A New Environmental Challenge for Seattle: RABBITS!

There is much talk in the Seattle media of invading hordes changing the nature of Seattle, with Amazon employees and homeless folks being the most frequently mentioned.

But the Seattle media has chosen to ignore an invasion that has become increasingly serious during the past year:

The appearance of huge numbers of bunnies around the city.

Cute, fluffy creatures that are eating their way through Seattle's vegetable gardens and lawns.

I bike to work each day along the Burke-Gilman trail.  Before this year I never saw bunnies...now I see at least a half dozen each morning.

Bunny in Seattle's Magnuson Park

One of my favorite activities is to run or walk through Magnuson Park with my little dog, Abby.  On Sunday, I counted 22 bunnies.   My dog is very excited to see the rabbits... but don't worry she is on a leash and can't give chase.

Rabbits are outside my house every morning, lazily munching on my lawn.  That's fine....less mowing for me.

But now they have gone too far....last week I found a fat bunny munching the lettuce in my vegetable garden.    I purchased plastic fencing to stop them to no avail....yesterday one snuck in through a small gap.   My lettuce was half eaten!

My vegetable garden after being visited by a hungry rabbit

I do worry that I am turning into a modern version of Elmer Fudd, hunting the hated Wabbit!  And if you remember from the cartoon, the Wabbit always won.

Early Sunday morning, driving out of my neighborhood, a rabbit dashed out in front of my car.  I was sure that I hit it, but miraculously it escaped.  I was shaken.

Some neighborhoods in Seattle have had rabbit issues before, such as the infestation around Greenlake circa 2005.   But one way or the other, the rabbit population waned.

And who could forget the Redmond/Microsoft bunny crisis of 1998, when nearly 1000 bunnies spread over the well-cared lawns of Microsoft and other Overlake businesses.   There was even a Redmond Rabbit Coalition.

But this time, here in Seattle, something is different.  Seattle's rabbit population is clearly growing exponentially to levels not seen before.  There are clearly thousands of bunnies.

But why?   Did a lot of people dump their pet rabbits in local parks?    The effects of global warming?  (very doubtful)

Has the local coyote population gotten lazy or decided they prefer fat pet cats who don't offer as much of a chase?  And what about our resident eagle population?  Not on the job.

Seattle coyotes appear to be lazy or now prefer cats

Well, I won't speculate any more....but those wabbits going into my vegetable garden better watch out!

Thunderstorms Bring Strong Winds, Road Closures, and Power Outages over Northeast Washington

The line of strong thunderstorms that hit western Washington around midnight Sunday/Monday continued into eastern Washington, where some of the convection revved up into intense storms.    Over limited areas the winds were extraordinary, gusting to well over 60 mph and I suspect more in some locations.

An idea of the intensity of some of these storms was made clear over Ferry County of northeast Washington, where extensive power outages and downed trees were noted.   State Route 20 was closed by a large number of fallen trees at a location about 4 miles west of the town of Republic (see pictures and location map below).

Picture Courtesy of Andy of TroutStreaming

The strong winds were associated with a line of strong thunderstorms.  Let me illustrate by showing a series of composite radar images from the Spokane radar from 1102 UTC Sunday (4:02 AM PDT) to 1231 UTC (5:31 AM).  The maximum reflectivity (how much of the radar signal is returned to the radar) was very, very large (values reaching the mid-60s), which is associated with hail and VERY heavy precipitation.

The radar can tell us about the top of the radar echo (see below), which reached around
40,000 feet---which is very high for our area (folks in Oklahoma would yawn at it).

So what kind of wind reports did we get?   The problem with NE Washington is that observation density is sparse....but we get some suggestive reports.  For example, the USDA RAWS site at Oroville, WA has a very sudden gust to 61 mph at the time of the convection line passage.

The RAWS site at Aeneas, WA, just a few miles from the SR-20 blowdown had a gust to 64 mph.

A weatherunderground station in Republic got a piece of the action (see plot below), with a surge of wind to 26 mph, accompanied by a sudden jump of pressure and a burst of rain.

 The really strong winds early Monday morning were localized over the Republic area of NE Washington.   The max wind gusts overnight  in the regional plot showed lots of blustery conditions (winds gusting to 20-35 mph), put little evidence of a major area of greater 50 mph.

