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Caribbean leaders beg Trump to act on climate change

by Grace98Vohrpzxo Posted on August 7, 2018

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Caribbean states and territories have rounded on the Trump administration for dismantling the United States’ response to climate change, warning that greenhouse gas emissions must be sharply cut to avoid hurricanes and sea-level rise threatening the future of their island idylls.

The onset of this year’s hurricane season has seen leaders in the region tell the Guardian that President Trump needs to grasp the existential threat they face. Rising temperatures and increased precipitation caused by climate change is strengthening hurricanes, researchers have found, even as the overall number of storms remains steady.

“In 2017 we saw some of the most devastating and destructive hurricanes we’ve seen in our history,” said Selwin Hart, Barbados’ ambassador to the United States. “This needs to be recognized.

“This isn’t some scientific debate, it’s a reality with loss of life implications. We need the U.S. to be back at the table and engage. It’s imperative. We wouldn’t have a Paris climate agreement without the U.S. and we need them back now.”

Hurricane Irma strengthened to a Category 5 hurricane before slamming into the Caribbean and the United States in September, causing more than 130 deaths in places such as Barbuda, Saint Martin, Barbados, and the United States. This storm was swiftly followed by Hurricane Maria, which obliterated much of Dominica and caused a widespread, ongoing disaster in Puerto Rico, leaving thousands dead.

“Even before the passage of Hurricanes Irma and Maria, we could already see the effects of coastal erosion, and even the loss of some islands,” said Ricardo Rosselló, governor of Puerto Rico. The U.S. territory is part of an alliance with several states, including New York and California, that have committed to addressing climate change absent the federal government. “Puerto Rico remains in a more vulnerable situation than other states. It is expected that some of the initial effects of climate change will be seen in Puerto Rico,” said Rosselló, who called Trump’s climate policies “a mistake.”

During the 2015 Paris climate talks, Caribbean nations were among the loose coalition of low-lying countries that successfully pushed the international community to aim to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C (2.7F) beyond pre-industrial levels.

This aspiration, which would provide many island states the hope of remaining viable in the face of sea-level rise, drought, and powerful storms, is currently far from likely, with a recent U.N. report warning the picture would be “even bleaker” if the Trump administration follows through with its vow to remove the United States from the Paris deal.

The withdrawal from Paris would take three years, but in the meantime the Trump administration is working to dismantle the Clean Power Plan, an Obama-era strategy to cut carbon dioxide, delay new vehicle emissions standards, open up new land and ocean to oil and gas drilling, and even put in place a set of subsidies that would prop up the ailing coal industry.

“The U.S. is a major player in the world and it needs to lead — we depend on it to be a moral voice on issues where people are vulnerable,” said Darren Henfield, foreign minister of the Bahamas. “We really hope the U.S. readjusts its position. It seems there will be doubters until we start completely losing islands.”

Henfield said Bahamians have become “dramatically aware” of climate change following a series of hurricanes that have hit or brushed the archipelago in recent years. The country has attempted to accelerate its transition to renewable energy although it faces the conundrum of relying economically upon tourists, borne on huge cruise ships that emit large amounts of carbon dioxide.

“We are being forced to put up sea walls to push back the rising tides,” Henfield said. “We are very exposed and we could see the swallowing of the Bahamas by sea-level rise. We don’t have much room for people, there’s nowhere for people to move. Climate change will exacerbate the issue of refugees.

“I don’t know what influences the mind of President Trump but the world will be negatively impacted by not dealing with climate change. We always talk to our neighbors in the North and part of our foreign policy is to sensitize them and the international community to the threat we face.”

But while Caribbean states plead for climate assistance, particularly from the United States, they are also looking at how to adapt to a new environment. The Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, a coalition of island countries that spread in an arc south of the British Virgin Islands, has turned its attention to looming challenges such as food security, coastal village relocation, and new building designs in order to deal with rising temperatures and seas.

“Dominica was a real wake-up call for us, it virtually got washed away,” said Didacus Jules, director general of the OECS. “We know the impacts are going to be increasingly catastrophic and we need to plan for that. We need to do things completely differently in order to protect life and limb.”

