ConvenienTruth

Strongest solar storm since 2005 hitting Earth

tienken — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 06:55:26 +0000

By SETH BORENSTEIN | Associated Press – 11 hrs ago

This colorized NASA image, taken Monday, Jan. 23, 2012, from the Solar Dynamics Observatory, …
This handout image provided by NASA, taken Sunday night, Jan. 22, 2012, shows a solar …

WASHINGTON (AP) — The sun is bombarding Earth with radiation from the biggest solar storm in more than six years with more to come from the fast-moving eruption.

The solar flare occurred at about 11 p.m. EST Sunday and will hit Earth with three different effects at three different times. The biggest issue is radiation, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center in Colorado.

The radiation is mostly a concern for satellite disruptions and astronauts in space. It can cause communication problems for polar-traveling airplanes, said space weather center physicist Doug Biesecker.

Radiation from Sunday’s flare arrived at Earth an hour later and will likely continue through Wednesday. Levels are considered strong but other storms have been more severe. There are two higher levels of radiation on NOAA’s storm scale — severe and extreme — Biesecker said. Still, this storm is the strongest for radiation since May 2005.

The radiation — in the form of protons — came flying out of the sun at 93 million miles per hour.

“The whole volume of space between here and Jupiter is just filled with protons and you just don’t get rid of them like that,” Biesecker said. That’s why the effects will stick around for a couple days.

NASA’s flight surgeons and solar experts examined the solar flare’s expected effects and decided that the six astronauts on the International Space Station do not have to do anything to protect themselves from the radiation, spokesman Rob Navias said.

A solar eruption is followed by a one-two-three punch, said Antti Pulkkinen, a physicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and Catholic University.

First comes electromagnetic radiation, followed by radiation in the form of protons.

Then, finally the coronal mass ejection — that’s the plasma from the sun itself — hits. Usually that travels at about 1 or 2 million miles per hour, but this storm is particularly speedy and is shooting out at 4 million miles per hour, Biesecker said.

It’s the plasma that causes much of the noticeable problems on Earth, such as electrical grid outages. In 1989, a solar storm caused a massive blackout in Quebec. It can also pull the northern lights further south.

But this coronal mass ejection seems likely to be only moderate, with a chance for becoming strong, Biesecker said. The worst of the storm is likely to go north of Earth.

And unlike last October, when a freak solar storm caused auroras to be seen as far south as Alabama, the northern lights aren’t likely to dip too far south this time, Biesecker said. Parts of New England, upstate New York, northern Michigan, Montana and the Pacific Northwest could see an aurora but not until Tuesday evening, he said.

For the past several years the sun had been quiet, almost too quiet. Part of that was the normal calm part of the sun’s 11-year cycle of activity. Last year, scientists started to speculate that the sun was going into an unusually quiet cycle that seems to happen maybe once a century or so.

Now that super-quiet cycle doesn’t seem as likely, Biesecker said.

Scientists watching the sun with a new NASA satellite launched in 2010 — during the sun’s quiet period — are excited.

“We haven’t had anything like this for a number of years,” Pulkkinen said. “It’s kind of special.”

Draconian EPA Regulations To Cause Rolling Blackouts

tienken — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 01:50:02 +0000

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Friday, December 2, 2011

The cost of complying with draconian new EPA rules on carbon emissions will force coal plants in Texas to close and increase the likelihood of rolling blackouts, as the Obama administration’s vow to “bankrupt” the coal industry takes full effect.

When rolling blackouts hit Texas at the start of the year, we wrote a series of articlespointing out that President Barack Obama’s promise to “bankrupt” the coal industry, in the form of draconian EPA regulations that would cause older power plants to close, had contributed to the power outages. Several of these articles were picked up by the likes of the Drudge Report and Fox News, stoking a wider controversy.

In response, the White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer claimed in a blog post that appeared on WhiteHouse.gov that the story came from a “questionable” source and was “unquestionably false.” We then issued a rebuttal documenting how the blackouts were caused by a maxed-out power grid and not by “mechanical failures” as Pfeiffer claimed in his article.

