DROWNED: A 43-day atmospheric-river storm
in 1861 turned California’s Central Valley region into an inland sea, simulated here on a current-day map.
Image: Don Foley
In Brief
- Geologic evidence shows that truly massive floods, caused by rainfall alone, have occurred in California about every 200 years. The most recent was in 1861, and it bankrupted the state.
- Such floods were most likely caused by atmospheric rivers: narrow bands of water vapor about a mile above the ocean that extend for thousands of miles. Much smaller forms of these rivers regularly hit California, as well as the western coasts of other countries.
- Scientists who created a simulated megastorm, called ARkStorm, that was patterned after the 1861 flood but was less severe, found that such a torrent could force more than a million people to evacuate and cause $400 billion in losses if it happened in California today.
- Forecasters are getting better at predicting the arrival of atmospheric rivers, which will improve warnings about flooding from the common storms and about the potential for catastrophe from a megastorm.
More In This Article
-
Overview
Hurricane Sandy: An Unprecedented Disaster
-
Overview
The Future of Climate Change
-
Overview
Extreme Weather and Climate Change
Editor's note (11/30/12): The article will appear in the January 2013 issue of Scientific American. We are making it freely available now because of the flooding underway in California.
The intense rainstorms sweeping in from the Pacific Ocean began to pound central California on Christmas Eve in 1861 and continued virtually unabated for 43 days. The deluges quickly transformed rivers running down from the Sierra Nevada mountains along the state’s eastern border into raging torrents that swept away entire communities and mining settlements. The rivers and rains poured into the state’s vast Central Valley, turning it into an inland sea 300 miles long and 20 miles wide. Thousands of people died, and one quarter of the state’s estimated 800,000 cattle drowned. Downtown Sacramento was submerged under 10 feet of brown water filled with debris from countless mudslides on the region’s steep slopes. California’s legislature, unable to function, moved to San Francisco until Sacramento dried out—six months later. By then, the state was bankrupt.
A comparable episode today would be incredibly more devastating. The Central Valley is home to more than six million people, 1.4 million of them in Sacramento. The land produces about $20 billion in crops annually, including 70 percent of the world’s almonds—and portions of it have dropped 30 feet in elevation because of extensive groundwater pumping, making those areas even more prone to flooding. Scientists who recently modeled a similarly relentless storm that lasted only 23 days concluded that this smaller visitation would cause $400 billion in property damage and agricultural losses. Thousands of people could die unless preparations and evacuations worked very well indeed.
Was the 1861–62 flood a freak event? It appears not. New studies of sediment deposits in widespread locations indicate that cataclysmic floods of this magnitude have inundated California every two centuries or so for at least the past two millennia. The 1861–62 storms also pummeled the coastline from northern Mexico and southern California up to British Columbia, creating the worst floods in recorded history. Climate scientists now hypothesize that these floods, and others like them in several regions of the world, were caused by atmospheric rivers, a phenomenon you may have never heard of. And they think California, at least, is overdue for another one.
Ten Mississippi Rivers, One Mile High
Atmospheric rivers are long streams of water vapor that form at about one mile up in the atmosphere. They are only 250 miles across but extend for thousands of miles—sometimes across an entire ocean basin such as the Pacific. These conveyor belts of vapor carry as much water as 10 to 15 Mississippi Rivers from the tropics and across the middle latitudes. When one reaches the U.S. West Coast and hits inland mountain ranges, such as the Sierra Nevada, it is forced up, cools off and condenses into vast quantities of precipitation.
People on the West Coast of North America have long known about storms called “pineapple expresses,” which pour in from the tropics near Hawaii and dump heavy rain and snow for three to five days. It turns out that they are just one configuration of an atmospheric river. As many as nine atmospheric rivers hit California every year, according to recent investigations. Few of them end up being strong enough to yield true megafloods, but even the “normal” storms are about as intense as rainstorms get in the rest of the U.S., so they challenge emergency personnel as well as flood-control authorities and water managers.
Atmospheric rivers also bring rains to the west coasts of other continents and can occasionally form in unlikely places. For example, the catastrophic flooding in and around Nashville in May 2010—which caused some 30 deaths and more than $2 billion in damages—was fed by an unusual atmospheric river that brought heavy rain for two relentless days up into Tennessee from the Gulf of Mexico. In 2009 substantial flooding in southern England and in various parts of Spain was also caused by atmospheric rivers. But the phenomenon is best understood along the Pacific Coast, and the latest studies suggest that these rivers of vapor may become even larger in the future as the climate warms.