Didacus said he was alarmed by the U.S. reversal on climate change. “We are very disturbed by what is going on, it’s a matter we’ll deal with aggressively in terms of diplomacy,” he said. “We will work with other island nations to make ourselves heard.”

However, many in the Caribbean fear the window of time to avert the worst is rapidly closing. Roosevelt Skerrit, prime minister of Dominica, addressed the U.N. last September in strikingly bleak terms, describing himself as coming “straight from the front line of the war on climate change.”

“Heat is the fuel that takes ordinary storms — storms we could normally master in our sleep — and supercharges them into a devastating force,” Skerrit said. “Now, thousands of storms form on a breeze in the mid-Atlantic and line up to pound us with maximum force and fury. We as a country and as a region did not start this war against nature. We did not provoke it. The war has come to us.”

Skerrit said the hurricane left Dominica with flattened homes, smashed water pipes, hospitals without power, wrecked schools, and ruined crops. “The desolation is beyond imagination,” he said. “The stars have fallen. Eden is broken. We are shouldering the consequences of the actions of others.

“There is little time left for action. While the big countries talk, the small island nations suffer. We need action and we need it now.”

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Caribbean leaders beg Trump to act on climate change

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The Caribbean relies on your vacation — but suffers from its carbon footprint

by dannhollander37 Posted on May 10, 2018

Some of our favorite travel destinations are in a bind. Small island nations, like Saint Lucia and Barbados in the Caribbean, are extremely vulnerable to a warming climate, yet many rely on an industry that’s a big driver of  global carbon emissions.

A study published in the journal Nature Climate Change this week revealed that tourism accounts for 8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. That’s nearly four times more carbon than previously thought.

The news comes as evidence piles up that suggests the type of hurricanes that tore through the Caribbean last summer are supercharged by a warming climate.

“The hurricanes in the Caribbean last summer were a wakeup call,” says Martha Honey, executive director of the Center for Responsible Travel, an organization that advocates for sustainable tourism. Resorts need to rebuild to be both more sustainable and more resilient to the effects of a changing climate, she says.

“We need to go back to the drawing board,” she says, after resorts and popular tourist spots were damaged or destroyed by hurricanes Maria and Irma last year.

Why are we just figuring this out now? Previous estimates didn’t take into account the carbon footprint of the goods and services related to tourism. So aside from offsetting the emissions from your flight, you might also want to rethink that collection of cheesy shot glasses.

“Our analysis is a world-first look at the true cost of tourism – including consumables such as food from eating out and souvenirs – it’s a complete life-cycle assessment of global tourism, ensuring we don’t miss any impacts,” lead author Arunima Malik of the University of Sydney said in a statement.

The study reinforces the Ugly American stereotype. Researchers looked at 160 countries and measured tourists’ carbon footprints two ways: by residence and by destination. When it comes to which country sends out its residents to go forth and pollute the most, the United States comes in first. And when it comes to which popular destinations have the largest carbon footprints, it’s America for the gold again. China takes second, followed by Germany, and India.

“We found the per-capita carbon footprint increases strongly with increased affluence and does not appear to satiate as incomes grow,” lead researcher Manfred Lenzen said in a statement. That means that tourism will likely play a bigger role in global warming as travel becomes more accessible to more people.

And while the affluent are the biggest polluters, developing island countries — some of which rely on tourism to shore up their economies — are paying the higher price when it comes to climate change.

“The Caribbean as a whole has been a minor contributor to climate change overall, but a tremendous victim of it,” Honey says. And the Caribbean is the most tourism-dependent region in the world. Every year more than 40 million (mostly American) cruise passengers and resort tourists vacation there. Tourism accounts for 14 percent of the region’s gross domestic product.

For Honey, the way forward is to educate and engage travelers in reshaping the way the tourism industry works. What can travelers do on their end? There’s always the option of offsetting the emissions from your travel by donating to projects aimed at reducing greenhouse gases. Carbon offsetting, Honey says, is good — but not enough. “It’s not really addressing the problem that airplanes are big polluters and greenhouse gas emitters. We need the traveling public to be more engaged in lobbying for the greening of the airline industry.”