Ten months down the line and the Austin-American Statesman reports today that, “Texas could face power shortages as soon as next year as aging plants are mothballed in response to new environmental standards, according to the state’s grid operator and the organization that monitors the U.S. power grids for the federal government.”

In other words, ourselves and other critics who warned that the EPA’s draconian eco-regulations would cause rolling blackouts, after being attacked by the White House, have been proven completely accurate.

“Already Dallas-based Luminant Generation Co., Texas’ largest electricity generator, has announced it intends to idle two coal-fired generating units as part of a plan to comply with the rule,” reports the Houston Chronicle.

Inadequate supply of power is being greatly exacerbated by coal and natural gas plants being shut down because they cannot afford the crippling EPA regulation fees, which will lead to “power shortages as soon as next year”.

“The report by the North American Electric Reliability Corp. found that many older power plants in Texas will be retired rather than retrofitted to meet new federal emission standards,” reports the Statesman, closures that have been welcomed by the likes of the Clean Energy Group consortium, whose agenda is to promote the vehemently discredited pseudo-science of man-made global warming

The CEG group opposes the building of new plants or a delay in implementing the EPA standards, demanding instead that Americans curtail their energy use, or in other words lower their living standards to satisfy the politicized, agenda-driven, money-making scam that is climate change and the carbon credit industry, while huge corporations like General Electric get waivers and are not even subject to the EPA rules everyone else is forced to comply with.

As we have documented, the entire carbon tax scam is a monumental fraud which does nothing to help the environment even if you believe in climate change hysteria, in that its primary purpose is to line the pockets of ‘carbon billionaires’ like Al Gore and Maurice Strong.

Obama’s support for Australia’s carbon tax is unsurprising given the fact that he was “instrumental in developing and launching the privately-owned Chicago Climate Exchange” via millions of dollars in donations from the Joyce Foundation, with whom Obama served as a director.

Carbon trading schemes are directly connected to people in third world nations like Honduras and Uganda being brutally evicted from their land and in some cases slaughtered in cold blood. Western companies make billions from seizing land and using it to grow trees in return for lucrative carbon credits which are then sold to companies (via EPA mandates) under carbon tax schemes like the one just passed in Australia.

Despite America still reeling from an economic collapse, the Obama administration and the EPA is still committed to bankrupting the coal industry in pursuit of a “green economy,” which has little to do with the environment and everything to do with hollowing out America’s industrial base so that the country may be more easily swallowed up by the “post-industrial revolution” that remains the goal of the global elite.

If you want to get a taste of just what effect this “green economy” will have on America, take a look at Spain, where the unemployment rate is over 22 per cent as a result of at least 2.2 jobs being lost for every “green” job created, in addition to soaring energy costs.

Weather Service predicts first 3 months of 2012 looking warmer out East, but cooler in West

tienken — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 02:28:27 +0000

WASHINGTON — Federal weather forecasters are predicting that the first three months of the new year will start off warmer than normal in the East, but cooler than usual out West.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts that January will be toastier than normal, with most states east of the Rockies getting warmer weather, except for New England.

Forecasters say the southernmost parts of the nation should be drier than normal, including drought-struck Texas. But the Northwest and Great Lakes states are likely to be wetter than normal.

Meteorologists are basing much of their forecast on a continuing moderate La Nina weather oscillation. The flip side of the El Nino, La Nina is a cooling of the equatorial Pacific Ocean that influences weather worldwide.

NPP: Improving U.S. weather forecast accuracy from space

tienken — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 06:27:00 +0000

On October 28, 2011, the launch of a new polar-orbiting environmental satellite will enable NOAA to continue issuing accurate forecasts and provide advance warning for severe weather, such as deadly tornado outbreaks, blistering heat waves, floods, snowfall and wildfires.

