Emissions, Thunderstorms, & Climate Change

June 15, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Smoke from wildfires in California and Colorado can make it hotter in Budapest. Isoprene, a naturally occurring hydrocarbon, rising in a summer mist from the forests of the Southeastern U.S., can damage the ozone layer that protects earth from harmful ultra violet radiation.

NASA’s Earth Science Division will employ three different aircraft and a fleet of satellites over the Southeastern U.S. this summer to collect data for a project called SEAC4RS, Studies of Emissions, Atmospheric Composition, Clouds and Climate Coupling by Regional Surveys. Quite a mouthful, meaning the researchers will examine the process of how localized pollutants change the composition of thunderstorms and invade the upper atmosphere, and how that impacts the global climate cycle.

In a prior study conducted by scientists at NASA’s Pacific Northwest Laboratory in June, 2012, it was found that locally-occurring contaminants such as car exhaust, factory smoke, and methane from cow manure rise with heat updrafts into the clouds of summer thunderstorms.  Sucked up in the form of tiny aerosol particles, local pollutants mix with the water in the cloud when it condenses to form a thunderhead. The pollution then acts to divide the water droplets inside the storm cloud, making them too small to create rain.  Polluted storm clouds, instead of bringing cool rain, become heat traps, gradually reflecting stored heat back to earth.

In the new SEAC4RS study, earth’s atmosphere will be probed from top to bottom with aircraft, satellite, and ground-based sensors at the critical time of year when regional air pollution and natural emissions pump gases and particles high into the atmosphere, with potentially global consequences for Earth’s climate.

Brian Toon of the University of Colorado, the study’s lead scientist, states, “In summertime across the United States, emissions from seasonal fires, metropolitan areas, and vegetation are moved upward by thunderstorms and the North American Monsoon. When these chemicals get into the stratosphere, they can affect the whole Earth. They may also influence thunderstorm behavior. We hope to better understand how all these things interact.”

Data will be collected from specialized instruments on (1) a fleet of formation-flying satellites known as NASA’s A-Train, (2) an ER-2 high-altitude aircraft that flies to the edge of space, (3) a DC-8 flying at lower levels, and (4) a specialty aircraft that measures cloud properties. A network of ground-based sensors will also be used.

By analyzing the collected data, the scientists expect to achieve a more precise understanding of how manmade and natural pollutants affect global climate:  What happens when polluted clouds travel with a weather system? Which pollution particles are absorbed by clouds, and which go directly into the stratosphere, and in what amounts? What happens when the jet stream carries stratospheric pollution around the world? Knowing more about this process should help us find more and better ways to reduce emissions and slow the pace of global warming.

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2013 Atlantic Hurricane Forecast

June 6, 2013 By Leave a Comment

On May 23, NOAA released their first seasonal hurricane outlook for 2013. Based on warm sea surface temperatures across most of the Atlantic Ocean, the absence of an El Niño in the Pacific, and the continuation of the active tropical storm era that began in 1995, NOAA forecasts an above-average hurricane season. The United Kingdom Met Office, Colorado State University, and other forecasting services have made similar above-average predictions.

The 30-year seasonal averages from 1981 through 2010 were: 12.1 named storms; 6.4 hurricanes; and 2.7 major hurricanes. NOAA forecasts 13 to 20 named storms, 7 to 11 hurricanes, and 3 to 6 major hurricanes for the 2013 season starting June 1.  Keep in mind these are predictions, not actual hurricanes. Whether the forecasts become real storms remains to be seen. But the conditions for a highly active storm season are present.

NOAA’s active tropical storm era began in 1995, a season that saw 21 hurricanes, including Hurricane Opal that struck the Florida Panhandle in September of that year with a 15ft (5m) storm surge. Opal caused heavy damage in the Panhandle, Alabama, Tennessee, and the Mid-Atlantic states, taking 63 lives and racking up losses of $3.5 billion. Continuing the active era, the five most destructive hurricanes to hit the U.S. since 2000 are Ivan in 2004, Katrina in 2005, Ike in 2008, Irene in 2011, and Sandy in 2012.

In September, 2004, Hurricane Ivan struck the Caribbean as a Category 5, devastating Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, and western Cuba. It came ashore in Alabama as a Category 3, but still inflicted extensive wind and storm surge damage, heavy rainstorms, and flooding to the Southeast and Atlantic coastal states. Ivan took 123 lives, and cost $18 billion in losses.

 Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana and Mississippi on August 29, 2005, resulting in 1,833 deaths and $81 billion in losses, the most expensive storm in U.S. history. The New Orleans levee system failed, flooding 80% of the city and surrounding parishes. The storm surge along the Mississippi coast wiped out buildings from the shoreline up to 12mi (19km) inland.

