bluewave

We will need to see a significant increase in public-private partnerships in order to make an energy transition possible. https://www.ecowatch.com/high-powered-public-private-partnerships-essential-to-expediting-renew-1882132714.html Public-private partnerships have been around since the start of the U.S. and exist at all levels of government. Basic science and technology has historically been funded by the U.S. government and taken place in national and university laboratories. When the technologies matured, some were released for commercial use. Perhaps the best example is the personal computer, which has shrunk significantly in size since the 1970s and has dramatically increased in computing power. A product used by billions of people worldwide began as an investment by the U.S. federal government, in order to develop better missile guidance systems for the U.S. Department of Defense and smaller on-board computers for NASA's space program. At some point, technology will take over. Fossil fuels will eventually be driven from the marketplace by something better and cheaper, but we first need the investment in basic and applied research to make that happen. The transition from an economy based on the one-time use of finite resources to one that relies on renewable resources requires a sophisticated, high-powered public-private partnership. The commitments made by Gates and the White House are a good start and there are many other signs that the transition from fossil fuels has begun. The speed of that transition, however, will depend on creativity, consensus and cash to be completed.

The North Atlantic Jet is also making headlines.

Hopefully, the coming EPS upgrade makes a lasting improvement.

I wouldn’t mind if the modeling centers stopped posting the OP runs after120 hrs. We would probably be better off with just ensemble means after day 5. These longer range OP runs seem to be taken too literally and then we get the big disappointment posts. It also doesn’t help during the cold season when the longer range OP snowfall maps get posted on social media. That the kind of thing that lowers peoples confidence in weather forecasts. But it could be easily avoided with more of a reliance on ensemble means.

Updated for the 3.88 in Sloatsburg, NY. Rockland County... Sloatsburg 3.88 815 AM 9/30 CWOP

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05978-1 Ocean heatwaves will become more frequent and extreme as the climate warms, scientists report1 on 15 August in Nature. These episodes of intense heat could disrupt marine food webs and reshape biodiversity in the world’s oceans. Scientists analysed satellite-based measurements of sea surface temperature from 1982 to 2016 and found that the frequency of marine heatwaves had doubled. These extreme heat events in the ocean's surface waters can last from days to months and can occur across thousands of kilometres. If average global temperatures increase to 3.5 °C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century, as researchers currently project, the frequency of ocean heatwaves could increase by a factor of 41. In other words, a 1-in-100-day event at pre-industrial levels of warming could become a 1-in-3-day event. Marine heatwaves have already become more long-lasting, frequent, intense and extensive than in the past,” says lead study author Thomas Frölicher, a climatologist at the University of Bern in Switzerland. He adds that these changes are already well outside what could be expected on the basis of natural swings in Earth’s climate: the study’s analysis determined that 87% of heatwaves in the ocean are the result of human-induced global warming. Going global Scientists have studied heatwaves on land for decades. But it wasn’t until researchers faced episodes of extreme heat in the ocean in the past several years that they started paying more attention to the issue at sea. Those episodes included the massive warm water ‘blob’ in the northeastern Pacific Ocean that killed off sea otters (Enhydra lutris) in Alaska and sea lions (Zalophus californianus) in California, and disrupted fisheries off North America from 2014 to 2015. They also included the massive 2015–16 El Niño that ravaged coral reefs around the world. The emphasis on marine heatwaves is really motivated by the recognition that the same kinds of extremes can happen in the ocean as on land,” says Noah Diffenbaugh, a climatologist at Stanford University in California. He adds that this latest study takes global perspective on these regional issues. The study provides a useful framework for disentangling short-term temperature spikes from long-term warming trends in the oceans, says Kris Karnauskas, a physical oceanographer at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. He says that marine heatwaves could be the result of natural temperature swings that become more extreme owing to a warming ocean. Or they could be a signal that global warming is changing how the ocean functions — thus altering the likelihood and intensity of marine warming events. Frölicher says current models suggest that more frequent and intense ocean heatwaves are largely a result of warming oceans. And now, he and his team are working to develop models that can explore marine heatwave trends and their ecological impacts at local and regional levels. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0383-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08471-z#ref-CR7 Tropical cyclones that rapidly intensify are typically associated with the highest forecast errors and cause a disproportionate amount of human and financial losses. Therefore, it is crucial to understand if, and why, there are observed upward trends in tropical cyclone intensification rates. Here, we utilize two observational datasets to calculate 24-hour wind speed changes over the period 1982–2009. We compare the observed trends to natural variability in bias-corrected, high-resolution, global coupled model experiments that accurately simulate the climatological distribution of tropical cyclone intensification. Both observed datasets show significant increases in tropical cyclone intensification rates in the Atlantic basin that are highly unusual compared to model-based estimates of internal climate variations. Our results suggest a detectable increase of Atlantic intensification rates with a positive contribution from anthropogenic forcing and reveal a need for more reliable data before detecting a robust trend at the global scale.

