Solar impacts on hurricanes
I'm in Tucson for the American Meteorological Society's 29th Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology. This is the premier scientific conference on hurricanes, and is held only once every two years, so pretty much all of the world's greatest hurricane experts are here. One of the more intriguing posters presented at Tuesday's poster session was titled, Evidence linking solar variability with USA hurricanes, by Robert Hodges and Jim Elsner of Florida State University. They showed that the probability of three or more hurricanes hitting the U.S. during a hurricane season with warmer than average sea surface temperatures increases dramatically during minima in the 11-year sunspot cycle. The odds increase from 20% to 40% for years when the sunspot activity is in the lower 25% of the sunspot cycle, compared to years in the upper 25% of the cycle. Near the peak of the sunspot cycle, the odds of at least one hurricane hitting the U.S. are just 25%, but at solar minimum, the odds increase sharply to 64%. The authors studied the period 1851 - 2008, and controlled for other variables such as changes in sea surface temperature and El Niño. Such a large impact of the sun on hurricanes might seem surprising, given that the change in solar energy at all light wavelengths is only about 0.1%. This relatively small change causes just a 0.1°C change in Earth's mean surface temperature between the peak of the 11-year sunspot cycle (high solar activity) and the minimum of the sunspot cycle (where we are now.) However, variation in radiation between extrema of the solar cycle can be 10% or more in portions of the UV range (Elsner et al., 2008.) The strong change in UV light causes globally averaged temperature swings in the lower stratosphere of 0.4°C between the minimum and maximum of the sunspot cycle--four times as great as the difference measured at Earth's surface (Lean, 2009). This sensitivity of the stratosphere to UV light is due to the fact the ozone layer is located in the stratosphere. Ozone absorbs a large amount of UV light, causing the stratosphere to heat up when solar activity is high. The authors speculate that a warmer stratosphere then heats up the upper troposphere, making the atmosphere more stable. An unstable atmosphere--with hot temperatures at the surface and cold conditions in the upper troposphere--are conducive for stronger hurricanes. Thus, we would expect to see reductions in hurricanes during the peak of the sunspot cycle.
Previous research
The findings presented at this week's conference build upon earlier work published by Elsner et al. (2008) and Elsner et al. (2010). The first of these studies found that for every 100 extra sunspots in September, the temperature of the atmosphere at 16 km altitude over the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico increased by about 0.5°C, and the number of hurricanes in this region was reduced by 26%. Interestingly, a reduction of hurricanes over the eastern Atlantic off the coast of Africa was not observed during solar maxima, which the authors attributed to the fact that hurricanes in this region are limited by sea surface temperature, not instability. Solar maximum brings a small increase in sea surface temperature to the globe, aiding hurricane development in regions where sea surface temperature is the limiting factor. The second of these studies (Elsner et al., 2010) computed that for a Category 2 hurricane affecting the U.S. during the most active 30% range of the solar cycle, the resultant heating of the upper troposphere would cause a 19% decrease in the stability, lowering the hurricane's winds by 10% (10 mph.) Stronger hurricanes would be affected even more, with a potential wind speed reduction of 23 mph for the most powerful hurricanes. The 27-day rotation period of the sun causes a change in UV light even larger than the change observed during the 11-year sunspot cycle, so perhaps we should be monitoring the phase of the sun's rotation to look for more favorable periods for hurricane formation.
Commentary
Considering that this year we are at the deepest solar minimum in more than a century, this research gives us yet another reason to expect a severe Atlantic hurricane season this year. My next post, which may not be until Monday, I'll discuss the sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic hurricane main development region, which set an all-time record last month for the warmest monthly anomaly for the 100+ years we have records. Also, El Niño now appears to be over, as sea surface temperatures in the Eastern Pacific have crossed the threshold into neutral territory.
References
Elsner, J. B., and T. H. Jagger, 2008, United States and Caribbean tropical cyclone activity related to the solar cycle, Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L18705, doi:10.1029/2008GL034431.
