etudiant

Forecast is for heavy rain Dec 14th, so if your contractor works Saturdays, you should be able to find your leak.

That said, my limited experience with leaks is that the water usually drips down some distance away from the actual leak, so look around for all potential culprits. I found very high grade clear silicon caulk a very effective help, sealing generously between the chimney and the flashing, especially where the flashing abutted the chimney. The contractor had wanted to take down the bedroom ceiling, as that was where the leak was showing, so I was forced to try to find a less disruptive solution. Fortunately the roof had a flat section that allowed access to the chimney, as it would have been much more involved had ladders and scaffolds been required..

1 hour ago, LibertyBell said:

we've let it go to waste many times before..... if we capitalized on every -NAO/-AO then NYC would average like 80 inches of snow a year lol.  An east-based -NAO and/or a bad PAC make snow much less likely.  I wish there were graphs that depicted exactly what type of neg NAO this would be.

 

It would be good to have the NYC annual snow fall totals for the 1600s and 1700s,  as that covers the 'Little Ice Age' interval. My guess is that snow totals were above the recent 50" averages, but surely there is some historical record somewhere.

19 hours ago, wdrag said:

Snowfall for this event interpolated-interpreted via NOHRSC.  It see's more than 0.2" in CP.  Something is wrong with NOHRSC analysis in and near NYC or with the obs. I'm moving forward. 

Although the map is not clear, the  NOHRSC estimate is at least a factor of 10 too high.

Central Park had barely enough snow to coat the grass, the 0.2" number given initially looked spot on to me.

It is not confidence inspiring when 'final revisions' are obviously wrong.

Has anyone had any experience with the new IBM GRAF weather tracking/forecasting system?

It seems to be inaccessible to ordinary mortals, but does it even perform at competitive levels with the Euro or the GFS?

Manhattan UES did not see much, a few desultory flakes disappearing on the wet ground. No slush at all.

Lot of moving parts to this. Difficult to be confident here in a snow forecast three days out.

Fortunately I don't have to drive anywhere Wednesday morning, so can consider the outcome with equanimity. 

Seems to be mostly a raw weather event here in Manhattan, thirties, windy and raining.  No substantial snow thus far.

Very nice paper, thank you for posting this.

I'm intrigued that the warm pool has been tracked since the start of the 1900s, a more than doubled warm area is massive and deserves to be highlighted more.

Saw that phenomenon in progress this morning in NYC Central Park , where there are lots of Ginkos.

In still air, their leaves were just showering down, so by the afternoon, the trees were almost bare, with the leaves carpeting the ground right under the trees.

It was very pretty in the afternoon sun, the green and gold leaves encircling the tree trunks.

quiet bar playing Xmas music= bad credit risk

I can see the appeal, but can't see how that type of place could earn enough to stay in business.

21 minutes ago, LibertyBell said:

Reposting this here:

https://twitter.com/i/events/1191456175449088006

https://t.co/L02Ps9o1UT?amp=1

The innovations include an energy-trapping molecule, a storage system that promises to outperform traditional batteries and an energy-storing laminate coating that can be applied to windows and textiles.

 

https://t.co/krDcakrWmi?amp=1

 

Swedish scientists develop energy storing molecule that can be applied as a transparent coating to windows, houses, cars, clothes and release heat when exposed to a catalyst. Still a few years from commercialisation - but pretty amazing potential if it comes good.

 

https://t.co/z35BQWGHGI?amp=1

 

Scientists say they’ve figured out how to store solar power for decades, a major energy breakthrough

 

https://t.co/lNqEF9YcJJ?amp=1

 

Scientists in Sweden have figured out how to harness solar power, store it and release it on demand in the form of heat decades after it's been captured

 

https://t.co/kqsBusDxWM?amp=1

All these links refer to the same Bloomberg article, which has very little detail. It is easy to store solar heat for decades, just grow some trees. 

The new molecule, cost unspecified,  stores and releases some unquantified amount of heat, but there is nothing about how fast or how the release is controlled.

At this point, the article seems click bait, rather than useful reporting. 

11 minutes ago, BillT said:

the greenhouse effect is an insulating effect.....can anybody here name any insulator that ADDS heat to the system it is insulating?

my understanding of insulation is it SLOWS the movement of the heat energy but in no way traps that heat and does NOT in any way ADD any extra heat to the system.....

if my understanding is wrong please show an insulator that ADDS heat?

 

Afaik, the issue here is that incoming energy from the sun is more short wave, which is not as obstructed by greenhouse gases as are the longer wave length heat radiations,

The effect is same energy incoming, less outgoing, resulting in a heating effect. 

Note that this leaves lots of room for discussion, as we have no full agreement on the effects of water vapor, the predominant green house gas, or of clouds, or of atmospheric convection, ocean heat flows etc etc. It is a very complex system and it is frankly a major achievement to have it modeled as well as it is. Major uncertainties still remain, but the existence of greenhouse effects is not one of them.

43 minutes ago, Juliancolton said:

I always forget that ToT is a real thing folks do. Been at least 20 years since I've had anyone come around.

It flourishes still in NYC, hordes of kids shepherding adults in silly costumes.

Fortunately nobody has to walk far from one apartment block to the next.

9 hours ago, forkyfork said:

choose a big breed

feed with lots of compost

only allow one pumpkin per vine

Still hugely impressive, 2000 pounds in a 200 day growing season requires 10 pounds a day average weight gain, so probably closer to 50 pounds  per day at the peak.

That plant might as well be directly connected to a tap, it must guzzle like fury. Wonder if it gets warm because it is growing so fast.

Thank you, csnavywx, very helpful links. Even without ability to pass the paywall, the summaries and the charts tell the story. The charts especially are pretty alarming.