The Central Arctic continues to set records for low extent as we get close to the beginning of October.

https://www.disl.edu/about/news/marine-heatwaves-and-hurricanes-study-examines-compounding-impact-of-severe-weather Several coastal communities are picking up the pieces after being ravaged by hurricanes in the past month. Hurricane Laura, a category 4, and Hurricane Sally, a category 2, seemed to meander their way across the Gulf of Mexico constantly shifting forecasts and keeping meteorologists on their toes. In the hours before these storms struck land, they seemed to explode in intensity. Researchers at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab with support from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory can offer insight into why these storms intensified quickly as they moved across the continental shelf. “Surprisingly, both Hurricane Laura and Hurricane Sally appeared to have similar setups to Hurricane Michael with both storm events being preceded by smaller storms (i.e. Hurricane Hanna and Marco, respectively),” Dr. Brian Dzwonkowski explained. “This pre-storm setup of the oceanic environment likely contributed to the intensification prior to landfall. Importantly, this pre-landfall intensification was not well predicted by hurricane models or forecasts, which as you can imagine is critical information for evacuation and disaster preparation.” Dzwonkowski and his team’s publication, “Compounding impact of severe weather events fuels marine heatwave in the coastal ocean”, outlines how one storm could impact the intensity of another storm by restructuring the thermal properties of the water column. Nature Communications published the findings in its September issue. The research focuses on Hurricane Michael which devastated Mexico Beach, Florida, and the surrounding communities, on October 10, 2018. The category 5 storm intensified hours before making landfall. Dzwonkowski, a physical oceanographer with the Dauphin Island Sea Lab and Associate Professor at the University of South Alabama in the Department of Marine Sciences, and his team tracked down the key events and processes that pushed the coastal waters in the Gulf of Mexico to an extremely warm state (i.e. a marine heatwave), likely contributing to the intensification of a storm so close to shore. Unlike the deep ocean, the continental shelf has a shallow bottom that limits how much cold water can be mixed up to the surface, cooling the sea surface temperature and weakening approaching storms. Dzwonkowski and his team focused on how a strong mixing event pushes surface heat downward and clears the bottom water of its cold water reserve. If this mixing is followed by a period of rewarming, such as an atmospheric heatwave, the shelf’s oceanic environment could be primed for the potential generation of extreme storm events, i.e. Hurricane Michael. This work shows that understanding the preceding weather conditions in a region where a storm is going to make landfall can improve interpretation of hurricane model forecasts and what the storm is likely to do prior to landfall,” says Dr. Dzwonkowski In mapping out heat flux and mixing, the team focused on the Mississippi Bight in late summer and early fall with data gathered by a mooring site off Dauphin Island’s coastline. The mooring site collects data throughout the water column allowing for the full heat content of the shelf to be determined. The period prior to the landfall of Hurricane Michael turned out to be the warmest ocean conditions during this time period in the 13-year record. “Turns out hurricanes and atmospheric heatwaves will be getting stronger in a warming world which would indicate the identified sequence of events that generate these extreme conditions may become more frequent,” Dzwonkowski said. “The occurrence of extreme heat content events, like marine heatwaves has significant implications for a broad range of scientific management interests beyond hurricane intensity.”Importantly, the mechanisms that generated this marine heatwave are expected to be more frequent and intense in the future due to climate change, increasing the likelihood of such extreme conditions. For example, coral reefs and hypoxia-prone shelves are already stressed by long-term warming trends. These temperature-specific benthic communities and habitats are typically of significant societal and economic value. As such, the newly identified sequence of compounding processes is expected to impact a range of coastal interests and should be considered in management and disaster response decisions. This research was funded by the NOAA RESTORE Science Program and NOAA NGI NMFS Regional Collaboration network. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18339-2 Abstract Exposure to extreme events is a major concern in coastal regions where growing human populations and stressed natural ecosystems are at significant risk to such phenomena. However, the complex sequence of processes that transform an event from notable to extreme can be challenging to identify and hence, limit forecast abilities. Here, we show an extreme heat content event (i.e., a marine heatwave) in coastal waters of the northern Gulf of Mexico resulted from compounding effects of a tropical storm followed by an atmospheric heatwave. This newly identified process of generating extreme ocean temperatures occurred prior to landfall of Hurricane Michael during October of 2018 and, as critical contributor to storm intensity, likely contributed to the subsequent extreme hurricane. This pattern of compounding processes will also exacerbate other environmental problems in temperature-sensitive ecosystems (e.g., coral bleaching, hypoxia) and is expected to have expanding impacts under global warming predictions.