“There’s nothing like feeling like you’re part of the solution.”

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The Caribbean relies on your vacation — but suffers from its carbon footprint

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As coral reefs disappear, some tropical fish might just keep swimming

by CalculatorTaxaAuto7 Posted on April 20, 2018

The future looks grim for coral reefs. Warmer oceans, overfishing, pollution, and gradually acidifying waters have destroyed more than a third of the world’s shallow tropical coral reefs. Just this week, a new report said that Australia’s Great Barrier Reef — the crown jewel of the world’s oceans — lost half of its corals in just the past three years. More than 90 percent of the world’s near-surface coral habitat could be gone in the next 30 years.

This is a big deal. Coral reefs support about a quarter of all marine biodiversity in just 1 percent of the ocean’s space. And so tropical reef fish, among the most vulnerable organisms when it comes to climate change, are increasingly under threat.

But amid all the bad news, it’s vitally important to have a reality check: Some reefs and reef fish — the familiar angelfish, eels, snappers, and parrotfishes — will survive. We are just now learning some basics of how Earth’s vast biodiversity responds to warming, and there’s a growing realization that deeper, cooler waters are one possible future for coral reefs and the fish that inhabit them.

A recent study in the journal Scientific Reports builds upon other studies showing that some coral reef fish may be more resilient than we thought to climate change, boosting chances that reef ecosystems might withstand the current onslaught. The evidence suggests that tropical fish species can adapt to warmer waters just by moving a few feet down to cooler waters. For some fish, profound changes don’t necessarily lead to extinction.

Carole Baldwin, a marine biologist at the Smithsonian Institution and lead author of the new study, thinks that deeper waters are the future for coral reefs, and she makes a case for hope amidst uncertainty.

“We know that fishes in general, like a lot of marine organisms, can survive a lot deeper,” says Baldwin. “We figured that there was a lot of habitat that is suitable for reef organisms between 500 and 1,000 feet, and sure enough, that is exactly what we found.”

Baldwin and her colleagues have discovered and named a new zone of the ocean between about 400 and 1,000 feet down where species may be beginning to flee and morph into entirely new ecosystems. Baldwin had to use a submarine to conduct her research off the coast of Curaçao in the Caribbean.

The new oceanic realm that Baldwin and her colleagues have identified — the “rariphotic zone” — is named for its lack of sunlight (rari = low, photic = light).

As a curator of the Smithsonian’s fish collection, the largest of its kind in the world, Baldwin knows a thing or two about tropical fish. And it’s possible that this “new” zone has actually been around for a long time, providing refuge for surface fish during times of environmental turmoil. Baldwin says there’s evidence that gobies — a type of small, bottom-dwelling fish — migrated from shallow reefs to deep reefs in response to warmer waters about 10 million to 14 million years ago. She wants to expand her work in the rariphotic zone to study other groups of fishes and the corals themselves, in an attempt to learn more about larger-scale responses to ocean warming.

“The hopeful thing is that if species start moving deeper now or in the future in response to warming surface waters or deteriorating reefs, that there are these other zones that they can go to.”

Rich Pyle, a fish scientist with the Hawaii Biological Survey, agrees that deep water corals hold immense promise for conservation efforts.

“The more we look, the more obvious it is that there are no natural ecology-wide boundaries” that prevent shallow fish from descending to greater depths, he says.

But it’s not as if surface fish can just pack up and move to deeper waters overnight, either. Pyle says that there are certain species, such as some rays, that live at both shallow and deep waters, and those are the ones that stand the best chance of survival.

“If we screw up the shallow reefs,” Pyle says, “we can take some comfort knowing that the deeper reefs still have populations of these organisms.”

Pyle is a pioneer of deep-water coral exploration. But the new zone that Baldwin and her colleagues have identified goes even further into the depths.

“These deeper coral reefs below about 30 meters have been barely looked at for the past several decades,” Pyle says. One reason is that’s about as deep as scuba diving gear allows you to easily go.