Sadly, seen that coal fired power plant construction is still very strong, particularly in China and India, i see no possibility of arresting the CO2 uptrend. We will see this future, like it or not.

4 hours ago, csnavywx said:

I'm still reading through that paper. From what I've read so far, the change is on the order of 0.25 pH post-impact. We've had around 0.15 of change so far, but this hasn't eaten into the aragonite buffer enough to cause undersaturation at the surface or in the mixed layer in most locales so far. That is due to change sometime in the 2030s in the Southern Ocean and the waters next to Antarctica (where colder SSTs allow more gas to dissolve). From there it will spread rapidly across seasons and area.

It's not talked about much and my suspicion is that it won't be until that starts to occur.

That is a  stunning change. Is there a reference which you could point me to? I've seen some reports, but nothing that suggests global loss of alkalinity on that scale.

24 minutes ago, adiabatic13 said:

Education, education, education, not the kind that teaches you facts and hard skills, but the kind that teaches you how to think, reason and look deeply, that's the only hope for our species. Until proven otherwise I will assume that intelligent life arises quite often in our universe, it seems designed for life (in so many particulars: i.e. gravity, the specific properties of H2O, oxidation-reduction, etc...not sure if these imply a sense of agency there); at any rate, most if not all self-aware species I'm guessing "progress" to precisely the point where humankind presently sits and because technological evolution inherently outpaces biological evolution for multi-cellular critters, they, in essence, commit species-wide suicide.

 

It is not obvious that human style intelligence is a common feature anywhere, afawk it has evolved just once in the several hundred million years that multi cellular life has existed on this earth.

Actually the constraint is even stricter, industrial technology is only a few hundred years old, so about a millionth of the multi cellular life span. That suggests intelligent life as we know it is a very fleeting apparition, even if we assume that it has longevity once achieved. However, as noted, the lack of wisdom which humans are showing in their dealing with their own biosphere strongly suggests longevity may be limited for our technological society.

20 hours ago, Windspeed said:

 

Well the micro-vortex is the tiny eye we observed with Hagibis. Really this phenomenon is no different than your average microcane or small hurricane eyewall in general, it just takes a very low shear environment + very high maximum potential intensity w/ high TCHP to get something like a Hagibis or Wilma; and even still, the aformentioned type of micro-vortex may still not occur. Otherwise, outer banding influences in the formative stages usually starves off or dissipates a smaller vortex before MPI can be achieved. Usually the intensification phase of the entire tropical cyclone's broader core cuts off or diverts outer low level convergence rather quickly away from a tiny interior vortex, if it happens to exist, while a larger eye or concentric band takes over. This is usually prior to the system even becoming a hurricane or typhoon. It's just a really chaotic and unpredictable process, at least until the main eyeband or core has consolidated, to know how large or small the dominate vort will be.

 

In short, there really isn't a way to model the chaotic nature of such a phenomenon. It is rather part luck on how small and aligned an MCS-induced mid-level vort is in conjunction to the low level vort underneath. If that can resolve and the MPI is sky high, a small vort can become dominant and remain that way through rapid intensification all the way into the sub-900s hPa. But it's really a crapshoot to know the probability of such occurring. Sometimes the original vort max is just larger and remains that way.

Thank you for this more complete explanation, although it is really over my head. For a novice such as me, TCHP and MPI are not familiar terms, so there are gaps in my understanding of the process. But I gather the hurricane formation is much more chaotically competitive than I'd thought, so that very small vortices sometimes play a pivotal role. Is that correct?

5 hours ago, Windspeed said:

6 hours ago, etudiant said:

Don't think I've ever seen something like this before. Is it usual in cyclones?

 

Rare is a better term. I mentioned some others above: Pam, Patricia, Wilma, Gilbert and Allen all had similar structures. There have been a number of others that developed a super intense >5nm micro-vortex eyewall within a much larger banded concentric envelope. Still, it's not something we see with regards to such extreme sub 890 hpa estimated intensities on a yearly basis. Think perhaps once every 5-10 years globally within the satellite era.

Thank you, a very informative summary.

Has there been any explanation or modeling that would shed light on how this comes about?  Why and how would a micro vortex spin up within the eye? 

2 hours ago, Windspeed said:

Incredible inner micro-vortex....

Don't think I've ever seen something like this before. Is it usual in cyclones?

Thank you for your ongoing excellent coverage of the Atlantic storm season.

12 hours ago, donsutherland1 said:

At least some research shows that at least parts of the Arctic today are the warmest in at least the last 44,000 years.

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2013GL057188

Thank you, that is a well documented piece of work.

I'd thought that the primary objection was not denial of the current evidence, but rather claims that similar or warmer conditions were in effect in prior recorded history, for instance during the Norse settlements of Greenland..

That then translates into a claim that there is a natural warm cold cycle, which the current models fail to capture. The Norse settlement was not small, it was big enough to be allocated its own bishop and they were able to sustain cattle and sheep.

Presumably there could be some isotope measurements possible in stalactites or glacier ice which provides some guidance on this issue, but I've not seen anything that really digs into the question.

I suspect we all underestimate the potential for reform. If people want change, they will get it. With effectively unlimited power from nuclear, even extreme efforts such as carbon capture are feasible.

What is required is a broad recognition that there really is a problem. That has not been achieved, imho partly because the early AGW researchers desperately oversold the immediacy of their findings. The subsequent pause after 1998 put them into the 'boy who cried wolf' category and that has impeded any further consensus action.

Sadly I believe it will now take a climate catastrophe to spur any concerted action. A collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet might force a recognition of the problem, but failing that, business as usual remains the most likely outcome. The best hope for progress is from the renewable energy sector. If it can continue to deliver increasingly economical power, we might buy some additional decades to find a solution to the problem.