Allegations have been swirling for a while now that last fall, in the aftermath of Katrina and Rita, the public may have been grossly misinformed regarding the connection between global warming and hurricanes. Some might go so far as to say cable and network news viewers were intentionally misled. One highly reputable climate researcher was willing to go on the record with this exclusive statement for Daily Kos readers and Science Friday:
DR Michael Mann: Director, Earth System Science Center (ESSC); Penn State Department of Meteorology, blogs at Realclimate: "We were hearing operatives from the National Hurricane Center (NHC) repeating, as if on cue, the mantra that this was all just part of a "natural cycle" in the climate. Mind you, the peer-reviewed scientific literature was indicating just the opposite. But not a hint of that from the NHC folks. Nothing but certainty in their pronouncement that this was all part of a "natural cycle" (and thus, nothing to worry about). Surreal is the only way I can describe it."
Hypothetically speaking, assuming money and power are no obstacle, how would one go about selling a line of pseudoscientific tripe as the genuine item to the laypublic? Well, you might fund a think tank to manufacture fake science and present it as the real deal. An oldie but a goodie. Or you might try discrediting scientists in general, paint them as whacked-out ideological flakes who make up crazy shit about the weather for some kind of nebulous self-serving reason (As opposed to say, non-profit right-wing televangelists who can prove beyond any doubt that hurricanes are Divine retribution). And dangle enough fame and fortune in front of science professionals in any field, even trauma surgeons for example, and you'll probably find some who are willing to swear on national TV that decapitation isn't fatal.
But to get a handle on this lesson in the science of deception, we must first briefly review the science of a hurricane. Because the general formula for fraud we're going to cover is sophisticated in its Orwellian way. And if it's actually in play, it's also slicker than diarrhea and about as revolting.
Work over a hot stove and you can feel it. Open an oven standing above and it can blister your face. Look across a parking lot of asphalt on a sunny day and you can
see it: Warm air rises, hot air even more so. This simple thermal observation is a huge part of what drives our weather, from the global to the local. At the core of every hurricane is just such a heat engine. Prime that engine with more fuel, and like any engine, she'll rev up.
Each summer periodic gales called tropical waves (Or 'TROFS') race across the Sahara Desert in Africa and pour over the Atlantic ocean en masse next to the jutting western shoulder of that continent. Usually by midsummer the direct heating of the oceans by the warm winds and intense summer sun creates tepid sea water in enormous quantities on the surface in the tropical eastern Atlantic.
As the tropical waves of low pressure move westward over the warm water toward slightly cooler climes, the warm air starts to rise up, just like it rises off a hot parking lot; and that warm air is loaded with moisture that has evaporated from the ocean surface. As the humid warm air rises to higher and cooler levels, water droplets condense and form clouds. This gives rise to the showers and thunderstorms that routinely dot the tropical regions of the world. Meanwhile, air rushes in from all sides to fill the vacuum the rising air created. That inflowing air then also heats up on contact with the ocean water and it rises chock full of water vapor, and the cycle keeps going. This rising process is called convection and the rain storm it produces in this case, under the right conditions, is called a Tropical Depression or TD.
The anatomy of a Cyclonic Storm. # 1 Warm ocean air and water (more than 80 ºF) provides energy for the cyclone and causes more evaporation making humid air and clouds. # 2 Winds spiral in from the coriolis effect forcing air in the center upward. #3 Winds flow outward above the storm allowing air below to rise. # 4 Humid air rising makes the clouds of the storm. # 5 Light winds outside the hurricane steer it and let it grow. The entire system feeds back on itself, all powered by the heat engine in the center and the earth's rotation. Illustration provided by Meteorologist Crystal Wicker and the Weather Wiz Kids. Used with permission
Tropical for obvious reasons and Depression because the pressure in the center is lowered; that's why the air came rushing in to start with. Atlantic TD's thus usually form around 300 to 600 miles away from the equator itself and drift westward within the trade winds that dominate the area year round. If they stay too close the equator, they end up as nothing but a large cluster of rain storms a few hundred miles wide and generally elliptical in shape.
