The Deluge Thread Pt. 1 (merged)

[DomusAlbion]

Awesome. Any pics?

I'm waiting until 2012 when most of the planned projects will be complete, then I thought I would start a short pictorial essay/thread titled "What We've Done"

The green house is just in the planning/design stage, though I've already started digging the hole out in the garden area. If I can't get the glass free or at a very cheap cost it's not going to happen. We have some glass and I'm getting some free from a local window contractor but it may not be enough.

Best of luck in an uncertain future.
db

Thank you, same to you.

[misterno]

I am reading the below article and something does not make sense. How come the water level in Mediterrean shores of Egypt is rising but nowhere else in the world is experiencing the same?

Is it possible that sea levels are rising only at certain locations? It does not make sense but I wanted to check.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/11/ ... DI20101114

[AgentR11]

You have to first understand that what we term "sea level" is not level with respect to the Earth's center of mass. And way more divergent than just tide and waves. Very recent science has measured it very accurately; and its definitely not spherical.

So, just as the level itself is uneven, there is no reason to expect any induced changes to occur in uniformly level manner.

If you need causes, then you can start with a non-spherical body, spinning very fast, non uniform heat and mechanical inputs (wind & bottom friction); and blockages from continents being annoyingly in the way, etc.

[Keith_McClary]

The article writer seems clueless.

River deltas where the river has been channeled will subside - sometimes called local sea level rise.

The gravitational attraction of the Antarctic ice deforms sea level (the "geode"). If it melted, the geode would change significantly, IIRC highest on US east coast.

[radon]

Also, another process that leads to sinking of some areas and rising of others is the tectonic movements of various parts of the planet's surface. It has been known for decades that the Scandinavian Europe is gradually rising, while Italy and New Zealand are sinking, even at a constant absolute sea level.

The Italian city of Venice is the place where this process manifested itself particularly expressively. The Netherlands is another relevant example.

[ritter]

And don't forget aquifer depletion. Sucking all that water out lowers the land surface.

[steam_cannon]

There are multiple factors that affect sea level:

* Wind patterns can significantly affect ocean height. Climate change is changing wind and ocean circulation.

* The Geode aka gravity from mountain ranges and glaciers distorts water height much like the far away moon does. You don't feel the moon pulling, but it's pulling. So are the massive blocks of ice in the arctic. The ice in the arctic is attracting a hill of water around the poles. If polar glaciers melt, that will shift the mass of the oceans around them and raise ocean height around the equator.

Here are some articles:

Gravity may make sea level rise worse

Everything with mass attracts everything else with mass gravitationally. So the 22 million billion tonnes of ice in the ice sheet are attracting the sea water around them. This lifts the local sea level creating a bulge around the ice sheet. So when the ice sheet melts you not only get a redistribution of the water in the sheet but around it too. Also moving around thousands of cubic kilometers of water could cause the earth's axis to move by as much as five hundred metres which will move where the centrifugal bulge of the earth is acting changing the shape of the earth and the oceans above it.

The overall effect of all this is that the sea level aroung north america and the southern indian ocean could rise an extra 1.5m on top of the 5m already predicted and the sea around west antarctica could only rise 4m instead of 5.

A change in wind patterns could speed sea level rise in California.

Bromirski's team studied the wind patterns that characterize the PDO - that can suppress sea level rise, or strengthen it, depending on the phase we're in. We've been in a "warm" part of the PDO for decades, this team and others say. That looks to be changing.

"When the cycle shifts to its negative "cold" phase, coastal ocean waters will become characterized more by a downwelling regime, where the amount of colder, denser water currently brought to the surface will be reduced. Resulting warmer surface water will raise sea level."

Bottom line: this could catch California's sea level rise stats up to where they are for the rest of the world - even push us a little bit ahead.

[Sixstrings]

It's winter in the southern hemisphere, some extreme weather there too:

Chile hit by 'white earthquake' of heavy snow

A "white earthquake" of heavy snow has blanketed parts of Chile leading the government to declare a "disaster area" in eight municipalities where around 16,000 people were left isolated.

Temperatures plunged to as low as -23 C (-9.4F) in some rural areas as severe snowfall wreaked havoc, leaving people without food supplies, mobile phone signals or radio communications. Miguel Mellado, governor of the province of Cautin, said that in four days from Sunday to Wednesday the area had seen "four months worth of snowfall."

In the town of Lonquimay, around 350 miles south of the capital Santiago, more than 6,500 people were trapped in their homes after snow piled up to 2.3 metres (7ft 6ins), while in surrounding rural areas it was reported to have reached 9ft.

According to the Chilean newspaper El Mercurio, the sub-zero temperatures froze pipes leaving many residents without water while even fuel in car's petrol tanks had become frozen.

(snip)

Although severe cold weather is not unusual in the region, close to the border with Argentina, Mr Pinera described the current polar front as the worst it had seen in 30 years.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/chile/8656274/Chile-hit-by-white-earthquake-of-heavy-snow.html

That's the theme I keep seeing with these successive weather events. "Worst in 30 years," "Once in two hundred years," "A hundred year flood," etc. etc.

