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This article, Climate change is increasing the chances of a California 'megaflood,' experts warn (link, article posted on NBC website, should be free), and a breathless, banner New York Times headline on, I think, Saturday, The Coming California Megastorm (link, may be paywalled), are drafted in full panic mode. An excerpt from the New York Times article (excerpts amount to approximately 5% of the article and should not present a copyright issue):
Quote:
Originally Posted by New York Times
According to new research, it will very likely take shape one winter in the Pacific, near Hawaii. No one knows exactly when, but from the vast expanse of tropical air around the Equator, atmospheric currents will pluck out a long tendril of water vapor and funnel it toward the West Coast.
This vapor plume will be enormous, hundreds of miles wide and more than 1,200 miles long, and seething with ferocious winds. It will be carrying so much water that if you converted it all to liquid, its flow would be about 26 times what the Mississippi River discharges into the Gulf of Mexico at any given moment.
When this torpedo of moisture reaches California, it will crash into the mountains and be forced upward. This will cool its payload of vapor and kick off weeks and waves of rain and snow.
This "torpedo of moisture", until now, has been called "El Niño" and was identified by Spanish fisher-people off the coast of Peru. This is explained by the Royal Meteorological Society (link, excerpt below):
Quote:
Originally Posted by Royal Meteorological Society
The name El Niño, Spanish for ‘child or ‘the Christ child’, was first used by fishermen along the coasts of Ecuador and Peru to refer to a warm ocean current that typically appears around Christmastime and lasts for several months.....
But during a significant warming event, like the El Niño of 1982-83, the impact was not only upon the local weather and marine life but also on global climatic conditions. During an El Niño event, the warmer oceans supply huge amounts of energy, which means strong convection and heavy rainfall in South America, the Galapagos Islands and California.
The NBC article concedes that this has historical precedent:
Quote:
Originally Posted by NBC article linked above
The state has seen extreme precipitation and severe subregional flooding events a number of times during the 20th century, including in 1969, 1986 (sic, should be 1983, jbgusa note) and 1997, the study notes. But while those incidents hint at the "latent potential" of a future major flood, "none have rivaled ... the benchmark 'Great Flood of 1861–1862,'" the study said.
That event, it noted, "was characterized by weekslong sequences of winter storms" that "produced widespread catastrophic flooding across virtually all of California’s lowlands — transforming the interior Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys into a temporary but vast inland sea nearly 300 miles in length."
Notwithstanding, the articles make panicky predictions of the future:
Quote:
Originally Posted by New York Times
“That’s when it clicked,” said Dr. Sullivan, who is now at the University of Denver.
His findings, from 1982, showed that major floods hadn’t been exceptionally rare occurrences over the past eight centuries. They took place every 100 to 200 years.
Dr. Swain and Dr. Huang looked at all the monthlong California storms that took place during two time segments in the simulations, one in the recent past and the other in a future with high global warming, and chose one of the most intense events from each period. They then used a weather model to produce detailed play-by-plays of where and when the storms dump their water.
The articles concede that this has happened before. There is no proof, other than blind panic, that human activity has much if any role here. Except, of course, that millions of people live there, unlike 1861-2, when the population was sparse. Just as significantly, nowhere does the research support a premise that an increase in government strangulation of the economy will prevent these nightmare scenarios. Perhaps millions of people should not be living in such fragile areas?
Im with Mike on this.. plus anyone who went to school and paid attention would not be afraid .. humans have trashed this earth... we are going to have to pay.
and no, no one on the news told me this.
I'm not panicked at all and neither is anyone else I know.
Besides I thought all conserves were always ready to go meet Jesus anyway.
https://nca2009.globalchange.gov/sou...ine/index.html The current year's drought in the SW may be at least as bad as the worst in history, but several others were much, much worse in the sense of being prolonged (like 50-75 straight years).
Prolonged drought forced the Anasazi cliff dwellers to abandon their territory ~1300AD....I hope things don't get that bad now. I don't want all those Kalifornia Moonbeams moving here and ruining my neighborhood.
https://nca2009.globalchange.gov/sou...ine/index.html The current year's drought in the SW may be at least as bad as the worst in history, but several others were much, much worse in the sense of being prolonged (like 50-75 straight years).
Prolonged drought forced the Anasazi cliff dwellers to abandon their territory ~1300AD....I hope things don't get that bad now. I don't want all those Kalifornia Moonbeams moving here and ruining my neighborhood.
Tailpipe emissions forced the Anasazi cliff dwellers to abandon their territory </sarcasm>
"This will cool its payload of vapor and kick off weeks and waves of rain and snow."
And here in the PNW, we've already had weeks - scratch that, MONTHS - of rain. And we had snow, too, this year.
But I do remember the El Ninos of the very early 80s in the Bay Area. Hills in the Santa Cruz Mtns that had been stable for decades slid, bringing down a lot of houses with them. It's not pretty when it happens.
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