Elsner, J. B., T. H. Jagger, and R. E. Hodges, 2010, Daily tropical cyclone intensity response to solar ultraviolet radiation, Geophys. Res. Lett., 37, L09701, doi:10.1029/2010GL043091.
Lean, J.L., 2009, Cycles and trends in solar irradiance and climate", Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, Volume 1, Issue 1, Pages 111-122 Published Online: 22 Dec 2009
Jeff Masters
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We here in North Trinidad are getting much needed rainfall finally.Some 61 mm ,within the last 20 hours at my location
I'm going to need some proof/data to back up your idea of 3.8 million gallons a day...
Nice itcz action trailing that wave,im out bbl.
Surface forecast Day 12:
Note the lighter colored natural gas spewing out above the denser crude and water..
..the Riser pipe is 21 inches across..the flow is 3000psi,and the Water depth pressure is round 2500psi.
Est remain between 220,000 gals and 240,000 per day,or 24 hrs
Good afternoon 456. What's your opinion on the upward MJO for late May?
Professor Steve Werely, of Purdue...the error factor for the formula he's using is closer to 25%, but even so, sounds as though the original estimates were somewhat less than the actual number
moderate to high chance of above average rains for the Caribbean Basin.
low-moderate chance of tropical cyclone development due to marginally favorable upper winds and the lingering subtropical jet stream. Anything managing to form would likely struggle with upper winds, and resemble Barry-type systems.
Shear really lowers south of about 15N, so the southern Caribbean, particularly the SW Caribbean, based on this and climo is the ideal place to watch.
The main inhibitor would be the subtropical jet north of 15-20N.
I give a low-moderate chance of anything forming before June 1.
I guess the next question is, what is the maximum outflow for a pipe of that size, given the pressure variables involved?
Fare winds and Godspeed to her and the STS-132 Crew as they Carry the Fire to Orbit this afternoon.
12 minutes to Liftoff.
Weather is Go..
I think the estimate is credible.
None of the other models show or suggest such a pulse occurring.
Me neither NG,..I was a Night cook and baker on Hercules-21 for Chevron
But I heard a lot and had a lotta late night conversations with company men,drillers,etc.
Its paying off a tad.
And yet it makes sense because the MJO is currently organizing over the Indian Ocean and Maritime Continent, which would put it in our area of the world around the end of the month. Furthermore, the El Nino is dying which favors the MJO running towards our area of the world while largely skipping the Pacific. That's why you see it here stopping in its tracks and starting to take a shortcut through the middle to octans 8, 1, and 2.
And they have Cherry Coke at all their Interstate Gas Emporium Soda Fountains with Fried Chicken in Louisiana..and Miss.
Slurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrpp..
Urp,scuse.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5031736098622232572#
by Erica Wenerth / The Associated Press
wwltv.com
Posted on May 14, 2010 at 11:36 AM
Updated today at 12:31 PM
Related:
* Text of Obama's remarks on the oil spill
WASHINGTON --President Barack Obama on Friday angrily decried the "ridiculous spectacle" of oil industry officials pointing fingers of blame for the catastrophic spill in the Gulf of Mexico and pledged to end a "cozy relationship" between the oil industry and federal regulators that he said had extended into his own administration.
Obama said he shared the "anger and frustration" felt by many Americans, and he acknowledged differing estimates about just how disastrous the damage from the leak could become. He said the administration's response has "always been geared toward the possibility of a catastrophic event."
As Obama spoke in the White House Rose Garden, undersea robots in the Gulf tried to thread a small tube into the jagged pipe that is spewing oil into the water. The blown-out well has pumped out more than 4 million gallons of crude.
BP engineers were trying to move the 6-inch tube into the leaking 21-inch pipe, known as a riser. The smaller tube was to be surrounded by a stopper to keep oil from leaking into the sea. BP said it hoped to know by Friday evening if the tube succeeded in taking the oil to a tanker at the surface.
The Gulf spill is not only a potential environmental and economic catastrophe. It also is a major political challenge for Obama to demonstrate that his administration is doing everything it can to deal with the disaster. An AP-GfK poll this week found that to this point the spill hasn't stained Obama nor dimmed the public's desire for offshore energy drilling. Although some conservative pundits have called this "Obama's Katrina," that's not how the public feels.
