bluewave

Scaling up fast enough and meeting expanding global energy demand is quite a challenge. https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/12/24/72/our-pathetically-slow-shift-to-clean-energy-in-five-charts/ By most measures that matter, clean energy had a stellar decade. The cost of large wind and solar farms dropped by 70% and nearly 90%, respectively. Meanwhile, renewable-power plants around the world are producing four times more electricity than they did 10 years ago. Similarly, electric vehicles were barely a blip at the outset of the 2010s. But automakers were on track to sell 1.8 million EVs this year, as range increased, prices fell, and companies introduced a variety of models. But the swift growth in these small sectors still hasn’t added up to major changes in the massive global energy system, or reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions. So far, cleaner technologies have mostly met rising energy demands, not cut deeply into existing fossil-fuel infrastructure, as the charts that follow make clear. That’s a problem. Cutting emissions rapidly enough to combat the increasing threats of climate change will require complete overhauls of our power plants, factories, and vehicle fleets, all within a few decades.

Wind damage with the line racing through Southern CT.

One of the strongest wind gusts of the year at Albany.

The 12z Euro has a good soaking now that it came east with Delta.

It will be interesting to see if sites like Tropical Tidbits and Pivitol Weather add the extra maps. While the ECMWF has a ton of data now available on the site, the other sites have have a more intuitive interface and better looking maps.

We'll see if the Euro is going too far west with Delta like it did with Laura. It would be nice to see what the new 9km ensembles show.

Longer range, models have been struggling with the Pacific Jet. This has resulted in fast wavelength changes over PNA and EPO regions. So a continuation of the up and down temperature pattern for us. Also notice how the PDO is really getting pushed around by these quick changes. New run Old run

Main La Niña theme since 2000 has been a dominant SE Ridge. The years with over 20” in NYC had Alaska and Greenland blocking episodes mixed with the SE Ridge. 16-17 was a great example of a few well timed blocks in a warm SE Ridge pattern producing respectable seasonal snowfall totals.

Areas that saw an early freeze in late September will probably have to wait a while for their next freeze. Frost/Freeze Summary for Poughkeepsie Area, NY (ThreadEx) Each section contains date and year of occurrence, value on that date. Click column heading to sort ascending, click again to sort descending. Year Last Value First Value Season Length 1963 05-24 (1963) 27 09-15 (1963) 32 113 1964 05-03 (1964) 31 09-16 (1964) 30 135 1984 05-18 (1984) 32 09-16 (1984) 32 120 1986 05-10 (1986) 30 09-17 (1986) 30 129 1956 05-25 (1956) 27 09-21 (1956) 32 118 1962 05-12 (1962) 32 09-21 (1962) 30 131 2020 05-14 (2020) 31 09-21 (2020) 31 129

I noticed that the vendors calculate the teleconnections indices in a slightly different manner than the CPC. But it looks like the the EPO and WPO forecasts will only be available from the vendors going forward. We can still use the 500mb height anomalies to get an idea of the EPO and WPO values.

Tough to bet against the SE Ridge in recent years.

I just saw this... Note: As of 23 September 2020, the Global Ensemble Forecast System has been upgraded to a much improved version 12, and this page is now obsolete. New reforecasts are available via Amazon Web Services for free download, at https://noaa-gefs-retrospective.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html, and you are directed there for data access. It is straightforward to set up scripts to loop over days and members and download sequences of global fields using wget or curl. The experimental forecast product pages that we have developed based on the previous model version and reforecasts will not be updated; we have not received any resources for updating them, regrettably. If you have questions or comments about this dataset or the associated products, please contact: [email protected] Note: Updated daily forecasts of teleconnection indices produced at NCEP's Climate Prediction Center can be found here.

Winter 20-21 discussion for NYC Metro.

Looks like the all or nothing rainfall pattern since September 10th will continue. 3”+ deluges on September 10th and 30th with a dry pattern in the middle. So it may be a while before our next big rainfall event.