Warmest melt season resulted in the second lowest minimum sea ice extent and a new record low in the Central Arctic.

It will be fun to see what the convergence of the rapid software improvements and miniaturization look like. Smartphones have taken the lead on computational photography. While DSLR and mirrorless still appeal to many who like the larger sensor size and lens selections. Maybe the smartphone and mirrorless tech will merge in the coming decade or two. The gap is already narrowing.

Excellent points from Rclab and Liberty Bell. I remember the old days of photography when I would do all my own black and white darkroom printing after taking the photos. Switching over to digital allowed me to do more extensive color post processing. Smartphones really opened up the world of photography to many more people. There are some great photographers now who do much of their work on a iPhone or Android. But a dedicated bunch are still working on DSLR and mirrorless cameras. The old saying is the best camera is the one that you have with you.

New lowest extent record for the Central Arctic.

https://www.njherald.com/news/20200909/summer-2020-was-second-hottest-on-record-in-new-jersey New Jersey experienced its second-hottest summer on record, continuing a long-term warming trend in the Garden State and across the planet that has seen sea levels rise and extreme weather become more common. The average temperature statewide soared to 75.3 degrees from June through August, ranking only behind 2010′s record-setting heat, according to a report released Tuesday by Rutgers University. Climate change is being felt increasingly in New Jersey, with the 10 hottest summers having all occurred since 1999, including seven since 2010, said David Robinson, the state climatologist and author of the report. A full list is below. “It’s indicative of what we’re seeing in other seasons in New Jersey, what we’re seeing nationally and what we’re seeing globally,” Robinson said. “It’s just another sign that climate change is here.” This summer’s milestone was not much of a surprise considering that July was the hottest month ever recorded in New Jersey. August 2020 was tied for the sixth-warmest August on record, and June was the 10th-warmest it’s been since record-keeping began in 1895.

50 years is not cherry picking. It represents the time of most rapid global warming as emissions have increased. The actual charts with trend lines are available at the NCDC site. New Jersey is one of the sates that you posted and summers have been warming at 0.3° F decade since 1895. This year was the 2nd warmest summer on record in NJ. Notice how many of the top 10 warmest summers have occurred in recent years. https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/statewide/time-series/28/tavg/3/8/1895-2020?trend=true&trend_base=10&begtrendyear=1895&endtrendyear=2020 201006 - 201008 75.7°F 126 202006 - 202008 75.3°F 125 201606 - 201608 74.9°F 124 200506 - 200508 74.8°F 123 201106 - 201108 74.6°F 122 201806 - 201808 74.4°F 121 201906 - 201908 74.4°F 121 199906 - 199908 74.3°F 119 201206 - 201208 74.2°F 118 200206 - 200208 74.0°F 117

It will be interesting to see how much longer this continues before it gets overpowered by warming. But how does agriculture cause increased rainfall and decreased temperatures? The team suspects it has to do with photosynthesis, which leads to more water vapor in the air. When a plant’s pores, called stomata, open to allow carbon dioxide to enter, they simultaneously allow water to escape. This increases the amount of water going into the atmosphere and returning as rainfall. The cycle may continue as that rainwater eventually moves back into the atmosphere and causes more rainfall downwind from the original agricultural area. Rong Fu, a climate scientist at UC Los Angeles, agrees with the team’s assessment. She also thinks that though human influence might be “greater than we realize,” this regional climate change is probably caused by many factors, including increased irrigation in the region. “This squares with a lot of other evidence,” says Peter Huybers, a climate scientist at Harvard University, who calls the new study convincing. But he warns that such benefits may not last if greenhouse gas emissions eventually overpower the mitigating effect of agriculture. Alter agrees, and says it’s unlikely that the large increases in U.S. crop production during the 20th century will continue. Other scientists have voiced concern that agricultural production could soon be reaching its limit in many parts of the world. “Food production is arguably what we’re more concerned about with climate change,” Mueller says. And understanding how agriculture and climate will continue to affect one another is crucial for developing projections for both climate and agricultural yields. “It’s not just greenhouse gasses that we need to be thinking about. While the cooling effect of irrigation mitigates global climate change on the regional scale, climate models suggest that regional warming attributed to the global trend will eventually overcome the magnitude of mitigation offered by irrigated agriculture. Farmers, who are partially buffered for now from more extreme heat, would quickly face increasing stress in that scenario. “Farmers in irrigated regions may experience more abrupt temperature increases that will cause them to have to adapt more quickly than other groups who are already coping with a warming climate,” says Kucharik. “It’s that timeframe in which people have time to adapt that concerns me.” The current study is the first to definitively link irrigation in the Midwest U.S. to an altered regional climate. These results could improve weather and climate forecasts, help farmers plan better, and, the researchers hope, better prepare agricultural areas to deal with a warming climate when the irrigation effect is washed out. “Irrigation is a land use with effects on climate in the Midwest, and we need to account for this in our climate models,” says Nocco.