Visit the NASA NPP Mission Page for more details on the NPP mission: http://www.nasa.gov/npp
Get the latest information on the NPP launch here:http://jointmission.gsfc.nasa.gov

The satellite, NASA’s NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP), orbits Earth every 102 minutes, flying 512 miles above the surface, and capturing data from the Earth’s land, oceans, and atmosphere. The data is used by NOAA forecasters to detect the potential for dangerous weather conditions days – even several weeks – in advance. For example, data from polar-orbiting satellites helped NOAA meteorologists predict, 5 days in advance, the major snowstorms that struck the Atlantic Coast in February 2010 (“Snowmageddon”) and paralyzed New York City in December 2010.

“Along with the skill of our meteorologists,
polar-orbiting satellites, like NPP, are critical to the success of our forecasts three days and beyond,” said Jack Hayes, assistant administrator of NOAA’s National Weather Service. “They are the backbone of the global earth observing system and global weather prediction capability.”

While NPP is a NASA mission, NOAA feeds the data collected from the satellite’s new, sophisticated instruments into the forecast models. The satellite data is used to generate dozens of products, including measurements of cloud and vegetation cover, ocean color, and sea and land surface temperatures. NOAA meteorologists use these products, especially measurements of the distribution of moisture and heat in the atmosphere, to improve forecasts.

NPP as the Bridge

NPP data replaces data from the NOAA-19 satellite in the ‘afternoon orbit,’ meaning that the satellite passes over the U.S. during full daylight hours. The afternoon orbit is especially important since some of the spacecraft’s sensors work best in full daylight. NPP is also the bridge that links NOAA’s current polarorbiting satellites to the next generation of advanced spacecraft called the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS).

“The bottom line is NPP is a big deal for America,” said Mary Kicza, assistant administrator for NOAA’s Satellite and Information Service. “We need the data from NPP to inform the public about what’s coming down the pike and how to plan for it appropriately.” Kicza added that the success of NPP is a credit to the long, successful partnership between NOAA and NASA.

“Both of our agencies have worked for many decades to provide the Nation with the best in satellite weather and climate monitoring, and NPP is no different,” she said. “NASA developed the NPP mission and NOAA provided the key instruments to populate the spacecraft.” Kicza added that NPP will test how these instruments perform before they are formally added to the JPSS satellites. Data from NPP, like all other U.S.weather satellite data, is processed and distributed from NOAA’s Satellite Operations Facility in Suitland, Md. to key users including NOAA’s National Weather Service and others around the world.

In addition to providing data for accurate weather forecasting, NPP tracks ash plumes from volcanic eruptions, helps emergency responders fight wildfires, helps advance climate science, accurately measures the amount of Arctic sea ice and changes in the ozone hole, and monitors phytoplankton and other organisms in the ocean.

NOAA will process and distribute NPP data from its Satellite Operations Facility in Suitland, Md., to key users including NOAA’s National Weather Service and others around the world.

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center manages the NPP mission on behalf of the Earth Science Division of the Science Mission Directorate. NOAA, with support from the Department of Defense, funded the instruments on NPP, and will provide operational support for the mission.

NPP Instruments

Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite, or VIIRS: will survey broad swaths of the land, oceans and air, enabling scientists to monitor everything from phytoplankton and other organisms in the sea, to vegetation and forest cover to the amount of sea ice at the poles.
Ozone Mapper Profiler Suite, or OMPS: maps and profiles ozone throughout the atmosphere.
Clouds and Earth’s Radiant Energy System, or CERES: monitors the amount of energy entering and exiting the top of the atmosphere.
Cross-track Infrared Sounder, or CrIS: measures temperature profiles with greater resolution, improving climate prediction and both short-and long-term weather forecasting, and scientists’ understanding of major climate shifts.
Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder, or ATMS: works in conjunction with CrIS to make detailed vertical profiles of atmospheric pressure, heat and moisture.

