Notes

 

PROLOGUE: 6229 Memphis Street

 

[>] many residents . . . Based upon a survey reported on by the New Orleans Times-Picayune in April 2006, nearly three-quarters of Lakeview residents planned to return to the shattered neighborhood. See Lynne Jensen, “Lakeview Survey Finds Hundreds Are Returning,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, April 6, 2006.

[>] couldn’t imagine living anywhere else . . . For an example of the determination on the part of some Lakeview residents to return and rebuild, see Brian Thevenot, “Family Ties,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, November 25, 2005.

[>] a front-page feature article . . . Martha Karr and Jeffrey Meitrodt, “What Will New Orleans Look Like Five Years from Now?” New Orleans Times-Picayune, December 25, 2005.

[>] Katrina was a mid-range Category 3 storm . . . For the definitive meteorological history of Katrina, see the National Hurricane Center, “Tropical Cyclone Report: Hurricane Katrina,” updated August 10, 2006. Available online at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/TCR-AL122005_Katrina.pdf.

[>] an article I published . . . Chris Mooney, “Thinking Big About Hurricanes,” American Prospect Online, May 23, 2005. Available online at http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=9754.

[>] “We only have one Earth” . . . “Hurricanes and Global Warming: Is There a Connection?” RealClimate.org, September 2, 2005. Available online at http://www.realclimate.org/index.plip?p=181.

 

INTRODUCTION: “The Party Line”

 

[>] Twelve thousand scientists . . . Figures on the AGU event were provided by public information officer Harvey Leifert, e-mail communication, March 3, 2006.

[>] security guards had to police . . . This description of escalator overcrowding at the American Geophysical Unions San Francisco meeting relies upon an account of the event by attendee Mika McKinnon, available online at http://www.sigmapisigma.org/societynews/agu_05.htm.

[>] a Time magazine cover story . . . Jeffrey Kluger, “Global Warming: The Culprit?” Time, October 3, 2005. Available online at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1109337,00.html.

[>] the top science story of the year . . . “Year in Science: Hurricanes Intensify Global Warming Debate,” Discover, Vol. 27, No. 1, January 2006. Available online at http://www.discover.com/issues/jan-06/cover/.

[>] five to ten media calls . . . Interview with Kerry Emanuel, April 26, 2006.

[>] one of the hundred “Most Influential” . . . “Kerry Emanuel: The Man Who Saw Katrina Coming,” Jeffrey Kluger, Time, May 8, 2006. Available online at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1187251,00.html.

[>] all the world’s electricity generators . . . See Kerry Emanuel, “The Power of a Hurricane: An example of reckless driving on the information superhighway,” available online at ftp://texmex.mit.edu/pub/emanuel/PAPERS/hurrpower.pdf. Emanuel estimates that an average Atlantic hurricane dissipates 3 terawatts of power (3 X 10¹² watts) and an extreme Pacific supertyphoon dissipates 30 terawatts (3 X 10¹³ watts). According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, “worldwide installed electricity generating capacity” was 3.71 terawatts in 2003 (or 3,710 gigawatts). (See http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/electricity.html.) So in fact some hurricanes dissipate much more power than the worldwide electricity-generating capacity as of 2003.

[>] Hurricane Epsilon . . . See National Hurricane Center, Tropical Cyclone Report, Hurricane Epsilon, January 7, 2006. Available online at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/TCR-AL302005_Epsilon.pdf.

[>] the twenty-seventh storm . . . For many months Epsilon was thought to have been the seasons twenty-sixth storm. However, a postseason reanalysis by the National Hurricane Center detected a short-lived and previously unnoticed storm with tropical characteristics, never named, that formed in early October.

[>] built to withstand . . . Interview with Richard Pasch, November 8, 2006.

[>] “I HAVE RUN OUT” . . . National Hurricane Center, Hurricane Epsilon Discussion Number 28, December 6, 2005. Available at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2005/dis/al292005.discus.028.shtml.

[>] weather communiques . . . Interview with Richard Pasch, November 8, 2006 (in person).

[>] “EPSILON APPEARS” . . . National Hurricane Center, Hurricane Epsilon Discussion Number 29, December 6, 2005. Available online at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2005/dis/al292005.discus.029.shtml.

[>] “THE END IS IN SIGHT” . . . National Hurricane Center, Hurricane Epsilon Discussion Number 31, December 6, 2005. Available online at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2005/dis/al292005.discus.031.shtml.

[>] the audience had heard . . . James Hansen, “Is There Still Time to Avoid ‘Dangerous Anthropogenic Interference’ with Global Climate?: A Tribute to Charles David Keeling,” lecture delivered at the American Geophysical Union meeting, December 6, 2005. Available online at http://www.columbia.edu/-jehl/keeling_talk_and_slides.pdf.

[>] a seemingly typical scientific talk . . . Kerry Emanuel, “Trends and Variability in Tropical Cyclone Activity,” PowerPoint presentation at the American Geophysical Union meeting, December 6, 2005. On file with the author.

[>] the flux of energy . . . For more on the role of greenhouse gases in regulating the planetary energy balance, see J. Hansen et al., “Earth’s Energy Imbalance: Confirmation and Implications,” Science, Vol. 308 (June 3, 2005), pp. 1431–35.

[>] This hypothesis . . . Kerry Emanuel, “The Dependence of Hurricane Intensity on Climate,” Nature, Vol. 326, No. 6112 (April 2, 1987), pp. 483–85.

[>] Hurricane damage . . . Interview with Greg Holland, February 13, 2006.

[>] It has been estimated . . . William Gray, “Twentieth Century Challenges and Milestones,” in Hurricane!: Coping with Disaster, ed. Robert Simpson (Washington, D.C.: American Geophysical Union, 2003).

[>] an agency publication . . . NOAA Magazine, “NOAA Attributes Recent Increase in Hurricane Activity to Naturally Occurring Multi-Decadal Climate Variability,” November 29, 2005, noting, “There is consensus among NOAA hurricane researchers and forecasters that recent increases in hurricane activity are primarily the result of natural fluctuations in the tropical climate system known as the tropical multi-decadal signal.” Available online at http://www.magazine.noaa.gov/stories/magl84.htm.

[>] what came next . . . The substance of Emanuel’s remarks on this occasion and the audience reaction were reconstructed through telephone interviews with Richard Somerville, who chaired the panel (February 21, 2006); Judith Curry, who was present (February 21, 2006); and Emanuel himself (January 4, 2006).

[>] “I HOPE THIS IS” . . . National Hurricane Center, Tropical Depression Epsilon Discussion Number 37, December 8, 2005. Available online at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2005/dis/al292005.discus.037.shtml.

[>] Tropical Storm Zeta . . . National Hurricane Center, Tropical Cyclone Report, Tropical Storm Zeta, March 17, 2006. Available online at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/TCR-AL312005_Zeta.pdf.

[>] “THE CALENDAR WILL SHORTLY” . . . National Hurricane Center, Tropical Storm Zeta Discussion Number 2, December 30, 2005. Available online at http:// www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2005/dis/al302005.discus.002.shtml.

[>] hundreds of overtime hours . . . Interview with Chris Landsea, November 8, 2006; e-mail from Dennis Feltgen, National Weather Service, January 4, 2007.

[>] “I SUPPOSE IT IS ONLY FITTING” . . . National Hurricane Center, Tropical Depression Zeta Discussion Number 30, January 6, 2005. Available online at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2005/dis/al302005.discus.030.shtml.

 

PART I: Warming and Storming

 

[>] [This] seems to be a rule . . . Tor Bergeron, “Methods in Scientific Weather Analysis and Forecasting: An Outline in the History of Ideas and Hints at a Program,” in The Atmosphere and the Sea in Motion: Scientific Contributions to the Rossby Memorial Volume, ed. Bert Bolin (New York: The Rockefeller Institute Press, 1959), pp. 440–74.

 

CHAPTER 1: Chimneys and Whirlpools

 

[>] The ancient Mayans . . . As related in Dr. Bob Sheets and Jack Williams’ Hurricane Watch: Forecasting the Deadliest Storms on Earth (New York: Vintage, 2001), pp. 5–6.

[>] The thirteenth-century Japanese . . . See Kerry Emanuel, Divine Wind: The History and Science of Hurricanes (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), Chapter 1, “Kamikaze.”

[>] the fleet of Christopher Columbus . . . Emanuel, Divine Wind, Chapter 5, “Columbus’s Hurricane.”

[>] scattered accounts from mariners . . . For a list of such descriptions, see Henry Piddington, The Sailor’s Horn-Book for the Law of Storms (London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1848), pp. 1–2, noting, “Hence we see that, up to the first ten years of the present century, all that appears known and published of tropical storms and hurricanes was, that they were often great whirlwinds.”

[>] images from Caribbean civilizations . . . Emanuel, Divine Wind, Chapter 3, “Huracán.”

[>] Benjamin Franklin first conceived . . . For an account of Franklins insight, see John D. Cox, Storm Watchers: The Turbulent History of Weather Prediction from Franklin’s Kite to El Niño (Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2002), Chapter 1.

[>] An accurate meteorological taxonomy . . . As Gisela Kutzbach notes in The Thermal Theory of Cyclones: A History of Meteorological Thought in the Nineteenth Century (Boston, Mass.: American Meteorological Society Historical Monograph Series, 1979): “No clear distinction had yet been made between storms of various scale size and origin; in fact, throughout the first half of the nineteenth century authors often used the same general, non-specific term storm, while referring to quite different phenomena, such as hurricanes, tornadoes or large-scale cyclones” (p. 16).

[>] American Storm Controversy . . . My discussion of the controversy draws upon original sources as well as a number of different secondary accounts. The authoritative version is James Rodger Fleming, Meteorology in America, 1800–1870 (Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990). Other accounts appear in Kutzbach, The Thermal Theory of Cyclones; Cox, Storm Watchers; and Jeffrey Rosenfeld, Eye of the Storm: Inside the World’s Deadliest Hurricanes, Tornadoes, and Blizzards (New York: Basic Books, 1999).

[>] Rutherford famously put it . . . In J. B. Birks, ed., Rutherford at Manchester (New York: W. A. Benjamin Inc., 1963). Rutherford is quoted in a reminiscence by P. M. S. Blackett, who writes, “Rutherford’s single-minded and passionate interest in the nucleus led him sometimes to decry the importance and interest of other branches of physics and still more so of other sciences. Though this depreciation was more jocular than serious, his prestige was such that even a joke from Rutherford’s mouth was apt to become a dogma in lesser men’s minds. No very young physicist could be totally unaffected by his famous crack: ‘All science is either physics or stamp collecting,’ or by the often implied assumption that it only needed some further progress in physics to allow us to deduce from first principles the facts and laws of the lesser sciences like chemistry” (p. 108).

[>] has long dogged meteorology . . . For a historical account of the growth of meteorology that highlights battles between empiricists and theoreticians, see Frederik Nebeker, Calculating the Weather: Meteorology in the 20th Century (San Diego, Calif.: Academic Press, 1995).

[>] William Redfield . . . For a detailed account of Redfield’s life, see Cox, Storm Watchers, Chapter 4.

[>] a very important study . . . William C. Redfield, “Remarks on the Prevailing Storms of the Atlantic Coast, of the North American States,” American Journal of Science and Arts, Vol. XX (July 1831), pp. 17–51.

[>] a range of evidence . . . In his paper, Redfield generalized his observations, arguing that “most storms, if not all, exhibit in a greater or less degree a circumrotarive character” (p. 29).

[>] rather than beginning with a commitment . . . As Redfield wrote in one rebuttal to Espy: “The attempt to explain nearly all the physical phenomena of the atmosphere by the theory of aqueous condensation, is not unlike that of him, who, in essaying to climb, should commence at the last and highest step in the ladder. In so diffuse and complex a science as meteorology, it is not by this inverted Baconian process that we can expect to ‘ascend from effects to their causes.’” (W. C. Redfield, “Remarks on Mr. Espy’s Theory of Centripetal Storms,” The Journal of the Franklin Institute, 1839.)

[>] a pot being stirred . . . As Redfield put it in his 1831 article: “Let a cylindrical vessel of any considerable magnitude, be partially filled with water, and let the rotative motion be communicated to the fluid, by passing a rod repeatedly through its mass, in a circular course. In conducting this experiment we shall find that the surface of the fluid immediately becomes depressed by the centrifugal action, except on its exterior portions, where, owing merely to the resistance which is opposed by the sides of the vessel, it will rise above its natural level, the fluid exhibiting the character of a miniature vortex, or whirlpool. Let this experiment be carefully repeated by passing the propelling rod around the exterior of the fluid mass, in continued contact with the side of the vessel, thus producing the whole rotative impulse by external force, analogous to that which we suppose to influence the gyration of storms and hurricanes, and we shall still find a corresponding result. . . .”

[>] “analogy between the tides and currents” . . . William C. Redfield, “Remarks on the Prevailing Storms of the Atlantic Coast,” p. 18.

[>] “mechanical gravitation” . . . W. C. Redfield, “On the Gales and Hurricanes of the Western Atlantic,” U.S. Naval Magazine, 1836.

[>] a book for sailors . . . Henry Piddington, The Sailor’s Horn-Book.

[>] Redfield-Reid-Piddington school of storm studies . . . Many insights about the behavior of hurricanes offered by Redfield and his devotees over a century and a half ago remain valid today. Not only did these researchers identify the rotary nature of hurricanes; they were also aware of the reversal of cyclonic rotation in the Southern Hemisphere. Moreover, they attempted to survey global storm behavior, observing the close similarity between Atlantic hurricanes and Pacific typhoons and noting that storms in the Atlantic often follow parabolic or “recurving” paths, moving west, then north, then back to the east.
Granted, these empiricists could not know what we know now, and many of their statements seem alien or even disorienting when read today. Not drawing a modern distinction between hurricanes and extra-tropical cyclones, Redfield lumped the two together. Some of the storms that he dubbed “hurricanes” originated over land, and some of them dumped snow. For instance, in “On the Gales and Hurricanes of the Western Atlantic,” published in the U.S. Naval Magazine in 1836, Redfield included a chart of the “route of twelve storms, or hurricanes, which have visited the American coasts and seas, at various periods, and at different seasons of the year.” Most of the storms originated over the ocean and followed tracks that seem very representative of the behavior of Atlantic hurricanes. However, Redfield’s storm No. X is described as a “violent hurricane and snow-storm” occurring in December, and storm No. XI was a “violent inland storm” that crossed lakes Erie and Ontario. Neither was a hurricane by modern definitions.
Redfield also thought hurricanes were simply a larger version of tornadoes. As he wrote in one essay, “A full and just consideration of the facts which have been stated, will show conclusively . . . that the storm operates in the same manner and exhibits the same general characteristics, as a tornado or whirlwind of smaller dimensions; the chief difference being in the magnitude of the scale of operation.” (William C. Redfield, “Observations on the Hurricanes and Storms of the United States and the West Indies,” American Journal of Science and Arts, Vol. XXV, No. 1 [1834], p. 6.)

[>] “common sailor-language” . . . Piddington, The Sailor’s Horn-Book, p. ii.

[>] James Pollard Espy . . . For detailed accounts of Espy’s life, see James Rodger Fleming’s entry on James Espy in American National Biography, eds. John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, 24 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); an entry on Espy in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Charles Coulston Gillispie, editor-in-chief, Vol. 4 (New York: Scribner, 1971); and Alexander Bache, remarks made to the Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, in Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution (Washington, D.C.: The Institution, 1860), pp. 108—111. See also L. M. Morehead, A Few Incidents in the Life of Professor James P. Espy (Cincinnati, Oh.: R. Clarke & Co., Printers, 1888).

[>] a major step . . . For this description of Espy’s significance in the context of the growth and history of meteorology, see Rosenfeld, Eye of the Storm, p. 61. Espy’s theoretical innovation seems particularly noteworthy in light of the fact that it preceded the discovery of the First Law of Thermodynamics, which states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, but only converted into a different form. By contrast, Espy worked from a “caloric” theory, which envisioned heat as a substance rather than as being interchangeable with work as stipulated by the first law. (See Kutzbach, The Thermal Theory of Cyclones, pp. 43–44.)

[>] all storms were the same . . . As Espy put it, “it is believed that all the phenomena of rains, hails, snows and water spouts, change of winds and depressions of the barometer follow as easy and natural corollaries from the theory here advanced, that there is an expansion of the air containing transparent water vapour when that vapour is condensed into water.” Quoted in Cox, Storm Watchers, p. 37.

[>] writing in 1835 . . . Quoted in Rosenfeld, Eye of the Storm, p. 56.

[>] a bile-filled 1839 rebuttal . . . Redfield, “Remarks on Mr. Espy’s Theory.”

[>] the growth of American meteorology . . . On the institutional changes brought about by the American Storm Controversy and its long-lasting nature, see Fleming, Meteorology in America.

[>] the most memorable commentary . . . Quoted in Fleming, Meteorology in America, p. 23.

[>] the conflict turned . . . For the differing scientific methodologies of Redfield and Espy, see Rosenfeld, Eye of the Storm, pp. 69–70.

[>] Matters came to a head . . . For an account of this episode, see Fleming, Meteorology in America, pp. 97—98.

[>] Elias Loomis . . . For an account of Loomis’s life, see Cox, Storm Watchers, Chapter 6.

[>] intensively studying . . . Loomis decided to undertake a detailed retrospective study of a particularly well-documented winter snowstorm that had occurred in December 1836. (See Kutzbach, The Thermal Theory of Cyclones, pp. 29–35.) Examining data on barometric pressure, temperature, and other measurements from dozens of outposts and locations across the country, he pieced together an image of a storm very different from the hurricanes that had drawn most of Redfield’s attention. It was a mid-latitude or extra-tropical cyclone, and as Loomis realized, its winds blew at one another in such a way that cold air lifted warm air above it—which, in turn, led to condensation of water vapor and thus precipitation.
Like hurricanes, extra-tropical cyclones have spiraling winds. But Loomis’s observations of this particular storm were too limited in extent to actually detect them (a defect he would remedy in later studies). Already, however, he had done a good job of describing what meteorologists now call a cold front. In subsequent examinations of other mid-latitude cyclones, meanwhile, Loomis detected the storms’ spiraling winds. But like Espy, he also highlighted the importance of latent heat release, postulating a storm that, thanks to rising heated air, pulls in additional moist air from below and thus “gains violence by its own action.” (Quoted in Kutzbach, The Thermal Theory of Cyclones, p. 34.)

[>] statistical studies . . . See Kutzbach, The Thermal Theory of Cyclones, pp. 123–24.

[>] a synoptic chart or weather map . . . For an account that complicates the standard narrative of how the practice of mapping the weather developed, see Katharine Anderson, “Mapping Meteorology,” in Intimate Universality: Local and Global Themes in the History of Weather and Climate, Fleming, Jankovic, and Coen, eds. (Sagamore Beach, Mass.: Science History Publications, 2006).

[>] George Bliss . . . Quoted in Mark Monmonier, Air Apparent: How Meteorologists Learned to Map, Predict, and Dramatize Weather (Chicago, 111.: University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. 10.

[>] William Ferrel . . . For more on Ferrel’s life, see Cleveland Abbe, “Memoir of William Ferrel, 1817–1891,” with Ferrel’s “Autobiographical Sketch,” National Academy of Sciences. Biographical Memoirs (Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, 1895), pp. 265–309.

[>] “dynamical meteorologist” . . . See Nebeker, Calculating the Weather, p. 28. For more on Ferrel, see Fleming, Meteorology in America, pp. 136–40.

[>] the Coriolis force . . . See Anders Persson, “How Do We Understand the Coriolis Force?” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 79, No. 7 (July 1998). Available online at http://www.ap.cityu.edu.hk/Ap8813/References/Coriolis/Coriolis.pdf. See also Persson, “The Coriolis Effect: Four centuries of conflict between common sense and mathematics, Part I: A history to 1885.” History of Meteorology 2 (2005), pp. 1–24. Available online at http://www.meteohistory.org/2005historyofmeteorology2/01persson.pdf.

[>] “to the right” . . . Quoted in Fleming, Meteorology in America, p. 138.

[>] did not draw firm distinctions . . . For Ferrel’s failure to distinguish between tropical and extra-tropical cyclones, see Kutzbach, The Thermal Theory of Cyclones, pp. 141–42.

[>] popular misconceptions . . . For a debunking of myths associated with the Coriolis force, see Pennsylvania State University meteorologist Alistair Fraser’s “Bad Coriolis” Web page at http://www.ems.psu.edu/-fraser/Bad/BadCoriolis.html.

[>] in a modified form . . . According to James Rodger Fleming, Ferrel was “ a supporter,’ with modifications, of Espy’s convective theory of storms. He held that gyratory storms were maintained by ‘Espian thermal processes,’ but he did not support Espy’s centripetal wind patterns. . . .” Meteorology in America, p. 138.

[>] “First Law” . . . Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962), p. 29.

[>] the aging James Espy . . . See Fleming, Meteorology in America, p. 139.

[>] one of Espy’s contemporaries . . . Alexander Bache, remarks made to the Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, in Annual Report of the Board of Regents, pp. 108–11.

[>] meteorological midgets . . . See Emanuel, “A Century of Scientific Progress,” in Hurricane!: Coping with Disaster, ed. Simpson.

[>] the lower part of the Earth’s stratosphere . . . Interview with Kerry Emanuel, October 19, 2006.

[>] and especially Europe . . . Europe does not experience tropical cyclones at all—or at least, had not recorded any until Hurricane Vince, by then weakened to a tropical depression, made landfall in Spain in October 2005. (See National Hurricane Center, “Tropical Cyclone Report: Hurricane Vince,” February 22, 2006. Available online at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/TCR-AL242005_Vince.pdf.)

[>] types of cyclones . . . See Appendix II, “Cyclone Typology.”

[>] a famous 1921 paper . . . Quoted in Kutzbach, The Thermal Theory of Cyclones, p. 212.

[>] found inadequate . . . Few scientists at the time appear to have made what now seems the obvious move: Use the thermal theory to explain hurricanes and the frontal theory to explain extra-tropical cyclones. However, the Austrian physicist Max Margules did precisely that. See Kutzbach, The Thermal Theory of Cyclones, p. 193.
In general, though, the ideas that had begun with Espy, centering upon phase changes of water molecules, went out of fashion even as most meteorologists devoted relatively little energy to understanding the cyclones of the tropics (where those ideas would have proven much more useful). See Emanuel, “A Century of Scientific Progress”: “The great success of the Norwegian School, led by Vilhelm Bjerknes, and the subsequent linear theories of extratropical cyclogenesis by Charney and Erik Eady in the late 1940s showed that most of the observed properties of middle latitude storms could be explained without reference to condensation of water vapor” (p. 183).

