Discussion on:

Resilience lessons from Hurricane Sandy

Thanks for this Chris but it seems incredibly optimistic to think this will end climate change denial or even reduce it that much. Rationalization is another human characteristic.

Climatology being a statistical science its difficult to tie any one event to global warming. But a couple of factors that went into making Sandy what it was bear some examination.

There is evidence that the loss of Arctic sea ice is affecting the jet stream making the amplitude of the Rossby waves larger and slowing down the jet stream. In the case of Sandy the blocking high over Greenland that forced Sandy to make a hard left turn into the coast of New Jersey and the Arctic air from the west that lead to heavy snowfall in the southern Appalachians were effects of the Rossby waves.

Also the ocean surface temperature anomaly off the East Coast was plus 3-5 degrees Fahrenheit so energy was available to sustain Sandy as it worked its way north and that probably helped make the size of it as large as it was (the darn thing was about 1000 miles across on Monday). Without that extra energy Sandy may have petered out as it worked its way north or at least been much smaller than it was.

So Sandy gets worked into the overall climatological statistics and 5 or 10 years from now in retrospect we will be able say that it was a part of the statistical increase in extreme weather but I don't expect the hard core deniers to change. But maybe some of the majority of people who aren't paying that much attention will start to do so now and the imperative to take some action will strengthen a bit. I just hope by the time we really get serious we will still be able to save our civilization.

BTW, I was rather amused by a typo in your second paragraph where you wrote:

"And a public that is insufficiently illiterate in the complexity of the science...

Hah/oops! Thanks riverat1, fixed the typo.

There are many ways to measure how bad a storm is. Sandy was so big because it never was very well formed and was mostly a category 1 storm. More powerful storms such as Katrina were more compact and its eye was very well formed. Another reason Sandy was so big was because there were very few major hurricanes this season, which left a lot of heat in the Atlantic Ocean to be picked up by Sandy.

You should take a look at the Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) for the earth (see http://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/accumulated_cyclone_energy.asp?basin=gl ). ACE is a measure of the accumulated energy of a storm over time, and the ACE for all hurricanes can be added together to get a total energy measure. You will see that while the global ACE peaked in the mid-90s with a spike around Katrina in 2005, it's now down to about what it was in 1980. Various regions of the planet are up or down relative to that, but the overall trend in the last decade is down.

While it's true that there has only been 1 major hurricane (Cat 3 or above) this year it has been an active season with 19 named storms and 10 hurricanes. As far as energy transfer I think several smaller storms can make up for one larger one.

ACE is an interesting number but I'd be careful about saying how meaningful it is. It is measured by taking the sum of the squares of maximum sustained wind velocity at 6 hour intervals. Where it falls short is it fails to take into account the size of the cyclone and thus ignores the total mass of air being moved by the storm. So it doesn't really measure the total energy in the whole cyclone, just the energy where it's winds are the highest.

The accurate tracking of how many storms happen per year was not really possible until weather satellites became available.

Prior to that many of the storms we now watch on the news that spin in the open ocean, never touching land, would have never been counted. In the past the best you could do is count on harbor reports tracking high surf conditions or ships at sea reporting storm conditions to track a storm at sea.

Hurricane numbers from just 50 years ago, prior to hurricane tracking by planes, fall into that group so making comparisons to todays numbers is not really honest.

Just watching the evening news you can see that in some years fully a third of all storms named and counted never see land. Their existence would not have been known except for planes and satellites.

Even 100 years ago I think there was enough shipping going on that few large tropical storms or hurricanes would have gone completely unnoticed.

Storms at sea reports ended up going to naval commands, harbor masters, etc. depending on the ship reporting it. There was no central report collection point.

All too often the ships that ran into large storms were just lost at sea like the HMS Bounty was last week.

Scientists have deliberately sought out that sort of information in order to fill in the gaps. It's never going to be perfect but we still know more than you apparently think we do.

The overall world climate has changed many times over the eons, all without any input from mankind. We've had warm periods, producing dinosaurs at some points, ice ages, where much of the world was ice-covered! Water has covered much of the earth at times, and been very low at others. Again man had little influence.

However, suddenly, MAN is the culprit for ALL weather changes! How did we somehow SUDDENLY cause all the world's weather to go to hell? Please explain how this came to be! Also, explain how something like sun-spots couldn't be warming our atmosphere and melting the ice-caps, or volcanoes, spewing all sorts of elements, gasses, etc into the air, producing more than man, by the way, has NO effect!

The changes described by mogul264 are changes that occured by natural forces over geologic time, meaning very slowly, usually over tens- or hundreds-of-thousands or even millions of years. What we are seeing today are changes that are accelerated by the past century of pumping ever-increasing amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere from fossil fuel combustion that we use to generate electric power, run our factories/all sorts of industries, power ships, trucks, buses, cars, and heat buildings and homes. The rate of greenhouse gas release into the atmosphere is unparalleled in history - can you imagine how large an amount as billions of tons per a year is? No one who is educated can deny that doing this does not come with eventual consequences that threaten our existence on this planet, i.e. what we have been doing "business as usual" is unsustainable on so many levels.

Time my Ideas are put on paper!!!
Dr. Neil Garland

The creek that runs through the village where I live was virtually bone dry over the summer due to the drought. Now it's barely staying in its banks. We had a brief reprieve from Sandy today when the sun broke through the clouds for a few hours. However, the forecast is for heavy rains again tonight and tomorrow. I'm glad I'm up the hill.