Solyndra, the logical endpoint of Obamanomics

tienken — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 01:10:54 +0000

The bankruptcy of solar-panel maker Solyndra neatly encapsulates the economic, political and intellectual bankruptcy of Barack Obama’s Big Idea. It was the president’s intention back in 2009 to begin centrally reorganizing the U.S. economy around the supposed climate-change crisis. To what end? Well, Obama claimed his election would mark “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” But that was just the cover story. At its core, Obamanomics is about the top-down redistribution of wealth and income. Government spending on various “green” subsidies and programs, along with a cap-and-trade system to limit carbon emissions, would enrich key Democrat constituencies: lawyers, public sector unions, academia and non-profits. Oh, and Wall Street, too. Who was the exclusive financial adviser to Solyndra when it was trying to secure the $535 million loan from Washington? Goldman Sachs. And had the cap-and-trade scheme been enacted, big banks stood ready to reap billions from the trading of carbon emission credits. No wonder many Democratic strategists predicted their party’s 2008 landslide win would usher in a generation of political dominance. Obamanomics, essentially, would divert taxpayer dollars to the Green Lobby – and then into the campaign coffers of the Democratic Party. This is what crony capitalism is really all about: politicians enriching favored businesses, who then return the favor. Or maybe it’s the other way around, Who cares, really. It’s an endless, profitable loop for both. And Obama almost pulled it off. The Great Recession conveniently allowed the president to start the spendathon under the guise of economic stimulus. (“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” – White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, 2009). As it turns out, the $38.6 billion loan program for clean energy firms that Solyndra benefited from has created just 3,545 permanent new jobs after parceling out half its dough. That works out to around $5 million a job. Unfortunately for the Obamacrats, the financial meltdown also undercut political support for cap-and-trade on Capitol Hill. Voters worried the scheme would slow growth and cost jobs. But without permanently and continually raising the price of carbon-based fuels, many green businesses can’t make the numbers work. As Peter Lynch, a New York-based solar energy analyst, told ABC News: It’s very difficult to perceive a company with a model that says, well, I can build something for six dollars and sell it for three dollars. Those numbers don’t generally work. You don’t want to lose three dollars for every unit you make. Unless, of course, American taxpayers make up the difference — though in the case of Solyndra, even government’s thumb on the scale wasn’t enough to save it. And it often isn’t enough when an investment’s goals are a fat political reward rather than a financial one. Indeed, studies of similar government investment efforts around the world show they’re usually a bad deal for taxpayers. An analysis of Canada’s government-backed venture capital fund, for instance, found the recipient firms “underperform on a variety of criteria, including value-creation, as measured by the likelihood and size of IPOs and M&As, and innovation, as measured by patents.” Even after getting the loan, Solyndra spent $187,000 on lobbying efforts, according to Bloomberg, including trying to get the White House to push government agencies to install its panels on the rooftops of federal buildings and extend “buy American” rules that favor U.S. companies. Instead of revenue seeking, Solyndra was “rent seeking,” which means trying to make money by manipulating government . And when the White House was trying to determine whether to sink another $67 million into Solyndra, its calculus was political not financial (via The Washington Post): “The optics of a Solyndra default will be bad,” the Office of Management and Budget staff member wrote Jan. 31 in an e-mail to a co-worker. “If Solyndra defaults down the road, the optics will be arguably worse later than they would be today. . . . In addition, the timing will likely coincide with the 2012 campaign season heating up.” That’s not how the private sector makes investment decision. But it’s routine for government where the stakeholders are politicians, bureaucrats, lobbyists and favored constituencies. The takers, not the makers. That’s whose side Obamanomics is on.

‘Dramatic’ solar flare could disrupt Earth communications

tienken — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 18:28:34 +0000

By Kerry Sheridan | AFP – 20 hours ago

This 2006 Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope …

An unusual solar flare observed by a NASA space observatory on Tuesday could cause some disruptions to satellite communications and power on Earth over the next day or so, officials said.

The potent blast from the Sun unleashed a firestorm of radiation on a level not witnessed since 2006, and will likely lead to moderategeomagnetic storm activity by Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service.

“This one was rather dramatic,” said Bill Murtagh, program coordinator at the NWS’s Space Weather Prediction Center, describing the M-2 (medium-sized) solar flare that peaked at 1:41 am Eastern time in the United States, or 0541 GMT.