So what happened around Republic?   There is no reason to suspect a tornado, particularly since the strong winds appeared to occur over a region of roughly 10 miles in size. 

Strong thunderstorms can produce strong "straight line" winds even without a tornado vortex.  For example, powerful thunderstorms can have strong gust fronts of descending outflow air, with wind speeds reaching 40-80 mph.   Dry air under the thunderstorm air can aid in producing a strong

 gust front, and the vertical radiosonde sounding at Spokane Airport for 5 AM, did show a low-level dry layer (see below, temperatures in red and dew point in blue, the more they are separated, the drier the air).  Dry air encourages evaporation and cooling, with cooler/denser air sinking more rapidly before it spreads out along the ground.  Strong downdrafts can also mix higher momentum air from aloft down to the surface.

An unusual event with strong thunderstorms on both sides of the Cascades.

Unusually Strong Cold Front (with Lightning) Hits the Northwest

Summer cold fronts are generally unimpressive around here, often bringing cooler marine air accompanied by a transition to increased onshore flow.   But last night we had a stronger than normal summer cold front that brought lightning and burst of heavy rain.

The radar image around 6 PM Sunday was impressive, with the yellow colors indicating heavy precipitation.

By midnight, the heavy precipitation reached Puget Sound and as many folks can attest, there was some serious lightning with the frontal band.

In fact, the regional lightning detection network observed hundreds of lightning strikes during this frontal passage (the figure below shows the strikes for the 24-h period ending 1 AM Monday).

If you want to get a real feel for the lightning, here is a video looking north from the northern Kitsap Peninsula from Greg Johnsons Skunk Bay Weather facility.  Pretty exciting at Skunk Bay.  No missile shots or UFOs!


The infrared satellite image at 8 PM Sunday was impressive for June, with a strong frontal band making landfall on the WA coast.

The precipitation totals from this band were modest...precipitation was heavy but it moved through quickly.  Particularly, heavy precipitation fell over the north Cascades (half inch), but lots of locations observed a tenth or two of rain.

On top of the atmospheric science building at the UW, the frontal passage was very obvious around
07-08 Z (GMT)--around midnight to 1 AM Monday.  About .15 inch of rain (bottom panel), an increase of wind (top panel), and an interesting, sudden jump down of pressure (fourth panel).

So why did we have so much action last night?   The front was fairly strong but a key was elevated instability (known as elevated CAPE, Convective Available Potential Energy, in the weather business).  The upward motion with the front released the instability, resulting in numerous thunderstorms.

The existence of the upper level instability was indicated in the cloud late Sunday afternoon with the existence of lots of altocumulus castelanus clouds.

Our high-resolution forecast models had a good idea about what would happen, as illustrated by the one-hour precipitation ending at 9 PM Sunday (04 UTC) and 1 AM Monday (below)

This week should be cool with plenty of low clouds in the morning and early afternoons.  Typical weather for this time of the year.  But don't worry....the latest model runs suggest a big improvement by early July.

How Climate Change Exaggeration Can Hurt People and the Environment

As readers of this blog know, I believe that communicating hype, exaggeration, and false information about human-caused climate change is a bad idea, if not highly counterproductive. 

On one hand, there are those who don't believe in the potential for human-caused climate change, mistakenly believing that an increase of a few hundred parts per million of CO2 could not be important. They are wrong.  Increasing CO2 will substantially change the climate of our planet during this century.

And then there are those who propose that virtually every severe weather event is the result of anthropogenic climate.   Also problematic.

In recent months we have seen a great example of how hyping global warming impacts can have a very negative impact, with potentially severe consequences for those suffering from a real environmental disaster. 

 The wine country wildfires north of San Francisco during October 2017.

The effects of the fires were catastrophic:  44 people lost their lives, 9000 buildings destroyed, 21,000 damaged,  hundreds of thousands of acres burned over, and Beijing-like air pollution affecting the health of millions of people in the Bay area.

The fires began after a normal dry summer that followed a wet winter, one that produced a lush crop of flammable grasses.  But the key to the fire initiation and spread were powerful "Diablo" easterly winds, gusting to 50-90 mph.  Winds that not only started many fires, but then caused then to explode and rapidly move into populated regions. 

