Study predicts more severe U.S. storms

AP on Yahoo ^ | 8/30/07 | Seth Borenstein - ap

[NormsRevenge]

WASHINGTON - As the world warms, the United States will face more severe thunderstorms with deadly lightning, damaging hail and the potential for tornadoes, a trailblazing study by NASA scientists suggests.

While other research has warned of broad weather changes on a large scale, like more extreme hurricanes and droughts, the new study predicts even smaller events like thunderstorms will be more dangerous because of global warming.

The basic ingredients for whopper U.S. inland storms are likely to be more plentiful in a warmer, moister world, said lead author Tony Del Genio, a NASA research scientist.

And when that happens, watch out.

"The strongest thunderstorms, the strongest severe storms and tornadoes are likely to happen more often and be stronger," Del Genio said in an interview Thursday from his office at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. The paper he co-authored was published online this month in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Other scientists caution that this area of climate research is too difficult and new for this study to be definitive. But some upcoming studies also point in the same direction.

With a computer model, Del Genio explores an area that most climate scientists have avoided. Simple thunderstorms are too small for their massive models of the world's climate. So Del Genio looked at the forces that combine to make thunderstorms.

A unique combination of geography and weather patterns already makes the United States the world's hottest spot for tornadoes and severe storms in spring and summer. The large land mass that warms on hot days, the contours of the atmosphere's jet stream, the wind coming off the Rocky Mountains and warm moist air coming up from the Gulf of Mexico all combine.

Del Genio's computer model shows global warming will mean more strong updrafts, when the wind moves up and down instead of sideways.

"The consequences of stronger updrafts are more lightning and bigger hail," he said.

On a normal sunny day, updrafts are less than 1 mile per hour. In a big rainstorm that is not severe, it's about 2 mph. In a severe storm they could be 20 to 30 mph. The faster that updraft, the worse the storms.

The Southeast and Midwest lie in the path of most of the most dangerous of these storms.

However, the new study also forecasts danger for the Western United States. It predicts lightning will increase about 6 percent as the amount of carbon dioxide — the chief global warming gas — doubles.

Previous studies have shown that the West will get drier, making it a tinderbox for more wildfires. This study shows that there will be more matches in the form of lightning strikes to start those fires, Del Genio said.

One general benefit of global warming is decreased wind shear, which is the speed of side-to-side wind as the altitude rises, Del Genio said. That would moderate the effects of updrafts.

However, during certain times of the year and under the right conditions in the Midwest and Southeast, wind shear will increase. Combine wind shear and updrafts, and damaging winds result, the scientist said.

Other pending and recent research, especially from the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, point in the same general direction, said several scientists who weren't involved in Del Genio's study. But they said research in this area is so new that the NASA study is not the final word.

"It's certainly a plausible result," said Leo Donner, a climate modeling scientist at NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab in Princeton, N.J. Donner earlier this year came out with a study predicting more heavy rain as temperatures rise.

Harold Brooks, a top scientist at NOAA's severe storms laboratory in Norman, Okla., has soon-to-be-published studies finding results similar to the new NASA study, especially when it comes to hail. Some of the severe hail that should be increasing could be baseball-sized and come down at 100 mph, "falling like a major league fastball," he said.

He said it's not possible to predict more tornadoes will result from climate change, however.

Jerry Mahlman, who used to be NOAA's top climate model expert, said that a decade ago then-Vice President Al Gore asked if global warming could cause more tornadoes. Then as now, Mahlman said that's something that's just too detailed to derive from complex climate models.

Mahlman, a scientist who has long warned about the dire consequences of global warming, cautions against going overboard on climate change links: "I'm beginning to suspect that global warming is dynamically much less sexy than people want it to be."

[NormsRevenge]

NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies:

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2007/moist_convection.html

[sinanju]

Trailblazing NASA scientists, huh?

Garbage in, garbage out.

[caseinpoint]

“The model then was applied to a hypothetical future climate with double the current carbon dioxide level and a surface that is an average of 5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the current climate. The study found that continents warm more than oceans and that the altitude at which lightning forms rises to a level where the storms are usually more vigorous.”

From the study itself. Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t a 5 degree increase something that everyone agrees is hundreds of years in the future at the present rate, if at all? Plus it presumes doubling of the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide. Isn’t that improbable also?

[sinanju]

This just in: Former Vice-President Al Gore prophesizes more and bigger tornadoes, recommends the wearing of ruby slippers in summer.

[Spktyr]

How is this different than what we normally get here in Texas???

The 1979 Wichita Falls, Texas tornado. An F4 tornado, it stayed on the ground for an hour, cruised 47 miles, and eradicated a fifth of the not-small city of Wichita Falls. At least one family who tried to outrun the twister in their car failed - the ***1.5 MILE*** wide tornado got them.

The tornado damaged or destroyed 5,000 houses and several apartments. About 20,000 people -- nearly one-fourth of the city's population -- were homeless, while 42 were killed and 1,700 injured.

The weather's been abnormally calm since then - but historically, we should be having some much larger and much nastier storms than we have been getting. The Fort Worth Tornado was a piker compared to the ones we've had historically.