“We saw the initial flare occurring and it wasn’t that big but then the eruption associated with it — we got energy particle radiation flowing in and we got a big coronal mass injection,” he said.

“You can see all the materials blasting up from the Sun so it is quite fantastic to look at.”

NASA’s solar dynamics observatory, which launched last year and provided the high-definition pictures and video of the event, described it as “visually spectacular,” but noted that since the eruption was not pointed directly at Earth, the effects were expected to remain “fairly small.”

“The large cloud of particles mushroomed up and fell back down looking as if it covered an area of almost half the solar surface,” said a NASA statement.

Murtagh said space weather analysts were watching closely to see whether the event would cause any collision of magnetic fields between the Sun and Earth, some 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) apart.

“Part of our job here is to monitor and determine whether it is Earth-directed because essentially that material that is blasting out is gas with magnetic field combined,” he told AFP.

“In a day or so from now we are expecting some of that material to impact us here on Earth and create a geomagnetic storm,” he said.

“We don’t expect it to be any kind of a real severe one but it could be kind of a moderate level storm.”

The Space Weather Prediction Center said the event is “expected to cause G1 (minor) to G2 (moderate) levels of geomagnetic storm activity tomorrow, June 8, beginning around 1800 GMT.”

Any geomagnetic storm activity will likely be over within 12-24 hours.

“The Solar Radiation Storm includes a significant contribution of high energy protons, the first such occurrence of an event of that type since December 2006,” the NWS said.

As many as 12 satellites and spacecraft are monitoring the heliosphere, and one instrument in particular on board NASA’s lunar reconnaissance orbiter is measuring radiation and its effects.

“Certainly over the (two-year) lifetime of the mission this is the most significant event,” said Harlan Spence, principal investigator for the cosmic ray telescope for the effects of radiation, or CRaTER.

“This is really exciting because ironically when we were developing the mission initially we thought we would be launching closer to a solar maximum when these big solar particle events typically occur,” Spence told AFP.

“Instead we launched into a historic solar minimum that took a long, long time to wake up,” he said.

“This is interesting and significant because it shows the Sun is returning to its more typical active state.”

The resulting geomagnetic storm could cause some disruption in power grids, satellites that operate global positioning systems and other devices, and may lead to some rerouting of flights over the polar regions, Murtagh said.

“Generally it is not going to cause any big problems, it will just have to be managed,” he said.

“If you fly from the United States to Asia, flying over the North Pole, there are well over a dozen flights every day,” he added.

“During these big radiation storms some of these airlines will reroute the flights away from the polar regions for safety reasons to make sure they can maintain communications.

“People operating satellites would keep an eye on this, too, because geomagnetic storming can interfere with satellites in various ways whether it is the satellite itself or the signal coming down from the receiver.”

The aurora borealis (Northern Lights) and aurora australis (Southern Lights) will also likely be visible in the late hours of June 8 or 9, NASA said.

Weather.com says San Diego ‘overdue’ for hurricane ~ complete joke

tienken — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 21:15:07 +0000

By Gary Robbins

To date, Hurricane Linda is the largest hurricane that’s ever developed in the eastern Pacific Ocean. — NOAA

Weather.com recently published a list (story) of cities that are “overdue” for being hit by a hurricane. Author Rick Knabb inexplicably placed San Diego second on that list, ahead of Tampa, Florida, Savannah, Georgia, and New York City.

The list came out on June 1, the first day of the Atlantic hurricane season. Knabb appears to be unaware that San Diego is located on the Pacific Ocean, and that Southern California is one of the least likely places to get hit by a hurricane.

As the National Hurricane Center often notes, hurricanes typically gain strength while moving over water that’s 80 degrees or higher. Ocassionally, the water gets that warm off the southwest coast of Mexico, sending big surf to Southern California. But the ocean is rarely warm enough off Northern Baja to allow a tropical storm or a hurricane to track directly into our region.

