Showing posts with label Precipitation extremes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Precipitation extremes. Show all posts
Friday, July 19, 2013
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
- Power outages, submerged cars, flooded subway stations. Dramatic Twitter photos show parts of Toronto hit by floods after heavy rains Monday.
- MORE on #TorontoFlooding : GoTrain stuck, reports 300 ppl trapped RT @YVRBCbro: photo credit @devjay twitpic.com/d1lzdw #breaking
- So my hubby is stuck in a bus at 427 and burnhamthorpe....cars flooded to the roofs pic.twitter.com/N4wUP2K0Qx
- Hey guys! You know how people are overreacting to the rain? Here's Toronto's King Street. pic.twitter.com/8QLXrMfthK #overreacting
- wow, those are rapids on the street in Toronto RT @Hassan_Ouda: pic.twitter.com/vN1iMGXNyS floods #stormTO
- Decided to sprint home and was rewarded w/ submerged cars #flood #carsdrowned #rainstorm #Toronto pic.twitter.com/vznQry421i
- wee bit of rain n flooding in toronto downtown pic.twitter.com/5plBYFQmPw
- Our bus just flooded! #stormTO pic.twitter.com/21nwaaNSSh
- That's one angry storm sewer. #stormTO pic.twitter.com/PxCv9pY6Fu
Saturday, May 18, 2013
by Dan Lashof, Natural Resources Defense Council, May 14, 2013
With all the debate on the federal budget in Congress, climate change rarely gets mentioned as a deficit driver. Yet dealing with climate disruption was one of the largest non-defense discretionary budget items in 2012. Indeed, as the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) shows in Who Pays for Climate Change?, when all federal spending on last year’s droughts, storms, floods, and forest fires are added up, the U.S. Climate Disruption Budget was nearly $100 billion, equivalent to 16 percent of total non-defense discretionary spending in the federal budget—larger than any official spending category.
That means that federal spending to deal with extreme weather made worse by climate change far exceeded total spending aimed at solving the problem. In fact, it was eight times the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s total budget and eight times total spending on energy.
Overall the insurance industry estimates that 2012 was the second costliest year in U.S. history for climate-related disasters, with more than $139 billion in damages. But private insurers themselves only covered about 25% of these costs ($33 billion), leaving the federal government and its public insurance enterprises to pay for the majority of the remaining claims. As a result, the U.S. government paid more than three times as much as private insurers did for climate-related disasters in 2012.
That reflects a major shift in liabilities with respect to climate change away from private insurers to public alternatives that began in earnest following the $72 billion hit the industry took in 2005 from hurricane Katrina.
Federal spending related to climate disruption falls into two major categories: storms and droughts.
Spending related to storms includes appropriated funds for the Federal Emergency Management Agency as well as emergency supplemental appropriations following major disasters, such as Superstorm Sandy. It also includes the National Flood Insurance Program, which is supposed to be self-supporting, but is increasingly under water.
Drought-related spending includes the federal crop insurance program as well as the government’s share of higher food costs.
The figure below shows how the federal climate disruption budget breaks down.
While some of these federal programs—such as forest fire prevention, crop insurance, flood coverage and disaster preparedness—offer wider benefits to the country, it should be noted that these liabilities have largely been assumed by the public sector due to a lack of private sector alternatives. The true scorekeepers of climate risk—the insurance industry—realizes it can’t win when the dice are increasingly loaded with carbon pollution, so it’s walking away from the table, leaving taxpayers holding the bag. Last year that cost amounted to over $1100 per taxpayer, and we can expect to see even higher costs in future as carbon dioxide concentrations continue to soar past 400 parts per million.
Even as the budget to clean up climate disruptions hit a record high in 2012 and is expected to continue to grow, the budget for programs to fight climate disruption—such as environmental enforcement, energy efficiency, clean energy vehicle research and the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy—suffered cuts of more than $100 million the “sequester” that went into effect in March and remain under continued pressure from the budget-cutting process.
Our climate plan is, in effect, to cut critical investments now for the sake of small short-term deficit reductions and send our children the tax bills to clean up the mess.
That’s colossally short-sighted, even by Washington’s standards.
Sunday, April 7, 2013
Deluge in Buenos Aires Could Be Sign of Rainfall to Come
BUENOS AIRES: Storms will bring a lot more rain as global temperatures rise through the 21st century, according to a new study from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Image: Flickr/La Bicicleta - Tango
Heavy rains could occur 30% more frequently by the end of this century, thanks to climate change
BUENOS AIRES: Storms will bring a lot more rain as global temperatures rise through the 21st century, according to a new study from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Image: Flickr/La Bicicleta - TangoRecent heavy rains that have lashed Buenos Aires and other parts of Argentina, causing 100-year record flooding that left more than 50 people dead, may be just a preview of the years to come. Storms will bring a lot more rain as global temperatures rise through the 21st century, according to a new study from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The study finds that extreme precipitation events will be more intense in a warming world, with as much as 20-30% more rainfall in most parts of the United States.
Greenhouse gases trap heat that warms the oceans, which, in turn, dispense more moisture into the atmosphere. Scientists from NOAA; the Desert Research Institute; and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, studied climate model simulations to assess the maximum possible water vapor concentrations that such warming could lead to.
"The way we estimate how big the biggest storms could be is [by asking], 'What's the max amount of moisture that can occur in a place or has occurred in a place, and what's the maximum amount the air can be raised up, and if you have a mountain, what's the maximum horizontal air flow that you have?'" said Kenneth Kunkel of the NOAA Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites, who is the lead author of the study.
The team of scientists ran climate simulations for two 30-year periods, 2041-2070 and 2071-2100, and compared the results with rainfall measurements for 1971-2000. They found that atmospheric moisture increased a lot more than other factors that influence precipitation -- vertical motion of moisture-laden air and horizontal wind speed.
Increases in atmospheric moisture, or "precipitable water," corresponded to the rise in latent heat in the oceans, both of which were found to be in sync with greenhouse gas projections.
News for dam builders, among others
The study shows that most of the Northern Hemisphere will witness 20-30% more rainfall between 2071 and 2100 compared with the end of the 20th century. The increase in rainfall intensity between 2041 and 2070 will be half that amount.
The study shows that most of the Northern Hemisphere will witness 20-30% more rainfall between 2071 and 2100 compared with the end of the 20th century. The increase in rainfall intensity between 2041 and 2070 will be half that amount.
That gives the United States plenty to worry about. "When you look at it in terms of inches, it does vary across the U.S. The heaviest amounts occur along the Gulf Coast. These heaviest storms, in terms of rain in one day, would be about 40 inches," Kunkel said. The greatest increases in precipitation in the United States will be in the western parts of the country, according to the study.
Rainfall intensity is not expected to rise as much in the Southern Hemisphere, where the larger ocean area moderates rising temperatures.
Kunkel said there are signs of the trend beginning, even if the evidence is only circumstantial. "If you look at the general increases that we see in heavy rains, not any particular event but in general, they are increasing, and there does seem to be some evidence that we are seeing some increase in atmospheric moisture because the globe is warming due to greenhouse gases," he said.
The research team believes its projections of rainfall intensity are crucial for water resource managers and builders to be able to factor in risks of catastrophic events. For example, a dam built for years to come should be able to withstand heavy rain and accumulation of water, Kunkel pointed out.
"The specific uniqueness about this paper is that we focused on heaviest of heavy events. We were looking at the worst storms that would occur," he said.
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