You are browsing the archive for hurricane harvey Archives - Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal.
15 May 2018
Scientists Indict Harvey for Colluding with Climate Change to Drown Texas
Title get your attention? Well, it’s true and I don’t write it lightly. In a paper soon to be published, a group of researchers have run the numbers and found where all the record heat in the waters of the Gulf last summer ended up. The indictment is convincing: The heat was laundered by Hurricane Harvey and ended up all over south Texas disguised as a severe flood. Seriously, here are the …
14 November 2017
Attribution Study Shows Hurricane Harvey Floods Becoming Much More Likely
Check out this paper in PNAS today. When the subject of hurricane experts comes up, there are two names that come into the mind of nearly every meteorologist: Kerry Emanuel and Chris Landsea. There are a lot of others, but these two have published a lot of research that gets sourced frequently. Today Kerry Emanuel has what can be called an attribution study on Hurricane Harvey. These studies look at how …
14 September 2017
It’s Time for a 21st Century Hurricane Scale
Most folks are familiar with the Saffir Simpson hurricane scale and while it’s very useful, it also has some drawbacks. It’s greatest attribute is that the public understands it, but I’m not alone among meteorologists who think the time has come to replace it. We need a new scale that will better indicate the destructive potential of a tropical cyclone, and there are some good candidates out there. The main …
26 August 2017
Astounding Model Output Leads to Forecasts We Meteorologists Never Thought We Would Make
I’ve forecasted the weather for 37 years and I’ve never seen consistent model output forecasting rainfall amounts of over 30 inches before. Astounding and astonishing are the only words I can use to describe what I’ve been seeing from the numerical models. Not only that, but it’s the same with nearly every usually reliable model. Could all of the models be wrong? Could this storm fizzle rather quickly once it …
Dan Satterfield has worked as an on air meteorologist for 32 years in Oklahoma, Florida and Alabama. Forecasting weather is Dan's job, but all of Earth Science is his passion. This journal is where Dan writes about things he has too little time for on air. Dan blogs about peer-reviewed Earth science for Junior High level audiences and up.