csnavywx

2 hours ago, GaWx said:

 

 What, where,and when would these wx impacts be? How significant would they be in relation to other factors? Also, keep in mind that the magnitude, scope, and timing of the effects of the 2022 Hunga Tonga volcano on the globe's wx are still being sorted out/debated. Several studies I've seen suggest that's its strongest effects may not be over for a good number of years (rest of the decade) with the most significant possibly still ahead due to a significant increase in water vapor that rose into the stratosphere. It is all very complex!

 

 

 

About 0.5Tg of SO2 so far. Not enough to be important to climate on its own. About 2-3% of Pinatubo's numbers.

https://twitter.com/airesEO/status/1780839755011518889/video/1

3 hours ago, bluewave said:

It was unprecedented since it’s the first satellite and modern bouy era 3 year La Nina to follow an ENSO neutral to borderline weak El Niño peaking at only +0.5 in 19-20. You will notice that the ones in the late 90s and early to mid 70s followed much stronger El Niños. The reliability of the 1908 to 1910 event isn’t as strong as the modern era since we didn’t have all the observation tools we have today.

 

https://research.noaa.gov/2023/11/07/recent-triple-dip-la-nina-upends-current-understanding-of-enso/#:~:text=“There were parts of the,leading to food security issues 

What caused the 2020–2023 triple-dip La Niña?

Triple-dip La Niñas are not new, with particularly strong ones occurring in 1973–1976 and 1998–2001. However, these two previous events developed in the wake of especially strong El Niños, which were thought to be precursors for triple-dip La Niñas. The leading theory was that strong El Niños cause a significant loss of heat from the equatorial Pacific Ocean to the atmosphere and to higher latitudes, leaving a large ocean heat deficit that can take years to recover. However, the 2020–2023 La Niña was unique in that it did not follow a strong El Niño, causing researchers to reevaluate current understanding of how these extended La Niñas develop.

Weird that they classify those two periods as triple dips. 73-76 looks like a bog standard double dip to me (with a cold neutral phase in between). Does 98-01 qualify either? The 3rd "event" is just two < -0.5 trimonthlies. Pretty sure you need three here to officially qualify but I could be misremembering.

1908-11 or 1890s looks like the last time we had one.

3 hours ago, Bhs1975 said:

You mean dimmer in the past. High CO2 is what kept Earth from staying frozen before life evolved to help pull the CO2 out and now that the Sun is getting hotter we have to keep it below 350ppm to keep a stable climate. That major dip in CO2 at the end is when modern humans showed up and started migrating.

Yes, thank you. Corrected it.

The sun was 0.6-0.7% dimmer 65 million years ago. You don't need as much CO2 for a given temperature this time around.

Antarctica glaciated around 650ppm, but my guess is that due to solar luminosity increases, you'd only need around 550-600 to deglaciate it this time around.

Humans do not appreciate just how late in the game we showed up and how lucky we are for CO2 to be as (relatively) low as it is now. Another 200-300m years and this planet is going to be a permanent hothouse.

Edit: To correct "brighter" to "dimmer" as intended.

1 hour ago, Chicago Storm said:

 

 

 

Have decided to focus on the IN portion of the corridor I had mentioned. Heading down to Indy later today, and will monitor trends tonight/Monday morning to adjust as needed.

For that MO/IL/IN/OH corridor, it seems like the better chance to avoid the worst of the cloud situation is there…possibly.

 

 

 

Sweet. Best of luck to ya and send us pics, man!

21 hours ago, Chicago Storm said:

I'm honing in on somewhere in the corridor from SE IL, near the IL/IN border, into C IN. Guidance seems to be in best agreement in keeping this corridor out of the expected high clouds, or at least keeping them minimal until after the eclipse. 

TX/OK/AR/MO all seem to be a lock to have high clouds of higher coverage and significance. While it may still be visible through the higher clouds in some areas in this corridor, the experience will be far from the same.

I never really considered the Northeast as a possibility, as it's going to be cooler (Would rather view in quality weather conditions), and there will likely be a higher density of viewers/travelers there due to the proximity to the higher population centers along the East Coast... And plus, I'm just not really interested in heading up that way anyway.

In 2017, I was down in Southwestern Illinois, just outside of the STL metro. I was right just inside the range of totality, so I got to experience brief totality and the effects of riding the edge. This go around, I plan on setting up in full/max totality.

I think I'd avoid IL altogether at this point. 250mb jet position and shared energy area is a dead ringer for getting washed out by thicker jet cirrus. Guidance has just started picking up on it and now dprog/dt is starting to trend the wrong way. That shit will come in fast and you won't have time to reposition adequately. It'll look fine in the morning and by lunch, you'll be screwed. 