See what we're tweeting about
65 Comments
Add CommentThen again they may become smaller & less frequent.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNOAA: ’2012 was an active [hurricane] year, but not exceptionally so …10 busier years in the last three decades’
I don't disbelieve the information given in the article. What I find confounding, however, is the dearth of contemporaneous accounts of thousands of deaths in the 1861-2 flood year. Why is there so little information about the flood in California histories?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI find it utterly fascinating, especially as Mark Twain's quote ("Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it,") is actually being stood on its head by global warming. (Yes, Virginia, there is a phenomenon called that. 97% of the National Academy of Sciences--a 'conservative' group of professionals if there ever was one-- says so.)
Please be warned, however. Any attempt to exaggerate the numbers of dead in this history will be used to attack part of your underlying contention, that global warming may impact adversely the size of future storms.
I am sorry so many continue to question global warming, whose jibes we see attacking this story. What do you think is causing the increase in warming if not greenhouse activity? Where do you think all the carbon dioxide magically disappears to?
The level of ignorance in this society is extraordinary. Unless we educate our people against the ignorance they hang on to, we leave our children and their children's children a harsher planet on which to survive an uncertain future.
"Atmospheric rivers" are described as only about a mile high and massive conveyors of water vapor. And they were not realized even after all the decades of weather balloons, rockets and airborns observation? That is questionable to the point of being non credible.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInteresting, and probably important, to note is that they described "atmospheric rivers" are being "discovered" in 1998. 1997 was the year chemtrails were first acknowledged being seen, by Art Bell. Interestingly enough, in California, the area this article suggests may be particularly hardest hit. 1998 was also the warmest year on record; the year of the largest year-to-year drop in Arctic sea ice coverage; and the beginning of the unnaturally massive spate of hurricane seasons which included the unprecedented 2005 season, which saw events such as Hurricane Katrina. It's often suggested that that was the year chemtrails began. In fact, it appears chemtailing has been ongoing since the beginning of the age of jets, around 1950. 1997 seems to be the year chemtrail chemicals became so saturated in the atmosphere that new loads precipitated out to form chemtrail lines! The number of tornadoes in the U.S. also exploded in number from a fairly constant 180 per year, starting in about 1952 to about ten times as many today. 1952 is also when the first new cloud species in a long time was announced, the cirrus intortus. The next new cloud species, the undulatus aspiratus, was announced only in the past few years, after chemtrail chemicals saturated the atmosphere.
In fact, climate change is occurring, but it's not the result of industrial pollution. It's being deliberately caused by chemtrail contamination of the air.
Supporters of lies cannot rely on their "point of view" to be able to argue from it. As a result, defenders of untruth often rely on non argument techniques to counter truths. Like non justified dismissiveness, contempt, arrogance, viciousness, mockery, vulgarity. No New World Order favoring defenders of the "official story" will address what I said with anything but non argument methods.
Absolutely correct.The spaying has been heavy over my head lately.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWas the flood related to the 1859 solar storm . Perhaps there was a solar backlash or whatever to the solar storm. That is what Nostradamus predicts.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1. A massive solar storm
2. massive floods
3. ice age of unspecified length.
The article is an exmple of why robust infrastructure should always be a high priority when building or maintaining cities. The US does only a fair job, but many other counties do a terrible job.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScienceproofreader,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisClimate change is "shoehorned" into the study of "atmospherice rivers" because prudent people want to study the likelihood of occurance of more disasterous storms in the future. It's called being prepared for the future -- a conservative value, but a value lacked by people who call themselves conservatives. Are you suggesting that scientists not attempt to model this and merely rely on the historical evidence that these megafloods occur only once every 100 to 200 years?
Here's an excerpt from the article:
"Will moister air or weaker winds win out? In six of the seven climate models, the average rain and snow delivered to California by future atmospheric rivers increases by an average of about 10 percent by the year 2100. Moister air trumps weaker winds.
All seven models project that the number of atmospheric rivers arriving at the California coast each year will rise as well, from a historical average of about nine to 11."