But TDs that move away from the equatorial zone are subject to the next evolution in storm formation: The earth rotates once a day. And our planet is roughly 24,000 miles in girth at the equator (Circumference). That means that objects on the equator are humming along at 1,000 MPH compared to an object on one of the poles! If you drive from the equator to the North pole, your sideways velocity decreases, because it's not as many miles round that smaller and smaller circle of latitude you're crossing. Think of a fly crawling on a spinning globe.
In on the vortex diagram on the left we can see more clearly what this Coriolis Effect does to a TD that strays north, away from the equator. That whole system begins to rotate counterclockwise (If it went south of the equator it would rotate clockwise because the dynamics are reversed). The effect on storm systems only a couple of hundred miles wide is not huge. Maybe a few tens of miles per hour difference between the northern and southern edges; but there's nothing to stop it from building as long as it stays above the equator and over warm water. The storm system will keep spinning and the effect will keep building -- the hotter the water the greater the draw of air -- until the center moves over cooler water or over land.
The wind rushing in from all sides now spirals into the center to fill the area of low pressure created by convection. A center of rotation forms, the forerunner of the familiar eye ... By the time a sustained wind is moving at 39 MPH near the center of rotation, it graduates to the classification of a Tropical Storm or TS and is given a name as opposed to a number.
Tropical Storm Zeta on the right was the 27th named storm of the record breaking 2005 Atlantic hurricane season. Zeta developed on 12/30/05 and persisted as a TS into January of '06. Image courtesy NASA and the wikipedia
If the TS stays away from the equator and it doesn't run out of warm water, doesn't hit land, and remains embedded within the constant and steady speeds of the trade wind, the rate of rotation will often grow and it will drift closer and closer to the US. When the storm winds clock in greater than 74 MPH, we call the storm a hurricane. And thar she blows!
Here's the key: The original storm system was created off the coast of Africa in the eastern, tropical Atlantic. Changes in ocean surface temperature near the US or in the Gulf won't affect that. It's unclear if raising the temperature a degree or two over the African mainland or the adjacent tropical ocean would cause more TDs to form. So, it would be accurate to say there's no conclusive evidence that global warming would increase the frequency of those tropical depressions.
But once the system has developed and strayed away form the equatorial zone, the intensity would be affected by the temperature of the water. All other factors being equal, the warmer the water over which the system is passing, the more intense the storm will become. And if the water is warmer overall, then it's probably warmer further north than it otherwise would be, which means greater intensity for any storm that wanders into that region. Solely because of warmer water, a TD that would have remained a TD instead crosses the threshold to a Tropical Storm and is christened with a name. A Tropical Storm that would have remained a TS becomes a category 1 or 2 hurricane, a weak hurricane becomes a powerful hurricane. A hurricane that would have weakened to a tropical storm as it heads north up the eastern seaboard remains a hurricane instead. Get it?
A mature hurricane. Moisture laden air spirals into the center, drawn by convection in the eye. The warmer the water, all things being equal, the more powerful and longer lasting the hurricane
In addition, under normal conditions if a cyclonic storm hovers over the same vicinity too long or moves slowly, it can create its own downfall. DR Michael Mann of Real Climate explains what happens instead, in the event of warming:
One additional point which Kerry Emanuel has made is that with global warming, the warming is occurring not just with the sea surface temperatures, but the layer of water underneath. This turns out to be very important, because typically, a hurricane helps insure its own demise by stirring up the upper ocean, bringing the cold sub-surface water to the surface, which quickly dampens the heat source necessary to keep the storm going. It's what we call a "negative feedback" (i.e. a damping mechanism) that in the past has helped shorten the lifetime of hurricanes and tropical storms.
