A weakening tropical storm is approaching Hawaii, where substantial precipitation and gusty winds are expected. Tropical Storm Calvin now has maximum sustained winds of 45 mph.
The infrared satellite image this morning clearly shows the storm east of the big island. You will note an absence of a distinct eye and rather amorphous rainbands.
Below are the winds during Wednesday evening, with yellow colors indicating the strongest winds (followed by green and blue). You will also notice the wind "dead zone" to the lee (southwest) of the Big Island.
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The precipitation totals for the entire event are shown below. 4-7 inches on the windward (eastern) side of the Big Island. Wet on the eastern side of Maui as well.
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Calvin has been rapidly weakening the past few days. Why?
The answer is cool water. Hurricane/tropical storms require warm water to strengthen, generally greater than 28C (82F).
Below are the latest sea surface temperatures around Hawaii. Temperatures east of Hawaii are now below 26C. Not a healthy place for a tropical storm! No wonder Calvin is declining.
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Finally, the winds of Calvin are still strong enough to produce some impressive waves on the southwest side of the Big Island, with some waves getting to 12-18 ft. Some good surfing opportunities!
I'm noticing how silent you are about the heat wave engulfing the planet. For years, you have repeatedly pointed to factors other than climate change for extreme weather. Maybe it's time to stop pretending that you're right. That's the right thing to do as a scientist.
ReplyDeleteThe planet is not being engulfed by a heat wave. I just looked at the temperature data around the globe. Some places have heat waves, some cold waves. This is very typical. The heatwaves are generally higher than 50 years ago by a few degrees F. Anyway, my blog is about West Coast weather, not global weather.
DeleteJet, there are a number of large media outlets highlighting the heat and aligning it with a narrative that they are being paid to push. They don't always have objective data backing their positions....or, the data is isolated to fit their position.
ReplyDeleteThe world is on fire, and you're writing about an unimpressive tropical storm in Hawaii? Every other climatologist who believes in science and who isn't on the take from fossil fuel companies is alarmed as hell. My god, Cliff.
ReplyDeleteAnthony.... the world is NOT on fire. A plot of the differences from normal show warm and cold areas. Heatwaves in local regions do not indicate global warming. The central/eastern US is below normal...what does that mean. You are a climate activist with a certain viewpoint that conflicts with observations and the best science. That is your right. But you are not correct in many of your claims. ..cliff
DeleteYour 24/7 pearl clutching is duly noted - would you like a fainting couch as well?
DeleteMy next blog will show the graphic and others.
DeleteHey JetCity Jumbly, in the northern hemisphere, it's summer.
ReplyDeleteYes. And it's also the hottest summer on record. Believe what you will - I was just in Phoenix and things are worse than they have ever been.
DeleteI am curious JetCity are records and heatwaves not natural? Can you prove they never happened in the past? Oh is climate change just making it worse? Can you source that info. Any good meteorologist, will tell you that they cannot attribute one severe event to climate change alone as too many variables. Watch Don Lemon with a weather channel expert. Any climate report I see says this "could", "may" or "likely" be what happens in future with climate change. Never the 100 percent certainty that you are protraying or media portrays. Since so certain, can you tell me how this current global heat wave is directly caused by climate change. If answer it is warmer and hotter due to climate change again I ask if records cannot be broken? Just broke a record here not long ago, think it was from 1909, before climate change. Cliff is an excellent scientist still sounding alarm without being an alarmist.
ReplyDeleteI thought maybe you were going to mention whether or not if Hawaii gets some kind of tropical storm does that water typically end up coming to the Pacific Northwest? Over the years I've noticed that quite often in the first or second week of August we often get a couple days of rain around here.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a kid, I spent a lot of time at the movies. One which absolutely fascinated me was the 1961 science fiction flick, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.
ReplyDeleteAs the plot goes, the ocean research submarine Seaview receives a radio message from the Bureau of Marine Exploration that a meteor shower has pierced the Van Allen radiation belt, causing it to catch on fire, resulting in a deadly increase in the global temperature.
The submarine and its research staff are ordered to New York City to work with UN scientists in deciding how to save the world.
'The research submarine Seaview in NYC Harbor'
Sixty years later, I attended a local talk given last month by a scientist who is an advocate of solar radiation modification (SRM) as a means of keeping the rise in global mean temperature under +1.5C above pre-industrial.
There are three broad approaches to solar radiation modification a.k.a. solar geo-engineering:
-- Stratospheric aerosol injection, or SAI, in which small particles of, for example, sulfur dioxide would be injected into the upper atmosphere.
-- Marine cloud brightening (MCB), which would spray fine sea water to whiten clouds and thus increase cloud reflectivity.
-- Cirrus cloud thinning (CCT), which is strictly not solar geo-engineering but shares many of the physical and especially governance characteristics as the other methods.