Southern California hasn’t a direct threat from a hurricane since September 1997, when El Nino-warmed waters allowed Hurricane Linda to track unusually far up Baja. (USAToday story.) The National Weather Service issued a statement that said there was a chance that Linda would make shore. But the storm faded. Southern California hasn’t been hit by a tropical storm since September 1939. That storm was comparatively weak, producing winds in the 50 mph range. But it killed about 50 people.

Weather.com’s Knabb didn’t mention that storm in his story about cities that are overdue for a hurricane. Instead, he wrote that, “Only one hurricane is known to have ever directly struck the coast of California with hurricane-force winds. I cannot show you a satellite image, because it happened long before satellites were invented. I cannot show you any video of the hurricane’s damage in California, because it happened before movie cameras were invented. In fact, it’s been such a long time that it took some extensive work by researchers within the past decade to dig up sufficient, relevant documentation of the event, such as old newspaper accounts and surface observations, to paint a clear picture of what happened.

“That one California hurricane struck San Diego on Oct. 2, 1858, producing sustained hurricane-force winds there and resulting in extensive property damages. Winds of tropical storm force extended up the coast to near Los Angeles. Another hurricane hasn’t hit California since. Why is such an event so rare?

The primary reason is the very cool ocean temperatures over the eastern Pacific off the coast of North America, extending northward from the southern tip of Baja California, Mexico. Even though the tropical eastern Pacific to the south and southwest of southern Mexico is routinely a concentrated area of hurricane activity, a rare set of circumstances must be in place for a hurricane to make it all the way up to San Diego. As in 1858, the hurricane must be moving fast enough, over waters just warm enough, to maintain its intensity on the way north to California.”

In other words, Knabb knows that the conditions rarely exist to allow a hurricane to track into San Diego. But he placed the city on the list anyway.

The Science Behind This Terrible Tornado Season

tienken — Thu, 26 May 2011 16:37:50 +0000

Andrea Mustain

So far, 2011 has proved a year destined for the tornado record books.

Nearly 1,200 tornadoes have swarmed the United States this year, according to preliminary numbers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Four of these storms have been rated at the highest tornado strength, an EF-5. The death toll from these tornadoes has likely topped 500, a number not seen since 1953.

But why has this year seen so many and such devastating twisters? Scientists point to several large-scale climate factors, some of which have been at work behind the scenes since winter. And at least some of the mind-boggling tornado numbers, believe it or not, can be chalked up to humans — there are more of us around to see them.

La Niña’s exit

Some of the blame for the wild tornado streak lies with La Niña, a cyclical system of trade winds that cools the waters of the equatorial Pacific Ocean. (El Niño is La Niña’s warm-water counterpart.)

Although we were in the grip of one of the most powerful La Niñas on record this last year, La Niña made a sudden exit about three months ago, said Bill Patzert, a climatologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

“La Niña would have been beneficial for all these people that have been so clobbered,” Patzert said. “If La Niña had maintained its strength, perhaps we wouldn’t have seen so many tornadoes.”

How do trade winds in the Pacific relate to deadly storms in the southern and central United States? It has to do with the jet stream, a high-speed air current that is essentially an atmospheric fence where cool, dry air meets up with warm, moist air — two of the main ingredients for severe storms. [Related: Why Tornado Forecasting is Tough]

La Niña has a stabilizing effect on the jet stream, and pushes it to higher latitudes.

Without La Niña around, the jet stream has gone rogue, Patzert told OurAmazingPlanet. “This time of the year it should be farther north,” he said.

Instead, the jet stream has spent April and May draped across the middle of the country, where it has the chance to violently mix cool, dry northern air with warm, moist southern air.

And in 2011, those two air masses have been on the extreme ends of the temperature scale.

Hot and cold

Patzert said lingering effects of last winter’s record snowfalls and snow packs have kept northern air especially cold, and the strong La Niña fueled unusually hot conditions in the southwest.