Honestly, I'm afraid it's largely going to be a shitshow. There will be a few places that don't have any problems, but this is par for the course for April climo. The best one was always probably going to be Aug '17, though.

The areas that *look* like the best (near STL/Carbondale) probably won't be because of thicker jet cirrus moving in at the last minute (that isn't being well forecast) and the little room you get to maneuver in IN/OH inside the dry slot will be crowded as fuck because everywhere else isn't great. Get too far east in OH and you're dealing with stratocu. Try to avoid it altogether and head to ME and you're running into a massive fresh (but melting) snowpack and less than stellar road network, and crowded too as most of the cities down south empty out to head there.

1 hour ago, katabatic said:

This whole system has been very dynamic. Other than the thundersnow I experienced in Nov of '22 in the epic Buffalo LES event, I had never experienced thundersnow. Until yesterday IMBY. To me at least, that's one of - if not the - coolest weather phenomenon there is. 

Cold core spring upper lows are the best. Need very little lift and instability to get them to work their magic and they usually produce strong winds and small hail with ease.

On 12/7/2023 at 8:52 AM, Typhoon Tip said:

Forgive me, economics isn't my bag.

I get the stressed domestic production - due to CC.  Intuitive enough.   

I guess I was thinking along the lines of, 'the value of the dollar drops while printing more money' as inflation - which really is more of a secondary response ( and really bad approach) to dwindling resources.

I can see how as GDP stressing gets worse, prices go up - that's academic. I think it's what happens as reactionary policies that is the problem.  Ex, the Germans were hung out to dry and left pretty destitute prior to WWII. Political identity was in crisis. GDP didn't really exist. Inflation there resulted, which led to the bad idea of printing more money. There's a lot of geopolitical/geodesic math between that and Hitler's decision to annex Poland ..etc ... but in principle, their society was left in a flight or fight pathway by a destitution both economically, then triggered further by that political identity crisis after WWI. Evil loves that vulnerability.  Ex II, Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan (their "Vietnam").  The U.S. abandoned their supplies to the region when that happen - bop ahead 10 or 20 years and in waltzes the Taliban.  I mean humans do this ...  but I'm digressing.

What I'm getting at is you can see the seeds of global conflict. Interesting.

Reinforcing this conversation wrt Ortiz-Bobea et. al with this new paper, which attempts to quantify CC's effect on food inflation.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-023-01173-x#:~:text=Evaluating these results under temperature,amplify by 30-50%.

TLDR, it's a lot. Enough that we should expect to see what's happening to cocoa in more commodities (sharp squeezes and dumps that don't quite correct back to the original level over the longer run). Inflation volatility also increases. Does not bode well for either food or fixed incomes that rely on government bonds. A persistent 50-150bp of headline inflation will cause a significant devaluation across the board and also hamper any equity price runs via bond volatility spikes.

Freezing levels are so low, it doesn't take much convective depth in this case to get lightning and small hail, given where the cloud bases are.

Feelin pretttttty good about this one from yesterday:

On 2/25/2024 at 7:09 PM, Brewbeer said:

Imagine weenieing data as if data were an opinion

I think we all know who's sock that is by now and it's because they don't think the data is real.

When a good scientist gets new data, they change their opinion.

When most people get new data, they change the data.

Solar and EV equity prices continue to be smashed, with the TAN ETF down 16% so far this year and 43% y/o/y. Even the best positioned companies are suffering pretty heavy balance sheet hits due to higher rates and higher capex costs, despite hardware component price declines.

Domestic EV makers are being hit in particular due to slumping demand and are sensitive to higher financing costs.

Unless those margins can be improved, R&D and capex will start taking a hit and these deployment rates are going to suffer as a result. Like I mentioned before, costs are important, but we live in a capitalist system -- profit margins are even more important!

I was hoping we'd get some interest rate cuts this year, but the market is starting to price those back out as core inflation remains too sticky/resilient.

Remember 10 years ago, when every denier was crowing about "flat temps since '98", increasing Antarctic sea ice and an impending "grand solar minimum"?

Imagine saying that, then looking at this graph and *still* wanting to short sell it.

20 hours ago, hazwoper said:

I get it, but even the utilities themselves are already transitioning away from gas powered peakers to BESS.  LIPA has already released PPAs for BESS projects to completely replace all of its gas peakers.  The transitioning is happening, although it certainly won't happen overnight or at the speed we need for it to make a massive impact on our CO2 emissions in the near term. 