As noted in my previous blogs,  there is no reason to suspect that anthropogenic  (human caused) global warming contributed to this event.   The previous wet winter was important, strong winds were essential (and they might even decrease under global warming), and in a normal year the fuels are dry enough to burn, with or without warming.   Importantly, there have been huge increases in population in regions that have burned for millennia, and fire suppression and the invasion of flammable invasive species (e.g., Eucalyptus trees) have made the region a dangerous tinderbox.

Recently, official investigations by California's official investigative agency (CalFire) have found that many of fires were caused by trees and branches falling on power lines managed by the local utility (PG&E).  PG&E is responsible for clearing the area around the lines to prevent such fires--it appears that they did not do a very good job at it and according to CA law should be responsible for the fire damage.  In fact, CalFire has communicating their concerns about PG&E to local law enforcement personnel.

But what are some major politicians saying?   They blame the fires on human-caused climate change and the "new normal", thus potentially giving PG&E a way to escape liability.

For example, when CA Governor Brown was asked about the wine country fires he stated "“That’s the way it is with a warming climate, dry weather and reducing moisture.” He also noted that climate change has produced a new normal of wildfires in the region.

And climate "advocacy" groups are with the governor.   For example, a local Pacific Northwest advocacy group (Grist) has produced a number of articles (like this one) pointing to climate change as the origin of the wine-country fires.


And then there is the media, with several jumping on the climate change as cause bandwagon ( such as Scientific American below)

PG&E is being sued for billions of dollars by those who have lost their homes, businesses, or loved ones. 

And what do you think they are doing?   They are attempting to use the climate excuse provide by the Governor, some climate advocates, and the sloppy media to get out of their responsibilities---blaming the fires on climate change and not their lack of maintenance of the power lines.

Blaming climate change is also an excuse for politicians not to do their jobs in protecting the environment and the population.   An excuse not to make hard decisions.   Like restricting people from living in fire-prone hills,  requiring homes to be fire resistant, or that power lines be buried.

Environmental stewardship goes well beyond dealing with  increasing CO2, but unfortunately many politicians and activist groups have become fixated on one issue, increasing greenhouse gases, and neglect important environmental threats and challenges.

Want a local, Puget Sound example?  That is easy... the quality of Puget Sound and our coastal waters.

Local environmental activists, regional politicians (like our Governor), and some local media (like the Seattle Times) have been fixated on the impacts of increasing CO2 on oyster production.    They have claimed that  increasing CO2 has caused the failure of oyster larvae to flourish in factory nurseries.

A detailed analysis reveals that none of this is true and that the factory nurseries made mistake in their intake of upwelled water at the wrong time of the day.  An error that has been remedied (thanks to the advice of the University of Washington!), with oyster production flourishing today.

But this fixation on the wrong problem (CO2 increases) has given the shellfish industry a pass on some very bad practices, such as spraying herbicides and pesticides over our State's waters, polluting our coastal zone with lot of plastic, and churning up our tide beds.    Politicians, wishing to show their environmental credibility, have been loud about CO2, but have neglected the issues of sewage run-off and the quality of our sewage treatment facilities. 

Remember the overflow of the massive overflow of the West Point treatment plant after a minor rainstorm,with huge amounts of sewage hitting Puget Sound?  It was due to some amazingly poor maintenance, lack of redundancy, and poor training.  Not as sexy as increasing greenhouse gases, but very important.

Another Washington State example?  

 So many politicians in our state blame climate change for the wildfires of late, rather than the real culprit:  the mismanagement of our state forests...forests that are overgrown and radically different than their natural state.   Or the fact they have allowed folks to live in regions that have traditionally burned.

Simplistic environmental activism can be highly destructive to the environment and we see this played out time and time again.

One final example:  the carbon tax saga.  Washington State had the opportunity to pass I-732, a revenue-neutral carbon tax that would encourage reduced emission of CO2 by our state, but not taking any money out of the pockets of state residents.  It even would have made our state tax system less regressive and would have been the first carbon tax in the nation and a bi-partisan beacon of what was possible if we worked together.