In addition, the sea surface temperature of the Gulf of Mexico is between 1.8 and 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.0 to 1.5 degrees Celsius) warmer than average, said Jake Crouch, a climatologist at the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.

Crouch said the warm, moist air is the perfect fuel for severe weather.

“If there’s more moisture and the atmosphere is warmer, it’s more unstable, so there’s more potential there for severe thunderstorms to develop,” Crouch told OurAmazingPlanet.

Like gasoline on a fire, those extremes provide the potential for more storms, and more powerful ones. And when powerful thunderstorms run into the windy conditions that occur each spring, they often begin to spin — and sometimes with horrifying consequences.

The tornado that devastated Joplin, Mo., killing at least 125 people, is not only the deadliest single tornado to strike the United States since 1947, but the storm has now been upgraded to an EF-5, the most intensely damaging tornado on the Enhanced Fujita Scale, with winds in excess of 200 mph (322 kph).

It is the fourth EF-5 tornado this year. In contrast, a single EF-5 hit the United States in 2008, one hit in 2007; before that, the last EF-5 hit in 1999.

Numbers game

However, scientists say it’s important to take a hard look at the numbers before jumping to any conclusions about the sheer numbers of tornadoes in the United States, and whether those numbers are going up.

“Just because we’ve seen an increase in the number of tornadoes doesn’t mean there has actually been an increase in the number of tornadoes,” said Greg Carbin, the warning coordination meteorologist with the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla.

Decades ago, when the country was more sparsely populated — and not everyone had a camera-equipped cell phone — there were simply fewer people around to spot and report tornadoes, Carbin said.

In addition, Carbin said, many initial tornado tallies include tornadoes that are counted more than once.

According to NOAA’s preliminary count, April saw 875 tornadoes. “That’s a gigantic number,” Carbin said. “It may turn out there were that many tornadoes, but I can guarantee that many of those were not significant tornadoes, but they get into the database now because everyone has a tornado they want to report.”

The highest number of tornadoes on record for any month is 542, from May 2003. Carbin said he suspects that once all the data are compiled, April’s numbers will be closer to the May 2003 numbers.

In addition, both Carbin and Crouch pointed to the fact that with increasing urbanization, more people are affected when storms do hit, putting tornadoes in the spotlight.

Numbers and climate conditions aside, one thing is for certain, the scientists said — this tornado season has been unusually violent, as the horrific images splashed across the evening news attest, and it’s not even close to being over.

Researchers see a pattern in rise of deadly tornadoes

tienken — Tue, 24 May 2011 06:08:45 +0000

View Photo Gallery — Storms tore through portions of the Midwest on Sunday, causing especially brutal damage in Joplin, Mo., and Minneapolis.

By Brian Vastag and Ed O’Keefe, Monday, May 23, 7:17 PM

The extraordinary Joplin twister — the single deadliest tornado since officials began keeping records in 1950 — was a rare destructive phenomenon known as a “multi-vortex,” hiding two or more cyclones within the wider wind funnel.

Sunday’s storm smashed the southwest Missouri city’s hospital, left nothing but splintered trees where neighborhoods once stood, and killed at least 116, with the death toll expected to rise. The storm injured another 500 and and damaged or destroyed at least 2,000 buildings.

Video

Raw footage captured by tornado chasers of the tornado that touched down in Joplin, Missouri.

(Gene Thorp/ The Washington Post ) – Joplin, Mo., in southwest Missouri was the site of the latest devastating tornado to occur in the Untied States.

Added to the record 875 tornadoes that tore across the country in April, this latest disaster has experts asking why 2011 has spawned so many deadly storms. While researchers suss out the causes for this year’s record-breaking season, one thing is certain: Unusually big twisters are blasting through heavily populated areas.

“We have had more F4’s and F5’s than in past years,” said Jack Hayes, director of the National Weather Service, referring to the two most destructive categories of tornadoes. And instead of touching down in farms and fields, storms have hit cities like Joplin and Tuscaloosa, Ala.

