Houston, TX – Scientists: Climate Change Could Cause Storms Like Harvey

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    Residents wade through flood waters from Tropical Storm Harvey in Beaumont Place, Texas, U.S., on August 28, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Bachman Houston, TX – By the time the rain stops, Harvey will have dumped about 1 million gallons of water for every man, woman and child in southeastern Texas — a soggy, record-breaking glimpse of the wet and wild future global warming could bring, scientists say.

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    While scientists are quick to say climate change didn’t cause Harvey and that they haven’t determined yet whether the storm was made worse by global warming, they do note that warmer air and water mean wetter and possibly more intense hurricanes in the future.

    “This is the kind of thing we are going to get more of,” said Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer. “This storm should serve as warning.”

    There’s a scientifically accepted method for determining if some wild weather event has the fingerprints of man-made climate change, and it involves intricate calculations. Those could take weeks or months to complete, and then even longer to pass peer review.

    In general, though, climate scientists agree that future storms will dump much more rain than the same size storms did in the past.

    That’s because warmer air holds more water. With every degree Fahrenheit, the atmosphere can hold and then dump an additional 4 percent of water (7 percent for every degree Celsius), several scientists say.

    Global warming also means warmer seas, and warm water is what fuels hurricanes.

    When Harvey moved toward Texas, water in the Gulf of Mexico was nearly 2 degrees (1 degree Celsius) warmer than normal, said Weather Underground meteorology director Jeff Masters. Hurricanes need at least 79 degrees F (26 C) as fuel, and water at least that warm ran more than 300 feet (100 meters) deep in the Gulf, according to University of Miami hurricane researcher Brian McNoldy.

    Several studies show that the top 1 percent of the strongest downpours are already happening much more frequently. Also, calculations done Monday by MIT meteorology professor Kerry Emanuel show that the drenching received by Rockport, Texas, used to be maybe a once-in-1,800-years event for that city, but with warmer air holding more water and changes in storm steering currents since 2010, it is now a once-every-300-years event.

    There’s a lot of debate among climate scientists over what role, if any, global warming may have played in causing Harvey to stall over Texas, which was a huge factor in the catastrophic flooding. If the hurricane had moved on like a normal storm, it wouldn’t have dumped as much rain in any one spot.
     Andrew Mitchell helps his neighbor Beverly Johnson onto a rescue boat to escape the rising flood waters from Tropical Storm Harvey in Beaumont Place, Houston, Texas, U.S., on August 28, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Bachman
    Harvey stalled because it is sandwiched between two high-pressure fronts that push it in opposite directions, and those fronts are stuck.

    Oppenheimer and some others theorize that there’s a connection between melting sea ice in the Arctic and changes in the jet stream and the weather patterns that make these “blocking fronts” more common. Others, like Masters, contend it’s too early to say.

    University of Washington atmospheric scientist Cliff Mass said climate change is simply not powerful enough to create off-the-chart events like Harvey’s rainfall.

    “You really can’t pin global warming on something this extreme. It has to be natural variability,” Mass said. “It may juice it up slightly but not create this phenomenal anomaly.”

    “We’re breaking one record after another with this thing,” Mass said.

    Sometime Tuesday or early Wednesday, parts of the Houston region will have broken the nearly 40-year-old U.S. record for the heaviest rainfall from a tropical system — 48 inches, set by Tropical Storm Amelia in 1978 in Texas, several meteorologists say.

    Already 15 trillion gallons of rain have fallen on a large area, and an additional 5 trillion or 6 trillion gallons are forecast by the end of Wednesday, meteorologist Ryan Maue of WeatherBell Analytics calculates. That’s enough water to fill all the NFL and Division 1 college football stadiums more than 100 times over.
    Volunteer rescue boats make their way into a flooded subdivision to rescue stranded residents as floodwaters from Tropical Storm Harvey rise Monday, Aug. 28, 2017, in Spring, Texas. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)


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    28 Comments
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    bsnow
    bsnow
    6 years ago

    Climate change is a hoax made up by liberals who worship the planet instead of G-D.
    And a big money scam!

    6 years ago

    People seem to forget why the מבול came,

    6 years ago

    This article actually proves the bias of the media in pushing the climate change agenda. While the text of the article reports that there is no basis to connect climate change with Harvey, the headline suggests that it does. That is the MSM that is founded on falsehood and political agendas.

    woodman516
    woodman516
    6 years ago

    Its Interesting that this hiurrIcane happens once in 1800 years yet amerIca is old 500 years

    puppydogs
    puppydogs
    6 years ago

    Is global warming the cause for no hurricanes making landfall in the US in a dozen years?

    AmYisroel
    AmYisroel
    6 years ago

    they said the same thing after Katrina we haven’t had a major hurricane (cat 3 or higher) hit the US from Wilma in ’05 to Harvey last week nearly 12 years

    6 years ago

    Two thumbs up for numbers 1 thru 3 . All very true good pointers . We still have no proof that
    1) climate change is not just a temporary fluck
    2)that it’s man made
    3) that it actually results in worse weather conditions and hurricanes
    4) that humans can really reverse any trend barring going back to the stone ages where zero fossil fuels were burned

    It’s a hoax . But very classic fake news to take facts but twist it and engage in fear mongoring.so sad

    6 years ago

    Man made climate change is such a hoax, It’s as if to say a ant could carry an elephant on its back.

    yonasonw
    Member
    yonasonw
    6 years ago

    Why are all of you so allergic to science? Just read!

    Greener
    Greener
    6 years ago

    This is definately due to climate change. Just like the most terrible hurricane to ever hit Texas in the past, over 6000 dead. That was in September of 1900. Climate change in Texas started 117 years ago.

    yonasonw
    Member
    yonasonw
    6 years ago

    From NASA’s website:

    “Multiple studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals show that 97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree: Climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities. In addition, most of the leading scientific organizations worldwide have issued public statements endorsing this position.”

    Some Hoax