In September, 2008, Hurricane Ike, a Category 4 with 140mph (239km/h) winds, hit Cuba and Haiti, and made landfall near Galveston, Texas, as a Category 2. Its hurricane force winds extended 120mi (195km) from the storm center, spreading destruction along the entire Gulf Coast from Texas to the Florida Panhandle. Losses: 195 dead; $29.5 billion in property damage.

Hurricane Irene struck the Outer Banks of North Carolina in August, 2011, as a Category 1, went back out to sea and made its next landfall in New Jersey, and later in Brooklyn, New York. Downgraded to a tropical storm, it dropped heavy rain on New England. Wind, rain, and storm surge damage totaled $15.6 billion. 56 people lost their lives in the storm.

Superstorm Sandy, one of the most massive hurricanes on record, spanned 1,100mi (1,800km), almost the entire length of the U.S. East Coast. It struck New Jersey on October 29, 2012, with a storm surge that devastated the Jersey Shore and flooded New York City tunnels and subways. Staten Island, New England, and states as far west as Wisconsin suffered Katrina damage. 285 people died in the storm and thousands were made homeless. Storm damage was $56 billion, second only to Katrina. Reconstruction is still ongoing.

As we write this, Tropical Storm Andrea, the first named storm of 2013, is bringing 60mph (90km/h) winds and heavy rain to Florida. Let’s hope that those living in hurricane-prone areas will take all precautions, and that deaths, injuries, and property losses will be greatly minimized during the 2013 hurricane season.

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Devastation in Tornado Alley

May 26, 2013 By Leave a Comment

The destructive EF5 tornado that ripped through Moore, Oklahoma on May 20, 2013, killed 24 people, leveled more than a thousand homes, and wrecked schools and hospitals. Offers of aid from all over the U.S. have poured in. A team from Joplin, Missouri, where another EF5 took 158 lives and injured over a thousand two years earlier, was one of the first on the scene. The people of Moore and their neighbors are pitching in to comfort each other, clear the debris, and start the rebuilding process. EF5 is the highest wind speed ranking on the Enhanced Fujita Scale, with funnel winds exceeding 200mph (322km/h).

The Moore disaster and the tornadoes that struck North Texas on May 16, 2013, also brought the term Tornado Alley back into the spotlight. Tornado Alley is not an official designation, but a media term that has come to mean an area in the U.S. heartland that spawns more tornadoes than anywhere else in the world. That area runs through the heart of the Plains States from North Texas to the Canadian Border. The states that suffer the highest number of tornadoes, and the most damaging, are Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, and Minnesota, plus a strip of the southeastern states called Dixie Alley that includes Alabama and Mississippi. More than 700 tornadoes strike those areas in an average year, according to NOAA’s  National Climatic Data Center.

Other states impacted by tornadoes include Ohio, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida. Other areas of the world that experience funnel winds are Canada, Western Asia, Bangladesh, China, Australia, South Africa, and Argentina. But none equal the number and intensity of the tornadoes that blast into Tornado Alley.

Tornadoes are a product of high-energy cumulus cloud formations called supercells. In the spring, when warm, moist air flows into the Midwest and Southeast from the Gulf of Mexico, it rises and mingles with layers of cooler air coming in from Canada and the mountain west. The warm air condenses when it meets the cool air, forming cumulus clouds. Rising convection currents create energy and instability inside the cumulus formation. In some cases, the energy moves vertically down from the base of the cloud to the ground in the form of a spinning vortex.

Why some cumuliform clouds produce rain or hail, and others tornadoes, depends on the amount of energy developed within the cloud. When the energy level peaks high enough, a rotating updraft, or mesocyclone, develops, and the storm formation becomes a supercell. There is something about the combination of spring weather and the thousands of miles of flat terrain between the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians that appears to be ideal for the formation of intense tornadoes.

Many lives could be saved if local building codes required storm shelters for all structures. Most states, counties, and cities in Tornado Alley are reluctant to impose the added construction costs onto their taxpayers, so the building of storm shelters is left to the discretion of building owners. Perhaps that policy should be reconsidered, at least for schools and hospitals where many of the fatalities occurred in the recent outbreak in Tornado Alley.  

 

 

 

 

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Tornadoes, Asteroids, & Wildfires

May 20, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Recent events keep reminding us that disasters, natural and manmade, constantly happen on our planet, and, where possible, our scientists are working on ways to better control outcomes.