As a result, no historical data exist for species in this zone of tropical reefs. There isn’t even much data about temperature at these depths, though it is significantly cooler and more stable than surface waters.

To be sure, Pyle says there’s reason to believe that deep reefs may even be in greater danger than their shallower cousins.

For example, it’s possible that stronger hurricanes have started raining thicker plumes of sediment down on deep reefs, burying fragile corals. Increased surface level pollution may also block light, stopping photosythesis. Deep reefs are also more accustomed to steady water temperatures, so they could be more vulnerable to severe marine heat waves of the future.

All of this argues for doubling down on deep-reef research in preparation for the ravages of climate change in the coming decades.

“We just need to spend more time out there in the sub to see what’s happening,” says Baldwin. She thinks it’s a good idea to begin designating deeper reefs as marine protected areas, too.

Reefs will survive, at least in some form. It’s just a question of what they will look like. Genetic engineering of corals, farming corals, transplanting corals, or trusting corals to adapt in surprising ways are all strategies currently underway.

And it looks like coral fish have a shot at surviving, too. If they migrated to the depths in the past, maybe they could do it again.

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As coral reefs disappear, some tropical fish might just keep swimming

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Hurricane Irma is a monster storm. Here’s where it might be headed.

by HeathChamplin7 Posted on September 1, 2017

As the remnants of what was once Hurricane Harvey move mercifully away from Texas, forecasters are already eyeing another monster storm.

Hurricane Irma formed early Wednesday in the warm waters off the coast of West Africa — and took just 30 hours to strengthen to a Category 3. That’s the fastest intensification rate in almost two decades. By Friday afternoon, the storm had also grown noticeably larger in size with a well-defined eye, a classic sign of a strong hurricane.

Though Irma poses no immediate threat to land, the outlook is ominous: In the Atlantic, Irma is expected to pass through some abnormally warm waters — the primary fuel source for storm systems. The official National Hurricane Center forecast says it will remain at major hurricane status for at least the next five days, and, in a worst-case scenario, Irma could eventually grow into one of the strongest hurricanes ever seen in the Atlantic.

That assessment is leaving forecasters and coastal residents understandably jittery. A hurricane this far out at sea normally wouldn’t draw this much attention, but Harvey’s floodwaters are still receding, leaving behind historic damage in Texas and Louisiana. This is not a normal situation.

Irma is “starting to give me that uncomfortable feeling in my gut,” wrote meteorologist Brendan Moses on Twitter. Another meteorologist, Michael Ventrice, said some of the initial modeling of Irma output “the highest windspeed forecasts I’ve ever seen in my 10 yrs of Atlantic hurricane forecasting.” Even the National Hurricane Center forecaster tasked with constructing the storm’s official forecast was surprised by how “uncommonly strong” Irma already is.

Hurricane Irma is what meteorologists call a “Cape Verde hurricane,” named after the African island nation just west of Senegal — an infamous late-summer breeding ground for powerful long-track storms. Some of the most notorious hurricanes ever to make U.S. landfall were born near where Irma generated.

Only about 15 percent of Cape Verde hurricanes directly strike the United States, so there’s no guarantee that Irma will. Since any potential landfall is still almost two weeks away and could take place anywhere from Texas to Maine, there’s not much for people to do right now except monitor the storm’s progress — and speculate.

On Friday, the National Weather Service warned of “fake forecasts” that are circulating widely on social media. But even established forecasting outlets have begun to share (rather cautiously) long-range graphics that show Irma threatening the U.S.

Meteorologists won’t have even a ballpark estimate of where Irma might make landfall or how strong it will be until early next week at the soonest. It will probably take a few more days to refine those forecasts enough to confidently call for preparedness actions.

But as of Friday, the most likely scenarios for Irma aren’t looking good.