Much cooler pattern to start October than last year. RECORD EVENT REPORT NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW YORK NY 553 AM EDT THU OCT 3 2019 ...RECORD DAILY AND MONTHLY HIGH TEMPERATURE SET YESTERDAY AT NEWARK NJ... A RECORD DAILY AND MONTHLY HIGH TEMPERATURE OF 96 DEGREES WAS SET AT NEWARK NJ YESTERDAY. THIS BREAKS THE OLD DAILY RECORD OF 86 SET IN 2013...AND THE OLD MONTHLY RECORD OF 93 SET ON OCTOBER 5 1941. RECORD EVENT REPORT NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW YORK NY 549 AM EDT THU OCT 3 2019 ...RECORD DAILY AND MONTHLY HIGH TEMPERATURE SET YESTERDAY AT KENNEDY NY... A RECORD DAILY AND MONTHLY HIGH TEMPERATURE OF 95 DEGREES WAS SET AT KENNEDY NY YESTERDAY. THIS BREAKS THE OLD DAILY RECORD OF 85 SET IN 2013...AND THE OLD MONTHLY RECORD OF 90 SET ON OCTOBER 8 2007. RECORD EVENT REPORT NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW YORK NY 551 AM EDT THU OCT 3 2019 ...RECORD DAILY AND MONTHLY HIGH TEMPERATURE SET YESTERDAY AT LAGUARDIA NY... A RECORD DAILY AND MONTHLY HIGH TEMPERATURE OF 95 DEGREES WAS SET AT LAGUARDIA NY YESTERDAY. THIS BREAKS THE OLD DAILY RECORD OF 87 SET IN 2002...AND THE OLD MONTHLY RECORD OF 93 SET ON OCTOBER 5 1941.

We will need to see a significant increase in public-private partnerships in order to make an energy transition possible. https://www.ecowatch.com/high-powered-public-private-partnerships-essential-to-expediting-renew-1882132714.html Public-private partnerships have been around since the start of the U.S. and exist at all levels of government. Basic science and technology has historically been funded by the U.S. government and taken place in national and university laboratories. When the technologies matured, some were released for commercial use. Perhaps the best example is the personal computer, which has shrunk significantly in size since the 1970s and has dramatically increased in computing power. A product used by billions of people worldwide began as an investment by the U.S. federal government, in order to develop better missile guidance systems for the U.S. Department of Defense and smaller on-board computers for NASA's space program. At some point, technology will take over. Fossil fuels will eventually be driven from the marketplace by something better and cheaper, but we first need the investment in basic and applied research to make that happen. The transition from an economy based on the one-time use of finite resources to one that relies on renewable resources requires a sophisticated, high-powered public-private partnership. The commitments made by Gates and the White House are a good start and there are many other signs that the transition from fossil fuels has begun. The speed of that transition, however, will depend on creativity, consensus and cash to be completed.

The North Atlantic Jet is also making headlines.

Hopefully, the coming EPS upgrade makes a lasting improvement.

I wouldn’t mind if the modeling centers stopped posting the OP runs after120 hrs. We would probably be better off with just ensemble means after day 5. These longer range OP runs seem to be taken too literally and then we get the big disappointment posts. It also doesn’t help during the cold season when the longer range OP snowfall maps get posted on social media. That the kind of thing that lowers peoples confidence in weather forecasts. But it could be easily avoided with more of a reliance on ensemble means.

Steadily rising September temperatures brought the recent 10 year period to a 70.3° average in NYC. September has shown the fastest monthly temperature rise for much of the East. So expect a significant monthly average temperature increase when the new 30 year climate normals come out. Monthly Mean Avg Temperature for NY CITY CENTRAL PARK, NY Click column heading to sort ascending, click again to sort descending. Year Sep Season Mean 70.3 70.3 2020 68.8 68.8 2019 70.4 70.4 2018 70.7 70.7 2017 70.5 70.5 2016 71.8 71.8 2015 74.5 74.5 2014 69.7 69.7 2013 67.9 67.9 2012 68.8 68.8 2011 70.0 70.0 Monthly Mean Avg Temperature for NY CITY CENTRAL PARK, NY Click column heading to sort ascending, click again to sort descending. Year Sep Season Mean 69.2 69.2 2010 71.1 71.1 2009 66.3 66.3 2008 68.8 68.8 2007 70.3 70.3 2006 66.6 66.6 2005 73.3 73.3 2004 69.3 69.3 2003 67.9 67.9 2002 70.2 70.2 2001 67.7 67.7 Monthly Mean Avg Temperature for NY CITY CENTRAL PARK, NY Click column heading to sort ascending, click again to sort descending. Year Sep Season Mean 67.8 67.8 2000 66.0 66.0 1999 69.0 69.0 1998 70.2 70.2 1997 67.0 67.0 1996 68.0 68.0 1995 68.3 68.3 1994 67.6 67.6 1993 67.3 67.3 1992 67.2 67.2 1991 67.5 67.5

Heaviest rains in the interior and strongest measured winds along the coast. https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/wx/afos/p.php?pil=PNSOKX&e=202009301439 ...Rockland County... Sloatsburg 3.88 815 AM 9/30 CWOP Suffolk County... West Gilgo Beach 64 445 AM 9/30 CWOP