32.4 million people were forced to abandon their homes in 2012 by disasters such as floods, storms, and earthquakes. The International Displacement Monitoring Centre reports that floods in India and Nigeria accounted for 41% of this total, but the United States also contributed a large percentage of displaced persons, mainly due to Superstorm Sandy that struck the U.S. East Coast in October.

Late spring is tornado season for Midwestern and southeastern U.S. On May 15, 2013, humid air flowing in from the Gulf of Mexico combined with a layer of cooler air from the Mountain West and 100° temperatures to spawn 16 tornadoes that ripped through communities southwest of Dallas, Texas. 6 people died, 100 were injured, and more than 100 homes were badly damaged, some hit so hard that all that was left was the concrete slab they were built on. One tornado was judged an E4, with wind speed clocked at 200 mph (320 km/h). On May 19, new tornadoes and hailstorms struck in Oklahoma and Kansas, killing 2 people, and causing widespread property damage. More storms are expected.

Asteroid QE2 will miss Earth by 3.6 million miles (5.8 million kilometers) when it sails by on May 31, 2013, but serves as a reminder that Near Earth Objects (NEOs) zip by us all the time. Occasionally one slips through and hits home, as did the small meteor that exploded over Russia on Feb. 15, 2013. The concussion blew out windows and injured hundreds  If another NEO does hit earth, let’s hope it’s smaller than QE2, which is 1.7 miles (2.7km) in length, or 9 times the size of the ocean liner Queen Elizabeth 2. Such a collision could be catastrophic. The QE2 designation has no relation to the cruise ship. It came up independently in NASA’s NEO numbering system.

According to a May, 2013, JPL news release, NASA will launch a robotic probe in 2016 to study one of the most hazardous of the known NEOs. NASA is also developing a project to capture and relocate an asteroid for human exploration. The mission will draw on the innovation of the brightest scientists and engineers.

Scientists from Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and Chapman University in Orange, California, have partnered in a project using satellites to measure vegetation moisture and soil moisture in the Southern California mountains and foothills. Such measurements are now made by manually taking brush and soil samples for lab analysis. But using India’s Oceansat-2 satellite to measure soil moisture, and NASA’s Aqua Satellite to measure vegetation moisture content, the project team is able to advise local and regional fire agencies of the degree of fire risk much sooner and over a much wider area than is possible with manual measuring. 2013 has seen sparse rainfall and high temperatures in Southern California and much of the U.S. southwest, making the start of the wildfire season 2 to 3 months earlier than in the past.

A recent survey shows that 98% of the world’s scientific studies on the subject agree that burning fossil fuels is greatly accelerating the pace of global warming and the climate changes that bring more violent storms, longer droughts, more flooding, more wildfires, faster ice sheet and glacial melting, and more water and air pollution. The faster that governments, corporations, and individuals can act to speed up the transition from oil- and coal-generated power to non-polluting wind, solar, thermal, and vegetation-based power, the sooner climate change can be moderated and the better off we’ll be.

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Restless Earth

May 12, 2013 By Leave a Comment

At times, it may seem that nothing ever changes on our planet Earth. The mountains are still there. The oceans are where they’ve always been. The prairie, the forests, the desert all seem the same. But changes, some seen, some unseen, are always in process.

CO2 saturation. The amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere finally topped the 400 parts per million mark. The measurement was reported on May 10, 2013, by NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory on Mauna Loa in Hawaii. The last time CO2 exceeded 400ppm was 3 to 5 million years ago when Earth was hot and tropical. By continuing to burn fossil fuels, humans pump 38 billion tons of CO2 into the air every year. The more CO2 in the air, the hotter it gets. Are we approaching a time when heat is normal, and ice, snow and cool temperatures are chapters in a history book?

Mayon Volcano. An eruption on May 6, 2013, hurled rocks “as big as a living room” down its slopes, killing 5 hikers who had set out with a group to hike to the crater. Mayon is located on the island of Luzon in the Philippines, 340km (212mi) from Manila. On May 4, 2013, the Cleveland Volcano in the Aleutian Islands began erupting. So far, the eruptions have been low level, but in 2001, a Mount Cleveland eruption shot an ash cloud 39,000 feet (11,820m) into the air, endangering aircraft flying south of Alaska. There are 1,500 active volcanoes in the world. An average of 60 erupt every year, most emitting low levels of gas, lava, and ash.

Iran and Tonga earthquakes. On May 11, 2013, a magnitude 6.0 earthquake hit southern Iran where the Arabian Plate converges with the Eurasian Plate. Some news sources report 15 people killed, others 15 injured. On the same day, a magnitude 6.5 quake struck north of Tonga, deep in the Tonga Trench where the Pacific Plate converges with the Australian Plate. No deaths or injuries were reported. Wherever tectonic plates collide, there will be fault line failures and earthquakes.