Florida and the Caribbean: Historically, Florida is the state most likely to be hit by a hurricane in September. Recent runs of the European model, the weather model with the greatest historical accuracy, showed a swath of the southeast coast from the Florida Keys to southern Virginia as the most likely area where Irma would make landfall. On the way, it could pass close to the islands of the northeast Caribbean.
Northeast: A few recent model runs show Irma curving northward off the East Coast, potentially affecting the mid-Atlantic or New England. The large-scale North American weather pattern over the next 10 days may become especially chaotic due to a dwindling typhoon in the Pacific (the atmosphere is one giant connected system, after all), so it’s possible an unpredictable dip in the jet stream could steer Irma inland.
Gulf of Mexico: Should a high-pressure area over the western Atlantic remain in place, Irma could scoot underneath it, passing through the northern edge of the Caribbean and into the Gulf of Mexico. With the Gulf coast already devastated by Harvey, it’s a potentially tragic scenario that can’t yet be ruled out.
Out to sea: Most hurricanes that form where Irma did don’t make landfall in the United States at all. They safely curve out to sea. If we’re lucky, Irma might do the same.

It’s peak hurricane season, so it’s no surprise to see another strong storm spinning across the Atlantic. But with Irma’s path still to be determined, the best place to focus our attention now is on helping soothe the disaster that’s already happened in Texas and Louisiana.

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Hurricane Irma is a monster storm. Here’s where it might be headed.

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We’re about to name a sad swirling sack of clouds Tropical Storm Don, which is apt.

by JeanettMillard Posted on July 6, 2017

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We’re about to name a sad swirling sack of clouds Tropical Storm Don, which is apt.

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Sometimes you have to melt some ice to make a point.

by YAZWinfred Posted on October 14, 2016

Ravaging crops, drowning goats, and wrecking fishing boats, the Category 4 storm devastated the financial mainstays of an already impoverished people, the Miami Herald reports.

While experts struggle to calculate Matthew’s long-term economic toll, Haitian farmers can see their losses in front of them, in fields littered with rotting fruit and fallen palms. Half the livestock and almost all crops in the nation’s fertile Grand-Anse region were destroyed. Although vegetables can be replanted, it will take years for new trees to bear fruit again. “This was our livelihood,” Marie-Lucienne Duvert told the Herald, of her coconut and breadfuit plantation. “Now it’s all gone, destroyed.”

The farmers, who have yet to receive any relief, are facing threats from famine and contaminated water. Matthew has already caused at least 200 cases of cholera, which could mark the beginning of an outbreak like the one following 2010’s crippling earthquake that claimed 316,000 lives and left 1.5 million homeless.

The death toll from the storm is over 1,000 in the Caribbean, a number that will likely continue to rise as Haitians struggle to find food.

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Sometimes you have to melt some ice to make a point.

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These species survived the last ice age but couldn’t survive people

by KristanTwp Posted on October 20, 2015

These species survived the last ice age but couldn’t survive people

By on 20 Oct 2015commentsShare

Screw Myers and Briggs. I’ve got a new personality test for you.

Read the following statement and choose the response that most accurately depicts how it makes you feel:

Statement: Ten thousand years ago, 22 species of birds, reptiles, and mammals on the Bahamian island of Abaco miraculously survived the rising seas and shifting climate at the end of the last ice age. Then, 1,000 years ago, humans showed up and took them out like trash on pick-up day.

Responses: A) Damn right! Humans are and forever will be the masters of this planet. B) Humans are everything that’s wrong with this world, and the sooner we die off, the better. C) Interesting … I wonder why this happened and what it means for species now dealing with both humans and climate change.

Now, based on the Psych 101 class that I took in college, here are your results: If you answered A, then you’re a psychopath; if you answered B, then you’re not helping; and if you answered C, then congratulations! You’re thinking like a scientist.

In a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, University of Florida researchers report that out of 100 species analyzed from fossils found in a flooded cave on Great Abaco Island, 17 bird species went extinct around the end of the last ice age, while 22 bird, reptile, and mammal species survived, only to succumb to humans a few thousand years later.

Here’s more from a University of Florida press release:

For species that were lost at the end of the ice age, climate change, habitat change and rising seas, with resulting smaller islands, may have caused their populations to become too small to remain genetically viable, resulting in inbreeding, (lead author Dave) Steadman said. A January 2015 study co-authored by Steadman found the Caribbean’s first humans depleted species as small as bats on Abaco. The new study shows several other species that endured until human arrival were lost to activities such as hunting and starting wildfires, he said.