[>] scientific observations were scarce . . . See, e.g., Christopher Landsea et al. “The Atlantic Hurricane Database Reanalysis Project: Documentation for 1851–1910 Alterations and Additions to the HURDAT Database,” in Richard J. Murnane and Kam-Biu Liu, eds., Hurricanes and Typhoons: Past, Present, and Future (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004). As the paper notes: “The tropical storms and hurricanes that stayed out at sea for their duration and did not encounter ships (or tropical cyclones that sunk all ships that they over-ran) are, of course, undocumented for the period of 1851 to 1910. It was estimated that the numbers of ‘missed’ tropical storms and hurricanes for the 1851 to 1885 period are between zero and six per year. The estimate is a bit lower for the 1886 to 1910 period, when it is thought that between zero and four storms were missed. The higher detection for the latter period is due to increased ship traffic, larger populations along the coastlines, and more meteorological measurements being taken” (p. 195).

[>] a powerful hurricane . . . My account of the Galveston hurricane and Isaac Cline’s story relies upon Cox, Storm Watchers, Chapter 15; Emanuel, Divine Wind, Chapter 13; and Neil Frank, “The Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900,” in Hurricane!: Coping with Disaster. See also Erik Larson, Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History (New York: Vintage, 1999).

[>] the Galveston strike . . . Behind the catastrophic destruction and loss of life lay multiple failures. The U.S. Weather Bureau, which had been formed only ten years earlier and took responsibility for issuing hurricane warnings, ignored seasoned Cuban forecasters as well as considerable data about the storms trajectory, incorrectly predicting it would curve past Key West and threaten the East Coast. Instead, the storm cut across the Gulf of Mexico toward Texas. Thus poor forecasting abilities were compounded by jealousy and xenophobia, a particular deadly combination. Meanwhile, Isaac Cline, Galveston’s chief forecaster, did little better. Cline firmly believed that the city, despite its location on a barrier island separating the Gulf of Mexico from Galveston Bay, would be immune to a hurricane’s storm surge. “It would be impossible,” he had written in 1891, “for any cyclone to create a storm wave which could materially injure the city.” (Quoted in Cox, Storm Watchers, p. 120.) Cline went even farther and argued that the Texas coast was generally “exempt” from hurricanes. On September 8, 1900, he was proven utterly wrong. And for this, Cline’s punishment was considerable: His pregnant wife died in the surge that destroyed the city. Again, for Cline’s story, see Larson, Isaac’s Storm.

[>] a Category 4 storm . . . According to NOAA’s analysis of the “Deadliest, Costliest, and Most Intense United States Hurricanes from 1900 to 2000,” that’s the estimated strength of the Galveston storm. See http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/deadly/Table4.htm.

 

CHAPTER 2: Of Heat Engines . . .

 

[>] a tropical depression . . . As reported in Herbert Riehl, “On the Formation of Typhoons,” Journal of Meteorology, Vol. 5, No. 6 (December 1948).

[>] “a bit of life” . . . American Meteorological Society/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research Tape Recorded Interview Project, Interview with Herbert Riehl, September 9, 1989; Joanne Simpson, interviewer.

[>] Born in Munich . . . For obituaries of Herbert Riehl, see William Gray, Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics, 67, 1998, pp. 3–4, and Joseph B. Verrengia, Rocky Mountain News, June 10, 1997.

[>] a powerful December typhoon . . . See Emanuel, Divine Wind, Chapter 23, “Bull Halsey’s Typhoons.”

[>] an entire generation of weather experts . . . See William A. Koelsch, “From Geo- to Physical Science: Meteorology and the American University, 1919–1945,” in James Rodger Fleming, ed., Historical Essays on Meteorology (Boston, Mass.: American Meteorological Society, 1996). See also Roger Turner, “Teaching the Weather Cadet Generation,” in Intimate Universality: Local and Global Themes in the History of Weather and Climate, Fleming, Jankovic, and Coen, eds. (Sagamore Beach, Mass.: Science History Publications, 2006).

[>] a very different problem . . . In 1945, Robert Simpson worked with the U.S. Air Force to establish a school of tropical meteorology in Panama, very similar to the in stitute in Puerto Rico. As Simpson later described it, “This was a program to provide an educational retread for A-course graduates who had been taught temperate latitude meteorology but found themselves ill-equipped to deal with the tropical weather they had to forecast in the western Pacific.” (American Meteorological Society/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research Tape Recorded Interview Project, Interview with Robert H. Simpson, September 6 and 9, 1989; Edward Zipster, interviewer.)

[>] catching up to do . . . For more historical context on the wartime training of U.S. meteorologists and their encounters in the Pacific, see Edward N. Rappaport and Robert H. Simpson, “Impact of Technologies from Two World Wars,” in Hurricane!: Coping with Disaster.

[>] Riehl led the way . . . In a later interview, Riehl made it sound like almost an accident: “Somehow, once you get going in some subjects, everybody keeps shoving projects to you in that area, and the line of least resistance is to do it. So that was what it was with tropical meteorology.” (American Meteorological Society/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research Tape Recorded Interview Project, Interview with Herbert Riehl, September 9, 1989; Joanne Simpson, interviewer.) 33 He served as mentor . . . As Joanne Malkus (later Simpson) has put it, “I didn’t really get the real devotion to meteorology until Herbert Riehl’s course in tropical meteorology in 1947.” (American Meteorological Society/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research Tape Recorded Interview Project, Interview with Joanne Simpson, September 6, 1989; Margaret LeMone, interviewer.) 33 his foundational 1954 textbook . . . Herbert Riehl, Tropical Meteorology {New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1954). 33 an “observational assault” . . . Richard Anthes, “Hot Towers and Hurricanes: Early Observations, Theories and Models,” in “Cloud Systems, Hurricanes, and the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM)—A Tribute to Dr. Joanne Simpson,” Chapter 10 in AMS Meteorological Monograph, Vol. 29, Tao and Adler, eds., January 2003, pp. 139–48.

[>] glowingly reviewed . . . Robert D. Fletcher, Review of Tropical Meteorology, Science, Vol. 120 (1954), p. 600.

[>] such devices . . . Interview with William Frank, May 30, 2006.

[>] radiosonde measurements . . . In Riehl’s “Waves in the Easterlies” report he discusses only radiosonde and pilot balloon measurements. In later work, research using rawinsondes gets reported. See, for example, Herbert Riehl and Ralph Higgs, “Unrest in the Upper Stratosphere Over the Caribbean Sea During January 1960,” Journal of Meteorology, Vol. 17 (October 1960), pp. 555–61.

[>] a pioneering report . . . Riehl was not the first scientist to detect the existence of African easterly waves, despite this definitive early report on them. They were first detected by meteorologist Gordon Dunn in 1940, whose findings inspired Riehl’s paper. See Dunn, “Cyclogenesis in the Tropical Atlantic,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 21 (June 1940), pp. 215–29.

[>] African easterly waves . . . Herbert Riehl, “Waves in the Easterlies and the Polar Front in the Tropics,” Misc. Rep., No. 17, Department of Meteorology, University of Chicago, 1945, 79 pp.

[>] “preexisting disturbances” . . . Quoted in Tropical Meteorology, p. 332.

[>] a national weather radar network . . . Edward N. Rappaport and Robert H. Simpson, “Impact of Technologies from Two World Wars,” in Simpson, ed., Hurricane!: Coping with Disaster.

[>] satellite imagery . . . See Christopher Velden et al., “The Burgeoning Role of Weather Satellites,” in Simpson, ed., Hurricane!: Coping with Disaster.

[>] The first deliberate hurricane flight . . . For discussions of airplane reconnaissance of hurricanes, see Emanuel, Divine Wind, Chapter 25, and Rappaport and Simpson, “Impact of Technologies from Two World Wars,” in Simpson, ed., Hurricane!: Coping with Disaster.

[>] “Around us was an awesome display” . . . R. H. Simpson, “Hurricanes,” Scientific American, Vol. 190, No. 6 (1954), pp. 32–37.

[>] “In the eye of a hurricane” . . . “Eye of a Hurricane” is included as part of The Edward R. Murrow Collection, Disc 2, The Best of See It Now.

[>] the National Hurricane Research Project . . . Again, see Rappaport and Simpson, “Impact of Technologies from Two World Wars,” in Simpson, ed., Hurricane!: Coping with Disaster. See also, in the same volume, Robert C. Sheets, “Hurricane Surveillance by Specially Instrumented Aircraft,” pp. 63–101.

[>] “every pier” . . . Walter R. Davis, “Hurricanes of 1954,” Monthly Weather Review, December 1954, pp. 370–73. Available online at http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hurdat/mwr_pdf/1954.pdf.

[>] abrasive personality . . . Interview with Robert and Joanne Simpson, October 12, 2006.

[>] he rejected all of them . . . As Robert Simpson related in a 1989 interview: “One of the people quite anxious to head this project was Herbert Riehl, without question the most notable tropical meteorologist of the time. While Dr. Reichelderfer recognized that Dr. Riehl had scientific credentials for the job, he was concerned whether Riehl, as a line manager, would be able to interface effectively with such diverse groups as he would have to deal with persuasively, not only on the scientific front, but with political figures, engineering groups, the military, contract support groups, and others across the nation upon whom the success of the project would depend. While I didn’t know at the time what was happening in the recruitment effort, I learned later that Riehl had been offered a number of options for playing a leading role in the project, but not that of director. He rejected them all. His failure to be appointed director was unquestionably a bitter disappointment—understandably so. Unfortunately, his bitterness led to his refusal to have anything to do with the project during its formative months, both in Washington and later at West Palm Beach, despite my entreaties for him to join us. It was not until Erik Palmén and Joanne Malkus visited the project at Palm Beach and became enthusiastic about it that Riehl was persuaded (by Palmén) to associate himself with the project.” (American Meteorological Society/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research Tape Recorded Interview Project, Interview with Robert H. Simpson, September 6 and 9, 1989; Edward Zipster, interviewer.)

[>] NHRP hurricane flights . . . The planes flew at three different levels: 6,000 feet, 14,000 feet, and 35,000 feet, the latter being “comfortable cruising altitude,” remembers Robert Simpson (who was offered the NHRP directorship in place of Riehl). Interview with Robert and Joanne Simpson, October 12, 2006.

[>] “You were supposed” . . . Interview with William Gray, October 12, 2006.

[>] a hurricane’s strongest winds . . . Interview with Charlie Neumann, November 8, 2006.

[>] a wide range of observations . . . Working in this way in 1958, Riehl and Joanne Malkus came up with a famous (and somewhat poetic) notion in hurricane science: the concept of “hot towers.” The key convective activity in hurricanes, the scientists argued, takes place in a relatively few regions of deep cumulonimbus cloud growth that become more prevalent toward the storm’s eye wall, where large amounts of heat are transported high up into the atmosphere. In later studies, including examinations of data accumulated from several days of NHRP flights into 1958 s Hurricane Daisy, Riehl and Malkus confirmed their “hot tower” hypothesis, as well as analyzing other aspects of hurricane structure and the flow of energy through these storms. See, for example, J. S. Malkus and H. Riehl, “On the Dynamics and Energy Transformations in Steady-State Hurricanes,” Tellus, Vol. 12, No. 1 (February 1960), pp. 1–20, noting: “These temperature deficiencies suggest, however, that the moist adiabatic ascent does not take place by means of uniform and gradual ascent of the whole mass in the hurricane but, as postulated by Riehl and Malkus (1958) for the equatorial trough zone, it is largely concentrated in regions of rapidly ascending buoyant hot towers.”
For a history of the development of the “hot towers” concept, see Anthes, “Hot Towers and Hurricanes: Early Observations,” pp. 139–48.

[>] “He wasn’t entirely” . . . Interview with Robert and Joanne Simpson, October 12, 2006.

[>] women weren’t allowed . . . As Joanne Simpson put it in 1989: “I was just involved as a consultant to the hurricane project. To learn about hurricanes and how they worked, I went down a number of times to Palm Beach when they had the project. The hurricane flights there were made by military planes, and, of course, no women could go. A couple of years after that they took along a woman reporter, but they didn’t take women scientists, which made me very mad.” (American Meteorological Society/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research Tape Recorded Interview Project, Interview with Joanne Simpson, September 6, 1989; Margaret LeMone, interviewer.)

[>] attempts to create storm models . . . See, for example, Herbert Riehl, “Some Relations Between Wind and Thermal Structure of Steady State Hurricanes,” Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, Vol. 20 (July 1963), pp. 276–87. The paper outlines a model of a “steady state, symmetrical hurricane” and then examines whether the observations from a number of storm flights match the model.

[>] considerable progress . . . Some of the insights that arose from the early days of storm-flying are now better remembered than others. In 1960, Riehl helped generate one of the more notorious ideas associated with hurricane science: the notion that seeding clouds at the outer part of the hurricane eye wall with silver iodide crystals might weaken the storm by causing more growth farther away from its center—in other words, hurricane modification. Riehl himself was never a great fen of the idea. But his observations during a 1960 navy flight into the outflow regions of the intense and long-lived Hurricane Donna—which devastated the Middle Keys of Florida as a Category 4 storm and later also struck North Carolina and finally New England—helped to set it in motion. Riehl had noticed that the storms outflow appeared to arise from a relatively small area, which suggested to Robert Simpson that cloud seeding might actually be feasible. (American Meteorological Society/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research Tape Recorded Interview Project, Interview with Robert H. Simpson, September 6 and 9, 1989; Edward Zipster, interviewer.)
Before long, such speculations led to the establishment of Project STORMFURY, which attempted hurricane-seeding missions. There have been many questionable ideas about how to weaken hurricanes over the years (a tradition that continues to this day), but the U.S. government actually invested in this one. While STORMFURY appeared to show some positive results, in retrospect the observed weakening in seeded hurricanes probably arose from the storms’ natural behavior rather than anything we humans had done to them. Meanwhile, the project grew controversial, with Fidel Castro claiming in the 1960s that the United States was modifying hurricanes so that they would hit Cuba. It eventually ended in 1983. See Willoughby et al., “Project STORMFURY: A Scientific Chronicle, 1962–1983,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 66, No. 5 (May 1985), pp. 505–14. See also Sheets and Williams, Hurricane Watch, Chapter 7, “Controlling Storms.”

[>] a seminal 1948 paper . . . Erik Palméi, “On the Formation and Structure of Tropical Hurricanes,” Geophysica, Vol. 3, 1948, pp. 26–38. In addition to his remarks on sea-surface temperature, Palméi also drew a firm distinction between tropical and extra-tropical cyclones and postulated that an “upper limit” must exist for the strength that a hurricane can achieve.

[>] Ernst Kleinschmidt . . . For information on his German-language publications, I am indebted to two internal reports from the Joint Centre for Mesoscale Meteorology of the United Kingdom’s Meteorological Office. The first, Internal Report 11, is entitled “An Appreciation of the Meteorological Research of Ernst Kleinschmidt,” by A. J. Thorpe, May 1992. The second, Internal Report 40, is entitled “Theory of Mature Tropical Cyclones: A Comparison Between Kleinschmidt (1951) and Emanuel (1986),” by Suzanne L. Gray, and contains a full translation of Kleinschmidt’s 1951 paper.
The first report provides an overview of Kleinschmidt’s work on atmospheric dynamics and his career in general. Interestingly, it notes that he visited the University of Chicago in 1959/1960 at the invitation of Herbert Riehl. However, Kleinschmidts work on hurricanes as heat engines had been published much earlier, in 1951. In that paper, just as Kerry Emanuel would decades later, Kleinschmidt noted (in translation), “The heat removed from the sea by the storm is the basic energy source of the typhoon. In comparison to it, the latent heat of water vapour, which the air carries with it from the outside, plays no more than a secondary role.” The paper is “Principles of the Theory of Tropical Cyclones,” Archiv fur Meteorologie, Geophysik und Bioklimatologie, Vienna, Vol. 4a (1951), pp. 53—72. It shows a strong familiarity with the works of Riehl.

[>] a 1950 paper . . . Herbert Riehl, “A Model of Hurricane Formation,” Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 21 (September 1950), pp. 917–25.

[>] “heat engine” . . . In later work, Riehl combined the heat-engine model with other observational data to further elucidate the energetic and wind structure of hurricanes. In 1960, he and Malkus published a paper on the inflow of air into a hurricane, finding that in order to maintain the necessary pressure gradient, “an oceanic source of sensible and latent heat is required.” (Malkus and Riehl, “On the Dynamics and Energy Transformations in Steady-State Hurricanes,” Tellus, Vol. 12, No. 1 [February 1960].)
In retrospect it appears that Riehl and Malkus stood on the verge of determining, from a heat-engine framework, the correct limit on the maximum intensity of a hurricane. It is this central value that should shift in the direction of greater intensity because of global warming, according to Emanuel. Indeed, as Joanne Simpson put it in an interview with Herbert Riehl in 1989: “Within the last two or three years, Kerry Emanuel did a much more elegant mathematical model of the very thing that you and I did earlier, perhaps in a cruder way.” (American Meteorological Society/ University Corporation for Atmospheric Research Tape Recorded Interview Project, Interview with Herbert Riehl, September 9, 1989; Joanne Simpson, interviewer.)
For further discussion of the continuities between the work of Riehl and Malkus and that of Emanuel, see Emanuel, “A Century of Scientific Progress,” in Simpson, ed., Hurricane!: Coping with Disaster. For a more scientifically detailed account (i.e., full of equations!), see Emanuel, “Tropical Cyclone Energetics and Structure,” available online at http://wind.mit.edu/-emanuel/tropical/Lilly_KE_ver2.pdf.

[>] “Atmospheric machines” . . . Tropical Meteorology, p. 326.

[>] the basic mechanisms . . . In addition to the writings of Riehl, this “how hurricanes work” section draws upon the writings of Emanuel, including the book Divine Wind as well as the article “Tropical Cyclones,” Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Vol. 31 (2003), pp. 75–104.

[>] sea-spray effects . . . For a further discussion of the current understanding on this subject, see Emanuel, “Tropical Cyclones,” pp. 75–104.

[>] Hurricane Wilma . . . National Hurricane Center, Tropical Cyclone Report, Hurricane Wilma, updated September 28, 2006. Available online at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/TCR-AL252005_Wilma.pdf.

[>] “sensitive to slight” . . . Tropical Meteorology, p. 331.

[>] it ought to be possible . . . As Riehl put it on pages 331–32 of Tropical Meteorology: “The temperature anomalies, especially when negative, correlate well with seasonal hurricane frequencies. It is certain that reliable synoptic charts of sea-surface-temperature deviations from the mean on a monthly or shorter time basis could provide a valuable aid for longer-term prognoses.”

 

CHAPTER 3: . . . and Computer Models

 

[>] a very active Atlantic hurricane era . . . For the definition of this era, see Stanley Goldenberg et al., “The Recent Increase in Atlantic Hurricane Activity: Causes and Implications,” Science, Vol. 293 (July 20, 2001), pp. 474–79.

[>] San Felipe/Okeechobee Hurricane of 1928 . . . For the story of the disaster, see Emanuel, Divine Wind, Chapter 17.

[>] Great New England Hurricane of 1938 . . . See Emanuel, Divine Wind, Chapter 21.

[>] 1969’s Camille . . . For more on Camille, see Emanuel, Divine Wind, Chapter 26, and Roger A. Pielke, Jr., et al., “Thirty Years After Hurricane Camille: Lessons Learned, Lessons Lost,” July 12, 1999. Available online at http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/about_us/meet_us/roger_pielke/camille/report.html.

[>] “The old antebellum residences” . . . R. H. Simpson et al., “The Atlantic Hurricane Season of 1969,” Monthly Weather Review, Vol. 98, No. 4 (April 1970), pp. 293–306.

[>] outside the meteorological mainstream . . . Indeed, in a historical overview of the development of knowledge of hurricanes in the modern era, Kerry Emanuel would later write, “A review of the literature on hurricanes published during the first two-thirds of the twentieth century reveals a striking separation between tropical meteorologists and the rest of the meteorological community.” Emanuel, “A Century of Scientific Progress,” in Simpson, ed., Hurricane!: Coping with Disaster.

[>] “It was not that popular” . . . Interview with T. N. Krishnamurti, May 31, 2006.

[>] posthumous stature . . . When Chamey died of cancer at the age of sixty-four, in 1981, the New York Times ran a lengthy obituary. See “Dr. Jule G. Chamey is Dead at 64; Worldwide Leader in Meteorology,” New York Times, June 18, 1981. By comparison, a Lexis-Nexis database search shows that when Herbert Riehl died in 1997 at the age of eighty-two, only the Rocky Mountain News ran a brief obituary—and that, presumably, is because it was a local paper. In 1960, Riehl had relocated from the University of Chicago to Colorado State University in Fort Collins, where he founded its atmospheric science department. See Joseph B. Verrengia, “Herbert Riehl, Pioneer in Tropical Storm Research, at 82,” Rocky Mountain News, June 10, 1997.

[>] Charney’s early career . . . For Charney’s biography, see Morton G. Wurtele, “Charney Remembered,” in Richard Lindzen, Edward Lorenz, and George Platzman, eds., The Atmosphere—A Challenge: The Science of Jule Gregory Charney (Boston, Mass.: American Meteorological Society, 1990). See also Norman A. Phillips, “Jule Gregory Charney, January 1, 1917-June 16, 1981,” available online at http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/biomems/jcharney.pdf.

[>] a “chore” . . . Quoted in Lindzen et al., eds., The Atmosphere—A Challenge, p. 20.

[>] Weather map analysis . . . As noted in Wurtele, “Charney Remembered.”

[>] far too subjective . . . Indeed, Norman Phillips noted: “Much of the change in meteorology from an art to a science is due to [Charney’s] scientific vision. . . .” Phillips, “Jule Gregory Charney.”

[>] “haute problème” . . . Quoted in Lindzen et al., eds., The Atmosphere—A Challenge, p. 49.

[>] the thesis . . . J. G. Charney, “The Dynamics of Long Waves in a Baroclinic Westerly Current,” The Journal of Meteorology, Vol. 4, No. 5, October 1947, pp. 135–62.

[>] “baroclinic instability” . . . For more detail on this very influential meteorological theory, see “Baroclinic Instability,” R. T. Pierrehumbert and K. L. Swanson, Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics, Vol. 27, 1995, pp. 419–67.

[>] origins of extra-tropical cyclones . . . The Bergen School scientists had already described extra-tropical cyclones by invoking the clash of tropical and polar air masses along a front. But Charney had provided the much broader atmospheric context, as well as the equations to explain dynamically why such storms arise. Knowing what to look for, later scientists found analogous baroclinic eddies in the oceans and even on other planets, such as Mars and Jupiter.

[>] The bias was embedded . . . On this point, see Emanuel, “A Century of Scientific Progress,” in Simpson, ed., Hurricane!: Coping with Disaster.