But many "environmental activists" worked against it, because of a false and divisive political narrative that climate change efforts must address "climate justice" by funding various interest groups (e.g., labor, tribes, minority groups),  without any evidence to support their contention that climate change preferentially hurts such groups IN WASHINGTON STATE.

The result:  the failure of I-732 and the pushing of a poorly designed carbon fee this year (I-1631) that will surely fail.

In summary, climate hype and misinformation hurts the environment and our citizens, no matter which side is doing it.  Facts matter and environmental issues go far beyond the concentration of one gas in the atmosphere.

Marine Air is Surging In

After a period of substantially above normal temperatures, the Northwest's air conditioning is now set to high, as cool, marine air pushes into western Washington tonight.

Meteorologists carefully study the pressure difference between the coast (e.g. at Hoquiam) and Seattle to appraise the situation.  When that difference gets to about 3 hPa, a good push is pretty much guaranteed.  Here are the latest numbers:

Hoquiam minus Seattle is now 3.6 hPa.... a guaranteed marine push.

The latest (10 PM) surface observations show that cool air has pushed into the Strait of Juan de Fuca and has already moved inland south of the Olympics.   Only central Puget Sound is in the 70s....and that will change quickly during the next few hours.

The visible satellite image at 7 PM clearly showed low clouds moving inland from the coast, while thunderstorms were evident over the Cascades (see below).

The cause of this marine push?   The movement of the high pressure ridge inland and the approach of an upper level trough (see upper level-- 500 hPa- map at 5 PM today).

Low clouds should be over most of western Washington on Thursday morning, with high temperatures only reaching the mid-70s.   Perfection.    And Friday will be even cooler, with highs only getting to the upper 60s, followed by a modest warming over the weekend.

The cooler air will be welcome.....my little dog has not liked the warm weather, preferring to sleep on the floor rather than in her normal chair.

Thursday morning addition

An interesting aspect of this marine push is how shallow it is.  Here is the time height cross section of temperatures (red lines) and winds above Sea Tac Airport (time is on x-axis and height (in pressure) on the y).  The cooling started around 06 UTC (11 AM PDT) and was pretty much limited to below 850 hPa (about 5000 ft).   So big cooling near sea level, but you would not notice it at higher elevations.

 The visible satellite imagery this morning shows nearly all of western WA covered in low clouds:

Warm West, Cool East in the Pacific Northwest

Today was one of those unusual late spring/summer days when it was warmer over the interior of western Washington than over portions of eastern Washington.  The highs today (shown below) were in the upper 80s in the central and southern Sound and around Vancouver BC, with 90s over the western slopes of the north Cascades, while Spokane and vicinity were in the mid-70s.  Go eastward into Idaho and western Montana and 50s-60s dominated.  Downright chilly.

The reason for this contrast is apparent in the upper level (500 hPa, about 18,000 ft) weather map for 11 AM today, shown below.  A ridge of high pressure is offshore, while an usually strong low center is position over southern Idaho.  The high pressure provides warm, sinking air in the middle troposphere, and the combination of ridge and trough resulted in northeasterly flow aloft above the Cascades--which contributes to warming over the western slopes.

The low center was associated with cool temperatures and extensive clouds from eastern WA to the east, with substantial precipitation.   The MODIS visible satellite image around noon shows the clouds associated with the upper low--you can see the circular distortion of the clouds.
Along the coast, marine stratus hugged the shore.

A radar image during mid-afternoon shows the precipitation extending into far eastern Washington and northern Oregon.

The ridge will move eastward during the next few days and western Washington will have two more warm days, marine air pushing in on Thursday.  Then for the next week we will enjoy typical late June weather, with some clouds and highs in the lower 70s.    Perfection.

Are Americans Losing Interest in Global Warming?

There are many stories about global warming in the media, and some politicians are talking about the issue in increasingly strident tones. 

But what do the American people really think about the subject?  Are they increasingly worried about the threat of global warming?   Have the apocalyptic warnings encouraged folks to take global warming seriously, or do folks tune out the scary headlines as noise?  What is  the most effective communication strategy to promote society's attention to both mitigation (reducing CO2 emissions) and adaptation (preparing our civilization for the changes producing by  a warming planet)?

This blog will take a look at those questions.