No shoehorning there 'Scienceproofreader', if you RTFA you will see that the same meteorological event now observed, was predicted before in derivatives of the computer models that model global warming.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow about you read the article and apply rational thinking as your name erroneously suggests you do?
And the fact that something happened before does not invalidate the hypothesis that both frequency and intensity are increased by shifting climate.
When detractors citing certain specific year being warmer than present, or another year that had worse disasters than present as examples of how our weather conditions today is not unusual, they are showing their total lack of understanding of weather "pattern." There will always be extraordinary data points when you plot the data of any natural phenomenon. There is such thing called random chance that cause those events to occur almost inexplicably. However, when scientists examine global warming or climate change, they are looking at overall trend and the effects of and projections of those trends. As they get more and more data, they can better model and predict the future of those trends. Early global warming predictions were off because we still didn't have enough understanding of what's going on. But that's the difference between science and fantasy, science continues to collect data and make improvements. Fantasy pretends that it knows everything and ignores anything that it doesn't agrees with.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWith more observation, what scientists have shown us is that the added heat energy that got trapped by the green house gasses (CO2, methane, water vapor, etc) are not simply warming the Earth. Heat is energy and energy does work. Earth's weather is not just determined by the temperatures of the atmosphere but much more so by the temperatures of the oceans as waters hold far more energy than gasses. As the oceans and the atmosphere take in the added heat energy, all the regular engines that drive our weather systems are now getting an extra push like you stepping on the gas peddle in your car. The weather system is now revving harder and faster, creating wider swings and more erratic weather systems.
Google "ocean temperature change" data that NASA and NOAA had been collecting. That's the true measure of warming. 1 degree Celcius change may not seem a lot to you, but 1 Calorie (kilocalorie) is the energy to heat 1 kiloliter of water 1 degrees Celcius and there are 1.3 sextillion kiloliters of water. That's enough Calories to feed all 7 billion people on this planet for 250 years.
"The next megaflood could occur in Chile, Spain, Namibia or Western Australia". HA! It *never* rains in Western Australia.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDang, I just cannot find some recent study of geological evidence of megafloods in Western Mexico states (Jalisco, Clima, Nayarit). A UNAM study (I think), but boy is their DB arcane... just wanted to correlate the timeframes with this... fat chance anyone here saw it, huh.
"Scientists do not program atmospheric rivers into weather and climate models; the rivers emerge as natural consequences of the way that the atmosphere and the atmospheric water cycle work, when the models are let loose to simulate the past, present or future. Thus, the rivers also appear in climate projection models used in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessments.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA recent review by one of us (Dettinger) of seven different climate models from around the world has indicated that atmospheric rivers will likely continue to arrive in California throughout the 21st century. In the projections, air temperatures get warmer by about four degrees Fahrenheit on average because of increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. Because a warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor, atmospheric rivers could carry more moisture."
For all of you scientifically challenged denier trolls that IS from this article and they are talking about anthropogenic global warming. The warming we have already experience has resulted in about 4 to 5% more water vapor in the atmosphere. You need a wide angle photographic record of a storms development over many consecutive days in order to observe and correctly identify the atmospheric river effect and they have only recently become more frequent. Remember Nashville 2010 and keep the boat handy!
Trolls, keep up the fascinating conspiracy theories, they make hilarious reading!
I do not understand why all the climate change deniers want to write comments at the Scientific American webpage. Isn't there a Flat Earth website they could stay glued to? They seem little interested in science, only in confirming their own beliefs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNinety seven percent of the National Academy of Sciences has supported the science behind climate change. Why so many non-scientists wish to display their ignorance by continued adherence to debunked hucksterism in the pursuit of profit (Google 'climate change and the Heartland Institute to see connections between fossil fuel industry and various lobbying disinformation groups) is only a testament to their own short sightedness.
Swift once described our species 'most pernicious race of vermin' known. Present testimonial on this comment page confirms Swift's opinion has greater basis in scientific fact than any opinions otherwise offered, present company included.
Unfortunately, many will have to lose property and lives of dear ones themselves before they abandon anything that threatens their beliefs in the cherished marketplace. In this, they mirror the communists who stupidly adhered to their beliefs past their usefulness.