An emerging body of research points to a cyclical drop in temperatures in the Pacific Ocean as part of the answer. Called La Nina, the cycle lasts at least five months and repeats every three to five years. This year La Nina is pushing a strong North American jetstream east and south, altering prevailing winds. The jetstream’s river of cool air high in the atmosphere pulls warmer, more humid air from the ground upwards, forming thunderstorm “super-cells.”

Such a pattern drove the outbreak of more than 300 tornadoes that swept from Mississippi to Tennessee in late April, killing at least 365, experts say. But it’s too early for them to know whether La Nina alone accounts for what is shaping up to be a disastrously record-breaking tornado season, said tornado expert Grady Dixon of Mississippi State University. “La Nina is probably part of it,” he said. “But it’s not the only reason.”

The climate change factor?

Tornado experts predicted a devastating season this year, and many have begun studying whether global climate change is driving more frequent — and more intense — tornado-spawning thunderstorms. Such work is at an early stage, making it difficult to draw conclusions.

“This will be a rich topic of research in the coming years,” said Russell Schneider, director of the Storm Prediction Center, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Norman, Okla.

Warm air, moisture, and specific wind patterns are the deadly ingredients that mix together to form tornadoes, and climate change impacts at least one of them by increasing the amount of moisture the air can hold.

“Climate change could be boosting one of those ingredients [for tornadoes], but it depends on how these ingredients come together,” said Robert Henson, a meteorologist at theUniversity Corporation for Atmospheric Research.

The intense twister that whipped through Joplin on Sunday spun with windspeeds approaching 200 miles per hour, ranking it as an F4 , just below the top of the tornado scale. The reported death toll from Joplin, 116 — which is expected to rise — increases to 481 the number killed in tornadoes this spring with five weeks until the traditional end of the season.

Global Warming vs. You

tienken — Sun, 01 May 2011 02:56:52 +0000

— By Kevin Drum

| Fri Apr. 29, 2011 12:00 AM PDT

The New York Times ran a report yesterday about New Jersey residents who are outraged by new solar panels on utility poles that are ruining the bucolic splendor of their neighborhoods. Matt Yglesias takes a look at the accompanying photo and finds himself underwhelmed:

This is not a pastoral view disrupted by solar panels. It’s a view of utility polls, street lights, and overhead electrical wires—now with solar panels! It would be interesting to see if people actually preferred a pastoral view free of the accoutrements of electrification but I doubt anyone actually prefers that. Instead, the customary interjections of technology into the suburban landscape are normalized while any deviation from the postwar pattern is anathematized. Had people 100 years ago had this attitude, I suppose nobody would have telephone service or electricity at all.

A few years ago I remember reading about a local outcry over a cell phone company that wanted to put their transmitters on existing light poles instead of building a bunch of new towers. It was over in a neighborhood called Turtle Rock, which is one of Irvine’s most upscale “villages” (yes, we really call them that). I got curious, and since it wasn’t far away I drove over to take a look. And I looked and looked. Finally I found the offending light pole and looked some more. And there it was! I didn’t see it at first, but sure enough, there was a small round doohickey attached to the pole about 20 feet up.

All I could do was shake my head. It was a light pole! And the transmitter was barely even visible. And it was 20 feet off the ground. How could anyone possibly care? But they did.

I’m perpetually astonished by the level of NIMBYism pretty much everywhere. I mean, objecting to a toxic waste dump or something, that I get. But people who live in 100% built environments are remarkably resistant to even the most innocuous changes in that built environment, let alone things that might potentially have a minor but real impact. It’s just a huge battle every time.

And in the non-built environment this is becoming a huge problem too. We need solar power and wind farms. But solar is no good if it’s built in the sunny Mojave Desert because it might impact tortoise breeding grounds. Wind farms are no good if they mar the view off Hyannis Port or kill too many migrating birds. Everybody wants change, but nobody wants that change to occur anywhere that might affect their own backyard or their own pet cause. This is hardly breaking news, I know, but one of these days we’re going to have to decide which is more important: marring our views a bit or preventing the planet from baking to death. I vote for the latter.