With global warming, this damping mechanism is no longer as efficient, because the water stirred up from beneath is no longer as cold as it used to be. So this is an important additional effect that global warming is likely having on tropical storm and hurricane lifetimes. The lifetimes are predicted to get longer because of this. Indeed, the data are showing this, as in the Science paper by Webster et al last fall. And as if that's not worrisome enough, the same phenomenon applies to a hurricane following closely in the footsteps of a previous storm: Whereas a powerful hurricane might have dampened the intensity of a second one a week or two behind it, with this deep warming effect, now the possibility that successive hurricanes can slam one after another into the same devastated coastline at full bore, like runaway trains on a track, is greater.
So it would be inaccurate to say that warming won't increase intensity, range, and duration of tropical storms and hurricanes, and a hurricane or a tropical storm is defined by intensity, in this case, wind velocity. It would be incorrect to flatly state that warming wouldn't increase the number of hurricanes or named storms, and particularly deceptive (Or just plain sloppy) to imply that warming wouldn't increase the number of large, powerful, sustained hurricanes; the kind most likely to make landfall with catastrophic and deadly consequences. Last year there were more named storms than in any other year on record, by a wide margin. And the reason in large part is because last year there was lots of warmer, deeper ocean water covering a larger region.
But if you tuned into a cable news show discussing the relationship between hurricanes and global warming last fall, in the aftermath of Katrina and Rita, you might not have heard any of this. Instead you could have been left with the impression that warming, global or otherwise, has no effect on hurricane frequency or intensity or probability of landfall.
You might have heard instead it's all just a natural cycle, in between station breaks for erectile dysfunction drugs or the All New SUV with onboard wet bar and Jacuzzi! They might have looked you straight in the eyes, peering coyly out of that cathode ray tube as if they've known you all their life with perfect teeth and manicured nails, and told you point blank it was all routine. Then the mantra would all be repeated by the bubble-headed bleached blonde with a gleam in her eye: Nothing to be worried about, before moving on to the real news: Runaway brides and Brad and Jen and maybe a young missing white gal. You know, stuff that's more important than having your house swept away in a storm surge or your neighbor's kids floating face down just out of working mom's grasp, as she haltingly clings to Nana's emaciated corpse with one hand and the tattered rooftop peeking shyly out of a dark, rippling cesspool with the other.
Given the format of commercial news, hemmed in by breaks for sponsors and the need to reduce complex phenomena into less precise soundbites, it's easy to pull a little bait and switch operation. Simply conflate or confuse hurricanes, dangerous hurricanes, tropical storms, and eastern Atlantic tropical depressions all together. It would be no sweat to portray the idea that there's no evidence that warming would increase the frequency or duration and range of hurricanes, or dangerous hurricanes by using the "word" storm loosely and interchangeably, referring to tropical depressions off of Africa and to hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico and everything else.
This is just one way to intentionally fool or accidentally confuse the public. Another would be to mix up statistics from TDs, TS's, hurricanes, dangerous hurricanes, and landfall hurricanes, and pick out whatever figures from whichever category that seems to make your case at hand, and apply that subset of stats haphazardly to other subsets with lots of vague techno-babble and pretty graphics to make it look credible: Cinematic sleight of hand to cover poor sourcing and questionable methodology. It even works on blogs, including Daily Kos diaries ...
Now, given all that, suppose you have an underlying agenda where any public awareness of global warming is unwelcome and potentially damaging. You now have a problem: Katrina and Rita have thrust the issue into the public limelight in a huge, negative way. Hypothetically speaking, if you wanted to engage in damage control, as a preemptive strike against any inconvenient concern over the relationship between global warming and ending up a bloated corpse face down in floodwaters, what would you do? What if money, influence, and power were no obstacle?