My sister in law is a case in point. She built on the Jersey shore, and her house will be condemned, along with those of her neighbors, because she built to close to the water. When she expressed a wish to build on the shore, I worried aloud about global warming. She laughed out loud. Global warming is a myth, she said. Then Hurricane Sandy took her house. She thinks climate change is probably real now, she says, and she is upset because has lost her house.
Is that what it takes for us to realize the reality when 97% of American scientists tell us climate change is real? I hope not.
Please help bring science back to the center of American life. It is not a good thing to disparage centuries of enlightened science in favor of mindless belief and continuous greed.
When you argue for ignorance, you argue against science. Please go to a religious website. I don't bother you and your beliefs there. Please don't bother science and its evidence with your anti-science. There are plenty of religious websites for you out there.
Every 200 years? impossible. Flooding and megastorms like this can only occur as the Global Warmist computer models say, which is only after the introduction of evil human produced CO2 and the supposed temperature rise. Prior to this there was apparently no storms of any size, minimal flooding and in fact all was perfect. Ice ages, Medieval warming periods, PETM none of it counts.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo for a megastorm to hit LA every 200 years is simply not possible if you a follower of the global warming prophets the rest of us call flawed computer models.
Some people will have a change of opinion after getting wiped out by extreme weather but others will simply say it is just the “natural cycle” as if pumping enormous amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels is natural. They would really become convinced if they actually studied the science written by those who are actually doing research and investigation in the field. But most people do not read. Or they might read something written by a non-expert. Or they might prefer conspiracy theories. Those who have decided that all experts, in any field of study, are not to be trusted tend to glom onto the bat-s*#t crazy conspiracy theories. I’m sure you can find some of those in NY or NJ. We sure have our share where I live.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLike HE said! (Phew!)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUndoubtedly it was due to man made factors.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have been continually amazed by all the people that
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisblame everything on peoples behavior.
The earth's crust, all around the earth, is continually
spreading every day. The resulting outflow of magma
from the cracks in the ocean floor add really large
quantities of Calories to the oceans heat sink all the
world around. Basically, we have just begun to under-
stand this world.
Although I have never calculated those numbers, the
people screaming about heat pollution, have apparently never considered that heat source.
My thinking tells me that human causes, such as air
pollution, etc. contribute less than what has been
normal to the earth since it's creation.
LWC, III
I think behind the fluff and insults that GW denialists post is the fear that doing something about it will somehow harm the economy and lead to a lower standard of living. Of course there are lots of people who might lose a lot, namely the fossil fuel industry. But I think is much more likely that reducing CO2 emissions and preparing for global warming will stimulate the economy and create millions more jobs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDo they prefer to believe the people who couldn't predict that Bear Stearns would go bankrupt two days before it did?
More likely is that people will live in better insulated houses, generate their own electricity, drive inexpensive electric cars, eat better food, convert more sewage into electricity and compost, etc. It is the denialists who have an apocalyptic view of what happens if we do something about CO2 emissions, and the fossil fuel industry wants to keep it that way.
I don't doubt that "atmospheric rivers" exist and can cause enormous damage every time they occur which should "stimulate" our legislators to be prepared from them, but I question this notion that "Global Warming" is involved. I suggest it's only natural variation in weather patterns, not unlike the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), which drives our El Niño's and La Nina's.After all, Roy Spencer's research, The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled The World's Top Climate Scientists, http://bit.ly/TyKzMf shows is a regional shift in weather patterns that changes phase every 30 years or so. Who's to say that Mr. Spencer's explanation for variation in weather patterns isn't as good as the IPCC dogma?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@scienceproofreader wrote: "...Reminds me of K-tel advertising....hype,hype, hype."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou seem science-proof, alright.