The researchers plan to go back to the island later this year to study more fossils and get a broader picture of who died of what and why, according to the press release.

“What we see today is just a small snapshot of how species have existed for millions of years,” Steadman said. “The species that existed on Abaco up until people arrived were survivors. They withstood a variety of environmental changes, but some could not adapt quickly or drastically enough to what happened when people showed up.

“So, there must be different mechanisms driving these two types of extinctions. What is it about people that so many island species could not adapt to? That’s what we want to find out.”

What is it about people? I ask myself that same question every day on my way to work. Does that make me a sociopath? Who knows — I’ve only taken Psych 101. Either way, hit me up when you find the answer, Steadman.

Source:

Ancient fossils reveal humans were greater threat than climate change to Caribbean wildlife

, University of Florida.

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These species survived the last ice age but couldn’t survive people

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Challenge Aims to Help Small Islands Reduce Fossil Fuels

by krynicki Posted on October 4, 2013

Sir Richard Branson’s Carbon War Room is leading a push to make 10 islands independent of fossil fuels. Photo: Carbon War Room

While dependence on fossil fuels is a global problem, it poses an even bigger threat for small islands that must import resources like oil, coal and natural gas. With rising sea levels caused by climate change, small islands find that their dependence on such fuels to survive is also the very thing that is threatening their existence.

As a way to break away from fossil fuel dependence, 10 Caribbean island nations have joined with the Carbon War Room and The Make Yourself Foundation to launch the Ten Island Renewable Challenge. The Carbon War Room, founded by Sir Richard Branson, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to discovering and implementing business solutions that reduce carbon emissions and promote a low-carbon economy. For the Challenge, they will work to make the islands dependent upon wind and solar power.

“We work as an ‘honest broker’ for islands,” Branson explained in promotional materials about the Challenge, “helping them identify the best available technologies, attracting the right experts and the investment, because we want to help them choose the best technology options for their islands, their economy and their people.”

According to a blog post written by Branson in September, the Ten Island Renewable Challenge will lead by example and encourage other, larger nations to move toward the use of renewable energy. Work has already begun in Aruba, and Branson says they will next expand to St. Lucia, Grenada and the British Virgin Islands before turning their attention to the Pacific Islands.

“There is no Planet B,” Branson wrote. “Let’s take good care of our planet. We’ll start by implementing renewable energy on islands, and then expand to the rest of the world.”

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Challenge Aims to Help Small Islands Reduce Fossil Fuels

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Nicaragua OKs plan for cross-country canal, environment be damned

by bukaroso Posted on June 17, 2013

Nicaragua OKs plan for cross-country canal, environment be damned

By John Upton

“Let’s cut it in two and let shipping through.”

Nicaragua is one step closer to being carved in half by a massive cross-country canal. Leftist President Daniel Ortega rammed the project through his country’s congress last week.

The lawmakers gave the Hong Kong-based HKND Group a 50-year concession to excavate and operate the canal, which is intended to rival Panama’s. If it’s actually built — and that’s still a big if — it promises to give an economic boost to the bitterly poor country. Nicaragua would get a minority share of profits and, say backers, tens of thousands of jobs too.

But critics warn that would come at the expense of the environment and clean water supplies. From Agence France-Presse:

Centro Humboldt environmental group deputy director Victor Campos told AFP the project to link Nicaragua’s Atlantic and Pacific coasts will jeopardize the watershed that supplies water to most of the impoverished country’s population when it transits through Lake Nicaragua. …

HKDN spokesman Ronald MacLean said the company was considering four possible routes for the waterway, and all would necessarily go across Lake Nicaragua.

In the lake lies an island with an active volcano and some 300 islets that serve as breeding grounds for the American crocodile (Crocodylus acutus), the largest reptile living in Central America and the Caribbean.

One of the possible canal routes would pass through the sprawling Cerro Silva nature reserve between the southern Caribbean coast and the El Rama River port, home to coastal ecosystems, wetlands and tropical forests that environmentalists warn could disappear.