Let's start by using the highly useful googletrends tool, which allows one to view the frequency with which folks have searched on any phrase or word from 2004 to today.   Below I will show some results for U.S. google inquiries.

A plot of the frequency of folks searching for the phrase "global warming" is shown below by the blue line  (100 represents the maximum frequency over the period).  There was increasing interest in the term early in the period, with a peak in 2007.  But interest greatly declined after the 2008 election of President Obama and remained at a steady, but low-level, since approximately 2011.

Frequency of search for "global warming"--blue line-- and "climate change"--red line

The term "climate change" has become more heavily applied in recent years, and often is used as a replacement for "global warming."    Googletrends statistics shows much less interest in this term than global warming early in the period, with a weak upward trend during the past decade.   In fact, there is a small preference of climate change over global warming during the last few years.

What about the use of the term "carbon footprint", which often is used to promote more individual responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions (see below)?   Almost no mention early in the period, a huge surge during 2006-2008,  a rapid decline after President Obama took office, and a steady level over the past decade.

carbon footprint googletrends

Next consider the term "extreme weather", which is often described by the media as being connected with global warming.    Pretty steady until 2010, followed by slow growth over time.  There tends to be a peak in winter, and a narrow huge peak occurred during the winter of 2013-2014, when there were severe cold waves and snow in the U.S. (which are NOT expected outcomes of global warming by the way).

The bottom line of the googletrends statistics is that after a period of increasing interest in global warming in the run up to the 2008 election, there was a profound decline in global warming related searches, declining to a steady state of low interest during the past 8-9 years.

How do the google trends compare to national polls?

A recent Gallup poll of the American people asking about the issues they cared about most revealed that environmental concerns (including global warming) were 13th on the list, noted by only 3% of those polled (see below).   Pretty small.

There is a climate communications group at Yale University that provides detailed geographical maps of the interest of the US population regarding global warming.

When asked whether they think global warming is happening (irrespective of magnitude), most Americans say yes. (see graphic).  There are hot spots of global warming "belief", such as King County, Washington, the San Francisco environs and in sections of the southwest US (like southern Texas and Colorado/ New Mexico).  Only about half the folks in the central Plains states think global warming is happening.

But if ones asks whether global warming is mostly caused by humans, the answer changes substantially (see below). 

 In most of the country, less than fifty percent of the folks agree with a predominant human origin to global warming.  Even in the most liberal/progressive areas, the percentiles only climb into the 60-65% range.

But now get ready to be shocked.  When folks are asked whether global warming will harm them personally in the future, only a small percentage (typically around 30%) answer affirmatively, even in the most liberal/progressive areas of the country.  Even western Washington.  

People do not believe that they personally have been or will be harmed by global warming.  If they had asked whether they would be harmed by global warming caused by humans, the percentages surely would have been less.

Perhaps some people feel that global warming will be a positive in their lives...but that question was not asked.

The above numbers should have a profound impact on the climate debate and what climate actions will be taken.  Since most folks do not believe global warming will be a negative for them, it is unlikely they will make any real sacrifices to deal with the issue.

Thus,  carbon taxes/fees that would result in substantial costs to individuals and  that are used to address global warming have very little chance of passing.  My prediction is the proposed carbon fee initiative (1631) in Washington State is virtually certain to fail.  A revenue neutral approach (folks get all their money back) would have a better chance, or an initiative that hardwired real benefits (like rapid completion of mass transit).   Folks won't sacrifice to deal with global warming--they have to perceive some personal benefit for any actions.

The above numbers also show how ineffective the gloom/doom climate communicators have been, and will continue to be.  Folks sense the exaggeration and hype, and turn off/don't believe the  highly political/apocalyptic messages.  That is why I spend a lot of time dealing with the hypsters (like some comm Seattle Stranger, and "activist" scientists like Michael Mann) and work hard to produce a fact-based climate message.  It is the only way one can earn trust.  Folks won't sacrifice if they don't trust your information.

Americans sense the truth about climate change is more nuanced than they are being told by the media, activist groups, and politicians.   And they are right. 

The scientific community must better police its own communication, putting more emphasis on transmitting our best understanding of climate change and refraining from advocacy in scientific publications and in our transmission of information to the media.