[>] dominant paradigm . . . “It is hard to imagine any phenomenon that, following its discovery, has formed the subject of more dissertations and papers,” MIT meteorologist Edward Lorenz would later write of baroclinic instability. Edward N. Lorenz, “The Evolution of Dynamical Meteorology,” in Fleming, ed., Historical Essays in Meteorology.

[>] different sections . . . Meanwhile, important processes that take place at scales smaller than the smallest section of the model—the formation of clouds, for instance—must be “parameterized,” or represented on the basis of approximations or assumptions. This inevitably requires judgment calls on the part of the scientists designing and running the model, as different parameterization schemes can yield very different results. The overarching aim remains the same: Apply the equations of physics to the atmosphere in a massive computational project that yields useful predictions.

[>] an “exact science” . . . Quoted in Cox, Storm Watchers, p. 154.

[>] dramatically off base . . . For more on Richardson, see Oliver M. Ashford, Prophet—or Professor?: The Life and Work of Lewis Fry Richardson (Bristol; Boston, Mass.: Adam Hilger, c. 1985). See also Peter Lynch, The Emergence of Numerical Weather Prediction: Richardson’s Dream (Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

[>] calculating the weather . . . I’ve borrowed this phrase from the title of Nebeker, Calculating the Weather.

[>] Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study . . . For the history of the Princeton project, see the following sources: Nebeker, Calculating the Weather, Chapter 10, “John von Neumann’s Meteorology Project”; Phillips, “Jule Gregory Charney”; and George W. Platzman, “The ENIAC Computations of 1950—Gateway to Numerical Weather Prediction,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 60, No. 4 (April 1979), pp. 302–12.

[>] an “investigation of the theory” . . . As Charney later wrote of von Neumann: “To him meteorology was par excellence the applied branch of mathematics and physics that stood the most to gain from high-speed computation.” Quoted in Jule Charney, “Impact of Computers on Meteorology,” Computer Physics Communications, Vol. 3, Suppl. (1972), pp. 117–26.

[>] Charney’s participation . . . After publishing his thesis and spending almost a year in the stimulating atmosphere of the University of Chicago, followed by a fellowship that took him to Oslo to visit with some of the leading Norwegian meteorologists, Charney was at the height of his scientific powers when he came to Princeton in 1948.

[>] the first numerical weather prediction . . . The results were later published as Charney et al., “Numerical Integration of the Barotropic Vorticity Equation,” Tellus, Vol. 2 (1950), pp. 237–54.

[>] Edward Lorenz . . . For the influence of Lorenz, see Nebeker, Calculating the Weather, Chapter 13, “The Recognition of Limits to Weather Prediction.”

[>] more accuracy when it came to projecting . . . For progress in dynamical modeling of hurricane tracks, see Kurihara et al., “The GFDL Hurricane Prediction System and Its Performance in the 1995 Hurricane Season,” Monthly Weather Review, Vol. 126 (May 1998), pp. 1307–22. See also Kerry Emanuel, “A Century of Scientific Progress,” and Mark DeMaria and James M. Gross, “Evolution of Prediction Models,” both in Simpson, ed., Hurricane!: Coping with Disaster. Finally, see Sheets and Williams, Hurricane Watch, Chapter 9, “Computer Modeling.”

[>] a significant breakthrough . . . For a comprehensive history of hurricane forecasting, see Mark DeMaria, “A History of Hurricane Forecasting for the Atlantic Basin, 1920–1995,” in Fleming, ed., Historical Essays on Meteorology, pp. 263–306.

[>] a 1972 essay . . . Charney, “Impact of Computers on Meteorology.”

[>] The resultant clash . . . See Katsuyuki V. Ooyama, “Footnotes to ‘Conceptual Evolution,’” presented at the 22nd Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology in Fort Collins, Colorado, 1997, on file with the author.

[>]–51 “there have always been incidents” . . . Quoted in Lindzen et al., eds., The Atmosphere—A Challenge, p. 69.

[>] Charney traveled . . . Interview with Robert and Joanne Simpson, October 12, 2006.

[>] a 1964 paper . . . Jule Charney and Arnt Eliassen, “On the Growth of the Hurricane Depression,” Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, Vol. 21 (January 1964), pp. 68–75.

[>] Vic Ooyama . . . Katsuyuki Ooyama, “Numerical Simulation of the Life Cycle of Tropical Cyclones,” Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, Vol. 26, No. 1 (January 1969), pp. 3–39.

[>] criticized Charney’s account . . . See Ooyama, “Footnotes to ‘Conceptual Evolution.’” As Ooyama notes: “I immediately saw disaster in the model, but Charney did not listen to my alarm . . . It was regrettable that Charney did not pursue his interest in tropical cyclones beyond CE64 [Charney and Eliassen’s 1964 paper]. The name, conditional instability of the second kind, had the dogmatic ring of universality, and took on, later, the aura of an authoritative cover for abuse.”

[>] CISK sought to solve . . . My account of the growth of CISK relies on Anthes, Richard: “Hot Towers and Hurricanes,” pp. 139–48.1 also draw upon Emanuel, “A Century of Scientific Progress,” in Simpson, ed., Hurricane!: Coping with Disaster.

[>] simple models produced . . . See, for example, Douglas K. Lilly, “On the Theory of Disturbances in a Conditionally Unstable Atmosphere,” Monthly Weather Review, Vol. 88, No. 1, January 1960, pp. 1–17, noting, “The conclusion that cloud-scale motions grow more rapidly than those of meso- or cyclone-scale obviously does not preclude the existence of the latter, but relegates their explanation to methods not used in this study. It appears, further, that the smaller-scale motions, because of their compensating dry downdraft regions, tend to discourage development of larger-scale disturbances unless or until an organized meso-scale or large-scale ascending core can be established by nonconvective processes.”

[>] CISK sought to explain . . . Interview with Richard Anthes, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, June 14, 2006 (telephone).

[>] a positive-feedback relationship . . . As Emanuel describes CISK: “A key concept that emerges in this work is the idea that organized latent heat release drives a circulation, which in turn feeds moisture into the system; the key feedback is between latent heating and moisture supply.” In “A Century of Scientific Progress,” in Simpson, ed., Hurricane!: Coping with Disaster.

[>] It has been observed . . . Emanuel, “A Century of Scientific Progress.”

[>] some arguably mislabeled . . . It has even been suggested that “the confusion about the popular acronym CISK is so wide-spread that it has become a useless term in any sensible communication.” See Katsuyuki V. Ooyama, “Conceptual Evolution of the Theory and Modeling of the Tropical Cyclone,” Journal of the Meteorological Society of Japan, Vol. 60, No. 1 (February 1982), pp. 369–79.

[>] “There are fashions” . . . Interview with Doug Lilly, June 5, 2006.

[>] in the tropics . . . Interview with Greg Holland, August 7, 2006. See also Anthes, “Hot Towers and Hurricanes,” noting, “in the real tropical environment, the effect of cumulus convection is to gradually modify the environmental lapse rate towards a moist adiabatic (neutral) state.”

[>] CISK explicitly ignored . . . As Charney and Eliassen put it: “We have implicitly assumed that the depression forms over the tropical oceans where there is always a source of near-saturated air in the surface boundary layer. However, we shall ignore any flux of sensible heat from the water surface.”

[>] a “setback” for the field . . . Emanuel, “A Century of Scientific Progress,” noting, “In many ways, the advent of CISK was a setback for tropical meteorology and for the study of hurricanes in particular.”

[>] “Don’t bury me” . . . See Ooyama, “Footnotes to ‘Conceptual Evolution.’”

[>] Riehl also argued . . . Interview with William Gray, October 12, 2006.

[>] the trajectory of research . . . My account of the development of climate science in this section draws upon James Rodger Fleming, Historical Perspectives on Climate Change (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), and Spencer R. Weart, The Discovery of Global Warming (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003).

[>] first discovered the greenhouse effect . . . “The solar heat possesses . . . the power of crossing an atmosphere; but, when the heat is absorbed by the planet, it is so changed in quality that the rays emanating from the planet cannot get with the same freedom back into space,” wrote Tyndall in 1859. “Thus the atmosphere admits of the entrance of the solar heat, but checks its exit; and the result is a tendency to accumulate heat at the surface of the planet.” Quoted in Fleming, Historical Perspectives on Climate Change, Chapter 6, p. 66. For more on Tyndall, see also Weart, The Discovery of Global Warming.

[>] Svante Arrhenius . . . On Arrhenius, again, see Fleming, Historical Perspectives on Climate Change, Chapter 6. Like Tyndall, Arrhenius was most interested in explaining how the ice ages of the past may have occurred (i.e., global cooling), and didn’t seriously worry about the likelihood of dramatic global warming. He assumed it would take thousands of years to double the concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere. When Arrhenius won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1903, it wasn’t for anything involving greenhouse warming, but for his work on the role of electricity in chemical reactions.

[>] climate science developed unevenly . . . During the Enlightenment and in early America, many theories linking climatic changes to the growth and prosperity of civilizations had flourished. See Fleming, Historical Perspectives on Climate Change, Chapters 1, 2, and 4. By the opening decades of the twentieth century, however, the view had taken hold that climate was “stable by definition,” as historian Spencer Weart notes it in The Discovery of Global Warming. The notion that human beings could alter the climate through their own actions remained, at best, a little-heeded speculation, hardly powerful enough to counter the widespread assumption that our activities simply cannot rival the tremendous forces of nature. The study of climate, meanwhile, was a “sleepy backwater,” writes Weart.

[>] the new concern about climate change . . . The reawakening began in the late 1930s with Guy Stewart Callendar, a British engineer who dabbled in climate research. Temperatures had been steadily rising throughout the Northern Hemisphere, and Callendar, who tracked the growing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, thought humans were responsible. Not that he had much of a problem with that: Like previous scientists, Callendar thought global warming would be beneficial, that it would save us from the return of the “deadly glaciers” (quoted in Fleming, Historical Perspectives on Climate Change, p. 115). His publications, however, helped generate renewed discussion of the issue and set the stage for its reemergence. For more on Callendar, see James Rodger Fleming, The Callendar Effect: The Life and Times of Guy Stewart Callendar, the Scientist who Established the Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climate Change (Boston, Mass.: American Meteorological Society, 2006).

[>] several breakthrough papers . . . See, for example, Syukuro Manabe and Robert F. Strickler, “Thermal Equilibrium of the Atmosphere with a Convective Adjustment,” Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, Vol. 21 (July 1964), pp. 361–85; and Syukuro Manabe and Richard T. Wetherald, “Thermal Equilibrium of the Atmosphere with a Given Distribution of Relative Humidity,” Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, Vol. 24, No. 3 (May 1967), pp. 241–59. Manabe’s team had constructed a very simple one-dimensional model that simulated the vertical transfer of heat between the sun, the upper atmosphere, and the Earths surface. It contained a role not only for radiation, but also for convection: Rising currents of warm air (often saturated with evaporated water) carried heat upward, cooling the surface and helping to offset heating from the sun or due to the greenhouse effect. The model was called a “radiative convective equilibrium” model, and its core elements would later get incorporated into the architecture of the more complex GCMs that several different groups of scientists were steadily improving.

[>] Hansen’s group got 4 degrees . . . This modeling history is related in Weart, The Discovery of Global Warming, Chapter 5, “Public Warnings.”

[>] a 1970 paper . . . Syukuro Manabe et al., “Tropical Circulation in a Time-Integration of a Global Model of the Atmosphere,” Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, Vol. 27 (July 1970), pp. 580–612.

[>] involved in climate science . . . Charney’s climate research also included very influential work on the formation of deserts. In a 1975 paper, he speculated about how changes in human land use—due, for instance, to overgrazing—might lead to a decline in vegetation, followed by greater reflectivity of the Earths surface, followed by cooling and less rainfall, followed ultimately by desertification. Charney wasn’t necessarily right on the specifics, but the larger point, undoubtedly correct, was that the way human beings change the landscapes they inhabit could in turn change the climate. See Louis Berkofsky, “Charney’s Influence on Desert Research,” in Lindzen et al., eds., The Atmosphere—A Challenge, pp. 139–41. See also Weart, The Discovery of Global Warming, pp. 101—102.

[>] the Charney Report . . . Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment, Report of an Ad Hoc Study Group on Carbon Dioxide and Climate (Jule Charney, Chair). Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, 1979. Available online at http://www.atmos.ucla.edu/-brianpm/download/charney_report.pdf.

[>] Carter’s science adviser . . . Frank Press, “Science and Technology in the White House, 1977–1980: Part 2,” Science, Vol. 211 (January 16, 1981).

 

CHAPTER 4: “Lay That Matrix Down”

 

[>] “Pistol Packin’ Mama” . . . For the song’s rather storied history, see http://www.nashvillesongwritersfoundation.com/fame/dexter.html.

[>] another fan of Francis Bacon’s inductive methods . . . As Darwin put it in his Autobiography: “My first note-book was opened in July 1837. I worked on true Baconian principles, and without any theory collected facts on a wholesale scale—” The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, Nora Barlow, ed. (New York; Norton, 1958), p. 119 (1993 paperback edition).

[>] nearly interchangeable profiles . . . For a sampling of newspaper profiles, see Jack Cox, “Eyeing the Storm: Nothing Calm these Days for Gray,” Denver Post, September 16, 1995; Diane Lacey Allen, “Forecaster Lives to Study, Predict,” Lakeland (Florida) Ledger, May 26, 1996; Michael Cabbage, “Hurricane Man,” Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, May 31, 1998; Jeff Klinkenberg, “Hurricane Bill,” St. Petersburg Times, May 30, 1999; and Kevin Lollar, “Renowned Forecaster Still Pitching His Predictions,” Fort Myers News-Press, May 27, 2001.

[>] a front-page story . . . Valerie Bauerlein, “Cold Front: Hurricane Debate Shatters Civility of Weather Science,” Wall Street Journal, February 2, 2006.

[>] an interview on CNN . . . CNN, “It’s a new era of hurricanes,” September 23, 2005.

[>] the period of warming . . . For a discussion of twentieth-century global temperature trends, see http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wgl/005.htm.

[>] a seventh-grade paper . . . William Gray press conference, National Hurricane Conference, April 13, 2006.

[>] Climate scientists today suspect . . . Interview with Anthony Broccoli, August 21, 2006.

[>] some journalists . . . One of the worst cases was Peter Gwynne, “The Cooling World,” Newsweek, April 28, 1975. Available online at http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/newsweek-coolingworld.pdf.

[>] A few alarmed scientists . . . See Weart, The Discovery of Global Warming, pp. 80–83.

[>] something of a canard . . . See RealClimate.org, “The global cooling myth,” January 14, 2005, available online at http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=94.

[>] “Ice Age people” . . . National Hurricane Conference, Closing General Session Part II, April 14, 2006, audio on file with the author.

[>] “the only thing I wanted” . . . William M. Gray, “The Misuse of Science and Global Warming,” November 15, 2005, essay on file with author.

[>] a college knee injury . . . William M. Gray, Biographical Sketch in Patrick Fitzpatrick, Hurricanes: A Reference Handbook (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 2006) (second edition), pp. 205–206.

[>] the very first course . . . See William M. Gray, “A Personal View of the Progress in Tropical Meteorology Over the Last 50 Years,” presentation at the American Meteorological Society’s 26th Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology (2004), available online at http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/75447.pdf.

[>] “On the Scales of Motion and Internal Stress Characteristics of the Hurricane” . . . The dissertation was published in the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, Vol. 23 (May 1966), pp. 278–88.

[>] compositing . . . For a discussion of compositing methodology, see William M. Gray, “Hurricanes: Their Formation, Structure and Likely Role in the Tropical Circulation,” in Meteorology Over the Tropical Oceans, ed. D. B. Shaw (London: Royal Meteorological Society, 1979), pp. 155–218.
Gray’s use of compositing was a necessary move in a scientific sense. Due to the sparseness of rawinsonde stations and the rarity of hurricanes, there was never enough data from any single storm to support general conclusions. Similarly, while storm-flying provided great data, it brought with it a wide variety of logistical woes. Compositing, however, allowed for quantitative reasoning about storm characteristics by assembling and combining data from a large number of individual cases.

[>] one of his most famous papers . . . William M. Gray, “Global View of the Origin of Tropical Disturbances and Storms,” Monthly Weather Review, Vol. 96, No. 10 (October 1968), pp. 669–700. Ironically, the paper flirted with the idea of Conditional Instability of the Second Kind, although nowadays that’s hardly its most important feature. Gray initially supported CISK but subsequently became skeptical of it. (Interview with William Gray, October 12, 2006.)

[>] six ocean basins . . . Different names and different breakdowns are used by different authors for the global hurricane basins. In general, I have relied, for my own breakdown and naming, upon the U.S. National Hurricane Center—which, for instance, uses “Atlantic” rather than “North Atlantic”—and upon Chris Landsea’s Hurricane FAQ, available online at http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/Fl.html. The exception is the Southern Hemisphere, where unlike Landsea I have opted to treat the South Indian as one basin and the Southwest Pacific as the other. Here I am following the lead of Peter Webster and colleagues in their paper for Science, discussed in detail in Chapter 9.

[>] traveled the globe . . . For further discussion of Gray’s career, see Sheets and Williams, Hurricane Watch. See in particular pp. 193, 199–202, and 268–71.

[>] a 1979 paper . . . Gray, “Hurricanes: Their Formation, Structure and Likely Role in the Tropical Circulation.”

[>] theoretical and modeling insights . . . Interview with Richard Anthes, February 14, 2006.

[>] hurricanes weren’t a very hot topic . . . As Gray himself complained in a coda to his 1979 paper: “It is [important] that more meteorologists take up seriously the study of tropical cyclones. To date, very few research meteorologists have devoted many years or a high percentage of their time to the study of these systems.”

[>] The lull period . . . See Goldenberg et al., “The Recent Increase in Atlantic Hurricane Activity: Causes and Implications.”

[>] a backwater . . . The 1970s and 1980s were “quiet in the Atlantic, and they were quiet for hurricane research,” as Kerry Emanuel observed in an interview on May 22, 2006.

[>] “When I came through” . . . Interview with William Frank, May 30, 2006.

[>] including Emanuel . . . See Kerry Emanuel, “Nuclear Winter: Towards a Scientific Exercise,” Nature, Vol. 319, No. 6051 (January 23, 1986), p. 259: “[The] recent literature on ‘nuclear winter’ research . . . has become notorious for its lack of scientific integrity.”

[>] Sagan and a group of sympathetic scientists . . . R. P. Turco et al., “Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions,” Science, Vol. 222, No. 4630 (December 23, 1983).

[>] “He took an extremist view” . . . Interview with Greg Holland, February 13, 2006.

[>] The El Niño phenomenon . . . See J. Madeleine Nash, El Niño: Unlocking the Secrets of the Master Weather-Maker (New York: Warner Books, 2002). For an overview of the effect of El Niño on hurricanes, see Pao-Shin Chu, “ENSO and Tropical Cyclone Activity,” in Murnane and Liu, eds., Hurricanes and Typhoons: Past, Present, and Future.

[>] the El Niño connection . . . This discovery represented something of a departure from Gray’s earlier insights on storm genesis. Rather than looking to universal environmental factors that influence hurricanes across the globe, it strongly linked a global climate phenomenon—El Niño—to a pronounced regional effect: the suppression of Atlantic hurricane activity. And unlike much of Gray’s previous data crunching, the El Niño insight sprang from research that he did largely in seclusion. “He did a lot of work on his own late at night down in his basement, staying up to eleven or twelve at night,” recalls William Frank. “And he came up with that one totally on his own, without any students involved originally.”

[>] the endeavor that would make him most famous . . . William M. Gray, “Atlantic Seasonal Hurricane Frequency. Part I: El Niño and 30 mb Quasi-Biennial Oscillation Influences,” Monthly Weather Review, Vol. 112 (September 1984), pp. 1649–68; and “Atlantic Seasonal Hurricane Frequency. Part II: Forecasting Its Variability,” Monthly Weather Review, Vol. 112 (September 1984), pp. 1669–83. The first study lingered on the strong correlation between El Niño years in the Pacific and less active hurricane seasons in the Atlantic. The second outlined the forecasting scheme.

[>] “He was doing all of these empirical things” . . . Interview with Richard Anthes, February 14, 2006.

[>] Hugo . . . For definitive details on Hugo, see Bob Case and Max Mayfield, “Atlantic Hurricane Season of 1989,” Monthly Weather Review, Vol. 118 (May 1990), pp. 1165–77. Additional discussion of Hugo’s meteorological and damage statistics can be found in the 1994 National Research Council report Hurricane Hugo: Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Charleston, South Carolina, September 17–22, 1989, prepared for the Commission on Engineering and Technical Systems.

[>] $7 billion . . . For Hugo’s contemporary and adjusted damage figures, and for a comparison of its intensity with that of other U.S. land-falling storms, see E. S. Blake, E. N. Rappaport, J. D. Jarrell, and C. W. Landsea, “The Deadliest, Cosdiest, and Most Intense United States Tropical Cyclones from 1851 to 2004 (and Other Frequently Requested Hurricane Facts).” NOAA Technical Memorandum NWS TPC-4, 2005.

[>] 1989 led Gray to add another . . . The 1989–90 changing of the forecasting scheme, and the reasons for it, are reported in two articles by Robert C. Cowen: “1990 Hurricane Alert,” Christian Science Monitor, December 12, 1989, and “Hurricane Forecaster Predicts Active Season in N. Atlantic,” Christian Science Monitor, June 14, 1990.

[>] Gilbert . . . For the definitive details on this storm, see Miles B. Lawrence and James M. Gross, “Atlantic Hurricane Season of 1988,” Monthly Weather Review, Vol. 117 (October 1989), pp. 2248–59.

[>] an Atlantic basin record . . . Hugh Willoughby et al., “A Record Minimum Sea Level Pressure Observed in Hurricane Gilbert,” Monthly Weather Review, Vol. 117 (December 1988), pp. 2824–28.

[>] three additional storms . . . See Miles B. Lawrence and James M. Gross, “Atlantic Hurricane Season of 1988,” Monthly Weather Review, Vol. 117 (October 1989), pp. 2248–59; Case and Mayfield, “Atlantic Hurricane Season of 1989.” 72 “In the next ten to twenty years” . . . Quoted in Paula Dittrick, “More Hurricanes Likely in 1990s,” United Press International, April 20, 1990.

[>] coastal population and property value . . . See National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “Population Trends Along the Coastal United States, 1980–2008,” September 2004, available online at http://www.oceanservice.noaa.gov/programs/mb/pdfs/coastal_pop_trends_complete.pdf. See also Roger Pielke, Jr., and Daniel Sarewitz, “Bringing Society Back into the Climate Debate,” Population and Environment, Vol. 26, No. 3 (January 2005).