Updated for the 3.88 in Sloatsburg, NY. Rockland County... Sloatsburg 3.88 815 AM 9/30 CWOP

Record 7th consecutive September above 70° at LGA. The NYC and EWR version of this is 7 consecutive years above 68°. Monthly Mean Avg Temperature for LAGUARDIA AIRPORT, NY Click column heading to sort ascending, click again to sort descending. Year Sep Season 2020 71.2 71.2 2019 72.1 72.1 2018 72.8 72.8 2017 71.5 71.5 2016 73.8 73.8 2015 74.1 74.1 2014 70.4 70.4 2013 68.1 68.1 Monthly Mean Avg Temperature for NY CITY CENTRAL PARK, NY Click column heading to sort ascending, click again to sort descending. Year Sep Season 2020 68.9 68.9 2019 70.4 70.4 2018 70.7 70.7 2017 70.5 70.5 2016 71.8 71.8 2015 74.5 74.5 2014 69.7 69.7 2013 67.9 67.9 Monthly Mean Avg Temperature for NEWARK LIBERTY INTL AP, NJ Click column heading to sort ascending, click again to sort descending. Year Sep Season 2020 69.2 69.2 2019 70.8 70.8 2018 71.4 71.4 2017 70.9 70.9 2016 71.8 71.8 2015 73.4 73.4 2014 69.8 69.8 2013 67.2 67.2

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05978-1 Ocean heatwaves will become more frequent and extreme as the climate warms, scientists report1 on 15 August in Nature. These episodes of intense heat could disrupt marine food webs and reshape biodiversity in the world’s oceans. Scientists analysed satellite-based measurements of sea surface temperature from 1982 to 2016 and found that the frequency of marine heatwaves had doubled. These extreme heat events in the ocean's surface waters can last from days to months and can occur across thousands of kilometres. If average global temperatures increase to 3.5 °C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century, as researchers currently project, the frequency of ocean heatwaves could increase by a factor of 41. In other words, a 1-in-100-day event at pre-industrial levels of warming could become a 1-in-3-day event. Marine heatwaves have already become more long-lasting, frequent, intense and extensive than in the past,” says lead study author Thomas Frölicher, a climatologist at the University of Bern in Switzerland. He adds that these changes are already well outside what could be expected on the basis of natural swings in Earth’s climate: the study’s analysis determined that 87% of heatwaves in the ocean are the result of human-induced global warming. Going global Scientists have studied heatwaves on land for decades. But it wasn’t until researchers faced episodes of extreme heat in the ocean in the past several years that they started paying more attention to the issue at sea. Those episodes included the massive warm water ‘blob’ in the northeastern Pacific Ocean that killed off sea otters (Enhydra lutris) in Alaska and sea lions (Zalophus californianus) in California, and disrupted fisheries off North America from 2014 to 2015. They also included the massive 2015–16 El Niño that ravaged coral reefs around the world. The emphasis on marine heatwaves is really motivated by the recognition that the same kinds of extremes can happen in the ocean as on land,” says Noah Diffenbaugh, a climatologist at Stanford University in California. He adds that this latest study takes global perspective on these regional issues. The study provides a useful framework for disentangling short-term temperature spikes from long-term warming trends in the oceans, says Kris Karnauskas, a physical oceanographer at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. He says that marine heatwaves could be the result of natural temperature swings that become more extreme owing to a warming ocean. Or they could be a signal that global warming is changing how the ocean functions — thus altering the likelihood and intensity of marine warming events. Frölicher says current models suggest that more frequent and intense ocean heatwaves are largely a result of warming oceans. And now, he and his team are working to develop models that can explore marine heatwave trends and their ecological impacts at local and regional levels. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0383-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08471-z#ref-CR7 Tropical cyclones that rapidly intensify are typically associated with the highest forecast errors and cause a disproportionate amount of human and financial losses. Therefore, it is crucial to understand if, and why, there are observed upward trends in tropical cyclone intensification rates. Here, we utilize two observational datasets to calculate 24-hour wind speed changes over the period 1982–2009. We compare the observed trends to natural variability in bias-corrected, high-resolution, global coupled model experiments that accurately simulate the climatological distribution of tropical cyclone intensification. Both observed datasets show significant increases in tropical cyclone intensification rates in the Atlantic basin that are highly unusual compared to model-based estimates of internal climate variations. Our results suggest a detectable increase of Atlantic intensification rates with a positive contribution from anthropogenic forcing and reveal a need for more reliable data before detecting a robust trend at the global scale.