Obama slammed BP and other companies responsible for equipment involved in the spill for pointing fingers at each other instead of accepting responsibility.
But he said responsibility rests with the federal government, too, and that oil drilling permits had been granted without appropriate environmental reviews.
"That cannot and will not happen anymore," Obama said. He announced a new examination of the environmental reviews that must happen before oil and gas development goes forward.
With millions of gallons of oil fouling the fragile Gulf ecosystem after a drilling rig exploded April 20 and later sank, Obama said: "It's pretty clear that the system failed and it failed badly." Eleven workers were killed in the accident.
There's "enough blame to go around and all parties should be willing to accept it," the president said.
He said he would not be satisfied until the leak was stopped, the spill was cleaned up and all claims were paid.
This week executives from three oil companies -- BP PLC, which was drilling the well, Transocean, which owned the rig, and Halliburton, which was doing cement work to cap the well -- testified on Capitol Hill, each trying to blame the other for what may have caused the disaster. Obama decried that scene.
"I did not appreciate what I considered to be a ridiculous spectacle during the congressional hearings into this matter. You had executives of BP and Transocean and Halliburton falling over each other to point the finger of blame at somebody else," the president said.
"The American people could not have been impressed with that display, and I certainly wasn't."
Not long before the spill the president had announced plans for a limited expansion of offshore oil drilling. After the catastrophe, he said those plans would be put on hold pending a 30-day review by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar of safety procedures on oil rigs and at wells.
On Friday the president announced there would be more stringent environmental reviews, too.
The Interior Department said those will focus on whether the Minerals Management Service is following all environmental laws before issuing permits for offshore oil and gas development.
"It seems as if permits were too often issued based on little more than assurances of safety from the oil companies," Obama said.
The standard, he said, quoting President Ronald Reagan's comment on nuclear arms agreements with Moscow, should be: "Trust but verify."
Still, Obama didn't back down from his support for domestic oil drilling, saying it "continues to be one part of an overall energy strategy."
"But it's absolutely essential that, going forward, we put in place every necessary safeguard and protection so that a tragedy like this oil spill does not happen again," he said.
(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
I never said it wouldn't come to our basin, rather that the pulse is weak on the other models. The GFS always has a tendency to bring about a strong pulse. The other models show it being weak or even skipping our basin.
Go figure?
5000 barrels a days equals 145 gallons per minute..
If the oil/gas is under 3000 psi, that is a differential pressure of 800 psi
On board my submarine we knew that at 572 psi.. our test depth of 1300 feet, a one half inch hole would let 240 gallons per minute into the boat...
That's more than 200 psi less differential pressure, with just a one/half inch hole. That riser is 21 inches across.. just how long is it taking for "three feet" (the height of a drum) worth of product, as Adm. Allen called it today, to emerge..
does it take 18 seconds?? because that is what they are saying, and this is just ONE of the leaks...
They don't want us to know the true extent of the leak.. that is why they tried using dispersants underwater.. out of sight, out of mind.. to hell with the "hidden" sea life. Adm. Allen today said with dispersants, it's a matter of which one is more toxic.. that's a lie.. the dispersant does NOT render the oil non toxic, it just sinks it and adds it own toxicity to the mess.
Joe B. brings in tone of money to accuweather because people pay for professional site to get his imput. I always pay for it during hurricane season and what I find is yes he does overhype but is pretty accurate. He also downplays to like last year. What I find funny is all these people on here that praise storm W and rag on Bastardi but if you read there forecast those two see things very similar.
As far as global warming if you actually go on there site it is tons of different blogs with different opinions. I have seen bastardi argue on video with other accuweather bloggers about that topic and more. bastardi is not Accuweather. Why is it when people only see what they want to see!!