This makes sense to me, that global warming would cause more rainfall / snowfall so that we have floods and high humidity in the northern hemisphere, record snowfall at the same time in southern hemisphere.

We'll have to wait a few years and see if "once in 30 years" events keep happening in the same area every couple years that's when you'd know something's not right.

But if the anti climate change camp is correct, then so many records and "once in a hundred years" things have already happened we should be set now for the rest of our lives right?

(I'm still objective though, statistically events can randomly bunch up.. I remember a spat of hurricanes in Florida, I thought that might be climate change but then the hurricanes stopped.. what I look for is continued extreme weather in the same areas more frequent than in the past)

[rockdoc123]

This makes sense to me, that global warming would cause more rainfall / snowfall so that we have floods and high humidity in the northern hemisphere, record snowfall at the same time in southern hemisphere.

We'll have to wait a few years and see if "once in 30 years" events keep happening in the same area every couple years that's when you'd know something's not right.

the thought "once in 30 years" should get you thinking about the cyclic nature of climate. There are cycles on various time scales that are well established and point to natural variation. There are many credible scientists who have been talking about this for a long time. The notion of the 100 year event or the 50 year event or whatever is a statistical measure. I currently live in a city that is 60 years past the "100 year flood event", people living in San Francisco are almost certainly decades past the "devastation earthquake event". If you have ever sat down and flipped a coin you would understand that a 50% chance of happening does not equate into every second flip being a heads event, indeed you could flip tails many times in a row and then flip heads many times in a row to achieve the same probability.

An important point is that North American humidity was actually not that high historically associated with the heavy snowfalls of this year. Not only that but temperatures were not warmer but colder. It was the slightly lower temperatures and longer period of lower temperatures as a consequence of the very significant La Nina event we are just coming out of that caused the nasty winter experienced in North America. It isn't unusual in recorded history. This is natural variation until such time someone can demonstrate conclusively that ENSO events are a direct result of global warming. No one has done that to this point in time. The current heat wave is also well explained by circulation patterns that are neither unusual or unheard of in the past. My parents-in-law lived through the "dirty thirties" and the heat waves and droughts that happened then make anything we experience now pale in comparison.

[stephankrasner]

Climate change is GRADUAL. I don't think that climate has changed enough to warrant frequent major weather events. But there have been some changes that cannot be denied. It's hard to see as a whole in the United States since we have so many different climate regions. But I can tell you for a fact having lived in Pennsylvania most of my life that spring and fall have gotten considerably shorter. While summer and winter have gotten considerably longer. It's the same pattern according to my friends in Korea and Japan, two other countries with 4 distinct seasons.

Climate change can also bee seen worldwide in food yields and crop failures. There are other factors too like soil degradation and water shortage, but those problems don't always apply.

[dinopello]

I haven't read it yet, but this paper in Nature seems to address this phenomena for along the East coast.

Climate warming does not force sea-level rise (SLR) at the same rate everywhere. Rather, there are spatial variations of SLR superimposed on a global average rise. These variations are forced by dynamic processes1, 2, 3, 4, arising from circulation and variations in temperature and/or salinity, and by static equilibrium processes5, arising from mass redistributions changing gravity and the Earth’s rotation and shape. These sea-level variations form unique spatial patterns, yet there are very few observations verifying predicted patterns or fingerprints6. Here, we present evidence of recently accelerated SLR in a unique 1,000-km-long hotspot on the highly populated North American Atlantic coast north of Cape Hatteras and show that it is consistent with a modelled fingerprint of dynamic SLR. Between 1950–1979 and 1980–2009, SLR rate increases in this northeast hotspot were ~ 3–4 times higher than the global average. Modelled dynamic plus steric SLR by 2100 at New York City ranges with Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scenario from 36 to 51 cm (ref. 3); lower emission scenarios project 24–36 cm (ref. 7). Extrapolations from data herein range from 20 to 29 cm. SLR superimposed on storm surge, wave run-up and set-up will increase the vulnerability of coastal cities to flooding, and beaches and wetlands to deterioration.

[rockdoc123]

One of the very big issues is that what is being talked about in terms of continent margins is relative sea level rise. The east coast of the US is one area where there is significant subsidence. The means by which the correction is made for eustasy and isostacy is subject to some error so it might not be that the sea is rising at different rates but rather that the various continental margins are moving up and down at different rates in different places.

[Tanada]

The central UK is being hit pretty hard with flooding.

Heavy rain has led to flooding with people needing to be rescued from waterlogged homes and roads in the south west of England.

The Environment Agency has issued 77 flood warnings mainly in the South West and the Midlands and 132 flood alerts across the rest of the country.

Overnight downpours caused some drivers to abandon their vehicles.

In Devon and Somerset, the fire service was called to 18 rescues of people in vehicles caught in flood water.
'Worst ever'

One of the incidents involved two people who got trapped attempting to rescue stranded cattle.

In Somerset, a crew from Chew Magna went to an address in Stowey Bottom, Bishop Sutton, where they helped a woman in labour to safely leave the flood-affected property she was in.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-20425112

More details at the link above.