When I first saw this photo in news stories today, my first thought was “how long before somebody idiotically links this to global warming aka climate change aka climate disruption” (take your pick)?
The answer, not long. From The Atlantic we have this pronouncement:
Environmentalists remind us that the conditions that create dust storms can be linked to climate change and poor farming practices. Today, the Earth is twice as dusty as it was in the 19th-century. At least we have YouTube and Twitpic to document the incredibly terrifying consequences?
Here’s some spectacular video of what is called a Haboob in progress yesterday. I find it more interesting than “terrifying”:
I had to laugh when I saw the title of this one.
Doomsday? Really? Dust storms might be an annoyance, and may shut down things we take for granted like air travel and sometimes road travel, but they hardly equate to doomsday. I’ll save that for when the sun goes nova or some crazy political/zealot faction starts setting off nukes.
Seems that dust storms in desert cities aren’t that uncommon, such as this one in Phoenix in 2003:
And more examples:
From Wikipedia, notable dust storms
- 1954-1991: The multi-year droughts in portions of North America of 1954-56, 1976–78, and 1987-91 were noted for dust storms of the intensity seen in the middle 1930s over some fraction of their coverage and timespan, and more sporadically during the times between. The three multi-year droughts were similar to the 1930s in storms being raised by synoptic scale weather events such as cyclones and cold fronts; otherwise the most common trigger is the outflow from convective activity, known as a haboob. Significant events of the latter variety occurred in Colorado and Kansas in May 2004 with winds to 100 mph, Minnesota and Wisconsin in June 2004 causing significant damage, and the upper Middle West in May 1988, notable for strong electrification and lightning activity and by one estimate reaching 30 000 ft or more. The first and third of this list reached black blizzard intensity, causing total blackout for some period ranging from 90 sec to 10 or more minutes, over some fraction of the ground covered. The 1987-91 drought was especially notable as in the 1930s for the large number of rain of mud events, often generated by dust in suspension and/or carried on upper-level winds.
- 1971: A dust storm that occurred near Tucson, Arizona on July 16 was extensively documented by meteorologists.
Dec 1, 1982 – High winds kicked up dust storms from near the California border, to Gila Bend, south of Phoenix. minutes,” said Keith the state’s chief National Weather Service … The San Diego Zoo was closed Tuesday for the fifth time in its 66- year history after wind blew down eucalyptus trees. …
From Mean Storm Hits Calif., Moves East .
Aug 20, 1999 – A large dust storm moves into the downtown Phoenix area causing 90-minute flight delays at the Sky Harbor International Airport. Wind gusts of up to 45 mph hampered visibility as the dust storm swept through the metro area from the southern portions of Arizona. …
From Phoenix gets down and dirty in big dust storm | Deseret News
Yeah, doomsday.
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DOOMSDAY!
Michael Bay apparently runs the news now.
The Santa Ana winds occasionally bring dust as far north as San Jose; the last time I recall was in the 90’s, I moved to Texas in 2003. Of course, at the time Climate change never came up in conversations, it was just weather, not a horrifying disaster linked to every ill of mankind, or noted as having similarities to storms on Mars……/sarc.
It’s a good thing William Connolley can not edit Wikipedia lately, he would surely change the definition of “Haboob” and “doomsday” to fit the AGW orthodoxy.
Dust storms in Phoenix were very common during the ’30s. My mother had lots of dust storm stories.
I can do you a doomsday if you like, or explain the one we’ve got at least.
More dust (twice the 19th C amount) means more silica in the oceans. Diatoms are limited by silica and it is only when they run out of that compound that the calcareous phytos can flourish. Fewer calcareous phytoplankton, less light carbon pull-down*, more light carbon in the atmosphere, hence the false anthropogenic signal.
Diatoms are not so good at forming di-methyl sulphide, the stuff that makes the aerosols which are brilliant at forming clouds. Fewer clouds, global warming.
(Please leave the Nobel with the neighbours if we’re out. Thank you.)
JF
(Serious students might like to check the results of silica fallout on the oceans by studying the recent North Pacific volcanoes.)
*Diatoms use crassula acid metabolism to fix their CO2. It is less discriminatory against the heavy C isotopes. If you want to make memorable dolmades, use vine leaves which have been picked at dawn and kept in the dark. CAM uses a malic acid dump during darkness and the result is a pleasing lemon taste.
