John Farley
Supporter
Saw this from the Washington Post this morning:
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NOAA was developing a way to predict extreme rainfall — until Trump officials stopped it
- Thread starter John Farley
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JamesCaruso
Staff member
This is paywalled. I thought WP allows a certain number of free articles per month? I don’t recall reading anything from WP for a while, but I still couldn’t access.
gdlewen
EF4
I haven't looked at WaPo in, like forever, so I was able to look at it. Here are the first 5 "paragraphs" of the text:
"The Commerce Department has indefinitely suspended work on a tool to help communities predict how rising global temperatures will alter the frequency of extreme rainfall, according to three current and former federal officials familiar with the decision, a move that experts said will make the country more vulnerable to storms supercharged by climate change.
The tool is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Atlas 15 project — a massive dataset that will show how often storms of a given duration and intensity could be expected to occur at locations across the United States. The project was intended to be published in two volumes: one that would assess communities’ current risks and a second that would project how those risks will change under future climate scenarios.
The release of Atlas 15 had been long awaited by civil engineers, regional planners and other groups that use NOAA’s precipitation frequency estimates to develop regulations and design infrastructure. Many parts of the country rely on decades-old data to determine their rainfall risks, and there is no authoritative national dataset of how rainfall and flood threats will rise in a warmer world.
But work on Atlas 15’s climate projections has been on hold for months after Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick ordered a review of Volume 2 this spring, according to current and former NOAA officials with knowledge of the project."
I can send a PDF of the web-page upon request but hesitate to post it in ST since I am not familiar with the Washington Post's Terms of Use, and so do not know if posting the article in its entirety would violate those. (However, since the PDF export picked up all of the ads featured on the page it seems to me that the advertisers would not mind easy access to their ads. But, it's a crazy world....)
Mike Smith
EF5
I think it is worth pointing out that (normalized) flood damage in the United States is on a fairly steep downward curve.
Roger Pielke, Jr. has a really interesting piece on heavy rain versus flooding here: Precipitation Paradox?
There is a lot more to determining flood potential than the clausius-clapeyron equation.
Roger Pielke, Jr. has a really interesting piece on heavy rain versus flooding here: Precipitation Paradox?
There is a lot more to determining flood potential than the clausius-clapeyron equation.
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William Monfredo
EF4
WeatherBell Analytics's reporting a rather large -0.6 degree C drop in global temperature this year.
Oh geez, I almost forget! Nobody, including me, runs their life based upon a global average.
Mike Smith
EF5
My hypothesis is that huge amount of water vapor from the Tonga Volcano is finally working its way out of the stratosphere, thus the cooling.
William Monfredo
EF4
While I was thinking about the fact that risk analysis is not weather prediction...
I'm also reminded that climate is not increased air-flow mixed with gasoline thrown into weather to make it explode.
The quoted phrase seems not only embarrassing for journalists who use it, but...impossible by the definitions of weather and climate.
John Farley
Supporter
Well, whatever the reason, let's hope it stands up by the end of the year and continues. That would be good news! But even with the drop thus far in the year, temperatures are well above recent decades on average.
John Farley
Supporter
I just read the "Precipitation Paradox?" article that Mike linked. Thanks for sharing that, Mike. I have a few thoughts after reading it:
1. The article at the end states: "The tragedy in Texas last week should not have happened. Nor should its exploitation by those seeking to advance a political agenda focused on climate change." My response is could we PLEASE, once and for all, just admit the obvious truth that there are political agendas on the part of BOTH climate change proponents and climate change skeptics? It is not simply one or the other, as both sides like to claim about the other.
2. It also states: "Some have even gone so far to suggest cynically that energy policy can be used as a control knob to limit or even prevent flooding. It can not." I agree that NOTHING is going to prevent flooding. There are no doubt some policy changes that can reduce flooding, but no change will ever totally prevent it, and it is naive to think that anything we do can accomplish that.
3. The article effectively acknowledges that extreme rainfall events are increasing, but that there is not evidence that flooding is increasing. However, it does note that there are a number of other factors besides the amount of rain that affect the likelihood of flooding, which I agree is true. At the same time, I am not sure it makes a convincing case that ALL ELSE BEING EQUAL, more extreme rainfall does not contribute to more intense flooding, because the point it makes is that all else is not equal.
4. To me, it still makes sense to try make changes in our behavior that contribute less to climate extremes. Despite all the other arguments about climate change, it seems pretty clear in climate research that in a warmer climate, there are greater swings between extremes of high precipitation and little or no precipitation. And I do not see how such greater extremes can lead to much that is good for us.
5. Finally, and getting back to the point of why I posted the link I posted originally, it makes no sense to cut off a nearly-finished research project that would be useful whether there is climate change or not, i.e. collecting data on extreme rainfall events and floods that could make us better able to understand and predict these events. That was more my original point than anything about climate change, even though climate change was admittedly part of the motivation for the project. But if the project is yielding useful data, why scuttle it after most of the money has already been spent? That won't save money and will only result in loss of data.
1. The article at the end states: "The tragedy in Texas last week should not have happened. Nor should its exploitation by those seeking to advance a political agenda focused on climate change." My response is could we PLEASE, once and for all, just admit the obvious truth that there are political agendas on the part of BOTH climate change proponents and climate change skeptics? It is not simply one or the other, as both sides like to claim about the other.
2. It also states: "Some have even gone so far to suggest cynically that energy policy can be used as a control knob to limit or even prevent flooding. It can not." I agree that NOTHING is going to prevent flooding. There are no doubt some policy changes that can reduce flooding, but no change will ever totally prevent it, and it is naive to think that anything we do can accomplish that.
3. The article effectively acknowledges that extreme rainfall events are increasing, but that there is not evidence that flooding is increasing. However, it does note that there are a number of other factors besides the amount of rain that affect the likelihood of flooding, which I agree is true. At the same time, I am not sure it makes a convincing case that ALL ELSE BEING EQUAL, more extreme rainfall does not contribute to more intense flooding, because the point it makes is that all else is not equal.
4. To me, it still makes sense to try make changes in our behavior that contribute less to climate extremes. Despite all the other arguments about climate change, it seems pretty clear in climate research that in a warmer climate, there are greater swings between extremes of high precipitation and little or no precipitation. And I do not see how such greater extremes can lead to much that is good for us.
5. Finally, and getting back to the point of why I posted the link I posted originally, it makes no sense to cut off a nearly-finished research project that would be useful whether there is climate change or not, i.e. collecting data on extreme rainfall events and floods that could make us better able to understand and predict these events. That was more my original point than anything about climate change, even though climate change was admittedly part of the motivation for the project. But if the project is yielding useful data, why scuttle it after most of the money has already been spent? That won't save money and will only result in loss of data.
Mike Smith
EF5
Agree with everything you wrote except this. Please read this: When the Climate Was Perfect
And, then consider that the worst (in terms of intensity) hurricane, tornado, drought, heat wave and flood in U.S. history all occurred between 1925 and 1940. When you combine those with the examples Roger cites, I do not think today's climate is particularly "extreme." It is clearly warmer than it used to be in winter but is that a bad thing?
John Farley
Supporter
Since I am a skier, I will give you a definitive YES on that!
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