ON THE MATTER OF HURRICANES

A potentially serious hurricane, Carlos, is now headed for Hawaii.  While still 2700 or so miles away, I thought this was a good time to review the subject to follow up on the Honolulu Advertiser's timely reportage today.  Let me first cite a segment from Chapter 5 of SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Planet Earth:

Both William Gray and Max Mayfield, icons in hurricane prediction and observation, have said that there is no link between global warming and hurricanes.  However, Environmental Science and Technology reports on two studies in Science and Nature which have found hurricanes growing fiercer. Peter Webster and Judith Curry believe that there is an unambiguous connection between warmer ocean surface temperatures and increase in hurricane intensity. Curry, chair of Georgia Tech’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, was asked why Gray and Mayfield feel the way they do, and her response was, “these are hurricane scientists who don’t know a lot about global climate warming.” Kerry Emmanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has reported that over the past 30 years hurricanes have become more powerful, where both wind speed and duration have increased by 50%. The blame was squarely placed on global warming. These storms trigger twisters and floods, so the effect multiplies.

 

Hawaii is in the path of hurricanes. I have not experienced one yet in my life, but during the writing of this section, Daniel was approaching our state as a Category 5 hurricane. Thankfully, it dissipated, but further west, Typhoon Saomai slammed into China in August of 2006 as the strongest storm in 50 years. It was only a Category 4 typhoon (hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones are the same, and the name depends on where they impact, with the southern hemisphere ones circulating clockwise and northern, counter-clockwise, caused by the rotation of the plane—sort of like how your bathtub water drains), but 1.6 million were evacuated, 50,000 homes were wrecked, and nearly 500 were killed. What was particularly ominous about the 2006 season was that two hurricanes FORMED just south of Hawaii, but thankfully, drifted West, and one of them, Ioke, became a Category 5 hurricane, and the strongest to ever be recorded in the Central Pacific. Maybe time to move to Kansas or the Equator, because—something called the Coriolis force being too weak to induce air to rotate around low pressure cells—hurricanes don’t start nor go there. Delete Kansas. They have twisters there that should also gain in ferocity.

 

Then, in June of 2007, Cyclone Gonu hit Oman and Iran. This was the strongest storm since record-keeping began in 1945. Even though oil fields were spared, the price of petroleum jumped past $71/barrel. Any excuse works for oil, but, the point is that something is happening to our weather.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is the official watchdog for hurricanes in the U.S.  They further discuss the El Nino effect.

Returning to Tropical Storm Carlos, it just popped out and is now already at 50 MPH, heading West to Hawaii.  The dangerous factor is that, as can be seen below, the track is over relatively warm waters.  Plus, remember that Hurricane Iniki in 1992 devastated Kauai during an El Nino period.  Carlos is expected to attain hurricane strength.

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The Dow Jones Industrial dropped 37 to 8147, with world markets also almost all down.  Crude oil fell below $60/barrel and gold slipped a buck to $913/toz.  GM was reborn today.  

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