When and where will a catagory 6 hurricane hit?

[ILLYRIAN]

At present the Hurricane ratings are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Given that sea temps are increasing, climates are increasing,
(even Glasgow has blue sky days) and storm power is on the increase. Add to that is the weather being altered by various governments/ military regimes.
Have you got any theories on the subject?

 

[Ethan Reigns]

About a thousand years ago, temperatures were higher than they are now. We know that the Vikings settled Greenland and raised crops of rye there. You can't do that now - it's too cold. Then the Little Ice Age hit and the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air dropped to 285 ppm (parts per million) and plant life was showing signs of stress with much greater concentrations of stomata (breathing holes) on each leaf. Now we are at about 410 ppm and plants are doing much better. In the dinosaur age, the carbon dioxide concentration was 1100 ppm and average temperatures were about 5°C/9°F higher than they are today and this permitted the level of growth that could feed dinosaurs. Snowball Earth was finally melted when volcanoes generated large amounts of gases that had little plant matter to absorb them and the concentration got up to about 7000 ppm.

Hurricanes are fed by temperature difference, not absolute temperature, so the increase in strength is not going to grow to the same extent as the absolute temperatures. Note that water vapour is present in much higher concentration than carbon dioxide and is a more effective greenhouse gas since carbon dioxide has no effect at wavelengths shorter than 10 micrometers but water has an absorption spectrum that goes through a lot of wavelengths. There are no mathematical models that can account realistically for the effect of water vapour, so I do not concur with all the naysayers who predict dire consequences from global warming. Normal temperatures generate infrared from 8 to 14 micrometers and the hotter it gets, the less carbon dioxide affects the weather.

 

[ILLYRIAN]

I'd be interested to know where you got those figures from.

Do you know what is causing the icebergs to break up, they are being made smaller in the water, so when there isn't enough underneath to support the weight of what is above it, parts will break off, and that is caused by increased water temperature.
Mankind is causing much more damage to the atmosphere now than was happening even a thousand years ago, mainly due to the extra few billion people burning fossil fuels and using other stuff that creates atmospheric crap.
It has been recorded that air temp and water temps are higher than what they were before the Industrial revolution.
Where do the hurricanes begin that affect east coast America, try South Africa.
How are they generated, what causes them to get bigger and have faster wind speeds?
Reading your figures one might think you are saying they shouldn't exist at all, but you didn't mention the size or regularity of storms, hurricanes at all, why?

You mention about Snowball Earth was finally melted when volcanoes generated large amounts of gases; mankind is generating the gases far faster than those volcanoes. And there was enough plant life to soak up all that crap.
In your aspect the volcanoes stopped and the plant life grew, well now mankind creates more and more gases and gets rid of the plants.

 

[Ethan Reigns]

The carbon dioxide concentration figures are derived from ice core samples and they are reported extensively in the literature. We are gaining about 5 ppm of carbon dioxide per year.

The interesting thing about icebergs is that they displace the same amount of water as the water they will become when they melt. If you consider the iceberg to be a boat, it follows the same physics - the weight of the boat is equal to the weight of the water it displaces. The weight of the iceberg is supported by the weight of the water it has displaced and since the ice reduces in volume when it melts, you have an interesting fact - if all the icebergs in the oceans of the world melted, there would be NO change in water level, zero, null, nada, nichts, rien. Only the meltback of glaciers and moraines currently on land could raise the water level.

In spite of what the yahoos in the California state legislature say, carbon dioxide is not a contaminant - it is a necessary component of the atmosphere without which, no plants would grow. I am more concerned about the damage to the atmosphere caused by deforestation, especially in the Amazon jungle, which is now becoming pastureland. This takes oxygen out of the air and removes a major sink for carbon dioxide. But keep in mind, the major part of the oxygen / carbon dioxide balance is maintained by one-celled plants and animals in the oceans. Pollution of the oceans is far more important than any other part of industrialization.

The air and water temps are higher than they were in the mediaeval era from about 1300 AD to 1850 AD which some researchers have called the "Little Ice Age". Looking back before that, the temperatures were higher a thousand years ago than they are now.

Hurricanes start in the ocean off western Africa where temperatures that are higher than the surrounding areas cause the winds to circle around one area and this area then migrates across the Atlantic. If the temperature difference between this part of the Atlantic off the coast of Africa and the surrounding area increases, the winds will be stronger. If all temperatures increase by the same amount, the winds will not be any stronger. Based on the recent changes in climate, it looks like the difference is getting larger.

