effects on North America?

If the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico contain large dead zones because of skewed temperature cycles and atmospheric wind patterns which have shifted because of high carbon content, how can we ignore either the consequences or our responsibility?

The bottom line is this: everyone benefits from fighting global warming, even energy companies because winning the battle requires innovation. When humanity innovates, there are ancillary benefits. So, if you doubt the existence of global warming or the fact that human behavior is the main cause, you still can climb aboard the Remediation Express and help millions of people who live in coastal areas fret a little less often about the frequency of killer hurricanes.

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

A Meteorological Yoyo

It is official. The year 2008 was among the warmest and coldest on record.

How’s that?

The Wyoming avalanches were part of a barrage of winter weather which struck nearly half of the continental United States in December, dropping huge quantities of snow and ice on dozens of cities and, sadly, killing a great many people. The record quantities of frozen precipitation were preceded by record rainfall in other places, which left horrible flooding in the nation’s midsection. Each storm occurred within mere days of the next.

When I traveled to Maine for my sister’s wedding, which was ushered in by several feet of gorgeous snow powder, my flight both ways nearly was canceled because of separate blizzards. However, as soon as the second storm ended, New York City, which had been buried in snow right before Christmas, saw its daytime temperatures shoot up to around 60 degrees Fahrenheit and then plummet for New Year’s Eve with wind chill factors near zero.

These huge, unseasonable swings in temperature are the partial result of global warming, as the atmosphere attempts to compensate for disruptions in its temperature regulating mechanisms. They also are how we can say that 2008 was among the warmest and coldest years on record. It was the coldest since the turn of the new millennium but, despite the aforementioned record snow storms and blizzards, was among the warmest in history when measured as a function of global mean temperature.

So, as you ponder the question of just how much snow Mother Nature can send to any particular spot during a given winter season, remember that the atmospheric systems which create snow no longer work as reliably as before because we have bent their cogs and chipped their flywheels. Even if we begin repairs today, which effectively would be impossible on such short notice, every revolution of those mechanisms will lead to further degradation. It is a sad reality which is as predictable as the dawn.

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

The abnormally low winter temperatures and vast accumulations of snow and ice during the winter of 2009 in North America have left many people who previously believed in the threat of global warming with understandable questions. NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has engaged in fresh research to find answers. What Dr. Martin Hoerling and NOAA his colleagues have learned is alarming to believers and skeptics alike.

They have discovered a warming hole over North America. For example:

• Northern and western sections of North America have seen the largest temperature increases over the last 50 years, with warming of up to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit in Alaska and in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Yukon in Canada. Meanwhile, the southern United States and eastern Canada have seen the least warming.

• In the United States, the Southwest has taken a one-two punch, experiencing some of the greatest warming in both winter and summer.

• Over the last 50 years, droughts have not become more frequent, contrary to prediction, but have, indeed, become more severe, as forecast.

So, what is going on here? Well, as I have reiterated several times, we must remember that the first word in global warming is global. Secondly, the atmosphere of the planet is self-regulating and tries to compensate for the ongoing and accelerating damage which we are causing.

Lastly, although we can prove beyond all scientific doubt that increases in the carbon content of our atmosphere cause average temperatures to rise and polar melting has exceeded all predictions, we remain, quite literally, in uncharted territory. In other words, the worst is yet to come but that frightening fact does not mean that we won’t continue to have cold winters or days, such as in early February, when Washington, DC saw a temperature swing of almost 70 degrees Fahrenheit from the previous day.

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

My being a global warming subject matter expert is not based merely on my extensive work on the topic, my attendance at global symposia or my status as a certified global warming presenter of the National Wildlife Federation. It also is based on the fact that I reside in Florida, a region on the front lines of climate change.

I first moved to Florida in 1987 to attend the University of Miami. While living there, I experienced my first autumn chill as a Floridian. In late November of 1987, temperatures dropped to near 40° F. Needless to say, I was shocked by the weather. Two years later, when I had relocated to Central Florida and lived in Winter Park, I experienced my first icy December, with Christmas temperatures hovering low enough to freeze a glass of tap water.

In both cases, Florida’s agriculture industry suffered billions of dollars of losses. Simply put, the subtropical climate of the Sunshine State is not supposed to see thermometers drop below 50° F at night during the winter. When they do, Floridians suffer.