Down the highway about half an hour is a town with it's own on-grid generating station. When the grid goes down, not too uncommon in this area, they flip a switch, and within 15 minutes, everything within town limits (which doesn't include the supermarket) has power again. During our not uncommon power failures, we head there for a dinner out.

I had been thinking in past years of proposing to the village council that the creek might make a sufficient micro-hydro project to be an emergency back-up for just the village, a little micro-grid. However, after this year, I think I am forced to give up on the idea. Farther up the creek is an old mill which was turned into a micro-hydro station. It usually generates enough power to light up a half dozen homes. This year was the first time since the mill was built that there was no water to turn the turbine. Even the big drought in the 50s didn't see the creek get that dry.

The task of designing resilient communities has now gotten much more difficult, but the need is now that much more apparent.

You can talk resilient infrastructure an climate change, but a simple sea-wall would have prevented much of this.

One hurricane, and not a particularly strong one, altough it was quite spread out, that happened to hit one cold front and make landfall during high tide under a full moon, does not make a trend.

When you build your home or business on a barrier island, don't act surprised when a storm surge floods it. Likewise, when you build your business on a island just a few feet above sea level, and then spread miles and miles of underground tunnels way below sea level, don't be surprised when they flood during a storm.

Instead of reporting on one natural disaster in the northeast, why don't you report on the very, very normal weather in the southwest at the same time, and call that a trend?

There's a lake just outside of Austin that has a spillway at 715 feet above mean sea level. There is one subdivision where people have built "lakefront" or "lake view" homes in the 695-710' range. So-called "full" is at 681 feet. These people gripe and moan every 10 years when their homes flood, and expect the government to take care of them. What the heck is wrong with people?

NYC was overdue for a storm like this. They were again told that as recently as June of this year.

http://www.propertycasualty360.com/2012/10/29/nyc-the-most-dangerous-place-in-the-world-for-stor

This event had nothing to do with global warming. It happened in 1938 and there are recorded storms like this hitting New England in October going back to the 1700s.

It has happened before, it will happen again.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_England_hurricanes

The storm is more devastating this time because of mans arrogance. We stuffed 1.6 million people onto a low lying island and told them it was ok. We punched holes in the island for vehicle and train tunnels and then blame the great Voldemort of global warming when the tunnels flood in a storm. Give me a break people.

If anything the Federal Flood Insurance program is directly responsible for underwriting the over development of flood prone areas.

Get a grip people and move aside so the adults in the room can clean up the mess and maybe improve development codes for flood prone areas so this much damaged can be avoided the next time.

I got flagged. LOL. Are the temp NFL refs back? Let me guess, flag thrown for excessive honesty. 15 yard penalty and repeat of down.

20,30 years. Maybe 40.

Mostly since the development of weather satellites.

To say there has NEVER been a storm this size is not very honest when the record is so short.

There is evidence of larger storms. Based on the location of ships impacted by it, the 1944 Pacific hurricane, informally known in the military as Cobra, hit ships well over 1,000 miles apart at the same time.

I am positive we are either in a warming or a cooling cycle. The climate isn't going to be static.

People living on a barrier island are in danger of flooding from storms.

And large cities are inherently dangerous. Look how difficult it was to evacuate the city after 9-11 and before Sandy. A dispersed population is at less risk for major catastrophes.

I don't understand the concern about climate change. I don't think there is much actual dispute about it. The dispute is about "Global Warming" which is a terrible term invented by politicians and innacurate.

Of course it is imperative that we all make an effort to plan for and accept the fact that climate change is normal and needs to be a part of our future planning. That is happening but it should be "ramped up" and needs the engineering-scientific community to drive it. It doesn't need politicians to use it for their personal profit as we have seen recently.

I'm saddened by your need to attack Romney on this issue. He certainly is no worse than Obama's use of these concerns to gain financial support of his campaigns.

pretty much not about the environment, but it's politicicizing a natural disaster for the purpose of mocking a politician.

...for the final week of the Presidential campaign. Since this is the 4th or 5th similar comment on Sandy and "climate change" I've read or heard so far this morning, I can only assume that the memo hit sometime yesterday.

Have CNBC on on the background in my office. If I were to be taking a drink every time they mentioned "climate change" in an interview, I'd be wasted already. What does "climate change" have to do with the CEO of Coca-Cola shipping bottled water to disaster areas?

Having nothing else solid to run on, the final pitch for Obama is going to be about "climate change". Kinda funny, considering that 4 years ago we were told that "This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow, and our planet began to heal.

Clearly, another promise unfulfilled.

This has to be the most blatant abuse of relating to weather outside of Al Gore's brain cells. Here is a scientific fact for us; Sandy was a storm! Sandy was big, but not even very powerful as storms go.

What ever happened to thinking "globally" when we make comments about local weather patterns? What ever happened to looking at the entire global picture before hyping a localized event?

I have absolutely no respect for someone who would make the commentary about a storm that Mr. Nelder has done in this article. Honestly, we the people are really just not this stupid.

...except when it serves the agenda of Progressives?

I punched out of the article and went direct to comments reading when I got to the words "Amy Goodman"...

Surely someone has already got the idea: Bring together a mosaic of clips of Mitt Romney talking about Global Warming and it's implications for US and international politics. Broadcast it on Youtube or better a major TV-network. But do it fast and show it before the elections!