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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Rapidity of
The sex change operation;
Nino to Nina.
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John Kehr @ur momisugly 3:54 PM
You beat me to it, and additionally it was the rapid transit from boy to girl that did this one. I know. I read it at Judy’s or somewhere.
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Guess what, if you type weather disasters into the Google labs books ngram viewer:
http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=weather+disasters&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3
it looks like a hockey stick!
Bit of a slow down since the year 2000 though.
Change will come from the bottom. Expect politicians to be the last to change their rhetoric.
PF, everything looks like up to me. And every day in every way, better and better.
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bubbagyro says:
January 25, 2011 at 3:52 pm
“Can you point out just one competent person in the Obama administration? Just one…….
I’m still waiting…”
uhm, I think Bo is doing a pretty good job as first dog. ……..except that there are mice running uncontrolled thru the white house…. nevermind.
Off topic but…
In case you can’t wait to see it, here’s the SOTU speech:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/25/obama-state-of-the-union-_1_n_813478.html
Unless I missed it, he does not utter the words ‘climate change.’
Weather is NOT climate, except when someone wants to use it to prove that CO2 Climate Change is real.
Lamentably, just because the Woman With One Eyebrow is blazingly wrong in this as in bloody everything else does not mean that the Red Party faction in Mordor-on-the-Potomac is to any significant extent right.
Would it be worth inquiring of the readers here to suggest the names of individuals writing or speaking to this issue who have an accurate and therefore reliable take on the floods which Allah the Merciful has visited upon his righteously observant people in the staunchly Islamic nation of Pakistan?
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“Die, heretic scum!”
— Emo Philips
Mike says:
January 25, 2011 at 3:47 pm blah blah blah blah climate change blah blah.
Well Mike, I have this to say. If CO2 or Climate change or climate disruption or global warming WAS blamed YOU would be over there with your mates at realclimate having a love in* over the fact it was mentioned. And the MSM would have front page headlines. They don’t, you lose. Anyway you try to spin it you lose.
As it is you make ONE troll comment on every post here at wuwt you do not agree with and then never return to respond to questions. Well guess what? I will not read or respond to any further posts by you, unless I warn others about your trolling.
Headline (for Mike): Flooding in Pakistan not caused by Global Warming. Peer reviewed paper says so. Go Back to your love in* Mike.
*Love in = *Circle
Mike = *Jerk
bubbagyro says: “Can you point out just one competent person in the Obama administration? Just one…….I’m still waiting…”
Wait. Wait. I’m still thinking. Wait…
R. Gates says: “There can be no definitive statement about the rare flooding in Pakistan this past summer either way….”
That’s about it.
Imagine that; a flood on a flood plain. Who would of thunk.
Al Gored says: “Off topic but…In case you can’t wait to see it, here’s the SOTU speech:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/25/obama-state-of-the-union-_1_n_813478.html
Unless I missed it, he does not utter the words ‘climate change.’”
Uh, it’s been rebranded. It’s called “clean energy.”
Listening to ABC (American) radio news as I was returning home, they said:”Cod weather and snow due to arctic ice loss! melting of the arctic due to climate change,
causes more cold weather and snow-according to some…”
OK….
Must be true Just like Hilliary’s s statement…
To all those who think that these floods are the evil work of AGW, please just ask yourself
“how did these massive delta flood plains get there in the first place?”
The answer is not that hard to figure out.
Re Mike above
So the stated cause is not really the cause, just the immediate cause and not the underlying cause and if they don’t mention or address climate change as the underlying cause then it fair to claim that climate change is the real cause not the weather; like they claim.
Interesting summary of that paper
Stevo, there are many peer reviewed papers showing that AGW is non-existent or very very over stated in climate science.
Pat Frank says: January 25, 2011 at 5:19 pm
Change will come from the bottom. Expect politicians to be the last to change their rhetoric.
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Yes Pat I agree. And when ordinary folk’s asses are frozen because they can’t afford to heat their houses then the changes will be rapid, dramatic, effective and permanent. ‘Let them eat cake’ seems to come to mind as a flash point statement that set the tumbrels a’rollin’ when the peasants were stressed. It might even need to come to that.
Douglas.
Rogue storm system caused Pakistan floods that left millions homeless.
Why humans should avoid living on flood plains, but always do!
Does the word flood plain/delta configure into many of the floods that have happen around the world in the past and to this day in Australia Etc…
Flood plains hold the water for much longer due to the poor soil absorption and a naturally slow drainage angle of the valley/delta floor, thus the wide spread river overlapping of the banks during higher than normal river run off, which causing extensive flooding? See satellite map below!
The Indus River is a major river, which flows through The Indus Valley; the full length of Pakistan and most of the area adjoining the river is a relatively flat flood plain/delta, with a huge population living in close proximity to the river. The total length of the river is 3,180 kilometers (1,976 miles) and it is Pakistan’s longest river.
See satellite map of river and FLOOD PLAIN:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Indus.A2002274.0610.1km.jpg
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, The flooding began in July and at one point it was estimated that 20 percent of Pakistan’s total land area was under water.
Layne Blanchard says: January 25, 2011 at 5:27 pm
uhm, I think Bo is doing a pretty good job as first dog. ……..except that there are mice running uncontrolled thru the white house…. nevermind.
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Need a cat for that Layne. Mus’ be enough ‘cats’ in the WH to deal wit dem mices —- but then again they are all ‘fat cats’ aren’t they –
Normal response:
“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.”
Basically it is an 18.03 year repeating pattern every 6558 days the lunar tides are the same and the same type of disturbance happens in the same areas on the surface of the Earth. Watch for a near repeat of the heat in Russia again this summer 27.32 X 12 (declinational cycles later)= 327.84 days later or about 37 days earlier in 2011.
Then it will be ~18 years before the same pattern occurs again.
Just looking back almost half of a cycle will not find anything naturally.
kevinc says:
January 25, 2011 at 4:11 pm
“were caused by a rogue weather system”
Mike, that’s clear enough for me.
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This is why science is so hard for you. I’ll try to make it clear to you. If I say A causes B and you say C causes B we can both be right. They may both contribute to B or maybe A causes C which then causes B. A practical example: If I say our ageing population is contributing to out budget woes, and you say it is Social Security that it the problem we have not contradicted each other.
I haven’t seen the study itself, so it may or may not mention climate change. But the results announced in the press release do not contradict claims by some scientists that AGW likely played a role in these floods.
The people who do science go to college and then graduate school where they take courses in how to think logically because formal logical thinking is hard and unnatural for most people. These courses are often called by such names as Calculus or Linear Algebra or Statistics, but they are really about how to think clearly. I teach these courses.
For those who lament the dumbness of hoomans living on flood plains (and volcanic slopes): it’s reeelly good farming, jeenyuses. Life is much more prosperous and easier, when you’re not being wiped out every generation or two. And then, after the flood or eruption, the farming is even BETTER! And lots of the competition is eliminated.
What’s not to like?
Please, please, please stop using ‘Romm’ as if it were some celebrity, cartoon character, or even minor Roman emperor we might already have school days memory of. WHO?