[>] a 1990 study . . . William M. Gray, “Strong Association between West African Rainfall and U.S. Landfall of Intense Hurricanes,” Science, Vol. 249, No. 4974 (September 14, 1990), p. 1251.

[>] “Stock up on candles” . . . Jim Puzzanghera, “When Senegal Sends a Squall: Hurricane watcher says rain in Africa means an E. Coast battering,” Newsday, September 14, 1990.

[>] the Sahel predictor . . . Interview with William Gray, May 12, 2006.

[>] Today scientists suspect . . . Interview with Chris Landsea, November 8, 2006.

[>] a perspective on Gray . . . Interview with Robert and Joanne Simpson, October 12, 2006.

[>] numerous studies on Atlantic hurricanes and the Sahel . . . See, for example, C. W. Landsea, and W. M. Gray, “The strong association between Western Sahelian monsoon rainfall and intense Atlantic hurricanes,” J. Climate, Vol. 5 (1992), pp. 435–53; C. W. Landsea, W. M. Gray, P. W. Mielke, Jr., and K. J. Berry, “Long-term variations of Western Sahelian monsoon rainfall and intense U.S. landfalling hurricanes,” J. Climate, Vol. 5 (1992), pp. 1528–34; and W. M. Gray and C. W. Landsea, “Examples of the large modification in US East Coast hurricane spawned destruction by prior occurring West African rainfall conditions,” ICSU/WMO International Symposium on Tropical Cyclone Disasters, J. Lighthill, Z. Zhemin, G. Holland, and K. Emanuel, eds. (Beijing: Peking University Press, 1993), pp. 182–89.

[>] successful doctoral students . . . William Gray vitae, on file with author.

[>] a staggering nineteen storms . . . For the official report on the 1995 Atlantic hurricane season, see Landsea et al., “The Extremely Active 1995 Hurricane Season: Environmental Conditions and Verification of Seasonal Forecasts,” Monthly Weather Review, Vol. 126 (May 1998), pp. 1174–93.

[>] Person of the Week . . . Bill Gray, ABC World News Tonight, September 8, 1995.

[>] “I have never seen anybody” . . . Interview with Hugh Willoughby, May 16, 2006.

[>] modelers have even begun . . . For a discussion of this technique, see Frederic Vitart, “Dynamical Seasonal Forecasts of Tropical Storm Statistics,” in Murnane and Liu, eds., Hurricanes and Typhoons: Past, Present, and Future.

[>] Crichton distrusts . . . Michael Crichton, State of Fear (New York: HarperCollins, 2004). As Crichton puts it (p. 570): “Before making expensive policy decisions on the basis of climate models, I think it is reasonable to require that those models predict future temperatures accurately for a period of ten years. Twenty would be better.”

[>] “seething with disgust” . . . William M. Gray, “The Misuse of Science and Global Warming,” November 15, 2005, essay on file with the author.

[>] Gray charges . . . William Gray, Answers to Follow Up Questions relating to September 28, 2005 Senate testimony, on file with the author.

[>] “innate sense” . . . William M. Gray, Written Testimony, Hearing on the Role of Science in Environmental Public Policy, Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, September 28, 2005. On file with the author.

[>] Different scientific commentators mean different things . . . See Carl Wunsch, “What Is the Thermohaline Circulation,” Science, Vol. 298 (November 8, 2002), pp. 1179–80; and Stefan Rahmstorf, “Thermohaline Ocean Circulation,” Encyclopedia of Quaternary Sciences, ed., S. A. Elias (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2006).

[>] Gray and his fellow hurricane scientists . . . Goldenberg et al., “The Recent Increase in Atlantic Hurricane Activity.”

[>] Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation . . . The term “Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation” was apparently first used in print in Richard Kerr, “A North Atlantic Climate Pacemaker for the Centuries,” Science, Vol. 288 (June 16, 2000), p. 1984. As climate scientist Michael Mann recalls, the phrase came up in a conversation between himself and Kerr: “I still remember the question and answer, ‘Dick: So what should we call this?’ Me: ‘Well, we have a Pacific Decadal Oscillation, so why not call this the “Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation?”’”

[>] Gray himself goes farther still . . . Gray’s views are captured in William Gray, “Global Warming and Hurricanes,” presentation at the 2006 American Meteorological Society 27th Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology, Monday, April 24, 2006. Extended abstract available online at http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/107533.pdf. A number of apparently unpublished papers on file with the author also summarize Gray’s views, including “Forecast of Global Circulation Characteristics in the Next 25–30 Years” (1996) and “Climate Trends Associated with Multi-Decadal Variability of Atlantic Hurricane Activity” (1997), co-authored with John D. Sheaffer and Christopher W. Landsea.

[>] much published evidence . . . See Tom Delworth and Michael Mann, “Observed and Simulated Multidecadal Variability in the Northern Hemisphere,” Climate Dynamics, Vol. 16 (2000), pp. 661–76.

[>] climate models link it . . . Jeff R. Knight et al., “A signature of persistent natural thermohaline circulation cycles in observed climate,” Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 32, L20708 (2005), noting, “The results imply the AMO is a genuine quasi-periodic cycle of internal climate variability persisting for many centuries, and is related to variability in the oceanic thermohaline circulation (THC).”

[>] A surprising 2005 study . . . Harry L. Bryden, Hannah R. Longworth, and Stuart A. Cunningham, “Slowing of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation at 25° N,” Nature, Vol. 438 (2005), pp. 655–57.

[>] hard to detect any trend . . . See Real Climate, “Ocean Circulation: New Evidence (Yes), Slowdown (No),” October 31, 2006. Available online at http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/10/ocean-circulation-new-evidence-yes-slowdown-no/.

[>] “all seat-of-the-pants stuff” . . . Real Climate, “Gray and Muddy Thinking About Global Warming,” April 26, 2006. Available online at http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/04/gray-on-agw/.

[>] widely accepted today . . . Interview with V. Ramaswamy, October 6, 2006.

[>] “brain fossilization” . . . Bauerlein, “Cold Front.”

 

CHAPTER 5: From Hypercanes to Hurricane Andrew

 

[>] “The equation was so simple” . . . Quoted in Lindzen et al., The Atmosphere—A Challenge, pp. 25–26.

[>] “more fulfilling aesthetic” . . . Kerry Emanuel, “Response of Tropical Cyclone Activity to Climate Change,” in Murnane and Liu, eds., Hurricanes and Typhoons, quotation on p. 396.

[>] “Our philosophy” . . . Quoted in Jack Cox, “Eyeing the Storm: Nothing Calm these Days for Gray,” Denver Post, September 16, 1995.

[>] Hurricane Gloria . . . For the definitive meteorological statistics on Hurricane Gloria, see Robert A. Case, “Atlantic Hurricane Season of 1985,” Monthly Weather Review, Vol. 114 (July 1986), pp. 1390–1405.

[>] “she followed me home” . . . Interview with Kerry Emanuel, October 19, 2006.

[>] a media conference call . . . Clear the Air Teleconference on Hurricane Intensity and Global Warming, May 22, 2006. Transcript available online at http://www.cleartheair.org/hurricane_briefing.vtml.

[>] its first forecast . . . NOAA News Online, “NOAA Predicts Very Active 2006 North Atlantic Hurricane Season,” May 22, 2006. Available at http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2006/s2634.htm.

[>] Emanuel has another hypothesis . . . The published form of this argument is Michael Mann and Kerry Emanuel, “Atlantic Hurricane Trends Linked to Climate Change,” Eos, Vol. 87, No. 24 (June 13, 2006).

[>] his initial turn toward the subject . . . Interview with Kerry Emanuel, May 22, 2006.

[>] back-to-back papers . . . The second study was coauthored with meteorologist Richard Rotunno of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. The two studies are Kerry A. Emanuel, “An Air-Sea Interaction Theory for Tropical Cyclones. Part I: Steady-State Maintenance,” Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, Vol. 43, No. 6 (March 15, 1986), pp. 585–604; and Richard Rotunno and Kerry Emanuel, “An Air-Sea Interaction Theory for Tropical Cyclones, Part II: Evolutionary Study Using a Nonhydrostatic Axisymmetric Numerical Model,” Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, Vol. 44, No. 3 (February 1, 1987), pp. 542–60.

[>] merely the instrument . . . As the second paper put it: “. . . the CISK mechanism overemphasizes . . . the role played by cumulus convection since the really important interaction is between the developing vortex and the exchanges at the sea surface, with cumulus clouds merely redistributing upward the extra latent heat acquired at the surface.”

[>] “important but it’s not causal” . . . Interview with Kerry Emanuel, May 22, 2006.

[>] a strong corollary . . . As Emanuel’s 1986 paper put it: “in principle, hurricanes might be extremely intense were the sea-surface temperature significantly higher or the lower stratosphere significantly colder than at present.”

[>] Emanuel’s first paper on hurricanes and climate . . . Kerry Emanuel, “The Dependence of Hurricane Intensity on Climate,” Nature, Vol. 326, No. 6112 (April 2, 1987), pp. 483–85.

[>] by about 5 percent for every degree Celsius . . . So Emanuel summarized these results in another paper of his: “Increasing Destructiveness of Tropical Cyclones over the Past 30 Years,” Nature, Vol. 436 (August 4, 2005), pp. 686–88.

[>] a tropical cyclone of unknown intensity . . . See Christopher Landsea et al., “Can We Detect Trends in Extreme Tropical Cyclones?” Science, Vol. 313 (July 28, 2006), noting: “Another major tropical cyclone, the 1970 Bangladesh cyclone—the worlds worst tropical-cyclone disaster, with 300,000 to 500,000 people killed—does not even have an official intensity estimate, despite indications that it was extremely intense.” For more on the Great East Pakistan Cyclone of 1970, see Emanuel, Divine Wind, pp. 221–25.

[>] an almost-as-awful repeat . . . For the details on 02B, see the Joint Typhoon Warning Center, 1991 Summary of Western North Pacific and North Indian Ocean Tropical Cyclones, available online at http://metocph.nmci.navy.mil/jtwc/atcr/1991atcr/pdf/chapter3.pdf.

[>] modest media coverage . . . See “More Violent Hurricanes?” Time, April 20, 1987, and “Science Watch: Are Stronger Hurricanes in Offing?” New York Times, April 7, 1987.

[>] journalists soon interpreted . . . See, for example, Thomas H. Maugh II, “Global Warming Storm Link Probed; Predicted Rise in Ocean Temperature May Increase Winds,” Los Angeles Times, September 20, 1989.

[>] especially those making landfall . . . Matthew C. Nisbet and Chris Mooney (2007), “The Next Big Storm? Understanding news coverage of the hurricane-global warming debate.” Working paper. School of Communication, American University, Washington, D.C.

[>] a 1988 paper . . . Kerry Emanuel, “The Maximum Intensity of Hurricanes,” Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, Vol. 45, No. 7 (April 1, 1988), pp. 1143–55.

[>] conditions far exceeding . . . As Emanuel’s paper put it, “Holding the temperature of the lower stratosphere constant, sea surface temperatures would have to be 6 to 10 C warmer than present values to sustain hypercanes. It is very unlikely that this has happened in the recent geologic past or will happen in the near future.”

[>] surface winds of 500 miles per hour . . . For hypercane winds, see Kerry Emanuel et al., “Hypercanes: A Possible Link in Global Extinction Scenarios,” Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 100, No. D7 (July 20, 1995), 13755–13766, noting maximum winds near the surface of 220 meters per second in a modeled hypercane, which converts to roughly 492 miles per hour.

[>] an “incredible tornado” . . . For the Fujita Scale, see http://www.outlook.noaa.gov/tornadoes/fujita.htm. It has actually been replaced by an “Enhanced Fujita Scale,” available at http://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/ef-scale.html.

[>] extinction of the dinosaurs . . . Emanuel et al., “Hypercanes,” 13755–13766. See also Jeff Hecht, “Did storms land the dinosaurs in hot water?” New Scientist, February 4, 1995.

[>] The press loved it . . . For a brief sampling, see Charles Petit, “Like a Hurricane, but Worse,” San Francisco Chronicle, December 8, 1994; Kurt Loft, “Hypercanes May Have Blown Away Dinosaurs,” Tampa Tribune, September 26, 1995; and Robert C. Cowen, “Could ‘Superhurricanes’ Have Done in Dinosaurs?” Christian Science Monitor, October 10, 1995.

[>] Gore sought to translate . . . For Gore’s early activism, see Weart, The Discovery of Global Warming, pp. 142–43.

[>] a blockbuster statement . . . As Emanuel would later opine of Hansen’s testimony, “I don’t think it was good for scientific research. It was such an outlandish view that it sparked a counterrevolution. We found ourselves in the middle of the Chicken Littles on the one hand, and the reactionaries on the other.” Quoted in Sharon Begley, “He’s Not Full of Hot Air,” Newsweek, January 22, 1996.

[>] “It is time to stop waffling” . . . Quoted in Philip Shabecoff, “Global Warming Has Begun, Expert Tells Senate,” New York Times, June 24, 1988.

[>] Hansen cautioned . . . James Hansen, “Let’s Not Count on the Earth to Heal Itself; Wolf in the Greenhouse,” New York Times, August 1, 1989.

[>] “manufacturing uncertainty” . . . See David Michaels, “Manufactured Uncertainty: Protecting Public Health in the Age of Contested Science and Product Defense,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 1076 (2006), pp. 149–62.

[>] altered his testimony . . . Philip Shabecoff, “Scientist Says Budget Office Altered His Testimony,” New York Times, May 8, 1989.

[>] A group of global warming “skeptics” . . . Chris Mooney, The Republican War on Science (New York: Basic Books, 2005), pp. 61—64.

[>] the “skeptics” attacked the models . . . See Mooney, The Republican War on Science, pp. 62–64.

[>] anomalous satellite and radiosonde data sets . . . See, for example, John Christy, Written Testimony, Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, May 2, 2001. Available online at http://epw.senate.gov/107th/chr_0502.htm. Since then this debate has largely been resolved, as corrected tropospheric temperature data are now more consistent with the results provided by models. See Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere: Steps for Understanding and Reconciling Differences, eds. Thomas R. Karl, Susan J. Hassol, Christopher D. Miller, and William L. Murray, 2006. A Report by the Climate Change Science Program and the Subcommittee on Global Change Research, Washington, D.C.

[>] These two questions . . . For a formal discussion of “detection” and “attribution,” see the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Third Assessment Report, Working Group I: The Scientific Basis, 12.1.1, “The Meaning of Detection and Attribution.” Available online at http://www.grida.nO/climate/ipcc_tar/wgl/443.htm#1211.

[>] “a higher frequency” . . . American Meteorological Society Council and University Corporation for Atmospheric Research Board of Trustees, “The Changing Atmosphere—Challenges and Opportunities,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 69, No. 12 (December 1988), pp. 1434–40.

[>] $26.5 billion . . . See Jerry D. Jarrell et al., “The Deadliest, Costliest, and Most Intense United States Hurricanes From 1900 to 2000,” available online at http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/deadly/index.html. The unadjusted figures for costliest hurricanes during this time period are available at http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/deadly/Table3.htm.

[>] and later told the tale . . . For hurricane specialist Stanley Goldenberg’s account of living through Andrew, see http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Goldenberg/index.html.

[>] wind gusts over 160 miles per hour . . . Interview with Richard Pasch, November 8, 2006. For a narrative account of the experience of Hurricane Andrew from the National Hurricane Center, see Sheets and Williams, Hurricane Watch, Chapter 10.

[>] a 2004 reanalysis . . . Christopher Landsea et al., “A Reanalysis of Hurricane Andrews Intensity,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, November 2004, pp. 1699–1712. Available online at http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1520-0477/85/ll/pdf/il520-0477-85-ll-1699.pdf.

[>] a prominent article in Newsweek . . . Sharon Begley and Daniel Glick, “Was Andrew a Freak—or a Preview of Things to Come?” Newsweek, September 7, 1992.

[>] “People who say” . . . Quoted in Randolph E. Schmid, “Global Warming and Hurricanes: No Proven Connection Yet,” Associated Press, August 25, 1992.

[>] personally wasn’t linked . . . Gray says he does not take energy industry funding. See, for example, Alan Prendergast, “The Skeptic,” Westword, June 29, 2006, available online at http://www.westword.com/Issues/2006-06-29/news/feature_fidl.html.

[>] Patrick Michaels . . . Michaels’s industry ties were documented in Ross Gelbspan, The Heat is On (New York: Perseus Books, 1998 [updated version]), see pp. 40–44. See also Scott Allen, “Global warming debate joined; scientists at hearing doubt threat, activists cite industry ties,” Boston Globe, November 17, 1995, noting, “Michaels contends that global warming is so minor that the media should ‘go find some other issue.’ But Harper’s magazine this week suggests that Michaels has a financial motive to push that view: He has received grants of $115,000 from energy interests, and a coal industry group funds his newsletter . . . Michaels said he publicly disclosed the research funding from industry and denied that it affects his findings. He said he had testified before Congress about his doubts on global warming ‘long before these industry guys knew we existed.’”

[>] “flies in the face” . . . Patrick Michaels, “Andrew’s Green Vapors,” Washington Times, September 14, 1992.

[>] Michaels often criticized models . . . See Mooney, The Republican War on Science, pp. 62–64.

[>] “merely an exercise” . . . Patrick Michaels, “Mitch’s Warming Afterglow,” Washington Times, December 17, 1998.

[>] at their warmest . . . Mark A. Saunders and Andrew R. Harris, “Statistical Evidence Links Exceptional 1995 Atlantic Hurricane Season to Record Sea Warming,” Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 24, No. 10 (May 15, 1997), pp. 1255–58.

[>] “I don’t believe” . . . Quoted in Bill Dawson, “Experts Debate Global Warming’s Effect on Tropical Storm Climate,” Houston Chronicle, October 22, 1995.

[>] Kevin Trenberth . . . Also quoted in Dawson, “Experts Debate Global Warming’s Effect.”

[>] a recipient of considerable funding . . . For example, according to company giving reports, ExxonMobil gave $270,000 to the Competitive Enterprise Institute in both 2004 and 2005. See http://www.exxonmobil.com/corporate/files/corporate/giving04_publicpolicy.pdf and http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/Files/Corporate/giving05_policy.pdf. However, on November 3, 2006, the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Mario Lewis wrote that “ExxonMobil stopped funding CEI months ago.” Available online at http://www.cei.org/gencon/019,05587.cfm. ExxonMobil’s 2006 giving report was not available as this book went to press.

[>] “Blaming hurricanes on recent warming” . . . Robert C. Balling, Jr., “Calmer Weather: The Spin on Greenhouse Hurricanes,” Competitive Enterprise Institute, May 1997. Available online at http://www.cei.org/pdf/1200.pdf.

[>] the Leipzig Declaration . . . “TV Meteorologists Publicly Endorse Anti-Climate Treaty ‘Leipzig Declaration’; Backlash Results After White House Prods Weather-casters to Promote Fears of Global Warming ‘Catastrophe,’” PR Newswire, November 11, 1997.

[>] the 1998 National Hurricane Conference . . . My account of the conference is based on the following press reports: Steve Stone, “Weather Expert Rains on Idea that Humans Cause Global Warming,” Virginia-Pilot, April 11, 1998; Richard Stradling, “Hurricane Forecast; Rain or Shine, Cloudy or Sunny,” Daily Press, April 11, 1998; Peter Bacque, “Climate Shifts Seen as Natural; Weather Experts Discount Human Effects on Warming,” Richmond Times Dispatch, April 11, 1998; and Michael Cabbage, “Hurricane Meeting Spawns Hot Debate on Global Warming,” Austin American-Statesman, April 11, 1998.

[>] “Tropical meteorologists” . . . Interview with Hugh Willoughby, May 16, 2006.

[>] highly episodic in nature . . . Nisbet and Mooney, “The Next Big Storm?”

[>] a journalist called up scientists . . . See, for example, J. Madeleine Nash, “Wait Till Next Time; If a Little Heated Water in the Atlantic Can Create Floyd, What Storms Will Global Warming Bring?” Time, September 27, 1999.

[>] a 1994 paper . . . J. Lighthill et al., “Global Climate Change and Tropical Cyclones,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 75 (1994), pp. 2147–57.

[>] dismissed entirely the notion . . . As the paper put it, “There are grave scientific objections to . . . directly applying climate models, even though at present these have to use coarse grids just because they must represent changes over many decades, to study the statistics of tropical ‘disturbances.’ (Such disturbances are then assumed, in spite of the grid coarseness, to be related to real TCs with very fine structure in their most energetic regions.) Comprehensive climate models are undoubtedly well suited to predicting climate changes, which they do with good consistency among themselves, but that consistency disappears completely when they are misapplied in an attempt to offer direct indications of TC statistics.”

[>] a trajectory of research . . . Manabe et al., “Tropical Circulation in a Time-Integration of a Global Model.” For another early attempt to study tropical cyclones in a GCM, see Lennart Bengtsson et al., “Simulation of Hurricane-type Vortices in a General Circulation Model,” Tellus, Vol. 34 (1982), pp. 440–57.

[>] “like mushrooms” . . . Interview with Syukuro Manabe, August 21, 2006.

[>] either increases or decreases . . . Anthony Broccoli and Syukuro Manabe, “Can Existing Climate Models Be Used to Study Anthropogenic Changes in Tropical Cyclone Climate?” Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 17, No. 11 (October 1990), pp. 1917–20.

[>] more and stronger storms . . . Reindert J. Haarsma et al., “Tropical Disturbances in a GCM,” Climate Dynamics, Vol. 8 (1993), pp. 247–57.

[>] substantially fewer . . . Lennart Bengtsson et al., “Will Greenhouse Gas-induced Warming over the Next 50 Years Lead to Higher Frequency and Greater Intensity of Hurricanes?” Tellus, Vol. 48A (1996), pp. 57–73. Other GCM studies of hurricanes under enhanced greenhouse conditions include T. N. Krishnamurti et al., “The Impact of Current and Possible Future Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies on the Frequency of Atlantic Hurricanes,” Tellus, Vol. 50A (1998), pp. 186–210, and Ruth McDonald et al., “Tropical storms: representation and diagnosis in climate models and the impacts of climate change,” Climate Dynamics (2005), pp. 19–36.

[>] their critical letters . . . See, for example, Jenni L. Evans, “Comment on ‘Can Existing Climate Models Be Used to Study Anthropogenic Changes in Tropical Cyclone Climate,’” Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 19, No. 14 (July 24, 1992), pp. 1523–24, arguing, “Claims that current climate GCMs are appropriate tools for exploring the relationship between greenhouse warming and tropical storm activity certainly seem to be overly ambitious.” Going back farther, see John L. McBride, “Comments on ‘Simulation of Hurricane-type Vortices in a General Circulation Model,’” Tellus, Vol. 36A (1984), pp. 92–93, noting: “The picture that emerges is one whereby the model cyclones are dependent on certain parameters in common with real cyclones but are independent of others.”