January 2010 has seen record low temperatures not just in Florida but in patches across North America. Moreover, other nations in the Northern Hemisphere have seen record accumulations of snow, which have paralyzed commerce and transportation for millions. Can it be a coincidence that one of the coldest winter seasons on record came to pass in the age of global warming? Does this sequence of frigid days and icy nights throughout the Northern Hemisphere disprove the anthropogenic origin of global warming?

The simple answer is no. In fact, the opposite is true. It is for this reason that Nobel Prize Winner Al Gore prefers the term climate change over global warming. Short-term effects of climate change can appear to contradict the long-term trend and cause confusion. Let there be none. Global warming is real. Humanity’s abuse of its home is the primary cause and abnormally cold winters are just another symptom.

My assertion still begs one to inquire as to the cause of the hemispheric blizzard of January 2010, though. What truly is happening? The simple response is that our continued and accelerating damage to the atmosphere and the systems it uses to maintain breathable air and tolerable temperatures causes those planetary natural systems to become erratic and overcompensate from time to time. That is precisely the situation today. In March of last year, I wrote a post which pointed to new research on exactly how widespread the damage is.

In summary, while it is true that we are quite literally cooking ourselves with the billions of tons of carbon which we spew into the atmosphere every year, there is no guarantee that some of us won’t freeze to death before others suffer fatal heat exhaustion and dehydration this summer. Get used to bizarre weather because the hemispheric blizzard of January 2010 is just the beginning!

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

Skeptics of global warming are fond of declaring the phenomenon a myth whenever unseasonably cold weather strikes a city or region. Those of us who know and comprehend the truth remind those skeptics that the first word of global warming is global. In fact, when measured globally, the decade which we just closed was the warmest on record in the southern hemisphere.

However, in order for the evidence of the anthropogenic origins of global warming to elicit the type of fundamental cultural change which will place humanity on the path to addressing the crisis with the effective scope and urgency it demands, popular culture must be affected and in a manner difficult to ignore. Last month’s Vancouver Olympics yielded just such an opportunity and I am hopeful that global warming skeptics and deniers were paying attention.

Climatologists favor the term climate change over global warming in part because the term helps defuse some of the skepticism. Naturally, I agree with them. However, I continue to use the terms interchangeably for a simple reason. The vested interests who profit by maintaining the status quo of fossil fuel addiction and deforestation spend huge sums of money every year on disinformation and propaganda. They are not swayed by accurate science.

Another reason that climate change is a better name for the crisis than global warming is that in the short term, many regions, in fact, are experiencing colder weather even as the globe warms on account of the natural balance which our atmosphere strives to maintain. Fortunately, the effects of climate change are becoming so obvious that even some skeptics have begun to say, “That can’t be right.”

Our climate is changing and the Vancouver Olympics are an ideal example because people from every continent gathered there for winter games which had almost no winter.

During the Lake Placid or Salt Lake City winter games, who would have imagined weather in British Columbia, Canada so unseasonably warm and dry that snow had to be imported to the mountains and the grass had to be trimmed in the city?

Not to be outdone, skeptics of global warming point to this evidence and see only random convergence. If the opposite effect had not occurred along a similar latitude approximately 2,000 miles east of British Columbia, such rebuttals might be persuasive. In truth, the rebuttals of skeptics only help to make the case of climatologists. You see, even as the Vancouver Olympics struggled with springtime weather in February, the Chesapeake Bay region of North America withstood record snowfalls and hurricane-strength winds, even as the games were underway!

Where skeptics see random events, those of us who know the facts see further proof. Perhaps the worst news, however, is the fact that the 2014 winter games already are in the planning stages for Russia, an area which is losing permafrost so quickly that the games may prove impossible to produce.

I shudder to think what the future holds now that the proof of global warming has achieved a new pinnacle of incontrovertible. Global warming deniers and skeptics needs to get over themselves and move to higher ground.

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

photos credit: © VANOC/COVAN

As I’ve shared with you previously, skeptics of global warming continue to point to the record snowfalls of January 2010 in Europe and the United States as proof that global warming is a myth. Sadly, these doubting fools not only err but allow a layman’s perspective to confuse a very important subject.

The pace of global warming is so severe that, during this past January, even when millions of people shivered for many days on account of consecutive blizzards, the global average temperatures for the same period yielded further proof that the constant increase in the carbon content of the planet’s atmosphere is keeping us on track to cook ourselves.

