Paging Joe Romm… Remember this ridiculous moment in climate politics last year?
Well guess what kids, there’s a new peer reviewed paper to be published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, and in the press release about the paper, they don’t even mention the word “climate”. Simply put, a rogue storm system, part of the normal chaotic nature of weather on this planet, was the cause. Nothing else. Anyone who claims it was part of “climate change” is simply flat wrong, and that includes Hillary.
This paper was presented today at the AMS meeting in Seattle.
From Eurekalert:
Rogue storm system caused Pakistan floods that left millions homeless
Last summer’s disastrous Pakistan floods that killed more than 2,000 people and left more than 20 million injured or homeless were caused by a rogue weather system that wandered hundreds of miles farther west than is normal for such systems, new research shows.
Storm systems that bring widespread, long-lasting rain over eastern India and Bangladesh form over the Bay of Bengal, at the east edge of India, said Robert Houze, a University of Washington atmospheric sciences professor. But Pakistan, on the Arabian Sea west of India, is substantially more arid and its storms typically produce only locally heavy rainfall.
The flooding began in July and at one point it was estimated that 20 percent of Pakistan’s total land area was under water. Structural damage was estimated at more than $4 billion, and the World Health Organization estimated that as many as 10 million people had to drink unsafe water.
Houze and colleagues examined radar data from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite and were able to see that the rainfall that caused the Indus River in Pakistan to overflow was triggered over the Himalayas, within a storm system that had formed over the Bay of Bengal in late July and moved unusually far to the west. Because the rain clouds were within the moisture-laden storm from the east, they were able to pour abnormal amounts of rain on the barren mountainsides, which then ran into the Indus.
The progress of the storm system stood out in the satellite radar data, Houze said.
“We looked through 10 years of data from the satellite and we just never saw anything like this,” he said. “The satellite only passes over the area a couple of times a day, but it just happened to see these systems at a time when they were well developed.”
Houze is the lead author of a paper detailing the findings to be published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. Co-authors are Kristen Rasmussen, Socorro Medina and Stacy Brodzik of the UW and Ulrike Romatschke of the University of Vienna in Austria.
Houze also will discuss the findings during a session Tuesday (Jan. 25) at the American Meteorological Society’s annual meeting in Seattle
The storms were associated with a wind pattern that could be traced in the satellite data back to its origin over the Bay of Bengal, Houze said. Finding the storm system’s signature in the satellite data makes it possible to incorporate that information into weather forecast models. That could make it possible for meteorologists to forecast when conditions are favorable for such an event to occur again and provide a warning.
“I think this was a rare event, but it is one you want to be thinking about,” Houze said. “Understanding what happened could lead to better predictions of such disasters in the future.”
For more information, contact Houze at 206-543-6922 or houze@uw.edu.
NOTE: The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission is a joint project of NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
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Hillary and Gore……..let’s see if the POTUS makes any silly attributions tonight in his SOTU address. On second thought, you’ll have to let me know as I don’t think I can bear to watch it.
The press release does not say the floods were unrelated to climate change. It discusses the immediate cause and does not address whether or not climate change may of contributed to the magnitude of flooding or increased the probability of the immediate cause.
That’s very hillarious…….
Can you point out just one competent person in the Obama administration? Just one…….
I’m still waiting…
So the storm itself was one of the normal monsoon storms that happen normally in that part of the world, but it happened farther west than normal.
Monsoon rains can easily bring monthly totals to 1m per month. That amount of rain anywhere unusual would cause serious flooding.
I know that 1998 (similar ocean pattern) produced tremendous flooding in Bangladesh. That country is designed for flooding. So that part of the world needs to be ready for flooding anytime an El Nino is switching to a La Nina.
John Kehr
Hi Anthony,
Great article – but I think there’s a typo in there. ‘Rouge storm systems’ sound like something you would only find at surrealclimate.com.
All the very best,
HtL.
[Fixed, thanx. ~dbs]
Smart diplomacy… now every Pakistani who has lost family, friends, or property to the floods can hold a legitimate grudge against the people of the United States of America for being the responsible party for the floods.
Smart diplomacy: how to make foreign friends and influence foreign people.
She’d have done well to have left out the “we”, and simply stated that the climate changes constantly ever since water showed up on this rock.
I think in the write-up (first paragraph) it should be “rogue storm system,” instead of “rouge storm system,” although I do see red when I see these things blamed on GW.