Being in the industry I have seen first hand what the lending rates have done to the market, but the IRA with its 10-year 30% ITC which for the first time ever includes BESS projects has helped to elevate a lot of that pain.  Not all of it of course.

The IRA was definitely a much-needed stick save. Agree there. It could be worse. We could be Europe or the UK! They're now mired with sticky inflation, flat to negative growth and cratered PMIs persistently sitting in the 40s. We have largely escaped that (though we still have some sticky inflation which will keep rates elevated for at least a while longer).

Hell, Europe had *negative* risk-free rates for a while. That was a trip. And incidentally, a goldilocks environment to do renewable investment. That quickly unwound with the pandemic and then the war.

I'd prefer to see large baseload nukes preserved and expanded where possible and income-based supports for where firming costs are getting high (cough, CAISO, cough). Fee-and-dividend type system would go a long way, too. 

Chart is somewhat informative (it's not perfect, but it is what it is).

We definitely don't want to fall into the trap that Europe has fallen into as that comes with all kinds of embedded geopolitical risk.

(North American PPAs only -- the bottom was in '19/'20, this takes it back to 2017 or so pricing.)

Src: https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/latest-news-headlines/north-american-solar-wind-power-prices-continued-ascent-in-2023-report-80219261

I'm less sanguine on this than others due to a complete lack of consideration for profits, power density, grid infrastructure or firming costs in virtually all of the analyses. Cost of raw hardware components and the initial margins are always talked about, because they're favorable. In reality, they end up being quite cheap *at first*, but quickly run into firming cost issues as soon as saturation increases. Regardless of whether you like it or not (I sure fuckin don't), we're trying to transition in an almost completely market-based manner and the market is overwhelmingly concerned about returns. Ask GE or Siemens how that's going for them recently with cratering profit margins. Hell, with battery farms, most of the returns at this point aren't even in what you would expect -- power arbitrage. It's in ancillary services! Returns in general were a lot easier in a low inflation, zero-interest-rate environment. Zero consideration is also given to rebound effects. Slow decarbonisation is a trap, as the incremental additional capacity will get used up on growth. Efficiency savings will be spent elsewhere and typically result in *more growth*. You need decarbonisation in large chunks.

79 here today. Daffodils loving it. Started coming up on the 23rd.

Nobody cares since you won't provide falsification criteria for your theory.

I'm still lending some credence to the shipping aerosol hypothesis mostly because they called the warming *before* it happened and it showed up pretty much exactly where and when you would expect it (N Pac, N Atl maximized in late summer). Of course, it's not the only thing going on and it will take some time to disentangle all the factors, but definitely not ready to drop it as a contributing factor.

(The IMO phase out was in 2 stages, a smaller one in 2015/16 and the second bigger drop in 2020).

Snow shower activity showing up to the west as strong CAA aloft pushes in and drops the top of the boundary layer <-10C. Should see some pretty decent snow shower activity this evening after the main synoptic snow dies off.

Nino climo for the mid-Atlantic has pretty pronounced peaks in mid-Jan and mid-Feb. Following the script so far.

HRRR is a failure mode. The delayed coastal development allows the inland low/surface reflection to strengthen more like a classic clipper. The best snow would be 50-150 miles left of the low track with the rest of the subforum confined to getting light f-gen and WAA driven precip on the front flank of the system, followed quickly by a dry slot aloft.

If you want decent snow outside the northern part of the subforum (PA, NJ, far N MD, etc), you really don't want that inland low to develop like that.

It's a testable hypothesis and soon. There are some similarities with the late 1877/78 El Nino, which came after 6 (!) years of Nina conditions. We had 3 years here, so while pretty extensive, not quite the amount of pre-conditioning we had then. The strong ENSO component will undoubtedly fade. Question is how cool it gets during the upcoming moderate-strong Nina. (The recent +IOD collapse is likely a harbinger here.)

Also, we've had a very notable increase in trade wind strength over the past 20-30y, possibly due to the "pattern effect" of anthropogenic aerosol loading in the Pacific. It's a transient climate response that one would expect to be peaking right around now (this decade). The peaking and gradual relaxation of that effect in combination with a notable increase in EEI would support higher temps over time. Right now my eyes are glued to ocean heat content readings and EEI.

6 minutes ago, Eskimo Joe said:

Get me just north of a nice east-west oriented 850-700 fronto band for a few hours. Oh yea.

Absolutely. I've had a lot of overperformers pull this little trick and end up extending the duration of snowfall via earlier start times, especially when the lift is near/in the DGZ. Sharper trough would help that along.