Thank you, Cramer. My son and his family live and work in Silicon Valley, so this concerns me. Conservatives, of which I am one, used to be the prudent people, diligently studying and planning for the most serious future contingencies. Now the prudent ones are the liberals--I'm one of those too--and many who pose as "conservatives" are radical reactionary anarchists shilling for the reckless multinationals (real conservatives admire small business, which is the only level at which capitalism will work). The others, who style themselves "NeoCons", are not NeoConservatives but NeoConfederates, dreaming of a return to the good ol' days of the Antebellum South where they can be masters of a plantation--although chances are their ancestors were indentured servants or white sharecroppers. But living in LaLa Land, they envision a supremacy of white males where happy darkies and grateful wives do all the work while they sip mint juleps and waste away their Confederate money. Believe me, I know those people! I grew up in the South. Their ignorance, carelessness, laziness and callousness (not to mention an easy attraction to violence and treason) have infected other parts of the country. Yet--after the ridiculous showing of the Repubs in 2012--we'll see how long they can continue to lull themselves with tea. Wasn't "tea" a 1950s euphemism for mind-mushing drugs? "Tea Partiers" actually makes a lot of sense.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPredict disasters often enough in enough places & sooner or later you will have a win. No need to worry about all the failed predictions. See: NOAA SPC’s Greg Carbin writes:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAfter a busy start, tornado events in the U.S. in 2012 have dropped well below the expected norm. The preliminary total of 886 tornadoes through 30 November 2012 is nearly 400 tornadoes below what might be expected in a “normal” year.
Who predicted this?
Also have a look here: http://www.2012hoax.org/california-superstorm#toc3
The gullibility of the alarmist believers is only exceeded by the dishonesty of those who feed their obsession.
The takeaway from the Dettinger/Ingram essay is that megastorms happen in a cyclic manner measured in centuries, being so is obviously independent of human activity. So, it is another argument that there is nothing we humans can do to forestall it (Global Warming). Thus - the most pressing issue - we should vote against imposing restrictions on "Carbon Footprints", Cap&Trade, et al.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNicht wahr?
Excellent work, congratulations on the hard work and results. Tying it all together geologically was the best!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMr. Lewis Ward Cobb, III, RPh, PD,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWho is screaming about heat pollution? Do you understand that heat pollution has nothing to do with global warming or the topic of this article, "atmospheric rivers?"
Yes, it's apparent you have not calculated the numbers or even attempted to lookup the numbers. Geothermal heat flowing to the Earth's surface is only 3/10 of 1% of the solar heat reaching the surface. This includes the highly concentrated heat from magma along the mid-ocean ridges and other volcanic sources.
http://mgg.coas.oregonstate.edu/~rob/MHF/Papers/Pollack_Hurter_Johnson_RG1993.pdf
"My thinking tells me" that you should do less thinking from gut feelings and more studying of science.
"I have been continually amazed" at the conservative mind, or should I say the conservative gut feeling.
Did they teach you to think with your gut in pharmacy school? Do you use gut feelings to count pills? [Sorry, had to say that due to your laughable attempt to impress us with your credentials.]
Yes, these GW denialists are the same ones fearmongering about US debt leading to hyperinflation. Peter Schiff has been predicting hyperinflation since 2008.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisConservatives should stay away from science -- whether it's climatology or economics -- science is more than gut feelings; it requires the scientific method.
Climate deniers in this forum are nothing less than TROLLS, bullies.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this2005, the United Nations Environment Programme predicted that climate change would create 50 million climate refugees by 2010. These people, it was said, would flee a range of disasters including sea level rise, increases in the numbers and severity of hurricanes, and disruption to food production.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhere are they?
http://asiancorrespondent.com/52189/what-happened-to-the-climate-refugees/
Hey folks- some are commenting and entering into dialog of sorts with the denialist commenters. May I make a suggestion?...As much as possible, the time has come to ignore them. We are facing an increasingly dire and time sensitive situation. 95% of the denialists will not change their stripes. Leave them be. We need to focus our sights simply and solely in the places where we can gain leverage for policy change to mitigate climate change. This is already a Herculean task. I am almost sure that many of the deniers simply seek to provoke reaction to deter the dialog from solution based conversation. I realize that there is a purpose to replying so that 'neutral onlookers' are not misled. But...we are running out of time and show almost no signs of altering our ways. One idea...come to Washingon on FEB 18th for the 350.org announced march and protest. We need to come out, we need to show up- if possible, in the hundreds of thousands. We are in the process of leaving an unforgivable legacy for our children and their children.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would suggest not wearing cats on your head then.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTwo things. [1] 43 days sounds a lot like 40 days and 40 nights to me. A lot of Biblical things seemed to take that much time. Noah's flood?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this[2] Is "seeding" a possible means to get the rain to fall over the Pacific Ocean?
Carlyle comments about UNEP "predicting" 50 million "climate change" refugees by 2010.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat's your point, Carlyle? Is this your attempt to find fear mongering? This is nothing more than another false equivalency.
There was no significant use of this number to create fear about global warming by UNEP. Please provide evidence that this was anything more significant than an error. The discription "climate refugees" was used instead of "environmental refugees." There was nothing more to this than a UNEP webpage containing less than 100 words with the title:
"Fifty million climate refugees by 2010"
accompanied by the following text:
"Today we find a world of asymmetric development, unsustainable natural resource use, and continued rural and urban poverty. There is general agreement about the current global environmental and development crisis. It is also known that the consequences of these global changes have the most devastating impacts on the poorest, who historically have had limited entitlements and opportunities for growth."
Here's a jpg of the original UNEP website:
http://dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/chart2.jpg
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I believe I know where this forecast might have came from (this is my own assessment). Norman Myers of Oxford Univesity produced a study in 1995 for the Climate Institute, Washington DC:
http://www.climate.org/PDF/Environmental%20Exodus.pdf
which made the following statement in the Executive Summary:
"There are at least 25 million environmental refugees today,... The total may double by the year 2010 if not before..."
------------
A summary of past attempts to enumerate environment refugees can be found on wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_migrant
How about this? Should a mega flood occur, couldn't a few well placed nukes open up the San Andrea's fault and drain the water away? When all was said and done we would have a new lake to build houses around and frolic in. And all the potential energy of the fault line would be released adding stability to the region. Of course the people would need to be relocated for this event but if a megastorm was underway that would have to happen anyway.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTypically, when your prophesy fails,move the goal posts. AGW becomes climate change when the world does not warm for 16 years. Climate change refugees become economic refugees. The U.K. Met Office recently released data showing that there has been no statistically significant global warming for almost 16 years. During this period, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations rose by nearly 9% to now constitute 0.039% of the atmosphere. Global warming that has not occurred cannot have caused the extreme weather of the past few years. Whether, when and how atmospheric warming will resume is unknown. The science is unclear. Some scientists point out that near-term natural cooling, linked to variations in solar output, is also a distinct possibility.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou disputed my original post: Review & Outlook: Climate Refugees, Not Found - WSJ.com
online.wsj.com/.../SB1000142405274870465870457627447023783...
21 Apr 2011 – In 2005, the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) published a color-coded map under the headline "Fifty million climate refugees by 2010.
http://weather.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/iwszone3So how does the actual weather compare with: Editor's note (11/30/12): The article will appear in the January 2013 issue of Scientific American. We are making it freely available now because of the flooding underway in California.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTypical scaremongering. It implies a pending disaster.
It would seem to me that the greatest risk of flooding would be during the spring snowmelt, not during the winter storm itself. Unless it's an unusually warm storm, most of the winter precipitation is stored as snowpack. A warm prolonged rain in an unusually hot May following a wet winter could create the perfect storm.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAdding CO2 and the resulting heat to the atmosphere and ocean will inevitably increase the probability of large storms.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is stated that a flood is "long overdue". It is never overdue because the probability is similar every year.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy would these huge flows of water vapor off the ocean become smaller and less frequent if the ocean is becoming warmer?
2012 may not have been an especially bad hurricane year, but one year doesn't mean anything.
If you are worried about people not finding climate change "real," you'd better pay attention to who is running your local school board and curricula. The know-nothings are very active, science doesn't agree with their religious concepts, and it is becoming more and more difficult to teach science and scientific concepts and methods properly. Given another 10 years with not enough watchdog activities by us who know better, we'll be nearly back to the sun revolving around the earth...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBecause a warmer ocean means more evaporation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCarlyle,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI did not dispute what the WSJ reported. I even provided you more evidence of the original UNEP webpage than did the WSJ:
http://dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/chart2.jpg
It's funny that right-wingers can only find one UNEP paragraph when attempting to create a scandal. What a joke.
I didn't see anyone from UNEP attempting to move goal posts. They said it was an error and removed the webpage (that contained less than 100 words).
Do your due diligence. Otherwise, you look like an idiot.
drbob 22, you are right in a way. Utah had massive snow accumulation two years ago and a very rapid melt, with flooding. But this year it is quite warm, the "pineapple express" is the name given to this week's precip from CA to CO and points north, and almost all of it is rain. Since snow is a major water reserve system in the West, the sooner it melts (and floods perhaps) the less irrigation water and culinary water is available during the summer and fall. The whole pattern of precip seems to be changing. Storms that do exist seem to be more violent, both tornadoes and the super event on the east coast just now. Average worldwide temps are up more than anticipated, the arctic ice is melting faster than predicted. All the above will require thinking people to be prepared to "do something," not just sit there. In the Rockies, heavy precip tends to trigger earth movements. Will the weight of all this water have a similar effect in CA? Give that a moment's thought.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo when did they alter it. Before the prediction failed or after?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe UN “disappears” 50 million climate refugees, then botches the disappearing attempt. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/15/the-un-disappears-50-million-climate-refugees-then-botches-the-disappearing-attempt/
Carlyle,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou are really having a hard time understanding this.
It was NOT a prediction by the UNEP. UNEP publishes many official reports. Their most comprehensive reports have been their Global Environment Outlook reports. GEO-1 through GEO-5 have been published. Here's a link to GEO-5, published May 2012 (551 pages):
http://www.unep.org/geo/pdfs/geo5/GEO5_report_full_en.pdf
These reports are published every five years. GEO-3 was published in 2002. GEO-4 was published in 2007.
Here's what was written in GEO-4:
"The term ecomigrant has been used to describe anyone whose need to migrate is influenced by environmental factors (Wood 2001). It has been claimed that during the mid-1990s up to 25 million people were forced to flee as a result of environmental change, and as many as 200 million people could eventually be at risk of displacement (Myers 1997). Other analyses indicated that while the environment may play a role in forced migration, migration is usually also linked to political divisions, economic interests and ethnic rivalries (Castles 2002). A clear separation between factors is often difficult."
source -- see page 23 of this report:
http://www.unep.org/geo/geo4/report/01_Environment_for_Development.pdf
also see:
http://www.unep.org/geo/GEO3/pdfs/The%20GEO-3%20Scenarios.PDF
Try doing some work and give me something more substantive that UNEP made an official prediction that there would be 50 million climate change refugees by 2010.
If you actually think what you got is scandalous, you are living in a bubble.
You simply keep providing different links to different right-wing rags that are referencing the same April 11, 2011 blog by Gavin Atkins.
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Carlyle,
It is obvious from your comments that you do very little due diligence. You simply repeat what you see spewed out of Rupert Murdoch's propaganda empire (WSJ editorials, Fox News, etc) excepting what they give you on religious faith.
You show no sign of having any scientific attributes, but are only a zombie.
If these megastorms and floods are regular (every 200 years) this means that they have nothing whatsoever to do with human impact. Global warming is a cyclic thing, alternating between periods of global cooling, and has been going on for millions and millions of years, long before any plastic bags, automobiles, incandescent light bulbs or plastic water bottles. It's beginning to look like people are coming back to their senses on this issue. Let's hope this trend will continue.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMorons that cite Nostradamus as the source of their arguments should be banned from commenting in the Sci. Am. site. Please Sci. Am. add this to your "terms and conditions" requirement!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBUY FLOOD insurance from the National Flood Insurance Program if you don't have it. Home owner's insurance policies DO NOT cover damage caused by flooding! It takes 30 days before the policy becomes effective.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUpon what Climate Change is the author basing this hypothesis on? The Global Warming-caused one?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe U.K. Met Office recently released data showing that there has been no statistically significant global warming for almost 16 years. During this period, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations rose by nearly 9% to now constitute 0.039% of the atmosphere. Global warming that has not occurred cannot have caused the extreme weather of the past few years. Whether, when and how atmospheric warming will resume is unknown. The science is unclear. Some scientists point out that near-term natural cooling, linked to variations in solar output, is also a distinct possibility.
The “even larger climate shocks” you have mentioned would be worse if the world cooled than if it warmed. Climate changes naturally all the time, sometimes dramatically. The hypothesis that our emissions of CO2 have caused, or will cause, dangerous warming is not supported by the evidence.
The incidence and severity of extreme weather has not increased. There is little evidence that dangerous weather-related events will occur more often in the future. The U.N.’s own Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says in its Special Report on Extreme Weather (2012) that there is “an absence of an attributable climate change signal” in trends in extreme weather losses to date. The funds currently dedicated to trying to stop extreme weather should therefore be diverted to strengthening our infrastructure so as to be able to withstand these inevitable, natural events, and to helping communities rebuild after natural catastrophes such as tropical storm Sandy.
Chemtrails, CME apocalypsists, and Climate changers... All the crazies are out in force on this topic.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust a simple test of your credibility. What do you have to say about the Climategate email scandal?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust a simple test of your credibility. What do you have to say about the Climategate email scandal?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you for displaying your complete lack of understanding of climate change and climate science. With people like you supporting climate change denial, stupid snark will surely overcome research, facts and thoughtful discussion of the future (not).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWeasel words will follow :)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScience gives me hope and expectation that humanity will be corrected.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrulahn,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1 (kilo)Calorie is the energy to heat 1 kiloGRAM of water 1 degrees Celcius, not one kiloLITRE. You have a three-orders-of-magnitude error here.
The USGS risk assessment referenced in this article contains additional historical info. You can get there via this sciencedaily link
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110117142512.htm
"Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisExactly. It's time to actually do something about global warming instead of whining and complaining about it. The only way to solve global warming is with new technology, to reverse entropy. If we can reverse entropy with nano technology, we can reverse global warming.
I would like to read the references detailing the ability of those climate models to resolve the altitude, vertical and lateral extent of atmospheric rivers. As a former mesoscale modeler, I must admit to being surprised and somewhat skeptical of the claimed abilities of those climate models.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile the is no doubt that climate change is occurring, all too many of the commentators have failed to notice the (shamefully under-reported) news from Doha that, despite the shocking increase in greenhouse gas emission, the globe has not, in fact, warmed for a decade-and-a-half. The average temperature is higher than in the fairly recent past, but the data make clear that the correlation between greenhouse gas and global temperature is, at best, suspect.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs the article points out, megastorms are a climatic fact of life which, like past episodes of global warming, predate the Industrial Revolution. It is, IMO, utterly irresponsible, not to mention unscientific, for SA to put an AGW twist on a natural phenomenon with providing any evidence; specifically, the correlation, if any, between the megastorm and global temperature records.
My brother-in-law and I look at it this way, with apologies to Mr. Frost:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSome say this state will end in shakes,
Some say with rain.
Though much destruction water makes
I hold with those who favor quakes.
But as we all wash down the drain
I think it not far from the mark
To say that for destruction, rain
Would do: the ark
Our last refrain.
Open a science periodical once in a while. The "15 years of no warming" argument is a fallacy, and you should be embarrased for referring to it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes- it was one of the most prevalent denial tropes out there. I think it has such traction because 1) The global temp warming HAS slowed somewhat in the past 12 or so years (it has NOT stopped, but has slowed) 2) Scientists have demonstrated that with multiple factors mitigating against warming- especially the HUGE amount of aerosals emitted by China and India- it is indeed impressive that the warming continues. What this SHOULD lead one to conclude is that a) we are in really big trouble because the aerosals will decrease at some point b) we are in really big trouble because even with only 0.75 C warming so far, we have already seen scary changes (drought, permafrost thaw, air water vapor content, etc.) But...this takes a bit to explain and comprehend it is SO much easier to insist: "It has stopped warming, tra-la-la, there is no problem"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou need a microscope aallison. See post 29 http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=polar-melting-is-accelera&posted=1#comments & the preceeding posts.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe warmer water gets, the less CO2 it can dissolve. As the central pacific receives considerable sunshine, the greenhouse effect will cause the water to warm and give off CO2. So there is a tipping-point where mid-pacific climate enters a vicious circle of gassing CO2 off and evaporation of water vapour which is also a potent greenhouse gas! And as water vapour is transparent, it does not increase albedo as many people think. Its time to implement biomass pyrolysis to sequester CO2 !
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGrays Harbor County in Washington State got 57 continuous days of rain a few years ago. It was no big deal.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCalifornia Central Valley is a sediment basin. A massive flood would bring more nutrients to the farmland. Since progressives hate dams, the flooding will go unabated.
Don't worry, progressives will find a way to 'Blame Bush'.