[Fixed, thanks. ~dbs, mod.]
The politicians spread their lies, one by one, two by two.
erik sloneker says:
January 25, 2011 at 3:45 pm
Hillary and Gore……..let’s see if the POTUS makes any silly attributions tonight in his SOTU address. On second thought, you’ll have to let me know as I don’t think I can bear to watch it.
Michele Bachmann will be giving her response after the official Republican response to the SOTU. I’m curious what she’ll say.
“were caused by a rogue weather system”
Mike, that’s clear enough for me.
Mike says:
January 25, 2011 at 3:47 pm
The press release does not say the floods were unrelated to climate change. It discusses the immediate cause and does not address whether or not climate change may of contributed to the magnitude of flooding or increased the probability of the immediate cause.
============================
Press release or peer reviewed paper, whichever one you mean, if they could even speculate that global warming was involved, they would have. Up to now, global warming was the assumed primary cause, and all else was secondary. That GW was not mentioned speaks volumes.
It’s worth remembering that the Pakistani floods impacted Hillary so much that she generously gave $10 to the relief effort. She also paid over $3 million for her daughters wedding as a juxtaposition.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/112669-clinton-pushes-flood-relief-for-pakistan-donates-10
Rogue storm caused by AGW.
Six degrees of separation applies, every event is somehow connected to AGW.
There can be no definitive statement about the rare flooding in Pakistan this past summer either way. It was a “rare” event, caused by “unusual” conditions and the only thing that can be said that if these kinds of “rare” events begin to happen more frequently over a longer period than just a few years, then some sort of climate change would be occurring (by definition). The next step would be to then identify the source of that longer term change– natural or anthropogenic. Certain elements from both sides of the AGW seem to want to try lay some sort of claim one way or another to these rare one-off events, when the only true scientific path is to track the frequency and intensitiy of “rare” events, as see if that frequency or intensity changes over time.
What was that?
It’s not just weather?
This really doesn’t surprise anyone does it? Just another leftist parroting the religion of AGW.
“Simply put, a rogue storm system, part of the normal chaotic nature of weather on this planet, was the cause. Nothing else. Anyone who claims it was part of “climate change” is simply flat wrong, and that includes Hillary.”
Mmmm, sure, because in science, we pick one paper that is the final word on a subject, because it fits in with our preconceptions, and all possible alternative views are henceforth considered untenable.
Oh, and I forgot – obviously we wildly misinterpret that paper, to ensure that we think it supports our preconceptions.
What is the necessary connection between climate (or in this case weather) alarmism and Progressive politicians? Is it because they must listen to some authority and they just happen to choose badly? or what?
“”””” Mike says:
January 25, 2011 at 3:47 pm
The press release does not say the floods were unrelated to climate change. It discusses the immediate cause and does not address whether or not climate change may of contributed to the magnitude of flooding or increased the probability of the immediate cause. “””””
Well it only happened once; and hasn’t happened since; and hadn’t happened before. (in that locations) Ergo, it is just weather and not a climate change. If it WAS climate change or related to that, it would be happeneing all the time; just like global warming.
Hillary Clinton choses her words very cautiously but even doing so, her implicit claim concerning disasters, if it were be right, how on earth could she possibly know? “Climate change” is such an empty word it can neither be the cause nor the result of anything. And if it were, H.C. would be in no position to perceive or understand. It just isn’t comprehensible, all simplistic reasoning – warmer planet means more moisture and more precipitation- cannot explain any distribution or intensity. It is just not “knowable” in the sense that it can be reduced to concepts that the human mind can comprehend. I am an economist and I know nobody can reduce the economic crisis nor the recovery, the currently continuing struggling of the Britisch economy and the German economic upturn to a causal relationship comprehensible to the human mind. If you accept this, the comments made by H.C. are both empty and irresponsible.
And the most irritating and recurring idle reasoning is arguing that climate or climate change is affecting weather. It’s weather that defines climate, not the other way around, weather is a phenomenon a physical fact, something you can describe and measure in “space-time” and which “exists”, climate is an ill defined human abstraction that neither “prevails” nor “appears”.
This is perfect politics. They don’t even have to prove it anymore. Where else would someone that could be wrong want to be.
I just typed ‘weather disasters’ into an amazon.com books search and got 724 hits so I guess we must be having them all the time to generate that amount of literature.