[>] “there is no a priori way” . . . Anthony Broccoli et al., “Comment on ‘Global Climate Change and Tropical Cyclones’: Part II,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 76, No. 11 (November 1995), pp. 2243–45. As the authors further noted, “We do not agree [that] empirical approaches are ‘thoroughly sound and appropriate’ while the use of current climate models is not a methodology from which useful information is available.’ Each of these methods has strengths and weaknesses. If one is mindful of the limitations of allot the methods for studying this issue, the use of existing climate models appears to be no worse than the methods employed by [Gray and coauthors].” See also Anthony Broccoli and Syukuro Manabe, “Reply to Evans,” Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 19, No. 14 (July 24, 1992), pp. 1525—26. Emanuel, meanwhile, defended the capacity of global climate models “in principle” to study future numbers of tropical storms, if not their intensity (due to the low resolution). See Kerry Emanuel, “Comment on ‘Global Climate Change and Tropical Cyclones’: Part I,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 76, No. 11 (November 1995), pp. 2241–43.

[>] 1995 report . . . John Houghton et al., Climate Change 1995: The Science of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group I to the Second Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 334.

[>] a group of experts . . . Ann Henderson-Sellers et al., “Tropical Cyclones and Global Climate Change: A Post-IPCC Assessment,” Bulletin of the American Meteorohgical Society, Vol. 79, No. 1 (January 1998), pp. 19–38.

[>] Gray’s empirically derived set . . . As the report put it, “Elementary applications of empirical relationships from the current climate to a future climate are fraught with danger and offer little useful insight.”

[>] a similar theory . . . Holland, “The Maximum Potential Intensity of Tropical Cyclones,” Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, Vol. 54 (November 1, 1997), pp. 2519–41.

[>] maximum wind speed increases . . . See Thomas Knutson, “Possible Relationships Between Climate Change and Tropical Cyclone Activity,” summary prepared for the Sixth International Workshop on Tropical Cyclones, 2006. Available online at http://severe.worldweather.org/iwtc/document/Topic_4_2_Tom_BCnutson.pdf.

[>] employing since 1995 . . . See Yoshio Kurihara et al., “The GFDL Hurricane Prediction System and Its Performance in the 1995 Hurricane Season,” Monthly Weather Review, Vol. 126 (May 1998), pp. 1306–22.

[>] an additional 7 to 20 millibars . . . Thomas Knutson et al., “Simulated Increase of Hurricane Intensities in a CO₂ Warmed Climate,” Science, Vol. 279 (February 13, 1998), pp. 1018–20.

[>] sole focus on storm intensity . . . Interview with Thomas Knutson, August 21, 2006.

[>] and now it’s too late. This concern was expressed by Max Mayfield in his January 31, 2006, presentation at the American Meteorological Society meeting in Atlanta. Author’s notes.

[>] Emanuel led the way . . . See Kerry Emanuel, “Thermodynamic Control of Hurricane Intensity,” Nature, Vol. 401 (October 14, 1999), pp. 665–69.

[>] Close to 600 miles . . . For Floyd’s size, see NASA Earth Observatory, “Hurricane Floyd’s Lasting Legacy,” March 1,2000. Available online at http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/FloydIntro/.

[>] Category 5 strength . . . See National Hurricane Center Preliminary Report, Hurricane Floyd, November 18, 1999. Available online at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/1999floyd.html.

[>] achieving its full potential . . . As Emanuel said of Floyd, “It’s pretty much at its potential—Probably only 1 percent of storms reach what we call their potential intensity.” Quoted by Seth Borenstein, “Conditions Are Perfect for Mighty Hurricane: Meteorologists Amazed by Combination of Factors that Breeds Huge Storm,” Knight Ridder, September 15, 1999.

[>] “any given intensity” . . . Kerry Emanuel, “A Statistical Analysis of Tropical Cyclone Intensity,” Monthly Weather Review, Vol. 128 (April 2000), pp. 1139–52.

[>] “too simplified” . . . Matthew Fordhal, “New Model May Help Forecasters Predict Hurricane Intensity,” Associated Press, October 13, 1999. 100 neither scientist . . . Notes on Kerry Emanuel and Bill Gray debate at AMS Hurricane Conference, Fort Lauderdale, 2000, taken by Julian Heming. On file with the author.

[>] a circus . . . The direct quotations from the debate arise from the reporting of Peter Whoriskey, “Secret Is Out: Hurricane Forecasters Just a Bunch of Blowhards,” Miami Herald, May 30, 2000.

[>] “a Kerry Emanuel roast” . . . Interview with Kerry Emanuel, October 19, 2006.

 

PART II: Boiling Over

 

[>] “Because it demands” . . . Thomas’S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, III.: The University of Chicago Press, 1962).

 

INTERLUDE: Among the Forecasters

 

[>] the conference’s final session . . . National Hurricane Conference, Closing General Session Part II, April 14, 2006, audio on file with the author.

[>] during the previous active hurricane period . . . William M. Gray and Philip J. Klotzbach, “Forecast of Atlantic Hurricane Activity for October 2004 and Seasonal Update Through September,” October 1, 2004. Available online at http://typhoon.atmos.colostate.edu/Forecasts/2004/oct2004/.

[>] Hurricane Opal . . . For meteorological statistics on Hurricane Opal, see Miles Lawrence et al., “Atlantic Hurricane Season of 1995,” Monthly Weather Review, Vol. 126 (May 1998), pp. 1124–51. Note that at least according to Wikipedia, Opal’s minimum central pressure of 916 millibars was the lowest pressure ever recorded in a storm that never officially reached Category 5 strength. I was unable to find any other confirmation of this apparent record. Available online at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Opal.

[>] 1998’s Mitch . . . For details on Hurricane Mitch, see a report from the National Climatic Data Center, “Mitch: The Deadliest Atlantic Hurricane Since 1780.” Available online at http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/reports/mitch/mitch.html. See also the National Hurricane Center, Preliminary Report, Hurricane Mitch, Revised May 4, 2000, available online at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/1998mitch.html.

[>] the Fantome . . . See Jim Carrier, The Ship and the Storm: Hurricane Mitch and the Loss of the Fantome (Camden, Maine: International Marine, 2001).

[>] Hurricane Georges . . . For information about how close Georges came to triggering a Katrina-type scenario, see the New Orleans Times-Picayune’s special graphic illustration of the storms progress, available online at http://www.nola.com/hurricane/images/georgesfl.ashback.pdf.

[>] Hurricane Isabel . . . National Hurricane Center Tropical Cyclone Report, Hurricane Isabel, January 16, 2004, available online at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/2003isabel.shtml.

[>] 239 miles per hour . . . See Sim Aberson et al., “Hurricane Isabel (2003): New Insights into the Physics of Intense Storms, Part II: Extreme Localized Wind,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, October 2006, pp. 1349–54.

[>] Tropical Storm Ana . . . See National Hurricane Center Tropical Cyclone Report, Tropical Storm Anna, December 19, 2003. Available online at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/2003ana.shtml.

[>] a boilerplate section . . . This section appeared in the forecasts as early as 1995. Grays December 1995 “Summary of 1995 Atlantic Tropical Cyclone Activity and Verification of Author’s Seasonal Prediction” stated, “there is no plausible way that increases in man-induced greenhouse gases can be even remotely related to this year’s extremely active Atlantic basin hurricane season.”

[>] a witty story on climate skeptics . . . Joel Achenbach, “The Tempest,” Washington Post Magazine, May 28, 2006.

[>] TCSDaily.com . . . “About TCS Daily,” available online at http://www.tcsdaily.com/about.aspx. The site states: “On September 19, 2006, DCI Group LLC announced the sale of TCS Daily to its editor, Nick Schulz. As part of this process, our previous sponsorship agreements have expired. Updates about the transition in ownership will be posted on this page as they are available.” For more information, see also http://www.dcigroup.com/tcsstatement/ and http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=091906D.

[>] funding in the past . . . ExxonMobil’s 2003 giving report lists a donation of $95,000 to the “Tech Central Science Foundation” for “Climate Change Support.” On file with the author.

[>] retained DCI’s lobbying services . . . Lobbying registration forms for 2005 and 2006 on file with the author.

[>] “Science Roundtable” . . . The “Science Roundtable” can be found at http://www.tcsdaily.com/sections/science_roundtable.aspx#.

 

CHAPTER 6: The Luck of Florida

 

[>] how to interpret other storms . . . For examples see W. C. Redfield, “Remarks on Mr. Espy’s Theory of Centripetal Storms,” The Journal of the Franklin Institute, 1839.

[>] a devastating tornado . . . See James Rodger Fleming, Meteorology in America, 1800–1870 (Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), pp. 31–35.

[>] Cyclone Gafilo . . . My main source of meteorological information on Gafilo has been the Joint Typhoon Warning Center’s report on the storm. Available online at: https://metocph.nmci.navy.mil/jtwc/atcr/2004atcr/SH/StormSH/SH16.html.

[>] minimum central pressure . . . Gafilo’s minimum central pressure estimate is provided by the Joint Typhoon Warning Center in its Annual Tropical Cyclone Report for 2004. Available online at http://metocph.nmci.navy.mil/jtwc/atcr/2004atcr/.

[>] left homeless . . . International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Final Report: Madagascar, Cyclone Gafilo, February 25, 2005. Available online at: http://www.reliefweb.int/library/documents/2005/IFRC/ifrc-madagascar-25feb.pdf.

[>] the ferry sank in the storm . . . See news reports including Agence France Presse, “Survivor found in Madagascar ferry tragedy, 16 corpses recovered,” March 13, 2004; Lloyd’s List, “Survivors recount Samson sinking off Madagascar,” March 12, 2004; Agence France Presse, “Ferry carrying 113 people in Madagascar probably sank: Comoran official,” March 11, 2004; Agence France Presse, “Moroni officials disclose chronology of Comoran ferry disaster,” March 11, 2004.

[>] “Genesis does not occur” . . . Gray, “Hurricanes: Their Formation, Structure and Likely Role in the Tropical Circulation,” in Meteorology Over the Tropical Oceans, pp. 155–218 (quotation on p. 181).

[>] a clockwise spiraling cyclone . . . For NASA imagery of Catarina, see the following links: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/natural_hazards_v2.php3?img_id=12037 and http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/natural_hazards_v2.php3?img_id=12036.

[>] peak sustained winds . . . For official track and intensity information on Catarina, see Ron McTaggart-Cowan et al., “Analysis of Hurricane Catarina (2004),” Monthly Weather Review, Vol. 134 (November 2006), pp. 3029–53. 110 more than 35,000 homes . . . Marcelino et al., “Cyclone Catarina: Damage and Vulnerability Assessment.” Available online at http://www.dsr.inpe.br/geu/Rel_projetos/Relatorio_IAI_Emerson_Marcelino.pdf.

[>] meteorologists sparred . . . See Bernd Radowitz, “Spiraling Storm Hits Southern Brazil as Scientists Disagree Whether It Is South Atlantic’s First Hurricane,” Associated Press, March 27, 2004.

[>] called it a hurricane . . . For another analysis that judges Catarina to have been a true hurricane in the full sense of the word, see McTaggart-Cowan et al., “Analysis of Hurricane Catarina (2004).”

[>] according to their model . . . U.K. Met Office, “Catarina Hits Brazil,” date unclear. Available online at http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/tropicalcyclone/catarina.html.

[>] storms occasionally turning up in the South Atlantic . . . See for example Broccoli and Manabe, “Can Existing Climate Models Be Used to Study Anthropogenic Changes in Tropical Cyclone Climate?” Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 17, No. 11 (October 1990), pp. 1917–20, noting: “Poor aspects of the simulations included the dearth of storms in the eastern North Pacific . . . and the formation of storms in the South Atlantic, where no tropical storms form in reality.” By 2005, however, Ruth McDonald and her colleagues could say. “A tropical storm-like cyclone was observed in March 2004 off the coast of Brazil, in the region where this model produces tropical storms.” R. E. McDonald et al., “Tropical Storms: Representation and Diagnosis in Climate Models and the Impacts of Climate Change,” Climate Dynamics, Vol. 25 (2005), pp. 19–36.

[>] “a problem with the model” . . . Interview with Ruth McDonald, July 28, 2006.

[>] two scientists at the University of Melbourne . . . Alexandre Pezza and Ian Simmonds, “The First South Atlantic Hurricane: Unprecedented Blocking, Low Shear and Climate Change,” Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 32, L15712 (2005).

[>] 24 to 25 degrees Celsius . . . Not all scientists consider the 26.5 degree Celsius “threshold” to be universally required for the formation of storms that can be called hurricanes. In the case of Catarina, while sea-surface temperatures were anomalously cool, cold air aloft increased the potential intensity that the storm could achieve. See McTaggart-Cowan et al., “Analysis of Hurricane Catarina (2004).”

[>] in 1991 . . . See Chris Landsea, “Why doesn’t the South Atlantic experience tropical cyclones?” Available online at http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/G7.html.

[>] in January of 2004 . . . See Jeff Halverson, “A South Atlantic rogue,” Weather-wise, July 1, 2004.

[>] in the Northwest Pacific . . . See Johnny Chan, “Variations in the Activity of Tropical Cyclones over the Western North Pacific: From Interdecadal to Intraseasonal,” in Murnane and Liu, eds., Hurricanes and Typhoons: Past, Present, and Future (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004).

[>] “The potential for mass destruction” . . . Joint Typhoon Warning Center annual report, 1979, p. 77. Available online at http://www.npmoc.navy.mil/jtwc/atcr/1979atcr/pdf/1979_complete.pdf.

[>] fully ten typhoons . . . The Japanese storms were Conson, Dianmu, Namtheun, Malou, Megi, Chaba, Songda, Meari, Ma-On, and Tokage. Not all made landfall at full typhoon strength. For more information see the Joint Typhoon Warning Center’s annual tropical cyclone report for 2004. Available online at: http://metocph.nmci.navy.mil/jtwc/atcr/2004atcr/.

[>] Supertyphoon Chaba . . . For the Joint Typhoon Warning Centers report on Chaba, see http://metocph.nmci.navy.mil/jtwc/atcr/2004atcr/lSrWP_IO/StormNWP_IO/WP19.html.

[>] Typhoon Tokage . . . For the Joint Typhoon Warning Centers report on Tokage, see http://metocph.nmci.navy.mil/jtwc/atcr/2004atcr/NWP_IO/StormNWP_IO/WP27.html.

[>] Hurricane Alex . . . For details on Alex see James L. Franklin, “Tropical Cyclone Report: Hurricane Alex,” October 26, 2004, National Hurricane Center. Available online at: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/TCR-AL012004_Alex.pdf.

[>] Alex eclipsed Hurricane Ellen . . . This record is noted in William M. Gray and Philip J. Klotzbach, “Summary of 2004 Atlantic Tropical Cyclone Activity and Verification of Author’s Seasonal and Monthly Forecasts,” November 19, 2004. Available online at: http://hurricane.atmos.colostate.edu/Forecasts/2004/nov2004/.

[>] “ONE FOR THE RECORD BOOKS” . . . National Hurricane Center, Hurricane Alex Discussion Number 19, August 4, 2004. Available online at: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2004/dis/al012004.discus.019.shtml?.

[>] Charley looked ominous . . . For details on Charley see National Hurricane Center Tropical Cyclone Report: Hurricane Charley, October 18, 2004. Available online at: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/TCR-AL032004_Charley.pdf.

[>] “NO OBVIOUS REASON” . . . National Hurricane Center, Tropical Storm Charley Discussion Number 7, August 10, 2004. Available online at: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2004/dis/al032004.discus.007.shtml.

[>] the low-lying Tampa Bay-St. Petersburg area . . . See Kevin Duffy, “Could Tampa Bay Be the Next New Orleans,” Palm Beach Post, Sunday, July 9, 2006. For a simulation of a strong hurricane storm surge hitting Tampa Bay, see http://www.tbo.com/weather/hurricane/worstcase/. Finally, for a scientific discussion of storm surge possibilities, see Robert H. Weisberg and Lianyuan Zheng, “Hurricane Storm Surge Simulations for Tampa Bay.” Available online at http://ocgweb.marine.usf.edu/Products/StormSurge/TB_stormsurge.pdf.

[>] the storm veered to the right . . . In the wake of the destruction—made all the more severe by Charley’s merciless last-minute intensification—came accusations that the experts had poorly forecast the hurricane’s track. In fact, the ultimate site of landfall fell within the (wide) cone of uncertainty inherent in the official forecast. Because Charley’s northward momentum paralleled the coast, however, its turn to the right (or northeast) translated into a great shift in point of landfall. In the arguments over the forecast, a more important message was lost: Tampa-St. Petersburg will be hit by a major hurricane someday, and when it happens, the destruction could be catastrophic.

[>] an estimated $15 billion . . . See Blake et al., “The Deadliest, Cosdiest, and Most Intense United States Tropical Cyclones from 1851 to 2004,” NOAA Technical Memorandum NWS TPC-4. Available online at http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Land-sea/dcmifinal2.pdf.

[>] “THE HURRICANE IS NOT A POINT” . . . National Hurricane Center, Hurricane Frances Discussion Number 24, August 30, 2004. Available online at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2004/dis/al062004.discus.024.shtml?.

[>] Hurricanes vary so much in size . . . Kerry Emanuel, “Anthropogenic Effects on Tropical Cyclone Activity.” Available online at http://wind.mit.edu/-emanuel/anthro2.htm.

[>] in 1926 . . . See Emanuel, Divine Wind, Chapter 15, “Miami, 1926.”

[>] exceeding $140 billion . . . See R. A. Pielke, Jr., J. Gratz, C. W. Landsea, D. Collins, M. Saunders, and R. Musulin, 2007. “Normalized Hurricane Damages in the United States: 1900–2005,” Natural Hazards Review (submitted). Available online at http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/publications/special/nhd_paper.pdf.

[>] 1935 Labor Day Hurricane . . . See Emanuel, Divine Wind, Chapter 19, “The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935.”

[>] Frances developed several outer eye walls . . . Such unpredictable developments—known as “concentric eye wall cycles”—are one reason that hurricane models have such a hard time getting storm intensity right.

[>] Ivan . . . See National Hurricane Center Tropical Cyclone Report, Hurricane Ivan, updated May 27, 2005. Available online at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/TCR-AL092004_Ivan.pdf.

[>] a city below sea level . . . If for no other reason than Ivan, New Orleanians should not have been surprised by the destruction that befell them a year later. Had it maintained its course toward the city, Ivan could have been much worse than Katrina. After the storm, Shirley Laska, a professor at the University of New Orleans who studies hazard assessment, projected what might have happened from a direct landfall of an “extreme storm” like Ivan at Category 4 or 5 intensity. Among other impacts, she wrote, Ivan would have “caused the levees between the lake and the city to overtop and fill the city ‘bowl’ with water from lake levee to river levee, in some places as deep as 20 feet.” “Hurricane Ivan had the potential to make the unthinkable a reality,” Laska concluded. “Next time New Orleans may not be so fortunate.” See Shirley Laska, “What if Hurricane Ivan Had Not Missed New Orleans?” Natural Hazards Observer, Vol. XXIX, No. 2 (November 2004). Available online at: http://www.colorado.edu/hazards/o/archives/2004/nov04/nov04.pdf.

[>] the biggest waves . . . David Wang et al., “Extreme Waves Under Hurricane Ivan,” Science, Vol. 309 (August 5, 2005).

[>] “AFTER CONSIDERABLE AND SOMETIMES ANIMATED” . . . National Hurricane Center, Tropical Depression Ivan Special Discussion Number 67, September 22, 2004. Available online at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2004/dis/al092004.discus.067.shtml?.

[>] $45 billion . . . See Blake et al., “The Deadliest, Cosdiest, and Most Intense United States Tropical Cyclones from 1851 to 2004.”

[>] tirelessly warning about . . . For another example of such warnings, see Chris Landsea and William Gray, “Florida’s Coming Hurricane Calamities,” Miami Herald, July 23, 2002. Available online at http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/herald/index.html.

[>] because of its extreme winds . . . Interview with Richard Pasch, November 8, 2006.

[>] a pretty good job . . . William Gray and Philip J. Klotzbach, “Extended Range Forecast of Atlantic Seasonal Hurricane Activity and U.S. Landfall Strike Probability for 2004,” December 5, 2003. Available online at http://hurricane.atmos.colostate.edu/Forecasts/2003/dec2003/.

[>] “This year did not behave” . . . William M. Gray and Philip J. Klotzbach, “Forecast of Atlantic Hurricane Activity for October 2004 and Seasonal Update Through September,” October 1, 2004. Available online at: http://typhoon.atmos.colostate.edu/Forecasts/2004/oct2004/.

[>] Gray’s October 1, 2004, hurricane forecast . . . Gray and Klotzbach, “Forecast of Atlantic Hurricane Activity for October 2004.”

[>] a Washington Post report . . . David Brown, “2 Storms in Florida Not Seen as Trend; Experts Don’t Fault Global Warming,” Washington Post, September 3, 2004.

[>] Los Angeles Times . . . Usha Lee McFarling, “Storm Activity Part of a Cycle; Ridges of high pressure are routing hurricanes onto a track across Florida, experts say,” Los Angeles Times, September 11, 2004.

[>] many other factors . . . My discussion of the climatic factors feeding into the 2004 Atlantic season draws upon Brian H. Bossak, “ ‘X’ Marks the Spot: Florida is the 2004 Hurricane Bull’s Eye,” EOS, Vol. 85, No. 50 (December 14, 2004), pp. 541–52; as well as Philip J. Klotzbach and William M. Gray, “Causes of the Unusually Destructive 2004 Atlantic Basin Hurricane Season,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (October 2006), pp. 1325–33.

[>] a telephone press conference . . . “Hurricanes and Global Warming News Conference,” Center for Health and Global Environment, Harvard Medical School, October 21, 2004. Transcript available online at: http://www.ucar.edu/news/record/transcripts/hurricanesl02104.pdf.

 

CHAPTER 7: Frictional Divergence

 

[>] “I can get you guys onto a flight” . . . Interview with Jim Kossin, November 22, 2006.

[>] “We just showed up in Miami” . . . Interview with Chris Landsea, November 8, 2006.

[>] plenty of barf bags . . . An account of the flight, written by Stephen Hodanish, appeared in Twin Tower Topics, a publication for Friends and Alumni of Lyndon State College, Vol. 3, No. 5, Winter 1988–89.

[>] the historic flight . . . See Willoughby et al., “A Record Minimum Sea Level Pressure Observed in Hurricane Gilbert.”

[>] HURDAT project . . . See C. W Landsea, et al., “The Atlantic Hurricane Database Reanalysis Project.”