Sure, you might take a science-fiction writer with decent speaking skills and some name recognition in a pinch. Maybe try to pass him off as a real scientist who has a clue or who plays one on TV. But ideally, for the really big stuff and really wide audiences, you want to find legit climate scientists with real cred who are willing to play ball, eh? You don't care if they really believe the spiel or are just happy to brown-nose in return for promotion and media attention. Then you'd get the message out through unofficial channels as quietly as possible to all the other climate scientists that won't whore themselves out for your cause celebre, that they can't talk about it. Better yet, maybe get a few fired, or cut off their funding for no apparent reason, just as an example of what can happen to anyone who doesn't obey.
Now, you're ready to call your media contacts and pass your industry friendly guys or gals around to every news outlet you can get them booked on, where they'd advertise their crack pot minority view as the objective consensus view of climate researchers, because there's no coworkers or superiors going to come out of the woodwork and correct them; not if you've done your job right anyway. And while they're on the air, at Fox News or CNN, or in the newspaper, it would be great if there was a big ticker under their names screaming out something like "#### Climate & Storm Expert", with as many impressive government science agency letters in there for the number signs as you can fit in. NASA might work well if you can swing it, there's a lot of scientific credibility in those four letters. NOAA wouldn't be a bad second choice.
And, just to keep a lid on things, if you happen to be a governor, or a powerful national politician, or better yet a party controlling Congress and the White House beholden to corporate lobbyists, you can appoint cronies of your choosing in every government agency at every level, in all kinds of made up positions, to serve as censors, spies, and minders, and get some sweet political contributions to boot! Thug wannabes and narcs and shadowy PR pricks whose job is to keep tabs, make strange phone calls and slip notes under doors telling uncooperative, smart ass scientists they better not spill the beans, without leaving a paper trail for the scientist to point to later as proof they were muzzled.
Do all that successfully and viola; "Mission Accomplished", to coin a phrase ...
James Hansen of NASA was one of the first really high profile climate researchers to risk his job, and who knows what else, to go on the record about these kinds of alleged shenanigans. That was a single case, one snapshot in a full length film, where we got an astonishing look into the methodology behind the secret doors. To jog your memory, in this case the WH apparently appointed a 24 year-old, college drop-out, to tell veteran NASA climate scientists with doctorates in every kind of science what they could and could not say about hurricanes and warming to the taxpayers who fund NASA. One of the reasons this particular schmuck got nailed, out of so many budding little Eichmann's that may be busily working away out there, is probably because he was dumb enough to use e-mails and memos, more than most, instead of the phone or the 'friendly' office chat method (But in the interests of accuracy, the stated reason for discharge is that he lied on his resume).
Hansen has now been joined by several other notable dissenters. As a result, these researchers have become big fat targets. Their inboxes and telephones are logging inbound invitations all day long from traditional media to come on their shows or consent to write stories in newspapers. Some of the news venues want to take potshots at them to please their corporate masters and gain access to the Halls of Power, others just want to use the scientists current fame to sell their advertisers products. But it's also a safe bet that everyone speaking out, including many we haven't heard about yet, are receiving some creepy warnings/comments, political pressure, and maybe even some scary threats. And it's virtually certain some will be pestered with crackpot bullshit and industry led swift-boating if they haven't been already.
The particular case I outlined above is just one such story, one that happens to be getting some heat, finally. Rumor and off the record complaints of this kind of bullshit have skyrocketed over the past four years from many government related science agencies. There are allegations and rumors coming from other government science orgs claiming or passing on hearsay of the exact same Gestapo crap. That includes the EPA, the NWS, NOAA, NASA, State and Federal Medical Boards, and on and on.
So how about we stand up for these brave guys and gals? Stop the Censorship! The publicly posted e-mail for the White House is comments@whitehouse.gov. The public posted e-mail for the Office of Science and Technology Policy, an Executive Office of the President of the Untied States, is info@ostp.gov.
Remember: Hurricane Season was supposed to wrap up last year at the end of November. It persisted into December with one tropical storm lasting in to January. Technically it starts again on June 1, right around the corner and the gulf waters are unusually warm right now ... anyone want to bet the storms start rolling a little early this year?