When snowball earth occurred, the world was plunged into deep cold. Plant life only grew near the equator and the cold reduced the chemical reaction times, so they could not change carbon dioxide to oxygen at the same rate as they could in a warmer climate. There was no sink for these gases - the small amount of plant matter could not absorb everything that was being given off. Now, we are looking at higher temperatures meaning faster chemical reactions meaning more ability to absorb carbon dioxide. During the age of the dinosaurs, the carbon dioxide level was higher at 1100 ppm, and the oxygen content of the air was higher, possibly over 33% - you could not get large animals without a higher concentration of oxygen. Plant life flourished as it has never done before or since. It would be an interesting world - people with marginal heart or lung function would do much better but firefighters would hate it.

 

[tickyboxes]

About a thousand years ago, temperatures were higher than they are now. We know that the Vikings settled Greenland and raised crops of rye there. You can't do that now - it's too cold.

Actually, farming in Greenland has been doing very well in recent years. They've been growing barley again for a decade. And Greenland's local climate wasn't representative of the global situation a millenium ago; there was substantial regional variation. It's my understanding that temperatures a thousand years ago were higher than they were last century, but we'd eclipsed that before Buffy first aired, and we're on track to get a lot hotter.

In the dinosaur age, the carbon dioxide concentration was 1100 ppm and average temperatures were about 5°C/9°F higher than they are today and this permitted the level of growth that could feed dinosaurs.

And the sea level was a couple of hundred metres higher than it is today, which would be quite a problem for human civilization if it happened now. Actually, there isn't enough ice to raise the level that much, since a lot of the difference is due to geological changes, but even the 70 metres or so that all the world's ice melting could cause would be quite bad enough. Check out the National Geographic map:

 

[GwenRaiden]

Scotland is nice and hilly. We'll be fine. 🙂

 

[ILLYRIAN]

Ethan Reigns.
A question I asked was where did those figures you used come from, the closest I go finding an answer was they are reported extensively in the literature. If I'm right then what literature are you referring to.
Gwen,
how much would the river in Glasgow be affect by another 70 mtrs. of water.

tickyboxes,
A lot of the coastal towns of west Scotland would be crippled by the rise in water. As would the Isle of Arran, much of coastal Scotland.

 

[GwenRaiden]

Gwen,
how much would the river in Glasgow be affect by another 70 mtrs. of water.

Should be fine. I'd just move into the high rise flats in Govan.

 

[ILLYRIAN]

Gwen,
If you start saving up now you could get a nice sail boat, chances are fuel will cost to much and who wants to have to row a boat?

 

[GwenRaiden]

I'd just need some sails! I'm actually a great sailor. More water and more wind would be ideal for me.

 

[Ethan Reigns]

Recent carbon dioxide history:

ESRL Global Monitoring Division - Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network

and showing large amounts hundreds of millions of years ago:

Carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Even a relatively unscientific collection of data that can be found by Google shows this story - a rise in carbon dioxide until plant life proliferated enough to absorb it and convert it to oxygen. Data from the Vostok core from east Antarctica for the past 420,000 years with the current date on the left:

Carbon dioxide going much further back:

 

[tickyboxes]

Even a relatively unscientific collection of data that can be found by Google shows this story - a rise in carbon dioxide until plant life proliferated enough to absorb it and convert it to oxygen. Data from the Vostok core from east Antarctica for the past 420,000 years with the current date on the left:

The current data is actually on the right, showing relatively rapid spikes in CO2 about every 100k years when major glacial periods end, followed by gradual decline. Rather crucially, it's missing the last couple of hundred years. This is a better graph, though even it's significantly out of date, as levels have since reached 400ppm:

CO2 levels haven't been this high for 20 million years or so, around the time apes started to diverge from monkeys. Ook!

 

[Blaze]

To be fair, everyone is kinda right here. This is not the first time we see this trend in history. But yes, the trend is happening much faster than it should.

 

[ILLYRIAN]

True this scenario has happened before but then it appears to have been through natural sources, what is happening now seems to be man made and it is happening a lot faster. When that happens the effects tend to be more extreme.
So maybe the time is right, for this thread, to leave the past out of it and concentrate more on the now.
What is causing the strong winds, how it could it be made better, even examples of governments and or agencies controlling weather patterns and behaviours.