Deepwater Horizon Response
AUDIO RELEASE: Dispersant subject matter expert conference call May 12, 2010
mp3
Yes, but their doughnuts were very oily. (Sorry Pat, couldn't help that one)
It's possible the GFS operational is a little overdone, but the GEFS has a weak and slow bias as well in the long-term verifications. Overall the models except for the Euro are going towards our area of the world and it makes sense given the global pattern. How strong it will be is debatable but it will likely be here one way or the other.
I am curious as to why every MJO forecast from the Euro I have seen in the last several weeks has had it all bunched up and stuck in the same area for the entire forecast. I don't know what's wrong with it.
Link
When I was first told Haliburton was involved with this, I laughed quite hard. My friend did not laugh. And then I laughed even harder realizing they are caught in another pickle.
U betcha..
And its Iron Man..,..
"We do not have real-time off-rig monitoring of what's going on on the vessel," Newman replied.
Part of Halliburton's contract on the Deepwater Horizon was to provide real-time data to officials on shore. That company was able to produce a chart showing events up to two minutes before the explosion. But that document would not be expected to show the key test results.
The chart indicated that shortly before 10 p.m., pressure in the standpipe increased sevenfold to 3,500 pounds per square inch. Halliburton had essentially two minutes' notice that something had gone horribly wrong.
Halliburton monitors temperatures and pressure in offshore wells through sensitive sensors and instruments often capable of transmitting data in real time to officials on the rig and on shore, said Jack Madeley, a consulting safety engineer in College Station, Texas.
"Operators like BP use that information to make sure the well is in the right location," said Madeley, who specializes in forensic investigations of rig accidents. "They need that to make sure the overall procedures for getting it cemented and getting the well secured before they pull the string out and plug up the well are done."
The data help BP and other well operators make crucial decisions about the formations where they are drilling, but it is not always streamed to shore minute by minute, he said.
Seven hours of data missing from Deepwater Horizon operations just prior to explosion
By The Associated Press
May 13, 2010, 10:35PM
A "black box" can reveal why an airplane crashed or how fast a car was going in the instant before an accident. Yet there are no records of a critical safety test supposedly performed during the fateful hours before the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico.
They went down with the rig.
While some data were being transmitted to shore for safekeeping right up until the April 20 blast, officials from Transocean, the rig owner, told Congress that the last seven hours of its data are missing and that all written logs were lost in the explosion.
The gap poses a mystery for investigators: What decisions were made -- and what warnings might have been ignored? Earlier tests, which suggested that explosive gas was leaking from the mile-deep well, were preserved.
steven_newman.JPGPablo Martinez Monsivais/The Associated Press archiveSteven Newman is president and CEO of Transocean Ltd.
"There is some delay in the replication of our data, so our operational data, our sequence of events ends at 3 o'clock in the afternoon on the 20th," Steven Newman, president and CEO of Transocean Ltd, told a Senate panel. The rig blew up at 10 p.m., killing 11 workers and unleashing a gusher that has spewed millions of gallons (liters) of oil into the Gulf.
Houston attorney Tony Buzbee, who represents several rig workers involved in the accident, questioned whether what he called "the phantom test" was even performed.
"I can just tell you that the Halliburton hands were scratching their heads," said Buzbee, whose clients include one of the Halliburton crew members responsible for cementing the well to prepare for moving the drilling rig to another site.
Buzbee said that when Halliburton showed BP PLC and Transocean officials the results of the pressure tests that suggested gas was leaking, the rig workers were put on "standby." BP is the rig operator and leaseholder.
Buzbee said one of his clients told him the "Transocean and BP company people got their heads together," and 40 minutes later gave the green light.
The attorney said the Halliburton crew members were not shown any new test results.
"They said they did their own tests, and they came out Oklahoma," he said. "But with the phantom test that Transocean and BP allegedly did, there was no real record or real-time recordation of that test."
Buzbee suggested that BP and Transocean had monetary reasons for ignoring the earlier tests.
"The facts are as they are," he said. "The rig is $500,000 a day. There are bonuses for finishing early."
None of the three companies would comment Thursday on whether any data or test results were purposely not sent to shore, or on exactly who made the final decision to continue the operations that day.
201 Hurricane Preparation
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