Obviously someone is out in the Arizona desert trying to revivify a mummy. Anybody have a location for Brendan Fraser?
Why the need for an arab name? As if the arabs had some monoply on dust storms. LOL
Anybody said Dust Bowl?
Ah, that was nothing compared to our times – they had no YouTube then …
If you have a couple acres of highly subsidized solar panels to sweep clean after the dust storm passes, you may call it terrifying. Then you go back inside to your XBox 360 and bong.
Move over to the UK, with an impressive 350 years of 0 (zero) temperature trend line:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CETjun.htm
Anything can be linked to anything, especially if there’s money in it.
Why are we surprised that many people believe in “climate change” being the cause of every natural disaster? Their ancestors believed for thousands of years that some omniscient and omnipotent Old Man in the Sky is the cause of everything (including all the catastrophes, diseases, sufferings, tribulations, and evil deeds).
Stupidity, gullibility, and conformism are obviously genetically inherited traits. One couldn’t be a good slave if he or she wouldn’t believe in what was being told “from above.” Good slaves have been carefully bred since times immemorial. Their descendants are a legion, and they live among us today.
I like that first one. Did Roland Emmerich direct it?
While visually exciting, they are relatively harmless. As long as planes stay in clear air ahead of the gust front, they are harmless to airplanes, and airport operations are only affected for about 1/2 hour.. As kids we liked ’em, cuz the temperature would drop by twenty degrees from the thunderstorm-cooled air. A few palm trees fall over is about the extent of it, everybody has to dust off everything that is outside.
If you must, the frequency and strength of these haboobs is a consequence of the strength of the monsoon season, as warm moist unstable air is sucked in from the Gulf of Mexico and then uplifted by the fierce desert heat. If the west winds from California are too strong, the summer rains fail.
About 15 years ago, the monsoon in Arizona failed. All the moisture got blown to Iowa, which suffered massive mid-summer flooding.
They typically come from the south, distributing desert alluvial soils to the north.
“Twitpic”
Damn……. Have to go up on the roof and vacuum off the ^%$^#$@ur momisugly@ solar panels again!
Dust In The Wind:
That was a MONSTER of a dust storm last night. I live in Mesa (the east side of the Phoenix metro area) and watching it come in was amazing. Visiblity dropped to about 1/10 mile where we were as the dust ‘front’ hit us.
It sure would have been nice to follow it up with rain ( a few areas I think did, we didn’t . . .)
Getting sandblasted might be terrifying if you were a solar panel.
Seriously? I have lived in Arizona for the last 15 years. I think I’ve seen a dust storm every year, and probably have been in four or five haboob. To me, it would represent a change in climate if they stopped.
What the ice record tells us, seldom talked about, is that dust storms rise in frequency with the cold, the more water tied in ice the more land exposed to violent winds.
Graph of CO2 (green), reconstructed temperature (blue) and dust (red) from the Vostok ice core for the past 420,000 years.
You made it to a reason.com article………
The first panel of the conference featured Anthony Watts, proprietor of the popular climate change skeptic blog Watts Up with That?, retired University of Winnipeg geographer Timothy Ball, and Patrick Michaels. Watts is the guy behind the project showing that a surprisingly high number of U.S. weather stations are badly situated. Tim Ball is a self-described long time skeptic of global warming orthodoxy.
http://reason.com/archives/2011/07/05/luckewarmers-denialists-and-ot
Today, the Earth is twice as dusty as it was in the 19th-century.
That’s quite the factoid! I guess there must be hockey stick dust chartists and computer dust modellers looking for a steady stream of grants. And think of the poor dust bunny overpopulation problem!
/sarc
This is the url of the graph: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok_Petit_data.svg
It worked in the preview :(.
There is a refernce at this site
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haboob
To this:
Idso, S.B. 1973. Haboobs in Arizona. Weather 28(4):154-155.
1973 !
There is also a photo from 14 April 1935 of a dust cloud near Spearman, TX. I think I remember this one from a US history class in high school.
We have dust storms in Washington State, big ones in the south central part, and numerous whirling dust devils in the central part along I-90.
Shhhhhh…Greenpeace and the climate alarmists are FUNDRAISING this month…PLEASE don’t destroy a good climate scare story!! Thanks…
The excellent Richard North on EU Referendum has his take on this:-
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2011/07/pre-emptive-strike.html
Amazing to see the problems “carbon” caused already in Grandpappy’s day!
\sarc.