[>] the hurricane that affected San Diego . . . Michael Chenoweth and Christopher Landsea, “The San Diego Hurricane of 2 October 1858,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (November 2004), pp. 1689–97.

[>] El Niño conditions . . . During the powerful 1997 El Niño year, the Category 5 Hurricane Linda, the most intense storm ever recorded in the Northeast Pacific with maximum sustained winds of 185 miles per hour and a pressure drop down to 902 millibars (26.64 inches), also gave California a scare when some models predicted it might recurve and approach the coast (although those predictions turned out to be way off base). For the official meteorological statistics on Linda see National Hurricane Center, Preliminary Report, Hurricane Linda, October 25, 1997. Available on-line at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/1997linda.html.

[>] San Diego and Los Angeles . . . Interview with Greg Holland, February 13, 2006.

[>] one very widely cited 2001 paper . . . Goldenberg et al., “The Recent Increase in Atlantic Hurricane Activity.”

[>] in media interviews . . . See, for example, Heather J. Carlson, “Global Warming Cited in Storms,” Washington Times, October 22, 2004, and Usha Lee McFarling, “Storm Activity Part of a Cycle; Ridges of High Pressure are Routing Hurricanes onto a Track Across Florida, Experts Say,” Los Angeles Times, September 11, 2004.

[>] a study in late September 2004 . . . The Knutson and Tuleya study was published online by the Journal of Climate on Tuesday, September 28, 2004. See Andrew Revkin, “Global Warming Is Expected to Raise Hurricane Intensity,” New York Times, September 30, 2004.

[>] Any consistent results . . . Thomas Knutson and Robert Tuleya, “Impact of CO₂-Induced Warming on Simulated Hurricane Intensity and Precipitation: Sensitivity to the Choice of Climate Model and Convective Parameterization,” Journal of Climate, Vol. 17, No. 18 (September 15, 2004).

[>] to critique the Knutson study . . . Patrick Michaels et al., “Comments on ‘Impacts of CO₂-Induced Warming on Simulated Hurricane Intensity and Precipitation: Sensitivity to the Choice of Climate Model and Convective Scheme,’” Journal of Climate, Vol. 18 (December 1, 2005), pp. 5179–82.

[>] Knutson and his coauthor stood firmly . . . Thomas Knutson and Robert Tuleya, “Reply? Journal of Climate, Vol. 18 (December 1, 2005), pp. 5183–87.

[>] “please don’t do this” . . . Interview with Chris Landsea, November 8, 2006.

[>] the character of precipitation . . . See, for example, Kevin Trenberth et al., “The Changing Character of Precipitation,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (September 2003), pp. 1205–17.

[>] In a warmer world . . . See Kevin Trenberth, “Changes in Climate and Hurricanes,” Preprint: AMS Meteorology and Oceanography of the Southern Hemisphere, Brazil, April 2006.

[>] the Harvard conference call . . . Harvard Medical School, Center for Health and Global Environment, Hurricanes and Global Warming News Conference, October 21, 2004. Available online at: http://www.ucar.edu/news/record/transcripts/hurricanes102104.shtml.

[>] a press release . . . Harvard Medical School, Center for Health and the Global Environment press release, “Experts to Warn Global Warming Likely to Continue Spurring More Outbreaks of Intense Hurricane Activity,” October 21, 2004. Available online at: http://chge.med.harvard.edu/media/releases/hurricanepress.html.

[>] Emanuel added in a 2004 article . . . Kerry Emanuel, “Response of Tropical Cyclone Activity to Climate Change: Theoretical Basis,” in Murnane and Liu, eds., Hurricanes and Typhoons.

[>] “I think it’s extremely difficult” . . . Quoted in Todd Neff, “Politics Fuel Climate Spat,” Scripps Howard News Service, January 27, 2005.

[>] Trenberth suspected . . . Interview with Kevin Trenberth, December 29, 2006.

[>] Paul Epstein . . . As Epstein put it at the press conference, “Since 2001, we know a lot more about the system. We know more about the deep ocean warming throughout the world. We know that surface pressures and winds are affected and polar winds are affected so that gradients are set up and so that storms can become more intense and are seeing these swings back and forth from dry periods to wet, et cetera. For Americans in the Southeast—Florida, Texas—this can be devastating; for Haiti, we’ve seen the impacts already this year. In terms of the direct public health impact of the lives lost in the U.S. alone, these hurricanes killed 128 people. We know that throughout the Caribbean over thousands, particularly in Haiti. We know Granada has been devastated. Their [indiscernible] is a loss so this is about development and poverty and ripples through the economy back to health. It means that this year’s unusually intense period of destructive weather activity of four hurricanes hitting the U.S. in a five-week period could be a harbinger of even more extremes to come.”

[>] “They are all smart guys” . . . Quoted in Bruce Ritchie, “Scientists Debate Global Warming,” Tallahassee Democrat, October 22, 2004.

[>] billboards along the 1–4 corridor . . . U.S. Newswire, “Billboards Say Bush Ignores Threat of Worse Hurricanes from Global Warming; Panel Says Warmer, Higher Seas Make Damage Worse,” October 25, 2004.

[>] a job that entailed . . . Interview with Kevin Trenberth, January 3, 2006.

[>] a letter . . . Juliet Eilperin, “Hurricane Scientist Leaves U.N. Team; U.S. Expert Cites Politics in a Letter,” Washington Post, January 23, 2005.

[>] “I personally cannot in good faith” . . . “Chris Landsea Leaves IPCC,” Prometheus, January 17, 2005. Available online at http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/science_policy_general/000318chris_landsea_leaves.html.

[>] he’d sought internal reassurance . . . Chris Landsea e-mail to IPCC leaders and Kevin Trenberth, November 5, 2004. Available online at http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/ipcc-correspondence.pdf.

[>] “Individual scientists can do what they wish” . . . R. K. Pachauri, e-mail to Chris Landsea, November 20, 2004. Available online at http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/ipcc-correspondence.pdf.

[>] Landsea protested . . . Chris Landsea, e-mail to IPCC leaders, December 8, 2004. Available online at http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/ipcc-correspondence.pdf.

[>] in January 2005 . . . “Chris Landsea Leaves IPCC.”

[>] major media coverage . . . Eilperin, “Hurricane Scientist Leaves U.N. Team.”

[>] “ridiculous” . . . Quoted in Eilperin, “Hurricane Scientist Leaves U.N. Team.”

[>] Landsea said he would work . . . Timothy Gardner, “UN Storm Brews over Hurricane-Global Warming Link,” Reuters, January 21, 2005.

[>] “The sad thing about this” . . . Chris Landsea e-mail to IPCC leaders and Kevin Trenberth, November 5, 2004.

[>] “stark example” . . . James Inhofe, statement on “Bringing Integrity Back to the IPCC Process,” November 15, 2005. Available online at http://epw.senate.gov/speechitem.cfm?party=rep&id=248811.

[>] did not put out . . . Interview with Kevin Trenberth, February 14, 2006.

[>] The paper, which appeared in Science . . . Kevin Trenberth, “Uncertainty in Hurricanes and Global Warming,” Science, Vol. 308 (June 17, 2005), pp. 1753–54.

[>] reportedly damaged nearly all standing structures . . . New Zealand Press Association, “Cyclone Percy Running Out of Puff,” March 4, 2005.

[>] Cyclone Zoe . . . See World Meteorological Organization, RA V Tropical Cyclone Committee for the South Pacific and South-East Indian Ocean, Tenth Session, Final Report, noting: “Although Tropical Cyclone Zoe can be claimed to be the most intense tropical cyclone yet in the SW Pacific (with Dvorak Technique), this however, still needs to be verified.” Available online at: http://www.wmo.int/web/www/TCP/Reports/RA5_TCC10.pdf. The 879 millibar pressure estimate comes from the Joint Typhoon Warning Center, South Pacific and South Indian Ocean Tropical Cyclones, 2003. Available online at https://metocph.nmci.navy.mil/jtwc/atcr/2003atcr/chapter2/chapter2.html.

[>] yet another “record” . . . Island Climate Update 56, May 2005. Available online at http://www.niwascience.co.nz/ncc/icu/2005–05/article.

 

CHAPTER 8: Meet the Press

 

[>] “back-of-the-envelope calculation” . . . Interview with Kerry Emanuel, October 19, 2006.

[>] Emanuel first published . . . Kerry Emanuel, “Contribution of Tropical Cyclones to Meridional Heat Transport by the Oceans,” Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 106, No. D14 (July 27, 2001), pp. 14771–81.

[>] “cool tropics paradox” . . . See Kerry Emanuel, “A Simple Model of Multiple Climate Regimes,” Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 107, Issue D9, pp. ACL 4–1, 2002.

[>] The early Eocene . . . For scientific papers discussing this past era’s climate and attributes, especially in the Arctic, see Kathryn Moran et al., “The Cenozoic Palaeoenvironment of the Arctic Ocean,” Nature, Vol. 441 (June 1, 2006), pp. 601–605; Appy Sluijs et al., “Subtropical Arctic Ocean Temperatures During the Palaeocene/Eocene Thermal Maximum,” Nature, Vol. 441 (June 1, 2006), pp. 610–13; J. R. Obst et al., “Characterization of Canadian Arctic Fossil Woods,” in Tertiary Fossil Forests of the Geodetic Hills, Axel Heiherg Island, Arctic Archipelago, eds. R. L. Christie and N. J. McMillan, Geological Survey of Canada, Bulletin 403 (1991), pp. 123–46. More generally, see James Zachos et al., “Trends, Rhythms, and Aberrations in Global Climate 65 Ma to Present,” Science, Vol. 292 (April 27, 2001), pp. 686–93.

[>] helped transport large amounts of heat . . . For a much fuller exploration of this idea, see the thesis of Emanuel’s student Robert Korty, “On the Maintenance of Weak Meridional Temperature Gradients During Warm Climates,” June 2005. Available online at http://www.mit.edu/-korty/thesis.pdf.

[>] Hurricane/Typhoon John . . . For information on Hurricane/Typhoon John, see the Central Pacific Hurricane Center’s Tropical Cyclone Records page, available online at http://www.prh.noaa.gov/cphc/pages/FAQ/Tropical_Cyclone_Records.php. John’s 8,000-mile travel distance is noted by NOAA’s Hurricane Research Division, http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/E7.html.

[>] John strengthened and weakened . . . For the best track data on Hurricane John, see the National Hurricane Center’s preliminary tropical cyclone report, available at the following links: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/storm_wallets/epacific/epl994-prelim/john/prelim03.gif; http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/storm_wallets/epacific/epl994-prelim/john/prelim04.gif; http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/storm_wallets/epacific/epl994-prelim/john/prelim05.gif.

[>] “power dissipation index” . . . Kerry Emanuel, “Increasing Destructiveness of Tropical Cyclones Over the Past 30 Years,” Nature, Vol. 436 (August 4, 2005), pp. 686–88.

[>] a doubling of the amount of power . . . Emanuel, “Increasing Destructiveness of Tropical Cyclones.”

[>] “The trend sort of jumped” . . . Interview with Kerry Emanuel, January 4, 2006.

[>] an interview with Discover . . . “Year in Science: Hurricanes Intensify Global Warming Debate,” Discover, Vol. 27, No. 1 (January 2006). Available online at http://www.discover.com/issues/jan-06/cover/.

[>] “I changed my mind in a big way” . . . Author’s notes, Monterey meeting on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology, April 25, 2006.

[>] they weren’t convinced. Interview with Kerry Emanuel, January 4, 2006.

[>] “the problem for me” . . . Quoted in Peter Whoriskey, “The Gathering Winds: Since 1995, the U.S. has seen a rise in deadly storms. Unknown is what future hurricane seasons will bring,” Washington Post, November 27, 2005.

[>] a rebuttal . . . See Richard Monastersky, “Future Forecast: Stronger Hurricanes?” Chronicle of Higher Education, September 16, 2005.

[>] It ultimately appeared . . . Roger A. Pielke, Jr., et al., “Hurricanes and Global Warming,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, November 2005, pp. 1571–75. Available online at http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/admin/publication_files/resource-1766–2005.36.pdf.

[>] chief cause of our vulnerability . . . Roger A. Pielke, Jr., and Daniel Sarewitz, “Bringing Society Back into the Climate Debate,” Population and Environment, Vol. 26, No. 3 (January 2005), pp. 255–68.

[>] Emanuel doesn’t necessarily disagree . . . See “Emanuel Replies,” Nature, Vol. 438 (December 22–29, 2005), p. E13.

[>] Dennis . . . National Hurricane Center Tropical Cyclone Report, Hurricane Dennis, updated March 17, 2006. Available online at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/TCR-AL042005_Dennis.pdf.

[>] Hurricane Audrey . . . For more on Hurricane Audrey, see Robert B. Ross and Maurice D. Blum, “Hurricane Audrey, 1957,” Monthly Weather Review, June 1957, pp. 221–27.

[>] “The bayou folk swam” . . . “Audrey’s Day of Horror,” Time, July 8, 1957. Available online at http://www.time.eom/time/magazine/article/0,9171,825085,00.html.

[>] Emily . . . For the official history of Hurricane Emily, see National Hurricane Center, Tropical Cyclone Report, Hurricane Emily, March 10, 2006. Available online at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/TCR-AL052005_Emily.pdf.

[>] a postseason reanalysis . . . See Robert P. King, “New Member Added to Cat 5 Class of ’05,” Palm Beach Post, March 16, 2006.

[>] “a terrible paper” . . . Quoted in Scott Allen, “Hurricanes More Powerful, Study Says: Researcher at MIT Sees Larger Storms with Stronger Winds,” Boston Globe, August 1, 2005.

[>] “the people who have a bias” . . . Quoted in Miguel Bustillo, “Katrina Hits the Gulf Coast; Storm Turns Focus to Global Warming; Though some scientists connect the growing severity of hurricanes to climate change, most insist that there’s not enough proof,” Los Angeles Times, August 30, 2005.

[>] “People are jumping” . . . Quoted in Tom Meersman, “Hurricane Katrina; Big storms open up big climate debate; As some scientists back a theory that global warming is behind more intense hurricanes, others call it a part of the natural cycle,” Minneapolis Star-Tribune, September 11, 2005.

[>] “If I’m proven wrong” . . . Quoted in Dan Vergano, “In the Eye of the Storms,” USA Today, September 25, 2005. Available online at http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2005–09-25-hurricane-science_x.htm.

[>] “all these medicine men” . . . CNN, “It’s a New Era of Hurricanes,” September 23, 2005.

[>] “The idea is to frighten the public” . . . Quoted in Kathy A. Svitil, “Discover Dialogue: Meteorologist William Gray,” Discover, Vol. 26, No. 09 (September 2005). Available online at http://www.discover.com/issues/sep-05/departments/discover-dialogue.

[>] a slightly above-average year . . . William Gray and Philip Klotzbach, “Extended Range Forecast of Atlantic Seasonal Hurricane Activity and U.S. Landfall Strike Probability for 2005,” December 3, 2004. Available online at http://typhoon.atmos.colostate.edu/Forecasts/2004/dec2004/.

[>] Gray had upped the forecast . . . Gray and Klotzbach, “Extended Range Forecast of Atlantic Seasonal Hurricane Activity and U.S. Landfall Strike Probability for 2005,” May 31, 2005. Available online at http://typhoon.atmos.colostate.edu/Forecasts/2005/june2005/.

[>] NOAA . . . had similarly predicted . . . NOAA 2005 Atlantic hurricane outlook, issued May 16, 2005. Available online at http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/outlooks/hurricane2005/May/hurricane.html.

[>] 2005 ultimately shattered all records . . . For the complete tracks of the twenty-eight storms, see http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/tracks/2005ad.pdf. The major hurricanes were Dennis, Emily, Katrina, Maria, Rita, Wilma, and Beta.

[>] dynamical seasonal hurricane forecasting . . . For a discussion of this technique, see Frédéric Vitart, “Dynamical Seasonal Forecasts of Tropical Storm Statistics,” in Hurricanes and Typhoons: Past, Present, and Future. See also Vitart and Stockdale, “Seasonal Forecasting of Tropical Storms Using Coupled GCM Integrations,” Monthly Weather Review, Vol. 129 (October 2001), pp. 2521–37.

[>] the glint of an ability . . . See Frédéric Vitart et al., “Dynamically-Based Seasonal Forecasts of Atlantic Tropical-Storm Activity,” 2006, in press. 146 Meteo-France . . . As noted in American Geophysical Union, “Hurricanes and the U.S. Gulf Coast: Science and Sustainable Rebuilding,” June 2006. Available on-line at http://www.agu.org/report/hurricanes/. E-mail correspondence with Frédéric Vitart, January 8, 2007.

[>] 16.2 storms . . . Frédéric Vitart et al., “Dynamically-Based Seasonal Forecasts of Atlantic Tropical-Storm Activity,” 2006, in press.

[>] the probability, across many model runs . . . As Frédéric Vitart describes the reasoning: “By creating a large number of forecasts, it is possible to sample the probability distribution function of the atmospheric variable of interest. An analogy would be playing cards with a deck where some red cards have been removed. If someone draws randomly a card from the deck, it would be impossible to conclude that the deck is not a regular deck. But if the person puts the card back inside the deck and repeats the same operation a very large number of times, it will become clear that black cards are drawn more often than red cards. If the operation is repeated a sufficient number of times, then the person will be able to assess that statistically there is very little chance that the deck is a regular deck. The size of the ensemble for seasonal forecasting usually ranges between 5 and 50 operations and is limited by the cost of computer time. The obligation to create an ensemble of forecasts makes dynamical seasonal forecasting very expensive.” (Vitart, “Dynamical Seasonal Forecasts of Tropical Storm Statistics.”)

[>] And then came Katrina . . . For the definitive meteorological history of Katrina, see the National Hurricane Center, Tropical Cyclone Report: Hurricane Katrina, updated August 10, 2006. Available online at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/TCR-AL122005_Katrina.pdf.

[>] the infamous Loop Current . . . See Benjamin Jaimes et al., “Influence of Loop Current Ocean Heat Content on Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma,” paper given Monday, April 24, 2006, at the 27th Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology. Extended abstract available at http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/108249.pdf.

[>] Corps of Engineers . . . For a powerful and devastating indictment of the failures of the Corps, see Michael Grunwald, “Progmation,” The New Republic, August 14–21, 2006.

[>] Mississippi River Gulf Outlet . . . Of the “Mr. Go,” Douglas Brinkley writes, “The result was the same as if a team of top-flight engineers had been assigned to build an instrument for the quick and effective flooding of New Orleans.” The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast (New York: William Morrow, 2006), p. 219.

[>] track and landfall predictions . . . Department of Commerce, Service Assessment: Hurricane Katrina, August 23–31. Available online at http://www.weather.gov/om/assessments/pdfs/Katrina.pdf. Note page 12: “NHCs official track forecasts for Katrina issued within about two and a half days of landfall in Louisiana were exceptionally accurate and consistent. The forecast errors were considerably less than the average official Atlantic track errors for the 10-year period 1995–2004. Every official forecast that was issued beginning at 5 p.m. EDT on August 26 showed a track crossing the coast of Mississippi and/or southeastern Louisiana.”

[>] invoked natural cycles. Gerry Bell et al., “The 2005 North Atlantic Hurricane Season: A Climate Perspective,” Climate Prediction Center, The National Weather Service. Available online at http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/expert_assessment/hurrsummary_2005.pdf.

[>] easterly trade winds . . . See Jyotika Virmani and Robert Weisberg, “The 2005 Hurricane Season: An Echo of the Past or Harbinger of the Future?” Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 33, L05707 (2006).

[>] June-to-October temperature anomaly . . . Kevin Trenberth and Dennis Shea, “Atlantic Hurricanes and Natural Variability in 2005,” Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 33, L12704 (2006).

[>] Ross Gelbspan . . . Ross Gelbspan, “Katrina’s Real Name,” Boston Globe, op-ed, August 30, 2005.

[>] “The American president closes his eyes” . . . Quoted in Craig Whitlock, “Environment Minister Criticizes U.S. Policy; ‘Neglected Climate Protection to Blame,” Washington Post, September 2, 2006.

[>] “It’s just unadulterated garbage” . . . Interview with Greg Holland, February 13, 2006.

[>] “absurd” . . . Kerry Emanuel, “Anthropogenic Effects on Tropical Cyclone Activity,” Revised January 2006, available online at http://wind.mit.edu/-emanuel/anthro2.htm.

[>] articles over the years discussing . . . This media-coverage data was compiled using Lexis-Nexis Guided Search. A search was performed, in the “general news” category for the New York Times and Washington Post, for the words “hurricane” or “tropical storm” or “tropical depression” and “global warming” or “climate change” or “greenhouse gas” or “greenhouse effect.” The “and not” feature was used to eliminate “news summary” or “information bank abstract” or “wall street journal.” All of the categories were set on full text.
Each article was read, which involved both scanning for the search terms and analyzing the relationship between them. Articles that related a change in the regularity or strength of hurricanes to global warming were included in the count; other articles were removed. Article types included op-ed pieces, editorials, and letters to the editor, as well as more standard news stories.

[>] Some forty articles . . . Matthew C. Nisbet and Chris Mooney (2007). “The Next Big Storm? Understanding news coverage of the hurricane-global warming debate.” Working paper. School of Communication, American University, Washington, D.C.

[>] “Are We Making Hurricanes Worse?” . . . Time, October 3, 2005.

[>] “filter” . . . Interview with Kerry Emanuel, May 22, 2006.

[>] a survey by the Pew Research Center . . . Pew Research Center, “Two-In-Three Critical of Bush’s Relief Efforts; Huge Racial Divide Over Katrina and Its Consequences,” September 8, 2005. Poll data available online at http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=255.

[>] “There is no relationship” . . . Charles Krauthammer, “Where to Point the Fingers,” Washington Post, September 9, 2005.

[>] partly funded by ExxonMobil . . . The George C. Marshall Institute received $115,000 from ExxonMobil in 2005, according to the company’s 2005 giving report available at http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/Files/Corporate/giving05_policy.pdf.

[>] a news release . . . George C. Marshall Institute, “Linkage Between Hurricanes and Global Warming Tenuous,” September 6, 2005, available online at http://www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/319.pdf.

[>] Tech Central Station . . . See a September 9, 2005, interview that Tech Central Station published with James J. O’Brien. Available online at http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=04l1061.

[>] Competitive Enterprise Institute . . . See Alex Kormendi and Charles C. W. Cooke, “Turning Science into Hot Air,” Washington Times, September 4, 2005.

[>] an event . . . George C. Marshall Institute, “Atlantic Hurricanes: The True Story,” October 12, 2005. Full transcript available at http://www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/364.pdf.