Also in the path of the construction is the Punta Gorda nature reserve in the southern Caribbean, home to more than 120 species of birds, mammals, reptiles, fish, amphibians, mollusks and crustaceans.

MacLean said environmental experts would be hired to measure and minimize environmental and social impacts. But groundbreaking is initially scheduled for May 2014, less than a year away, providing precious little time to prepare environmental analyses and recommendations.

Independent experts are skeptical, meanwhile, saying the plan would be so hard to pull off that it may never be realized. From The New York Times:

Experts say that while the approval process led by President Daniel Ortega has been swift, environmental opposition, changes in shipping patterns and construction costs could easily thrust the proposal onto the large list of discarded plans for a Nicaraguan canal.

“It’s not going to happen, that was my first reaction,” said Noel Maurer, an associate professor at the Harvard Business School who helped write a book about the Panama Canal. “A pipe dream might be too strong, but I would just consider it a really bad investment.”

The challenges for Nicaraguan canal planners have always been enormous, and the current project is nothing if not ambitious. It would entail slashing through around 180 miles of thick tropical terrain — roughly triple the length of the Panama Canal — and then pumping a virtual sea through a series of locks deep enough for massive cargo ships.

Activists are already protesting the plans. “Nicaragua isn’t for sale,” the Movement for Nicaragua, a coalition of civil-society groups, wrote in an open letter to the country, the AP reports. “Nicaragua belongs to all Nicaraguans and isn’t the private property of Ortega and his family.”

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Watch every hurricane that formed during the third-most-active season in history

by Myrna Posted on November 29, 2012

Watch every hurricane that formed during the third-most-active season in history

By Philip Bump

Here, in just shy of four and a half minutes, is the entire 2012 hurricane season. Assuming, that is, that no tropical storms crop up in the next 36 hours or so; hurricane season ends on Nov. 30.

It’s pretty, in its way. Humbling, watching the patterns and the flow of the clouds as they work their way slowly around the ocean. For the planet, Sandy was just another spinning formation, made and gone and forgotten.

For us, Sandy was the capstone to what the Capital Weather Gang notes was tied for the third-most-active hurricane season in history.

In an average season (using 1981-2010 as a baseline), there are 12.1 named storms, 6.4 hurricanes, and 2.7 major hurricanes. This season ended up with 19 named storms, 10 of which became hurricanes, but just 1 of those became a major hurricane (defined as category 3 or higher on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale). The 19 named storms ties for the third greatest number of such storms in a season on record. Historically, only about 3 percent of seasons experience 19 or more named storms. As rare as this feat is, it was amazingly the third consecutive season to have 19 named storms!

Despite this year’s large number of named storms, major hurricane activity was minimal. Of all the seasons with at least 19 named storms, the previous lowest number of “major hurricane days” was 3.75. This year, the total was a meager 0.25 days (six hours).

NOAA

Every storm of 2012. Click to embiggen.

There’s another measure by which 2012 was exceptional.

Another metric for evaluating seasonal activity is known as Accumulated Cyclone Energy, or ACE. ACE is basically a wind energy index used to succinctly characterize a season by the intensity and duration of all of the storms. The 2012 season finished up at 126.2, or about 137 percent of an average season. The median value over the period 1951-2010 is 92.4, and any season that exceeds 103 is considered to be “above normal”; however, there must also be at least two major hurricanes to meet the “above normal” criteria. As of now, Michael is 2012’s only major hurricane, but it’s quite possible that Sandy will be upgraded to a major hurricane when it was near Cuba. Nadine, the fifth-longest-lasting storm on record, contributed to 20% of the total ACE, while Sandy contributed to 11% of the total.

So, in short, this year we had an extremely active and highly energetic hurricane season that resulted in billions of dollars of damage on the East Coast and the Caribbean.

If only there were something humans could do to lessen the amount of energy in the atmosphere and prevent future years of similar intensity.

Source

Third most active hurricane season on record (tie) ends Friday, Capital Weather Gang

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Watch every hurricane that formed during the third-most-active season in history

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