 

[Ethan Reigns]

One of the other considerations is food waste decaying and producing methane that is about 21 times more effective than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. The absorption spectra do not match with different greenhouse gases, so wavelengths that would get through carbon dioxide would be trapped by water or methane. The only gases that are not greenhouse gases are monatomic gases (helium, neon, argon, krypton, xenon, radon) and gases having two identical atoms in the molecule such as oxygen or nitrogen. Triatomic and larger molecules? All greenhouse gases. Diatomic with different atoms (like carbon monoxide)? Also a greenhouse gas. Climate science lives or dies by the correctness of the mathematical models used for predicting the effect of water vapour and so far, no one is even claiming to have that answer.

So far, the most effective (even if inadvertently) policy that helped the environment is the one-child policy instituted by China. The most devastating environmental decision you can make is the decision to have a child who will become a consumer and polluter and will spawn more of them.

There have been a number of government initiatives that were frankly ridiculous and even counterproductive such as gas-hog taxes on cars with poor fuel economy. For some people, it was a badge of honour to have to pay the gas-hog tax so you could be seen as one of the wealthy. What actually worked was a split speed limit - there was a time in the province of Ontario when there was a speed limit of 70 mph for cars and 60 mph for trucks on major highways, so you didn't get a pickup truck unless you needed a pickup truck. You could institute different colour license plates with higher speeds allowed for efficient vehicles with the greener plate. The plague of large SUV's would melt away in under two years.

The 55 mph national motor speed limit in the US was a bust - traffic was on the road longer, there was more congestion and rush hour lasted a lot longer, making matters worse rather than better.

Governments controlling weather patterns? Other than specific instances like seeding clouds with silver iodide to initiate rain, I don't see much in the way of weather control. There is some atmospheric improvement from from water-bombing forest fires but again forest fire smoke reduces the penetration of sunlight, so it is hard to tell if this is a gain or a loss. There was one privately-funded experiment using a 10 x 10 array of oil burners to attempt to generate tornadoes. One test using a 6 x 8 subset of this array actually generated a funnel cloud at about 6000 feet up, but it did not touch the ground. People keep starting rumours of government control of weather, but so far, no one has shown an instance where this happened and the control of something on that scale would require prodigious amounts of power. This is not something that would occur on a small scale - it would take thousands, maybe millions of people to construct something that would modify weather and I haven't seen any job ads for that.

 

[ILLYRIAN]

Hi, I won't make any comments about the gases because I don't understand that sort of thing.
What you said about the one child policy in China could have been of benefit to the world. But the politicians of the world had promoted it to fail by increasing world populations so that more people could pay taxes to pay for the elderly of the last generation. That type of thought means that each generation needs to have more people. The Chinese 1 child policy failed as there is not enough young people to support an elderly generation.
A person might get the idea that governments don't care about the people, they only care about having enough money.

Speed limits seem to have been implemented to get people to travel at speeds that the fuel is most effectively used. But the governments stuffed up by allowing gas guzzlers on the road if the owners paid a little bit more. They allow families to have multiple cars, they allow manufacturers to build gas guzzlers.
The speed limit does not create traffic congestion silly drivers do, and that is the same in most countries of the world. There are too many people driving to many cars on to few roads. Even if there are ten roads home most people use the main road and traffic jams occur.

Weather control. Governments and their agencies have been attempting to control weather patterns for years, what they can't do is prevent the side effects. In England some 50 years ago rain clouds were created in Bedfordshire and quite a lot of rain fell. The side effect was the storm persisted and blew across the country where it joined other smaller storm then in Devon the village of Lynmouth was virtually wiped off the map when a years supply of rain fell in a severely short space of time.
After Chernobyl the radioactive cloud was heading for Moscow the bosses over there sent in planes to make rain clouds. The radioactive clouds didn't reach Moscow but the radiation fell on a town and caused major dramas there, it is still causing major dramas there. Recently a Major Gruschen was honoured for flying one of the planes that caused the rain.
America used weather control to try to attack in Vietnam but the rain clouds didn't always go where they wanted.

Forest fire water bombing is different, as effective water bombing will stop all smoke, generally though water bombing is done to help the ground crews to stop the spread of a fire. Quite often water bombing is only used is areas where vehicles can't get to or when fires threaten structures. On a side note a fire fighter facing a wild fire might take in the equivalent of 750 cigarettes a fire.

It is thought a Hurricane might start when a child walks on a desert in Africa. The very slight anomaly, if it starts at all it will continue and grow until it becomes one of a group of storms that could spark a Hurricane.

It would appear a better strategy to me to stop those storm from growing than to attempt to deflect a Hurricane making landfall on American soil.