[dr_lew]

Yeah, how about the “Tristate tornado” as seen on documentary TV. Holy Moly, what was that?

[familyop]

Good. It might be worthwhile to build some lightning rods, very large coils and other toys to play with. [familyop wrings hands and smiles sardonically.]

[JennysCool]

It started off as a joke, but now I guarantee NASA's James Hansen will end up with a cushy retirement job on the board of one of Gore's companies.

[Tex Pete]

“Some of the severe hail that should be increasing could be baseball-sized and come down at 100 mph, “falling like a major league fastball,” he said.”

And?

I remember baseball-sized hail falling through people’s roofs here 10 years ago. That isn’t new, and it isn’t common. Nor will it ever be.

[FlingWingFlyer]

This so-called “study” is fine and dandy but WHAT THE HELL IS THE WEATHER GOING TO DO TOMORROW! That’s what I really want to know. 50% chance of rain? That means there is a 50% chance it won’t rain. Hmmmmmm. You gotta go to college to do this?

[crazyshrink]

“a trailblazing study by NASA scientists suggests.”

Must be one of those very technical studies that gov’t uses that include data from weather stations very near burning barrels and a/c discharges, sitting in the middle of black tarred areas, isn’t allowed to be peer reviewed, uses incorrect #’s proven to be erroneous (hockey stick) and needs correcting due to sloppy work (AKA politically motivated).

[crazyshrink]

“falling like a major league fastball,” he said.”

I think he is telling us he doesn’t know what the hell he is talking about by this comment.

I occassionally watch baseball and have never seen a fast ball fall like he is describing. They go fast and relatively flat (horizontal) into the catchers mitt.

[- Smokestack Lightning]

Over educated morons

[chaos_5]

One day scientists may discover the source of sunlight....

[az_gila]

They should speak to some glider pilots...

A 1 to 2 mph thermal (updraft) would be considered quite puny. In the mid-West 4 to 5 mph updrafts are common in the afternoons.

Out in the desert West, 1000 ft per minute (about 10 mph) updrafts are common, and my personal best was over 2000 ft per minute in the mountains N. of Bishop, CA.

Perhaps they have got their scales wrong? ...or they are just predicting what is already happening now... or perhaps they just adjust the equations to get what they need to get the next grant?

[Recovering_Democrat]

Guess those predictions of MORE AND MORE HURRICANES isn't working out, so they're lowering the bar...

Hell, these guys can't tell me 10 days out if it will rain--how do they know if storms in 30 years will be stronger?!?

Pitiful. And the LameStream Press laps this crap up like a cat a bowl of cream. Pathetic.

[EGPWS]

I miss the good ol’ day’s when organizations like NASA just stuck to “Can we have more funding?” as a conveyance that they wanted more money.

[Thrownatbirth]

A 1 to 2 mph thermal (updraft) would be considered quite puny

In the East, that's a blessing. My best thermals were always over open-air garbage dumps on a hot sunny day. That's something else the enviros ruined.

[kittymyrib]

And another ice age could hit overnight. The Russian discovery of the quick-frozen woolly mammoth with undigested flowers and grass in its maw under the Arctic ice cap tells just how suddenly the climate changed eons ago. Scientists don’t even know what they don’t know.

[Chode]

these the same genius's what predicted EXTRA hurricanes AGAIN this year??? please...

[taxed2death]

Yup, me and my wife always comment that you poor souls down there in Texas seem to get every friggin variety of killer storm / wind / flooding known to mankind on a regular basis.

[taxed2death]

Immanuel Velikovsky

http://www.varchive.org/ce/index.htm

http://www.varchive.org/

Very interesting reading.

[Wolfie]

I predict more and wider spread reporting of storms (said storms actually occurring at no greater rate than before) giving the appearance that these idiots are right.

[pas]

Study finds “Global Warming” cause of sub prime problem.

[sergeantdave]

With a computer model, I can predict which horse will win the 5th race at Arlington. Send me your money.

[reformedliberal]

You are correct.

This year, however, we have had hail predicted 4-5 different times between June and August and not once has it materialized. The last time, right after we got inundated here in SW WI by torrential rains, they modified the warnings to “Conditions are right for large, damaging hail.”

Last year, we got hail once, literally out of the blue, no forecast. Oh, and the 11 inch in 24 hour rains were not orginally forecast to be so severe. In fact, www.weather.com still posts in its history of the month that we only got 1.64 inches on a day when we got over 6 inches. Immediately prior to the storms, we were in a moderate drought condition. We have always had severe weather and percipitous weather changes and we always will.

NOAA is forecasting a “30-50 percent chance of a warmer than average winter” for my area. I bought extra firewood.

[sinanju]

“Rent Texas and live in Hell.”

[avacado]

Harold Brooks: "Some of the severe hail that should be increasing could be baseball-sized and come down at 100 mph, "falling like a major league fastball"

I guess Mr Scientist Harold Brooks skipped physics class when they covered terminal velocity?

[xcamel]

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