The scientist had these talking points to make:
-- In his view, the true source of danger from global warming is the fast rate at which global mean temperature is increasing, not necessarily that it will break some arbitrary boundary in the future.
-- As his thinking goes, the fast rate of increase in GMT doesn't give enough time for local and global ecosystems to successfully adapt to rising temperatures in the way that they did in pre-industrial times.
-- The world's consumption of energy is growing. Maintaining any society anywhere on earth in a middle class lifestyle requires the consumption of 3000 kw-hours of electricity per person per year.
-- China, India, and other third-world nations are committed to improving the economic lot of their citizens and will not be abandoning fossil fuels regardless of what we here in the west decide to do in pursuing Net Zero.
-- SRM would be very effective in quickly reducing global mean temperature. The technology needed to implement SRM in the form of stratospheric aerosol injection exists today and could be quickly deployed in a few years.
-- Although SRM is expensive and would need to be done indefinitely into the future, it is not nearly as expensive as the future cost of fully implementing Net Zero on a worldwide basis, something which will not be happening in any case.
-- The Chinese are giving consideration to unilaterally pursuing SRM by injecting large quantities of small sulfur dioxide particles into the atmosphere above their own sovereign territory. These particles will be quickly dispersed over the whole of the earth just as happens when a major volcanic eruption occurs.
A recently published government report which goes into great detail concerning the positives and negatives of SRM is available here:
Congressionally Mandated Report on Solar Radiation Modification
One is immediately impressed by how many billions of dollars could be spent by government scientists and by academic institutions studying the possible impacts of solar geo-engineering.
Suppose the Chinese just say to the world, we are going forward with SRM on our own initiative. If you don't like it, just stuff it.
Billions will then be spent by government scientists and by academic institutions studying the worldwide impacts, if any, of what the Chinese actually did with SRM.
Betah, your points of the world falling in line with the west is the fundamental part of this crux. China, India and others want to grow and be world dominate and salivate at the fact the west is crippling themselves by trying to abandon fossil fuels. These methods you bring up should be studied more, nuclear for power, more hydro, but we all know other alternative are far too expensive for the amount we get from them. If sane people just started debating these few things maybe something would be done. Instead of just the fear mongering that we have to be Carbon neutral or we will all die unless we stop all use of fossils period. Which is a false narrative anyway too many things rely on fossils other than energy.
ReplyDelete"Instead of just the fear mongering that we have to be Carbon neutral or we will all die unless we stop all use of fossils period."
DeleteJust take one look at the posts from today and yesterday - point taken.
After watching the climate science debates for eighteen years or so, my personal opinion is that the rise in global mean temperature since the mid-20th century is partly natural and partly man-caused, with the man-caused portion being from a third to possibly even a half of the combined driving causation.
DeleteIMHO, in the absence of a serious attempt at solar geo-engineering using stratospheric aerosol injection, the rise in GMT is unstoppable, reaching +2C above pre-industrial by the year 2100 as the most likely outcome.
Is a +2C rise in GMT by the year 2100, or even a +3C rise, sufficient justification to give solar geo-engineering a try?
I don't think so. The government report on solar geo-engineering identifies a number of possible risks. As an example of one possible outcome, the eruption of the Mount Tambora volcano in 1815 resulted in the 1816 Year Without Summer.
The Wikipedia article for the Year Without Summer describes a series of climatic disruptions which are similar if not identical to the ones now being predicted for anthropgenic global warming -- crop failures, increased flooding, etc. Solar geo-engineering conducted on a more-or-less continuous basis could easily produce a century without summer, not just a year without summer.
We have another socio-economic disaster in the making as a direct consequence of the Net Zero fantasy, a disaster which is much more dangerous than the alleged adverse consequences of climate change.
We are systematically shutting down reliable sources of baseload electric power without supplying adequate replacement on a megawatt-hour per megawatt-hour basis. More than that, we are doing so without producing any measurable effect in slowing the rate of global warming.
Some of the biggest "heat wave" fuss came from a report that used surface temperature - ground temperature - not air temp at 2 meters. See:
ReplyDeletehttps://notrickszone.com/2023/07/19/europes-48c-horror-that-never-was-esa-media-sharply-criticized-for-manipulative-reporting/
You might guess that I am old enough to be a grandparent of most of the ClimateCult™ activists. I am not impressed with either hot or cold weather.
Why haven't you included the length of the record keeping in Phoenix (at least 125 years)? Data points can also be cherry picked. Cherry picking which stories to focus on is also misleading. Globally, this June was the hottest ever observed, this is certainly a more pertinent story. Do the many unscientific and ignorant comments you receive give you any pause?
ReplyDeleteRich... the Phoenix record is far shorter than 125 years. June was warm globally. That is not the question. The question is about local heatwaves. Unscientific and "ignorant" comments come from both sides of the argument...I allow both sides on this blog. Would you have me censor them?
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