The only solution to global warming is to reverse the trend of atmospheric carbon, which means that we must foreswear fossil fuels. To read the latest conclusions from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, surf over to their website at

ipcc.ch

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

Winter often is an unpopular season. Indeed, in the United States, we use a term from wildlife, snowbirds, to describe people, typically pensioners, who spend parts of spring and summer in cooler areas such as New England while residing in Arizona or Florida during autumn and winter.

Real snowbirds have similar options but rely on the regular changing of the seasons in order to provide a natural signal as to when it is time to migrate. However, if there is more than the slightest shift in how the seasons change, there may be no food for the snowbirds when they arrive in their temporary home.

In the case of the movement of winter into spring, in North America, it is a documented fact that spring now starts about 10 days earlier than it used to. Why does this matter? Well, tree budding, the hatching of animal species prematurely, earlier blooms, etc. all are devastating side effects. In other words, entire biospheres are driven by temperature trends and the changing of the seasons.

As I lived in New England for many years and my immediate family still resides there, the natural production of maple syrup from the vast forests of the north is very personal to me. The maple industry already has seen marked changes in how the trees produce sap. Indeed, much like bee keepers and honey farms in warmer areas, maple farmers may find themselves with little to no raw material in the next few years.

We can argue as to the exact timing of the loss of these valuable natural products but the trend is unmistakable.

What can you do? The answers have not changed even as the damage to our environment continues to worsen. Embrace carbon neutrality. Do it today.

Where to begin? There are many fine choices but my top recommendation is

CarbonFund.org

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

I have warned many times about the impending milestone in the progression of global warming from a terrifying result of humanity’s addiction to fossil fuels and unsustainable lifestyles to a planetwide crisis which will kill millions and displace hundreds of millions of more. While the scientific basis for predictions of an ice-free Arctic during the summer months strikes me as overwhelmingly conclusive, I can understand where some skeptics remain unconvinced. Now, thanks to the brilliant work of scientific vanguards, we have new evidence from which we can extrapolate the inevitable.

At first glance, one might be struck by the work of Dr. Wieslaw Maslowski of the Naval Postgraduate School and Dr. Leonid Polyak from Ohio State University as pointing to bad news which doesn’t quite rise to the level of global emergency. However, if you fall into this category, I will hasten to emphasize a key detail. Maslowski and Polyak point to an ice-free Arctic in the autumnal months by the end of this decade.

Yes, you read that right. Maslowski and Polyak have offer scientific conclusions that we will see an ice-free Arctic during autumn by the end of this decade. In fact, they inform us that the Arctic ice pack is at its thinnest and smallest coverage area in at least several millennia. Yes, the news is that bad.

By extension, then, we know that we will experience ice-free Arctic summers in our immediate future. I shudder to ponder what that will mean for us and hundreds of endangered species.

We are turning the Arctic Sea into a salty form of slush. Shame on us!

jpg credit: US Geological Survey via flickr

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

The scientific episode known colloquially as Climategate, which was hailed by deniers of global warming as proof that there’s nothing wrong with exceeding 350 parts per million of carbon in our atmosphere, has ended with total defeat for the skeptics. While the well-intended scientists at the University of East Anglia were clumsy in their communication, their work remains above reproach and the timing of the vindication of their work couldn’t be better.

According to NASA and NOAA, June 2010 was the hottest June in the history of meteorological records (measured as a global average), the first 6 months of this calendar year were the hottest 6 months ever and, unless we have an early hemispheric blizzard which mirrors the scope and precipitation of the massive storms which blanketed much of North America this past winter, 2010 will be the hottest year ever.

Up until the findings released by NASA and NOAA a few weeks ago, there was reason to be guardedly optimistic that the worst effects of global warming would be gradual in their arrival because harsh winters continue to strike vast stretches of terrain. Now, even if such patterns continue, the breadth and intensity of heat waves are growing with such rapidity that it will become impossible to predict anything but a massive increase in global average temperatures throughout the year and on every continent.

The origins and themes of my blog make it crystal clear that I know the truth about global warming. However, I have conceded many times in my writings that some skeptics mean well and do not hold their convictions out of a wholesale acceptance of propaganda funded by advocates of the status quo. Now, however, in light of these damning new statistics, I have little tolerance for anyone who asserts that global warming is a myth or that its main causes occur naturally.

FALSE!

Humanity is the main cause of global warming and if we don’t take definitive action today, right now, as you read this, billions of people and species of wildlife, yes, billions, will pay for our ignorance with their lives.

Let’s stop the madness while we still can!

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler