INCLIMATE WEATHER 18,424

INCLIMATE

WEATHER

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This week we would like to honor Dave Granlund.  His cartoons have appeared in the New York Times,Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek and he has been a great source for our Blog.  His art often illustrates many subjects we have featured with his great sense of houmor.  His web site also features other artests which we have featured in the past @ http://www.davegranlund.com/cartoons/ 

Thanks Dave!

*  Special thanks to "Google Images", "urbandictionary.com", "NBC News", "USA Today",

"ABC News" and "The Gurdian".

BLOG  POST

by Felicity Blaze Noodleman

Los Angeles, CA

11.22.13

Global warming?  Climate Change?  Just an unuseual weather pattern: freak storms?   The evidence is beginning to stack up.  As we approach and are preparing for our Thanksgiving holiday 2013, maybe we should be giving thanks for the good weather we enjoy from day to day while we are able!  Catastrophic weather conditions are beginning to appear the world over.  These phenomenon are beginning to occur with more frequency and are creating record breaking meteorological devastation on the earth and human kind, and also on many life forms for this world. Mother Nature is letting us know that she is on the move.

Weather has the ability to change so quickly that it is able to catch us completely off guard. Normally we expect the weather conditions to be in season with the time of year and therefor we are prepared for the seasonal climate.  Occasionally however; nature will throw us a "curve ball" which catches us by "storm"!  "The Urban Dictionary" defines inclimate weather in these terms:

 inclimate weather

Often mistakenly used when the phrase "inclement weather" should be used, the phrase "inclimate weather" actually means "unseasonable weather" due to climate change.

"Inclement weather" means "unpleasant weather which is stormy, rainy, or snowy," and that can also be the meaning of "inclimate weather" when the weather is supposed to be pleasant. However, when the climate and the time of year normally would bring stormy, rainy, or snowy weather, "inclimate weather" is sunny or pleasant weather.

"urbandictionary.com"

Going back to the devastation of “Hurricane Katrina” in the New Orleans area of Louisiana and the destructive force of “Hurricane Sandy” on the east coast which was seen in the New York area damaging the Statute of Liberty, we are experiencing larger storm forces around the world.  What is even more disturbing than the size of these storms is the unseasonal times of the year in which these storms are striking leaving their devastation as a testimony of changes which may be right around the corner for the Planet.

Within the last month or so we have seen three news worthy Meteorological events which again bear witness to global warming and change.  The Typhoon which struck the Philippines, a record snow fall in China and a large number of Tornado's striking the Midwestern US.  This week was are passing along the articles for these events along with as article about “Sea Urchins” as further evidence of global warming.

"NBC News"

More Bad Global Warming News: Acidification Harming Sea Urchins 

Stephanie Pappas LiveScience

Adult green sea urchins, a keystone species in temperate and subpolar kelp forests.

(GEOMAR)

Spiny green sea urchins face a new challenge from climate change: As the oceans become more acidic, urchin larvae struggle to digest their food, new research finds.

The study is the first to prove that ocean acidification can cause digestive problems for marine animals, though scientists have long been alarmed at the trend for other reasons. Ocean acidificationhas threatened oyster farms, slowed coral growth and caused common marine snails to shrink, among other effects.

Earlier studies have focused on calcification, or the process by which marine animals draw minerals from the water to build shells and skeletons, study researcher Meike Stumpp, a former Ph.D. student at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research and the University of Kiel in Germany, said in a statement.

"Other vital processes — such as digestion and gastric pH regulation — were neglected," Stumpp said. Gastric pH is the level of acidity in the digestive system. "We can now demonstrate that they deserve much more attention," she said.

Warming climate, acidifying oceans

As levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increase — driven by the burning of fossil fuels — the oceans act as a sponge, taking up some of the extra carbon dioxide. The result is carbonic acid, which decreases the overall pH of the oceans. Since the Industrial Revolution, the ocean has become about 25 to 30 percent more acidic, scientists estimate. [Top 10 Surprising Results of Global Warming]

Acidification eats away at minerals used by corals to build their skeletons and other animals to build their shells. But Stumpp and her colleagues were concerned with another part of the life cycle. Many marine animals start their lives as larvae, which are very exposed to the ocean environment. In particular, the larvae of the green sea urchin (Strongylocentrotus droebachiensis) have a digestive system that is bathed in ocean water.

Humans and other mammals have acidic gastric juices with a pH measurement of around 2, similar to the acidity level of lemon juice. Sea-urchin larvae, in contrast, have very basic, or alkaline, digestive juices — about 9.5 on the 14-point pH scale. Historically, ocean pH was about 8.16 on the pH scale, making it slightly less basic than urchin digestive juices.

Digestive problems

Stumpp and her colleagues exposed sea-urchin larvae to slightly more acidic seawater, calibrated to be at a pH level of 7.7 and 7.4. On the pH scale, 7 is neutral, so the seawater was still slightly basic.

Because the larval digestive system is exposed to the outside environment, the more acidic water caused a decrease in gastric-juice pH of about 0.3 to 0.5, the researchers report Oct. 20 online in the journal Nature Climate Change.

In the more acidic environment, the enzymes that digest food don't work as well. As a result, the researchers found, urchin larvae in acidic water ate 11 percent to 33 percent more than those in ideal water conditions.

"If the organisms are unable to compensate for extra costs caused by ocean acidification by eating more, they suffer negative consequences in the form of reduced growth and fertility, and in extreme cases, death," study researcher Sam Dupont of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden said in a statement.

Green sea urchins are a key species in kelp forests in temperate and subpolar oceans, so their health and survival is crucial for the entire ecosystem, the researchers wrote. More studies of keystone species are needed, they added — especially in the vulnerable larval stage.

"NBC News"

Super Typhoon Smashes Into Philippines

Doyle Rice, USA TODAY 5:19 a.m. EST November 8, 2013

It is one of the most intense storms in world history.

One of the most powerful typhoons ever recorded has slammed into the Philippines. Officials are worried about the number of casualties and the amount damage they will find in remote areas. (Nov. 8) AP

(Photo: Charism Sayat, AFP/Getty Images) 

A massive typhoon packing winds approaching 200 mph and called one of the most powerful storms ever recorded blasted into the Philippines on Friday, killing at least four people.

Forecasters warned of potentially catastrophic damage. Trees were down, power was out in parts of the country, there was widespread flooding and communication with the hardest-hit areas was knocked out, making it difficult to get a full sense of the damage.

Two people were electrocuted in storm-related accidents, one person was killed by a fallen tree and another was struck by lightning, official reports said.

Super Typhoon Haiyan made morning landfall at Guiuan, a small city in Samar province in the eastern Philippines. The U.S. Navy's Joint Typhoon Warning Center said maximum sustained winds were 195 mph, with gusts to 235 mph.

It reached the fragile island chain as the most powerful typhoon or hurricane in recorded history, based on wind speed measurements from satellites, says meteorologist Jeff Masters of Weather Underground.

""There aren't too many buildings constructed that can withstand that kind of wind,'' Masters said.

Authorities in Guiuan could not be reached for word of any deaths or damage, regional civil defense chief Rey Gozon told DZBB radio.

Forecaster Mario Palafox with the nation's weather bureau said it had lost contact with its staff in the landfall area.

"This is really a wallop,'' Southern Leyte Gov. Roger Mercado said on ABS-CBN television. "All roads are impassable due to fallen trees."

A reporter for the network in the Tacloban city was drenched in the pounding rain and said he was wearing a helmet as protection against flying debris. Visibility was so poor that only his silhouette could be seen through the driving rain and water.

Television images showed a street under knee-deep floodwater carrying debris. Tin sheets ripped from roofs were flying above the street.

(Nicolas Asfouri, AFP/Getty Images)

Officials in Cebu province have shut down electric service to the northern part of the province to avoid electrocutions in case power pylons are toppled, said assistant regional civil defense chief Flor Gaviola.

Thousands of people evacuated villages in the central Philippines as Haiyan took aim the region, which was devastated by an earthquake last month.

No Atlantic or eastern Pacific hurricane has ever been stronger than Haiyan (typhoons are the same type of storms as hurricanes).

It's called Super Typhoon Usagi — and it's picking up serious steam as it churns away in the western Pacific Ocean. Now the equivalent of a Category 5 Atlantic hurricane, it's poised to hit some of the most densely populated regions in the world, including Taiwan, the northern Philippines, and Hong Kong.

http://io9.com/a-super-typhoon-is-about-to-smash-into-east-asia-1356679780

About 10 million people live on the central Philippine islands and are most at risk from a direct strike from Haiyan.

The latest forecast track shows Haiyan passing near Tacloban, a city of about 250,000, and Cebu, a city of nearly 1 million, reports meteorologist Eric Holthaus of Quartzmagazine.

The storm was not expected to directly hit Manila, which is farther north. Predictions for Manila were for winds of up to 37 mph and rain.

TYPHOON: Why everyone is talking about it

SUPER TYPHOON: Gusts estimated as high as 230 mph

President Benigno Aquino III warned people to leave high-risk areas, including 100 coastal communities where forecasters said the storm surge could reach up to 23 feet. He urged seafarers to stay in port.

"No typhoon can bring Filipinos to their knees if we'll be united," he said in a televised address.

Haiyan is the fourth typhoon to hit the Philippines in 2013, a nation that typically gets hit by more typhoons than any other country in the world, usually about six or seven each year.

Haiyan is the Chinese word for petrel, a type of bird that lives over the open sea and returns to land only for breeding. The storm is known as Super Typhoon Yolanda in the Philippines.

Governors and mayors supervised the evacuation of landslide- and flood-prone communities in several provinces where the typhoon is expected to pass, said Eduardo del Rosario, head of the government's main disaster-response agency. School classes and plane flights were canceled in many areas.

Aquino ordered officials to aim for zero casualties.

Edgardo Chatto, governor of Bohol island province in the central Philippines, where an earthquake in October killed more than 200 people, said soldiers, police and rescue units were helping displaced residents, including thousands staying in small tents, move to shelters. Bohol is not forecast to receive a direct hit but is expected to be battered by strong winds and rain, government forecaster Jori Loiz said.

"My worst fear is that the eye of this typhoon will hit us. I hope we will be spared," Chatto told the Associated Press by telephone.

After roaring across the Philippines, Haiyan is expected to move into the South China Sea and eventually hit Vietnam and Laos over the weekend, still as a typhoon. 

"USA Today"

"ABC News"

81 Midwest Tornadoes Highly Unusual for November

Nov. 18, 2013

By MAX GOLEMBO

Historic Storms Kill at Least 8 in the Midwest

After one of the quietest U.S. tornado seasons in 40 years, Sunday was nature's comeback, with a total of 81 tornado reports in Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, Indiana and Ohio.

Illinois was the hardest hit, with 43 tornadoes, followed by 23 in Indiana, 13 in Kentucky, one in Missouri and one in Ohio.

According to the National Weather Service's preliminary ratings, New Minden, Ill., in the southern part of the state, was in the swirl of an EF4 tornado, with winds of at least 166 mph. In Washington, Ill., the tornado, also an EF4, packed even more force, with winds from 170 to 190 mph.

According to the climatology of U.S. tornadoes in the Midwest, twisters of such force were unusual for this time of year. In the lower 48 states, the peak of severe weather and tornadoes usually occurs in April and May; November is known as the second peak for severe weather.

According to the SPC, we've had 81 tornado reports this week, most of them caused by the massive low pressure system that moved through the Midwest... and that doesn't include 25 funnel clouds and 2 waterspout reports which are shown on the map above: To put this in perspective, October beat August and September (which is not all that unusual - there is a "second severe weather season" this time of year) and also scored the most tornadoes in October since 2001! The same is true for total October storm reports (including wind & hail) that now stand at 1,148.

 http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-blogs/weathermatrix/1000-storm-reports-record-october-tornadoes/40769

On average, the entire United States usually gets hit with 35 tornadoes in November. Only seven tornadoes on average occur in Midwestern states in November, and only one on average strikes Illinois in November.

More than 140 tornado warnings were issued Sunday from this storm. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had never issued a "high risk" prediction for severe weather, including tornadoes, this late in the season this far north.

At Least 6 Dead in Illinois After Tornadoes, Storms Damage Homes

Tornadoes' Trail: Houses Turned to Rubble, Lives Shattered

But it was a perfect atmospheric setup: strong jet stream aloft (more than100 mph), blowing from the southwest to the northeast over the Midwest, which helped to lift the moist air at the surface coming from the Gulf of Mexico, south to north.

When these elements combine, they create "twist" in the atmosphere conductive to tornado development. As a strong cold front moved through this unstable environment, it helped to lift the moist, warm air. The result was violent, large and long tracked tornadoes, seen more typically in April or May.

Baltimore Ravens players leave the field as play was suspended for a severe thunderstorm blowing through Soldier Field during the first half of an NFL football game against the Chicago Bears, Sunday, Nov. 17, 2013, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/11/17/developing-tornadoes-sweep-through-midwest-nfl-game-suspended

"ABC News"

"The Guardian"

It's Not Just Britain Shivering As Record Snow Hits China and South Korea

Police stand guard at Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Temperatures are expected to fall to -18C in the Chinese capital by tomorrow night. (Photograph: Joe Chan/Reuters)

• Tania Branigan in Beijing, Sam Jones and agencies
• The Guardian, Monday 4 January 2010 13.38 EST

British commuters may have shivered, cursed and slid as they headed back to work after the Christmas break today, but the UK has been spared the worst of the cold weather that is gripping much of the northern hemisphere, bringing freezing temperatures and record snowfalls to parts of north Asia, Europe and the US.

The punishing winter weather has brought transport chaos to China andSouth Korea and claimed at least 60 lives in northern and eastern India.

Reports suggest that the states of Punjab, Bihar, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh have borne the brunt of the freezing temperatures in India. "We are looking into the deaths and in the meantime have asked local authorities to arrange bonfires in the evening for the homeless," said a government official in Bihar, who added that all schools had been closed.

A heavy blanket of fog in New Delhi forced airport authorities to cancel or delay dozens of flights from the capital and train services were also disrupted.

In China more than 2.2 million pupils in Beijing and nearby Tianjin enjoyed a day off as officials took the rare step of closing thousands of schools. Temperatures in the Chinese capital are expected to fall to –18C on Tuesday night, with predictions they could reach –32C in the northernmost parts of the country by Wednesday morning.

In Beijing authorities mobilised more than 300,000 people to clear the streets after Sunday's blizzard dumped 8cm (3in)of snow – the most in the capital in a single day in January since 1951.

The city's normally bustling shopping districts were empty. "It's been a real pain," said He Wenhua, 19, from the south-western city of Chengdu. "I'm here on holiday and I can't get to any of the main sights."

Changping, near the Great Wall, saw more than 20cm of snow, according to China's National Meteorological Centre.

A wholesale market in Beijing told state media the prices of several vegetables had risen by 10% to 50% because of transport problems. There were also concerns that the weather could destroy crops and cause other economic damage.

But Yi Xianrong, an economist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, told Reuters there would be no significant damage. "This won't have any impact. It's too small and local," he said. "In fact, all the snow could be a positive thing for agriculture in northern China, which is usually so dry … the melted snow will help feed crops in spring."

Officials will also be concerned about the strain the cold weather will place on China's gas and oil supplies. There have been gas shortages in the last two months as demand has risen in the unusually cold weather. More snow is expected this week.

In Seoul a blizzard dumped more than 25cm of snow today – the heaviest snowfall since Korea began conducting meteorological surveys in 1937, the state weather agency said.

In Switzerland police said three people were still missing after two successive avalanches hit the Bernese Oberland.

They declined to give the victims' nationalities, saying only that three people had died in the first avalanche, while the doctor sent to help them had become engulfed by the second and had died later in hospital. Eight people were rescued, some seriously injured.

The US is also experiencing an unusually chilly winter, with cold and windy weather along the east coast and record low temperatures in southern states such as Georgia, Alabama and Florida.

South Korea’s Gangwon Province was blanketed by more than a meter of snow earlier this week, the heaviest snowfall in the northeastern province in a century.

http://yeinjee.com/tag/natural-disaster/

"The Guardian"

As we review all of the unusual weather activity over the past years we are beginning to see a case emerge for some kind of climate change happening world wide.  We've mentioned most of them with the exception of the Tsunami which devastated Japan in 2011.  As we sign out we are posting an article entitled "Just 90 companies caused two-thirds of man-made global warming emissions".  Since most of these companies are energy producers it would serve us well to use our natural resources wisely and more sparingly.  

Something is happening to our planet and we can only hope and pray things will not worsen in the future.  Clearly we need to do more in protecting our Earth.  Thanks again for being with us at "The Noodleman Group"!


"The Guardian"

Just 90 Companies Caused Two-Thirds of Man-Made Global Warming Emissions

Chevron, Exxon and BP among companies most responsible for climate change since dawn of industrial age, figures show

Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent

·         theguardian.com, Wednesday 20 November 2013 11.07 EST

Oil, coal and gas companies are contributing to most carbon emissions, causing climate change and some are also funding denial campaigns. (Photograph: David Gray/Reuters)

The climate crisis of the 21st century has been caused largely by just 90 companies, which between them produced nearly two-thirds of the greenhouse gas emissions generated since the dawning of the industrial age, new research suggests.

The companies range from investor-owned firms – household names such as Chevron, Exxon and BP – to state-owned and government-run firms.

The analysis, which was welcomed by the former vice-president Al Goreas a "crucial step forward" found that the vast majority of the firms were in the business of producing oil, gas or coal, found the analysis, which has been accepted for publication in the journal Climactic Change.

"There are thousands of oil, gas and coal producers in the world," climate researcher and author Richard Heede at the Climate Accountability Institute in Colorado said. "But the decision makers, the CEOs, or the ministers of coal and oil if you narrow it down to just one person, they could all fit on a Greyhound bus or two."

Half of the estimated emissions were produced just in the past 25 years – well past the date when governments and corporations became aware that rising greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of coal and oil were causing dangerous climate change.

Many of the same companies are also sitting on substantial reserves of fossil fuel which – if they are burned – puts the world at even greater risk of dangerous climate change.

Climate change experts said the data set was the most ambitious effort so far to hold individual carbon producers, rather than governments, to account.

The United Nations climate change panel, the IPCC, warned in September that at current rates the world stood within 30 years of exhausting its "carbon budget" – the amount of carbon dioxide it could emit without going into the danger zone above 2C warming. The former US vice-president and environmental champion, Al Gore, said the new carbon accounting could re-set the debate about allocating blame for the climate crisis.

Leaders meeting in Warsaw for the UN climate talks this week clashed repeatedly over which countries bore the burden for solving the climate crisis – historic emitters such as America or Europe or the rising economies of India and China.

Gore in his comments said the analysis underlined that it should not fall to governments alone to act on climate change.

"This study is a crucial step forward in our understanding of the evolution of the climate crisis. The public and private sectors alike must do what is necessary to stop global warming," Gore told the Guardian. "Those who are historically responsible for polluting our atmosphere have a clear obligation to be part of the solution."

Between them, the 90 companies on the list of top emitters produced 63% of the cumulative global emissions of industrial carbon dioxide and methane between 1751 to 2010, amounting to about 914 gigatonne CO2 emissions, according to the research. All but seven of the 90 wereenergy companies producing oil, gas and coal. The remaining seven were cement manufacturers.

The list of 90 companies included 50 investor-owned firms – mainly oil companies with widely recognised names such as Chevron, Exxon, BP , and Royal Dutch Shell and coal producers such as British Coal Corp, Peabody Energy and BHP Billiton.

Some 31 of the companies that made the list were state-owned companies such as Saudi Arabia's Saudi Aramco, Russia's Gazprom and Norway's Statoil.

Nine were government run industries, producing mainly coal in countries such as China, the former Soviet Union, North Korea and Poland, the host of this week's talks.

Experts familiar with Heede's research and the politics of climate change said they hoped the analysis could help break the deadlock in international climate talks.

"It seemed like maybe this could break the logjam," said Naomi Oreskes, professor of the history of science at Harvard. "There are all kinds of countries that have produced a tremendous amount of historical emissions that we do not normally talk about. We do not normally talk about Mexico or Poland or Venezuela. So then it's not just rich v poor, it is also producers v consumers, and resource rich v resource poor."

Michael Mann, the climate scientist, said he hoped the list would bring greater scrutiny to oil and coal companies' deployment of their remaining reserves. "What I think could be a game changer here is the potential for clearly fingerprinting the sources of those future emissions," he said. "It increases the accountability for fossil fuel burning. You can't burn fossil fuels without the rest of the world knowing about it."

Others were less optimistic that a more comprehensive accounting of the sources of greenhouse gas emissions would make it easier to achieve the emissions reductions needed to avoid catastrophic climate change.

John Ashton, who served as UK's chief climate change negotiator for six years, suggested that the findings reaffirmed the central role of fossil fuel producing entities in the economy.

"The challenge we face is to move in the space of not much more than a generation from a carbon-intensive energy system to a carbonneutral energy system. If we don't do that we stand no chance of keeping climate change within the 2C threshold," Ashton said.

"By highlighting the way in which a relatively small number of large companies are at the heart of the current carbon-intensive growth model, this report highlights that fundamental challenge."

Meanwhile, Oreskes, who has written extensively about corporate-funded climate denial, noted that several of the top companies on the list had funded the climate denial movement.

"For me one of the most interesting things to think about was the overlap of large scale producers and the funding of disinformation campaigns, and how that has delayed action," she said.

The data represents eight years of exhaustive research into carbon emissions over time, as well as the ownership history of the major emitters.

The companies' operations spanned the globe, with company headquarters in 43 different countries. "These entities extract resources from every oil, natural gas and coal province in the world, and process the fuels into marketable products that are sold to consumers on every nation on Earth," Heede writes in the paper.

The largest of the investor-owned companies were responsible for an outsized share of emissions. Nearly 30% of emissions were produced just by the top 20 companies, the research found.

By Heede's calculation, government-run oil and coal companies in the former Soviet Union produced more greenhouse gas emissions than any other entity – just under 8.9% of the total produced over time. China came a close second with its government-run entities accounting for 8.6% of total global emissions.

ChevronTexaco was the leading emitter among investor-owned companies, causing 3.5% of greenhouse gas emissions to date, with Exxon not far behind at 3.2%. In third place, BP caused 2.5% of global emissions to date.

The historic emissions record was constructed using public records and data from the US department of energy's Carbon Dioxide Information and Analysis Centre, and took account of emissions all along the supply chain.

The centre put global industrial emissions since 1751 at 1,450 gigatonnes.

"The Guardian"

Just 90 Companies Caused Two-Thirds Of Man-Made Global Warming Emissions. Details from The Guardian: "The climate crisis of the 21st century has been caused largely by just 90 companies, which between them produced nearly two-thirds of the greenhouse gas emissions generated since the dawning of the industrial age, new research suggests. The companies range from investor-owned firms – household names such as Chevron, Exxon and BP – to state-owned and government-run firms. The analysis, which was welcomed by the former vice-president Al Goreas a "crucial step forward" found that the vast majority of the firms were in the business of producing oil, gas or coal, found the analysis, which has been accepted for publication in the journal Climatic Change..."

(Graphic above courtesy of Carbon Majors.)

http://www.startribune.com/blogs/232950371.html

Joe Heller / Green Bay Press Gazette, Politicalcartoons.com  http://www.nbcnews.com/slideshow/weather/year-in-weather-cartoons-45481124

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