Landsat 8. Droughts, floods, rainforest destruction, loss of arable land are examples of earth changes that need to be tracked and managed. That’s the mission of the Landsat series of earth-monitoring satellites. Landsat 8, the latest in the series, was launched by NASA in February, 2013. USGS will take operational control of the satellite starting on May 30, 2013. USGS currently operates Landsats 4, 5, and 7. Landsat 8 will make the fourth in the group, each one mapping a different part of the world. Landsat data can assist a broad range of specialists in managing the world’s food, water, forests, and other natural resources. Landsat imaging also tracks changes brought by manmade and natural disasters, Arctic and Antarctic ice changes, crop yields and failures, and dozens of other measurements important to the health of the planet and the people living on it.

 Snowpack and snowmelt analysis. As global warming thins the snowpack in the mountains of the western U.S. and other semi-arid regions, it becomes more important to know exactly how much water will be available for farmers and growing populations. NASA’s Airborne Snow Observatory mounted in a Twin Otter aircraft, uses lidar – a laser beam echoing measurement system – to assess snowpack volume and melt. Preliminary tests flying over the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountain watersheds indicate the new system is far more accurate than the present method of taking manual measurements. The system can calculate snow depth within 4 inches (10cm), and snow water equivalent to within 5%. Water system managers who depend on snowmelt for their fresh water supply can use this data to plan ahead more accurately.

Earth is restless. Mountain ranges are either gaining or losing height. Some gain a few inches a year from the squeezing of tectonic plates. Some lose a few inches through weathering and erosion, and will someday disappear. Global warming is melting Arctic ice, and moving forests northward, along with rain and snow. Temperate areas are becoming drier and hotter. Storms are getting stronger and more erratic. As we go about our day to day business, it may not seem like much is changing. But it does. Every day.

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Remotely Triggered Earthquakes

May 3, 2013 By Leave a Comment

On April 16, 2013, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck near the Iran/Pakistan border. 40 people died, and the quake demolished 85% of the buildings in Mashkel, Pakistan, population 250,000. Other mountain villages in the area are thought to have suffered heavy damage and additional loss of life. Magnitude 7.8 earthquakes have been known to produce far greater fatalities and heavier damage, but in this case the epicenter was 50 miles (80km) deep, and in a thinly populated area.

Four days later, on April, 20, a magnitude 6.6 quake hit China’s Sichuan district , 3,000 miles away. Over 200 people are reported dead or missing, 12,000 injured, many hundreds of buildings destroyed or badly damaged, and many thousands homeless. Although the magnitude was not as great as the Iran quake, the epicenter was a shallow 7.6mi (12.3km) and located in a heavily populated area.

Could there be a connection between these two earthquakes thousands of miles apart? Iran and China are at opposite ends of a continuous series of fault lines that have produced many of history’s severest earthquakes. The linked fault line marks the convergence of the African, Arabian, and Indian tectonic plates with the Eurasian Plate. It starts in the Red Sea and runs through Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, India, and ends at the edge of the Tibetan Plateau in China. Much of it crosses through the high mountains of Central Asia, including the Himalayas, the Karakorum Range, and the Hindu Kush. Strong quakes that start avalanches and bury mountain villages along this line are not uncommon.

It has been established that strong earthquakes can destabilize other faults in the same region. For example, the 1992 magnitude 7.3 Landers earthquake in California triggered aftershocks on dozens of other California fault lines hundreds of miles away. But whether one earthquake can trigger another thousands of miles away is another question.

A research team led by Taka’aki Tara of the UC Berkeley Seismological Laboratory found that an upsurge in quakes on the San Andreas fault in California occurred following the magnitude 9.0 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami in 2004. The two areas are separated by 9000 mi (14,700km) of ocean. The same phenomenon occurred following a magnitude 7.9 Alaska earthquake in 2002. Fault lines as far away as California and Wyoming, 2,000 mi (3,200km) distant, registered a dramatic increase in earthquakes, some only minutes later, and some delayed by days or weeks. Tara’s findings were published in the journal Nature in September, 2009. A separate study indicated that the 2004 Indian Ocean quake triggered earthquake activity in China’s Yunnan Province, 2,000 mi (3,200km) away.

The crust of Planet Earth is made up of tectonic plates that are constantly moving, grinding together, and causing earthquakes. Whether the energy from one strong quake can travel over great distances and cause an earthquake in another part of the world has been debated in the scientific community for many years. Some research supports the idea. More research is needed to understand the full dynamics of the process. In the meantime, if a far-away quake shakes the earth near you, don’t be surprised.  

 

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