[>] the most narrow metric conceivable . . . See Judith Curry et al., “Mixing Politics and Science in Testing the Hypothesis That Greenhouse Warming Is Causing a Global Increase in Hurricane Intensity,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, August 2006. As the authors note, “regional datasets cannot, by their very nature, be used to reject the hypothesis that the frequency of the most intense hurricanes is increasing globally.”

[>] a major study . . . Barnett et al., “Penetration of Human-Induced Warming Into the World’s Oceans,” Science, Vol. 309 (July 8, 2005).

 

CHAPTER 9: “The #$%^& Hit the Fan”

 

[>] “Only 11 percent” . . . Interview with Peter Webster, March 10, 2006.

[>] the Aerosonde . . . For more information, see Greg Holland, Peter Webster, Judith Curry, et al., “The Aerosonde Robotic Aircraft: A New Paradigm for Environmental Observations,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 82 (May 2001), pp. 889–901.

[>] the leading rival to Emanuel’s account . . . Holland, “The Maximum Potential Intensity of Tropical Cyclones.”

[>] Cyclone Tracy . . . See Emanuel, Divine Wind, Chapter 30, “Cyclone Tracy.” 156–7 “jumping around” . . . Interview with Greg Holland, August 7, 2006.

[>] No one on the Webster team . . . Curry et al., “Mixing Politics and Science.”

[>] “bloody hermit on a mountaintop” . . . Interview with Greg Holland, February 13, 2006.

[>] “the #$%^& hit the fan” . . . Judith Curry, comment to ClimateAudit.org, September 7, 2006, available online at http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=803#comment-44757.

[>] Seeking to cut budgets . . . See William M. Gray et al., “Assessment of the Role of Aircraft Reconnaissance on Tropical Cyclone Analysis and Forecasting,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 72, No. 12 (December 1991), pp. 1867–83.

[>] the Dvorak technique . . . For more information, see Christopher Velden et al., “The Dvorak Tropical Cyclone Intensity Estimation Technique: A Satellite-Based Methodology That Has Endured for Over Thirty Years,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, September 2006, pp. 1195–1210.

[>] “not inconsistent with recent climate model simulations” . . . Peter Webster et al., “Changes in Tropical Cyclone Number, Duration, and Intensity in a Warming Environment,” Science, Vol. 309 (September 16, 2005), pp. 1844–46.

[>] “a tar baby” . . . Interview with Judith Curry, March 10, 2006. 160 “all coastal cities” . . . Curry et al., “Mixing Politics and Science.”

[>] “Even senior scientists” . . . Curry et al., “Mixing Politics and Science.”

[>] “an electric chair” . . . Interview with Judith Curry, March 10, 2006.

[>] Hurricane Rita . . . For the official meteorological statistics, see National Hurricane Center, Tropical Cyclone Report, Hurricane Rita, updated August 14, 2006. Available online at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/TCR-AL182005_Rita.pdf.

[>] “Unless the storm turns south or north” . . . Eric Berger (Sci-Guy Blog), “From Bad to Worse, I Am Afraid,” September 21, 2005. Available online at http:// blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2005/09/from_bad_to_wor.html.

[>] “Within an hour or two” . . . Eric Berger, “Seeking the Truth in a Fictional Storm: Computers Model Areas Perfect Storm,” Houston Chronicle, February 20, 2005.

[>] At one point in Congress . . . Dan Vergano, “In the Eye of the Storms,” USA Today, September 25, 2005. Available online at http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2005–09-25-hurricane-science_x.htm.

[>] “not a cause” . . . USA Today/CNN Gallup Poll, conducted October 21–23, 2005. Available online at http://www.usatoday.com/news/polls/2005–10-21-poll.htm.

[>] “I question” . . . The Diane Rehm Show, “The 2005 Hurricane Season,” Wednesday, September 21, 2005. Audio available online at http://www.wamu.org/programs/dr/05/09/21.php.

[>] one GCM study . . . Kazuyoshi Oouchi et al., “Tropical Cyclone Climatology in a Global-Warming Climate as Simulated in a 20km-Mesh Global Atmospheric Model: Frequency and Wind Intensity Analysis,” Journal of the Meteorological Society of Japan, Vol. 84, No. 2 (2006), pp. 259–76.

[>] storm surge . . . See Emanuel, Divine Wind, Chapter 20, “The Storm Surge,” pp. 147–52.

[>] a rise in sea level . . . See, for example, Gerald Meehl et al., “How Much More Global Warming and Sea Level Rise?” Science, Vol. 308 (March 18, 2005), pp. 1769–72, finding, “Even if we could stabilize concentrations of [greenhouse gases], we are already committed to significant warming and sea level rise no matter what scenario we follow.” The study applied two separate models to three separate greenhouse gas emissions scenarios, finding the following resulting ranges in sea level rise by 2100: 13 to 18 centimeters for the low-end emissions scenario, 18 to 25 centimeters for the mid-range scenario, and 19 to 30 centimeters for the high-end scenario. But these were deemed “minimum values” because the models did not include any ice-sheet or glacier melting.

[>] hurricane-spawned tornadoes . . . David J. Novlan and William M. Gray, “Hurricane-Spawned Tornadoes,” Monthly Weather Review, Vol. 102 (July 1974), pp. 476–88.

[>] the number of hurricane-spawned tornadoes . . . J. A. Belanger, B. Miller, J. A. Curry, P. J. Webster, “Recent Increase in Tornadoes Spawned by U.S. Land-falling Tropical Cyclones.” Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology (submitted).

[>] does not show any trend . . . See Roger A. Pielke, Jr., “Are There Trends in Hurricane Destruction?” Nature, Vol. 438 (December 22–29, 2005), p. Ell.

[>] The 1926 Miami hurricane . . . R. A. Pielke, Jr., J. Gratz, C. W. Landsea, D. Collins, M. Saunders, and R. Musulin, 2007. “Normalized Hurricane Damages in the United States: 1900–2005.” Natural Hazards Review (submitted). Available online at http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/publications/special/nhd_paper.pdf.

[>] countless factors besides storm strength itself . . . Interview with Richard Anthes, February 14, 2006.

[>] It stands to reason . . . See Tom Knutson, “Perspectives on Focused Workshop Questions Regarding Past Economic Impacts of Storms or Floods,” presentation at the Munich Re/University of Colorado Workshop on “Climate Change and Disaster Losses: Understanding and Attributing Trends and Projections,” May 25–26, 2006. Available online at http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/sparc/research/projects/extreme_events/munich_workshop/knutson.pdf.

[>] Risk Management Solutions . . . See Risk Management Solutions, “The 2006 RMS Expert Elicitation and Atlantic Hurricane Activity Rates Update,” November 2006, available online at http://www.rms.com/Publications/2006_Expert_Elicitation.pdf. Controversy over the outcome is reported in Kevin Begos, “Insurance risk forecast called faulty,” Tampa Tribune, January 7, 2007.

[>] “marginal” basin . . . Interview with Thomas Knutson, August 21, 2006.

 

CHAPTER 10: Resistance

 

[>] Thomas Kuhn’s famous 1962 book . . . Thomas’S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, 111.: University of Chicago Press, 1962).

[>] “novelty emerges only with difficulty” . . . Quoted in Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Third Edition, 1996), p. 64.

[>] “By ensuring that the paradigm” . . . Kuhn, p. 65.

[>] “we did the work.” Interview with Judith Curry, March 10, 2006.

[>] “Because it demands” . . . Kuhn, pp. 67–68.

[>] well aware. As Kuhn noted, “except in occasional brief asides, I have said nothing about the role of technological advance or external social, economic, and intellectual conditions in the development of the sciences. One need, however, look no further than Copernicus and the calendar to discover that external conditions may help to transform a mere anomaly into a source of acute crisis” (pp. xi-xii).

[>] “I just can’t have people” . . . Interview with William Gray, February 12, 2006.

[>] “not valid” . . . William M. Gray, comments on “Increasing Destructiveness of Tropical Cyclones Over the Past 30 Years” by Kerry Emanuel in Nature, Vol. 436 (July 31, 2005), pp. 686–88, submitted to Nature (October 19, 2005). Available online at http://tropical.atmos.colostate.edu/Includes/Documents/Responses/emanuel_comments.pdf.

[>] Gray even argued . . . William M. Gray, comments on “Changes in Tropical Cyclone Number, Duration, and Intensity in a Warming Environment” by Webster et al., Science, Vol. 309 (September 2005), pp. 1844–46. On file with the author.

[>] “sound science” . . . See Mooney, The Republican War on Science, Chapter 7, “The Greatest Hoax.”

[>] the hearing itself . . . Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Hearing on Science in Environmental Policy-Making, September 28, 2005. Video available online at http://epw.senate.gov/epwmultimedia/epw092805.ram.

[>] eco-terrorists conspiring . . . Crichton, State of Fear (New York: HarperCollins, 2004).

[>] inflammatory analogy . . . Crichton, State of Fear, See Appendix I, “Why Politicized Science is Dangerous,” in which Crichton draws an analogy between the eugenics movement and global warming. In his own words: “I am not arguing that global warming is the same as eugenics. But the similarities are not superficial” (p. 579).

[>] Hurricane Vince . . . See National Hurricane Center Tropical Cyclone Report, Hurricane Vince, February 22, 2006. Available online at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf7TCR-AL242005_Vince.pdf.

[>] “more records being broken” . . . Interview with Judith Curry, October 6, 2006.

[>] Hurricane Wilma . . . For the definitive meteorological history, see National Hurricane Center Tropical Cyclone Report, Hurricane Wilma, updated September 28, 2006. Available online at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/TCR-AL252005_Wilma.pdf.

[>] “THE DREADED PINHOLE EYE” . . . National Hurricane Center, Hurricane Wilma Discussion Number 14, October 18, 2005, 11 pm EDT. Available on-line at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2005/dis/al242005.discus.0l4.shtml.

[>] “smallest eye known” . . . Quoted in National Hurricane Center Tropical Cyclone Report, Hurricane Wilma, updated September 28, 2006. Available online at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/TCR-AL252005_Wilma.pdf.

[>] “LOWEST MINIMUM PRESSURE” . . . National Hurricane Center, Hurricane Wilma Discussion Number 16, October 19, 2005, 5 A.M. EDT. Available online at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2005/dis/al242005.discus.016.shtml.

[>] Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties . . . Interview with Richard Pasch, November 8, 2006.

[>] “this enormous eye” . . . Interview with Richard Pasch, November 8, 2006.

[>] lengthening the average tropical cyclone season . . . This argument was presented at the American Geophysical Union 2006 meeting by Peter Webster, “Expanding Tropical Warm Pool: Increased Tropical Cyclone Season Length and Storm Duration,” Tropical Cyclone-Climate Interactions on All Timescales I, December 15, 2006.

[>] “after fraternities” . . . Author’s notes, Monterey meeting on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology, April 25, 2006.

 

CHAPTER 11: Consensus

 

[>] a series of high-resolution experiments . . . For an overview, see Thomas Knutson et al., “Impact of Climate Change on Hurricane Intensities as Simulated Using Regional Nested High-Resolution Models,” in Murnane and Liu, eds., Hurricanes and Typhoons.

[>] Knutson didn’t see . . . See David Brown, “2 Storms In Florida Not Seen As Trend; Experts Don’t Fault Global Warming,” Washington Post, September 3, 2004. The story quotes Knutson saying, “I wouldn’t read too much into a couple of individual events like this.”

[>] apparently traveled up to Princeton . . . Kent Laborde e-mail to Tom Knutson, September 30, 2004 (“I’ll be there tomorrow also. I should arrive around 10:30 or 11”). Document obtained by Greenpeace through a Freedom of Information Act Request, 2006. All FOIA documents on file with the author. In addition, some are available online at http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/news/katrina-raises-heat-on-bush-gl.

[>] a series of talking points . . . David P. Miller e-mail to Tom Knutson, October 21, 2004. Document obtained by Greenpeace through a Freedom of Information Act Request, 2006. All other internal NOAA e-mails cited in this chapter are from the same source unless otherwise noted.

[>] “I find the implications to be rather alarming” . . . Quoted in Ronald Brownstein, “Hard Choices Blow in the Winds of Katrina, and Now Rita,” Los Angeles Times, September 26, 2005.

[>] “That seemed to trip some wires somewhere” . . . Interview with Thomas Knutson, August 21, 2006.

[>] “incomplete” . . . Letter from President Bush to Senators Hagel, Helms, Craig, and Roberts, March 13, 2001. Available online at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/03/200103l4.html.

[>] a rapid independent evaluation . . . Committee on the Science of Climate Change, National Research Council, Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions (Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2001). Available online at http://fermat.nap.edu/books/0309075742/html.

[>] mouth an apparent endorsement . . . Remarks by President Bush on Global Climate Change, June 11, 2001. Available online at http://www.state.g0v/g/0es/rls/rm/4l49.htm.

[>] brazenly mislead the public . . . Bush press conference, March 29,2006, transcript available online at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/03/20060329-6.html.

[>] Bush himself was revealed . . . Michael Janofsky, “Bush’s Chat with Novelist Alarms Environmentalists,” New York Times, February 19, 2006.

[>] “a few noncommittal paragraphs” . . . Andrew C. Revkin and Katharine Q. Seelye, “Report by EPA Leaves Out Data on Climate Change,” New York Times, June 19, 2003.

[>] In a leaked memo . . . For the actual complaint memo itself, see http://www.nwf.org/nwfwebadmin/binaryVault/EPA%20Climate%20Section%20Memo.pdf.

[>] had repeatedly sought to edit . . . Andrew C. Revkin, “Bush Aide Edited Climate Reports,” New York Times, June 8, 2005.

[>] the lawyer resigned . . . Andrew C. Revkin, “Former Bush Aide Who Edited Reports is Hired by Exxon,” New York Times, June 15, 2005.

[>] Piltz went further in his accusations. See Rick’S. Piltz, “On Issues of Concern About the Governance and Direction of the Climate Change Science Program,” June 1, 2005. Available online at http://www.whistleblower.org/doc/Memo%20to%20Superiors.pdf.

[>] The National Assessment . . . U.S. Global Change Research Program, “Climate Change Impacts on the United States: The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change” (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Available online at http://www.usgcrp.gov/usgcrp/nacc/default.htm.

[>] U.S. National Assessment had also been endorsed . . . Committee on the Science of Climate Change, National Research Council, Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions (Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2001). See pp. 19–20: “The U.S. National Assessment of Climate Change Impacts, augmented by a recent NRC report on climate and health, provides a basis for summarizing the potential consequences of climate change.” Available online at http:// fermat.nap.edu/books/0309075742/html.

[>] sent into a “black hole” . . . In a 2005 interview with Environmental Science & Technology, James R. Mahoney, then director of the Climate Change Science Program, confirmed that his program had been restricted “on our use of information” from the National Assessment. See Paul Thacker, “Blowing the Whistle on Climate Change: Interview with Rick Piltz,” June 22, 2005, available online at http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/2005/jun/policy/pt_piltz.html.

[>] It hardly seems a coincidence . . . For a more thorough discussion and documentation, see Mooney, The Republican War on Science, Chapter 7, “The Greatest Hoax.” For additional information, see updates to the paperback edition (2006).

[>] “If you get any press requests” . . . Jana Goldman e-mail to Ron Stouffer, January 24, 2001.

[>] “Can I ask why this is the policy?” . . . E-mail exchange between Ron Stouffer and Jana Goldman, January 24–25, 2001.

[>] “in the loop” . . . Jana Goldman e-mail to Ants Leetmaa, June 11, 2001 (“Ideally I’d like to know before the interview takes place, but I realize that that cannot always happen . . .”).

[>] regular e-mails . . . E-mail from Ron Stouffer to Jana Goldman discussing an interview with Science magazine, October 18, 2001.

[>] an article for Science magazine . . . Thomas Karl et al., “Modern Global Climate Change,” Science, Vol. 302 (December 5, 2003), pp. 1719–23.

[>] a senior NOAA official who debunked and criticized the article . . . See, for example, David Perlman, “Climate Change Laid to Humans: Report warns there’s ‘no doubt’ industry is primary cause,” San Francisco Chronicle, December 4, 2003; and Theo Stein, “Unstable Climate Linked to Pollution,” Denver Post, December 5, 2003.

[>] “unconscionable” . . . This episode is reported in Earl Lane, “Marburger Defends Administration; Rebutting charges from top scientists,” Newsday, March 28, 2004.

[>] a written NOAA policy . . . NOAA Media Policy, issued June 28, 2004, and listed as “effective” June 22, 2004. Available online at http://www.corporateservices.noaa.gov/-ames/NAOs/Chap_219/naos_219_6.html.

[>] Scientists like Stouffer . . . Interview with Ron Stouffer, October 6, 2006.

[>] Goldman asked to know . . . Jana Goldman e-mail to Brian Gross, July 6, 2004.

[>] “You betcha” . . . E-mail exchange between Jana Goldman and Brian Gross, about July 6, 2004 (precise date unclear).

[>] “My experience prior to that time” . . . Interview with Anthony Broccoli, August 21, 2006.

[>] a study published in February 2006 in Science . . . V. Ramaswamy et al., “Anthropogenic and Natural Influences in the Evolution of Lower Stratospheric Cooling,” Science, Vol. 311, No. 5764 (February 24, 2006), pp. 1138–41.

[>] the NOAA press release . . . Maria Setzer e-mail to V. Ramaswamy, March 6, 2006.

[>] Ramaswamy had to liberate . . . V Ramaswamy e-mail to NOAA and other scientists, February 22, 2006.

[>] a Byzantine thirteen-step review process . . . Maria Setzer e-mail to V. Ramaswamy, March 6, 2006.

[>] “Any updates on the ‘clearance’?” . . . V. Ramaswamy e-mail to Jana Goldman, date unclear, 2006.

[>] “those kinds of things should not really happen” . . . Interview with V. Ramaswamy, October 6, 2006.

[>] “no problems from above” . . . Ron Stouffer e-mail to Stefan Lovgren, April 15, 2004.

[>] Kent Laborde listened in . . . Ron Stouffer e-mail to Brian Gross, April 16, 2004.

[>] “internal noaa talking points” . . . Scott Smullen e-mail to Ron Stouffer, about May 24, 2004 (precise date unclear).

[>] “How close to the talking points” . . . Ron Stouffer e-mail to Scott Smullen, May 24, 2004.

[>] “breaking the rules” . . . Ron Stouffer e-mail to Andrew Revkin, September 13, 2004.

[>] a parody of the Times article . . . John Lanzante e-mail to Ron Stouffer, around September 1, 2004 (precise date unclear).

[>] “you are still stuck with me” . . . Ron Stouffer e-mail to John Lanzante, September 1, 2004.

[>] “a whole wide range of disciplinary things” . . . Interview with Ron Stouffer, October 6, 2006.

[>] playing by the rules . . . Ron Stouffer e-mail to Jana Goldman, March 16, 2005 (“Can I get back to her? I will say that sea level changes have very long time scales . . .”). 191 “The reporter got quite upset” . . . Ron Stouffer e-mail to Brian Gross and Jana Goldman, November 29, 2005.

[>] Stouffer’s own experience . . . As summarized in an e-mail to Jana Goldman and Maria Setzer, March 1, 2006.

[>] the Commerce Department wanted to “coordinate” . . . Jana Goldman e-mail to Erica Rule and Brian Gross, September 13, 2005.

[>] “the restrictions being placed on government scientists” . . . Morris Bender e-mail to Brian Gross, September 13, 2005.

[>] another e-mail had gone out . . . Richard Spinrad e-mail to NOAA officials, October 4, 2005.

[>] “jana needs to approve” . . . Ants Leetmaa e-mail to Isaac Held, November 28, 2005.

[>] a major editorial in USA Today . . . “Global Warming Activists Turn Storms into Spin,” September 26, 2005.

[>] Mayfield did not even cite . . . Max Mayfield, testimony before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Subcommittee on Disaster Prevention and Prediction, September 20, 2005. Available online at http://www.legislative.noaa.gov/Testimony/mayfieldfinal092005.pdf.

[>] “Without invoking global warming” . . . Max Mayfield, comment before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Subcommittee on Disaster Prevention and Prediction, September 20, 2005. Audio available at http:// commerce.senate.gov/archive.hurricaneprediction092005.ram (see approximately minutes 1:28–1:30).

[>] Mayfield dodged any mention . . . House Committee on Science, full committee hearing, NOAA Hurricane Forecasting, October 7, 2005. Video available online at http://www.house.gov/science/hearings/full05/oct%207/index.htm (exchange between Ehlers and Mayfield begins at 1:52:45).

[>] “not related to greenhouse warming” . . . NOAA press conference, “End of the 2005 Hurricane Season,” National Press Club, Washington, D.C., November 29, 2005.

[>] “There is consensus” . . . NOAA Magazine, “NOAA Attributes Recent Increase in Hurricane Activity to Naturally Occurring Multi-Decadal Climate Variability,” November 29, 2005. Available online at http://www.magazine.noaa.gov/stories/magl84.htm.

[>] a February 12, 1998, press release . . . National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “Hurricanes May Be Intensified by Global Warming” (press release), February 12, 1998. Available online at http://www.publicaffairs.noaa.gov/pr98/feb98/noaa98-9.html.

[>]–95 “scientists cannot say” . . . Earth Day Remarks on Global Climate Change, Dr. D. James Baker, April 18, 2000, available online at http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories/s4l2b.htm.

[>] “The honest answer” . . . Quoted by Reuters, “Climate, Storms Hit Extremes in 2005—U.N. Weather Body,” Robert Evans, December 15, 2005. Available online at http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/34070/newsDate/16-Dec-2005/story.htm.

[>] New York Times page-one story . . . Andrew C. Revkin, “Climate Expert Says NASA Tried to Silence Him,” New York Times, January 29, 2006.

[>] George Deutsch . . . Andrew C. Revkin, “A Young Bush Appointee Resigns His Post at NASA,” New York Times, February 8, 2006.

[>] “The Hansen piece uncorked a bottle” . . . Quoted in Nisbet and Mooney, “The Next Big Storm.”

[>] Hansen continued to stir the pot . . . Juliet Eilperin, “Censorship Is Alleged at NOAA; Scientists Afraid to Speak Out, NASA Climate Expert Reports,” Washington Post, February 11, 2006.

[>] this one in the New Republic . . . John Judis, “NOAA’s Flood,” The New Republic, February 20, 2006.

[>] “This is an embarrassment” . . . Ants Leetmaa, e-mail to James R. Mahoney, Ph.D., and other NOAA officials, February 12, 2006.

[>] an internal critique . . . Tom Delworth, e-mail to Tom Knutson and other GFDL scientists, February 13., 2006.

[>] “freely and openly” . . . Conrad C. Lautenbacher, Jr., “Message from the Under Secretary,” February 14, 2006.