Updated for 9-10. 9-10....Pt Lookout....6.47.....Massapequa....5.41...Wantagh Mesonet...4.64....Amityville....4.04....Copaigue....4.05

The dust bowl was a localized rather than global event. The heat and drought were amplified by the poor land use practices which lead to the extreme soil erosion. The modern localized summer cooler high temperatures in the corn belt are also a result of farming practices. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/383102 Abstract We provide a new and more complete analysis of the origins of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, one of the most severe environmental crises in North America in the twentieth century. Severe drought and wind erosion hit the Great Plains in 1930 and lasted through 1940. There were similar droughts in the 1950s and 1970s, but no comparable level of wind erosion. We explain why. The prevalence of small farms in the 1930s limited private solutions for controlling the downwind externalities associated with wind erosion. Drifting sand from unprotected fields damaged neighboring farms. Small farmers cultivated more of their land and were less likely to invest in erosion control than larger farmers. Soil conservation districts, established by the government after 1937, helped coordinate erosion control. This “unitized” solution for collective action is similar to that used in other natural resource/environmental settings. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/02/america-s-corn-belt-making-its-own-weather The Great Plains of the central United States—the Corn Belt—is one of the most fertile regions on Earth, producing more than 10 billion bushels of corn each year. It’s also home to some mysterious weather: Whereas the rest of the world has warmed, the region’s summer temperatures have dropped as much as a full degree Celsius, and rainfall has increased up to 35%, the largest spike anywhere in the world. The culprit, according to a new study, isn’t greenhouse gas emissions or sea surface temperature—it’s the corn itself. https://news.wisc.edu/irrigated-farming-in-wisconsins-central-sands-cools-the-regions-climate/ New research finds that irrigated farms within Wisconsin’s vegetable-growing Central Sands region significantly cool the local climate compared to nearby rain-fed farms or forests. Irrigation dropped maximum temperatures by one to three degrees Fahrenheit on average while increasing minimum temperatures up to four degrees compared to unirrigated farms or forests. In all, irrigated farms experienced a three- to seven-degree smaller range in daily temperatures compared to other land uses. These effects persisted throughout the year.

First time since 2012 that the 5 day NSIDC extent dropped below 4 million sq km. Also the first 5 year period with 3 years below 4.2 million sq km. 9-6-20.......3.928 September 5-day date 3.387 2012-09-17 4.155 2007-09-18 4.165 2016-09-10 4.192 2019-09-18

A recent study was able to determine just how extreme the Bering wintertime sea ice low in 2018 was.

This was the warmest melt season on record. A new paper is out on the continuing Atlantification of the Arctic Ocean. This year the sea ice edge made it to 85°N on the Atlantic side. https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/ Atlantification continues As discussed in a recent paper in the Journal of Climate led by colleague Igor Polyakov of the University of Alaska, the process of “Atlantification” of the Arctic Ocean, first noted in the Barents Sea, is continuing, with significant effects on the sea ice cover during the winter season in the Eastern Eurasian Basin. The relatively fresh surface layer of the Arctic Ocean is underlain by warm, salty water that is imported from the northern Atlantic Ocean. The cold fresh surface layer, because of its lower density, largely prevents the warm, salty Atlantic waters from mixing upwards. However, the underlying Atlantic water appears to have moved closer to the surface in recent years, reducing the density contrast with the water above it. Recent observations show this warm water “blob,” usually found at about 150 meters (492 feet) below the surface, has shifted within 80 meters (263 feet) of the surface. This has resulted in an increase in the upward winter ocean heat flow to the underside of the ice from typical values of 3 to 4 watts per square meter in 2007 to 2008 to greater than 10 watts per square meter from 2016 to 2018. Polyakov estimates that this is equivalent to a two-fold reduction in winter ice growth.

Updated for August 2020. 8....2020...EWR...10..LGA...5...BDR...3...ISP....6