[>] “You will find near the bottom” . . . Tom Delworth, e-mail to Tom Knutson and other NOAA-GFDL scientists, February 15, 2006.

[>] the first on-the-record allegations . . . Antonio Regalado and Jim Carlton, “Statement Acknowledges Some Government Scientists See a Link to Global Warming,” Wall Street Journal, February 16, 2006.

[>] public-affairs officials . . . For further elaboration of Knutson’s experiences with the NOAA public affairs process see his February 7, 2007, testimony before a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on “Climate Change Research and Scientific Integrity,” available online at http://commerce.senate.gov/public/index.cfmiFuseAction=Hearings.Testimony&Hearing_ID=1812&Witness_ID=6489.

[>] “‘Tom, about that interview’” . . . Interview with Thomas Knutson, August 21, 2006.

[>] “what is Knutson’s position” . . . Chuck Fuqua e-mail to Kent Laborde, October 19, 2005. E-mails from this exchange are available online at http://www.democrats.reform.house.gov/Documents/20060919101130-l4873.pdf.

[>] “Why can’t we have one of the other guys” . . . Paul Thacker, “Climate-controlled White House,” Salon.com, September 19, 2006, available online at http:// www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/09/19/noaa/.

[>] Landsea . . . was outraged . . . Interview with Chris Landsea, November 8, 2006.

[>] trying to shift debate . . . In fact, another reporter documented precisely this phenomenon at work in early 2006. Writing for the Providence Journal, Peter B. Lord described his experience trying to get an interview with Knutson:
Calls to NOAA’s public-affairs office led to Kent Laborde, who was described as the public-affairs person who focuses on climate-change issues.
Laborde made it clear that the NOAA has discounted the research tying global warming to worsening hurricanes.
“What we’ve found is, if you look at a couple segments of science, observational or modeling, there is no illustrated link between climate change and hurricane intensity,” Laborde said. “We actually have periods of intensity followed by periods of lower intensity. We have evidence of periods going back to the 1930s. It follows a clear pattern.”
Laborde was asked if he would approve an interview with Knutson.
What is the topic? he asked.
Emanuel’s theories linking climate change to worsening hurricanes.
“Chris Landsea would be better. He’s an observational scientist,” Laborde said.
(Peter B. Lord, “NOAA hiding truth about hurricanes, scientists say,” Providence Journal, March 26, 2006.)

[>] “Very courageous of Tom” . . . James Hansen e-mail to Ron Stouffer, February 16, 2006.

[>] this most obvious of lessons . . . Due to its general focus on the hurricane-climate issue, this chapter by design does not give a full account of all of the science-related scandals and controversies that have plagued NOAA during the Bush administration. That would have been a larger project. However, for a sampling of other case studies, see Jim Erikson, “Climate Scientist Says ‘Kyoto’ Barred: Investigators Eye Censorship Claims About White House,” Rocky Mountain News, December 11, 2006; and Kitta MacPherson, “Tempest Brews in Weather Think Tank,” Newark Star-Ledger, October 1, 2006.

 

CHAPTER 12: Preseason Warm-Ups

 

[>] a panel . . . The event was part of the 18 th Conference on Climate Variability and Change, Session Four, “Observed Climate Change in the Atmosphere and Oceans, Part II,” January 31, 2006. Author’s notes.

[>] a planned debate . . . Bauerlein, “Cold Front.”

[>] “tongue-lashing” . . . Interview with William Gray, February 16, 2006.

[>] “it’s become personal entirely on one side.” Interview with Greg Holland, February 13, 2006.

[>] had invited . . . E-mail from Elizabeth Ritchie to Max Mayfield, William Gray, Kerry Emanuel, Peter Webster, and Chris Landsea (from now on referred to as “group”), November 3, 2005. The e-mails cited and quoted here were later circulated beyond this group of individuals.

[>] Webster and Emanuel quickly expressed concerns. E-mails by Kerry Emanuel and Peter Webster quoted in e-mail by William Gray to group, November 14, 2005.

[>] “will behave themselves” . . . E-mail by William Gray to group, November 14, 2005.

[>] justification for further grant support . . . E-mail from William Gray to group, December 16, 2005; e-mail copy provided by its author.

[>] Ritchie quickly swooped in . . . E-mail from Elizabeth Ritchie to group, November 14, 2005.

[>] “To disagree with science” . . . E-mail from Peter Webster to group (now including Greg Holland and Russell Elsberry), November 15, 2005. 207 Ritchie wasn’t giving up. Elizabeth Ritchie, e-mail to Peter Webster and Kerry Emanuel, November 16, 2005.

[>] a skeptic . . . See Johnny Chan, “Comment on ‘Changes in Tropical Cyclone Number, Duration, and Intensity in a Warming Environment,’” Science, Vol. 331 (March 24, 2006), p. 1713.

[>] “still time to backtrack” . . . William Gray, e-mail to group, November 29, 2005. 207 a joking message . . . Chris Landsea e-mail to Ritchie, Gray, Emanuel, and Webster, November 4, 2005.

[>] “Bill, please, stop” . . . Chris Landsea e-mail to group, November 29, 2005.

[>] Landsea launched into his presentation . . . For another firsthand account of the substance of Landseas presentation, see Jeff Masters, “Are Category 4 and 5 hurricanes increasing in number?” WunderBlog, March 27, 2006. Available online at http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=327&tstamp=200603.

[>] The Dvorak method . . . For more information, see Velden et al., “The Dvorak Tropical Cyclone Intensity Estimation Technique.”

[>] a few North Indian basin cyclones . . . Later in an article in Science, Landsea and a group of coauthors further noted that the infamous 1970 Bangladesh cyclone, which killed hundreds of thousands of people, “does not even have an official intensity estimate, despite indications that it was extremely intense.” Landsea et al., “Can We Detect Trends in Extreme Tropical Cyclones?”

[>] a subject Knutson would discuss . . . Thomas Knutson, “Assessment of Twentieth-Century Regional Surface Temperature Trends Using the GFDL CM2 Coupled Models,” American Meteorological Society, February 1, 2006. Author’s notes.

[>] contrast hurricane intensity measurements . . . Chris Landsea presentation, March 29, 2006, Lamont Campus, Earth Institute of Columbia University. Author’s notes.

[>] Carol . . . isn’t even officially classified as a hurricane . . . Interview with Chris Landsea, November 8, 2006.

[>] overestimated or underestimated . . . Author’s notes, Monterey meeting on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology, April 25, 2006.

[>] “There is no evidence” . . . J. A. Curry et al., “Mixing Politics and Science.”

[>] the same two American Meteorological Society awards . . . Both scientists won the Max Eaton Prize, awarded for the best student paper in hurricane research and tropical meteorology: Holland in 1982 for a study concerning hurricane intensity, and Landsea in 1992 for work on the relationship between African rainfall and hurricane activity in the Atlantic. For the Max Eaton prizewinners, see http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/EatonPrize.htm. Reprising another decadal cycle, Holland and Landsea both also won the Banner I. Miller Award for “an outstanding contribution to the science of hurricane and tropical weather forecasting.” Holland won in 1985 for two studies on tropical cyclone motion; Landsea was a co-recipient in 1994, for a paper with Gray and coauthors on the prediction of Atlantic hurricane activity six to eleven months into the future. For the Banner I. Miller prizewinners, see http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/banner.html.

[>] “doing their own thing” . . . Interview with Kerry Emanuel, May 22, 2006.

[>] they began haunting scientific conferences . . . See Nisbet and Mooney, “The Next Big Storm.”

[>] The trend was epitomized . . . Bauerlein, “Cold Front.”

[>] Jeff Masters . . . In one of the most harrowing stories of modern hurricane science, Masters nearly perished during a disastrous low-level research flight into Hurricane Hugo in 1989, and never flew another storm. For the story of the near-crash that almost killed a large number of the nations top hurricane scientists, see http://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/hugo1.asp.

[>] a naming system . . . Dr. Jeff Masters’ WunderBlog, “South Atlantic Tropical Depression Dissipates,” February 24, 2006. Available online at http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=309&tstamp=200602&page=2.

[>] tropical-looking disturbance . . . Dr. Jeff Masters’ WunderBlog, “Brazilian Tropical Disturbance, and Tornado Damage Surveys,” March 15, 2006. Available online at http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=320&tstamp=200603.

[>] translated into Saffir-Simpson categories . . . For a conversion of these 2005–2006 storm intensities into more familiar terms, see the National Climatic Data Center: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2006/2006-aussie-trop-cyclones.html.

[>] Larry . . . Severe Tropical Cyclone Larry Report, Bureau of Meteorology, Queensland Regional Office, updated December 2006. Available online at http://www.bom.gov.au/weather/qld/cyclone/tc_larry/.

[>] “That something is global warming.” Jeffrey Kluger, “Polar Ice Caps Are Melting Faster Than Ever . . . More And More Land Is Being Devastated By Drought . . . Rising Waters Are Drowning Low-Lying Communities . . . By Any Measure, Earth Is At . . . The Tipping Point,” Time, April 3, 2006.

[>] possibly a Category 4 . . . Best track data on Larry, provided by Unisys Weather, rates the storm as a Category 3. See http://weather.unisys.com/hurricane/s_pacific/2006/LARRY/track.dat. Wikipedia (not necessarily reliable) puts the storm at Category 4: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_Cyclone_Larry.

[>] closer to 115 miles per hour . . . Again, see the National Climatic Data Center: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2006/2006-aussie-trop-cyclones.html.

[>] Severe Tropical Cyclone Glenda . . . For best track data on Glenda, see http://weather.unisys.com/hurricane/s_indian/2006/GLENDA/track.dat. For Glenda’s track itself, see Severe Tropical Cyclone Glenda report, Western Australia Regional Office, Bureau of Meteorology, available at http://www.bom.gov.au/announcements/sevwx/wa/watc20060315.shtml.

[>] 898 millibars . . . See Dr. Jeff Masters’ WunderBlog, “An Extraordinary Cat 5 in Australian Waters,” March 28, 2006, available online at http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=328&tstamp=200603. For the Bureau of Meteorology’s estimate, see http://www.bom.gov.au/announcements/sevwx/wa/watc20060315.shtml.

[>] Severe Tropical Cyclone Monica . . . For the official report on Monica, see the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, Northern Territory Regional Office. Available on-line at http://www.bom.gov.au/announcements/sevwx/nt/nttc200604l7.shtml. Best track data for Monica available at http://weather.unisys.com/hurricane/s_pacific/2006/MONICA/track,dat.

[>] one of the two strongest . . . According to meteorologist Jeff Masters, “Monica ranks as the 14th most intense tropical cyclone in world history, and is tied with Cyclone Zoe of 2003 as the strongest Southern Hemisphere cyclone on record.” See http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=344&tstamp=200604.

[>] 879 millibars . . . See Dr. Jeff Masters’ WunderBlog, “How Strong Was Monica?” April 24, 2006. Available online at http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=345&tstamp=200604.

[>] 868.5 millibars . . . See http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/tropic/adt/archive2006/23P-list.txt.

[>] isn’t necessarily reliable . . . E-mail from Jim Kossin, December 6, 2006.

[>] If we can’t get dependable measurements . . . For a further discussion, see Dr. Jeff Masters’ WunderBlog, “How strong was Monica?” April 24, 2006. Available online at http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=345&tstamp=200604.

[>] The online write-up . . . William Gray, “Global Warming and Hurricanes,” presentation at the 2006 American Meteorological Society 27th Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology, Monday, April 24, 2006. Extended abstract available online at http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/107533.pdf.

[>] the scariest idea yet . . . David’S. Nolan, E. D. Rappin, and K. A. Emanuel, “Could Hurricanes Form from Random Convection in a Warmer World?” Presentation at the 2006 American Meteorological Society 27th Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology, Monday, April 24, 2006. Extended abstract available on-line at http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/107936.pdf. Recorded presentation available online at http://ams.confex.com/ams/27Hurricanes/wrfredirect.cgi?id=5323.

[>] “All six or seven of them.” Interview with Hugh Willoughby, May 16, 2006.

[>] more than 550 . . . Stephanie Kenitzer, American Meteorological Society, e-mail communication, December 1, 2006.

[>] Gray didn’t disappoint. Recorded presentation available online at http://ams.confex.com/ams/27Hurricanes/wrfredirect.cgi?id=5470.

[>] a recent study . . . The work referenced was Harry Bryden et al., “Slowing of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation at 25° N,” Nature, Vol. 438 (2005), pp. 655–57.

[>] an impassioned defense . . . This exchange was also reported by Richard Kerr, “A Tempestuous Birth for Hurricane Climatology,” Science, Vol. 312 (May 5, 2006), pp. 676–78.

[>] an equation-intensive talk . . . Kerry Emanuel, “Environmental Influences on Tropical Cyclone Variability and Trends,” Presentation at the 2006 American Meteorological Society 27th Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology, Monday, April 24, 2006. Extended abstract available online at http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/107575.pdf. Recorded presentation available online at http://ams.confex.com/ams/27Hurricanes/wrfredirect.cgi?id=54l3.

[>] “no personal comments” . . . Authors notes, April 25, 2006, Monterey, California.

[>] seasonal typhoon activity . . . See Johnny Chan, “Variations in the Activity of Tropical Cyclones over the Western North Pacific: From Interdecadal to Intraseasonal,” in Murnane and Liu, eds., Hurricanes and Typhoons.

[>] I sought out Gray . . . Author’s notes, April 26, 2006, Monterey, California.

[>] Florida Governor’s Hurricane Conference . . . Author’s notes at the Florida Governor’s Hurricane Conference, Fort Lauderdale, May 12, 2006.

 

CHAPTER 13: Where Are the Storms?

 

[>] The protesters were in a chanting mood . . . The description of this event is based upon the author’s firsthand experience and notes.

[>] ABC News ran a story . . . ABC News, “Ignoring Science? Protesters Call for Resignations, Say Government Ignoring Global Warming Effect on Hurricanes,” May 31, 2006. Available online at http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=2025372&page=1.

[>] “natural disaster made worse by global warming” . . . Statement on file with the author.

[>] he claimed not to have been convinced . . . Again, see ABC News, “Ignoring Science?” Mayfield is quoted in the story as follows: “I’m always looking forward to looking at new data. If I get convinced, so be it. But I’m not convinced yet.”

[>] burned out . . . Ken Kaye and Sally Kestin, “After 34-year Career, Hurricane Center’s Chief to Leave in January,” South Florida Sun-Sentinel, August 26, 2006.

[>] “no U.S. taxpayer funded website” . . . Mike Tidwell, “Hurricanes and Global Warming: The NOAA Cover Up,” on file with the author.

[>] “ALBERTO COULD BECOME A HURRICANE” . . . National Hurricane Center, Tropical Storm Alberto Discussion Number 10, June 12, 2006. Available on-line at http://www.nhc.noaa.gOv/archive/2006/al01/al012006.discus.010.shtml?.

[>] the earliest to strike Florida in forty years . . . This factoid is attributed to National Hurricane Center forecaster Eric Blake by the Washington Post. See Peter Whoriskey, “Florida Braces for Early-Arriving Alberto,” June 13, 2006. Available online at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/12/AR2006061200531.html.

[>] a four-foot storm surge . . . See National Hurricane Center Tropical Cyclone Report, Tropical Storm Alberto, August 11, 2006. Available online at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/TCR-AL012006_Alberto.pdf.

[>] “It is now generally recognized” . . . Quoted in Brendan Farrington, “President Clinton urges state Democrats to be party of values,” Associated Press, June 12, 2006.

[>] the first year since 1997 . . . Philip J. Klotzbach and William M. Gray, “Summary of 2006 Atlantic Tropical Cyclone Activity and Verification of Author’s Seasonal and Monthly Forecasts,” November 17, 2006. Available online at http:// hurricane.atmos.colostate.edu/Forecasts/2006/nov2006/nov2006.pdf.

[>] four new forecasters . . . Interview with Chris Landsea, November 8, 2006.

[>] “MILTON BERLE.” National Hurricane Center, Tropical Storm Beryl Discussion Number 5, July 19, 2006. Available online at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2006/al02/al022006.discus.005.shtml.

[>] “REGARDING THE PRONUNCIATION OF BERYL” . . . National Hurricane Center, Tropical Storm Beryl Discussion Number 7, July 19, 2006. Available online at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2006/al02/al022006.discus.007.shtml?.

[>] it’s a good curse to have. See Dr. Jeff Masters, “Chris Nears Hurricane Strength,” August 2, 2006. Available online at http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=442&tstamp=200608.

[>]–29 “a quiet decade” . . . Interview with Kerry Emanuel, October 19, 2006.

[>] In downgrading their forecast . . . Philip J. Klotzbach and William M. Gray, “Forecast of Atlantic Hurricane Activity for September and October 2006 and Seasonal Update Through August,” September 1, 2006. Available online at http:// typhoon.atmos.colostate.edu/Forecasts/2006/sep2006/.

[>] a 12.1 storm season . . . See Frédéric Vitart et al., “Dynamically-Based Seasonal Forecasts of Atlantic Tropical-Storm Activity,” 2006, in press.

[>] Hurricane John . . . See the National Hurricane Center Tropical Cyclone Report, Hurricane John, November 16, 2006. Available online at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/TCR-EP112006_John.pdf.

[>] the unnamed 1858 San Diego storm . . . Chenoweth and Landsea, “The San Diego Hurricane of 2 October 1858.” Granted, the scenario described here would be uncommon behavior for any hurricane in the Northeast Pacific basin, most of which travel westward out to sea. Some make it as far as Hawaii, but rarely do they manage to travel north to California because of quickly cooling sea temperatures off the U.S. West Coast. El Nino years warm those temperatures, and 1858 may have been such a year. During the record-breaking 1997 El Nino, the Category 5 Hurricane Linda, the most intense storm ever recorded in the Northeast Pacific, with maximum sustained winds approaching 185 miles per hour and a pressure fall down to 902 millibars (26.64 inches), also gave California a scare when some models predicted it might curve northeastward and reach Southern California in a weakened state (although that turned out to be way off base). For more information on Linda, see the National Hurricane Center Preliminary Report, Hurricane Linda, October 25, 1997, available online at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/1997linda.html.
That same year, Hurricane Nora struck the Baja California peninsula and traveled northward over land far enough to deliver tropical storm-force winds to the United States near the California/Arizona border. The storm caused flooding, power outages, and considerable agricultural losses. For more information, see the National Hurricane Center Preliminary Report, Hurricane Nora, October 30, 1997, available online at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/1997nora.html.

[>] Hurricane Sergio . . . National Hurricane Center, Tropical Cyclone Report, Hurricane Sergio, November 29, 2006. Available online at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/TCR-EP212006_Sergio.pdf.

[>] “do not occur” . . . Gray, “Global View of the Origin of Tropical Disturbances.” On page 678 Gray writes: “In the SW Atlantic and central Pacific, where tropical storms do not occur, the observed climatological tropospheric wind shear is large (i.e., 20–40 kt.). This is believed to be the major inhibitor to development in these areas.”

[>] Hurricane Iniki . . . For the Central Pacific Hurricane Center’s report on Iniki, see http://www.prh.noaa.gOv/cphc/summaries/1992.php#Iniki.

[>] “THIS IS THE FIFTH CATEGORY 5” . . . Central Pacific Hurricane Center, Hurricane Ioke Discussion Number 25, August 25, 2006. Available online at http://www.prh.noaa.gov/cphc/pages/prod.php?file=/cphc/tcpages/archive/2006/TCDCP2.CP012006.25.0608260248.

[>] 920 millibars . . . Best track data for Ioke available at http://weather.unisys.com/hurricane/e_pacific/2006/IOKE/track.dat.

[>] “IOKE COULD ENTER THE RECORD BOOKS” . . . Central Pacific Hurricane Center, Hurricane Ioke Discussion Number 29, August 26, 2006. Available online at http://www.prh.noaa.gov/cphc/pages/prod.php?file=/cphc/tcpages/archive/2006/TCDCP2.CP012006.29.0608270240.

[>] “198 CONSECUTIVE HOURS” . . . Central Pacific Hurricane Center, Tropical Weather Summary for the Central North Pacific, November 30, 2006. Available online at http://www.prh.noaa.gov/cphc/pages/TWS.php.

[>] Hurricane Ivan had lasted . . . See National Hurricane Center Tropical Cyclone Report, Hurricane Ivan, updated May 27, 2005. Available online at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/TCR-AL092004_Ivan.pdf. The total of 192 hours is computed by analyzing the best track data provided here. For thirty-two consecutive six-hourly reports (192 hours), Ivan was at or above an intensity of 115 knots, the cutoff for Category 4 designation. However, I could not find a definitive source stating that Ivan actually held the record prior to Ioke.

[>] “It’s unusual to see one storm” . . . Jeff Masters WunderBlog, “Another Extreme Typhoon for the Philippines,” November 10, 2006. Available online at http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=575&tstamp=200611.

[>] “not a consensus” . . . Quoted in Reuters, “President Briefed on Storms, Warming; Weather experts tell Bush there’s ‘not a consensus’ connecting the two,” August 1, 2006.

[>] in the president’s hands . . . Interview with Chris Landsea, November 8, 2006.

[>] Landsea dressed sharply . . . For the photo, see http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/hurricane/.

[>] “you didn’t typically see this kind of behavior from scientists” . . . Judith Curry notes on Jeb Bush meeting, on file with the author.

[>] two opposed positions . . . For a more thorough discussion of the contrast between “sound science” and the “precautionary principle,” see Mooney, The Republican War on Science, Chapter 6, “Junking ‘Sound Science.’”

[>] “Alice falling down the rabbit hole” . . . Judith Curry, post to RealClimate.org, August 19, 2006, 8:33 A.M., available online at http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/08/fact-fiction-and-friction/#comment-17948.

[>] “falling out of the Ivory Tower” . . . Judith Curry presentation, “Falling Out of the Ivory Tower,” American Geophysical Union meeting, December 12, 2006, San Francisco.

[>] Curry had been shocked . . . Interview with Judith Curry, October 6, 2006; Curry presentation, “Falling Out of the Ivory Tower.”

[>] Doug Blackmon . . . Interviewed on January 17, 2007.

[>] sprang from societal and demographic trends . . . See, for example, Roger A. Pielke, Jr., “Disasters, Death, and Destruction: Making Sense of Recent Calamities,” Seventh Annual Roger Revelle Commemorative Lecture, Oceanography, Vol. 19, No. 2 (June 2006). Available online at http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/admin/publication_files/resource-2449-2006.02.pdf. As Pielke notes, “To emphasize, humans have an ef fect on the global climate system and reducing greenhouse-gas emissions makes good sense. But reducing emissions will not discernibly affect the trend of escalating disaster losses because the cause of that increase lies in ever-growing societal vulnerability.”

[>] a “lurker” . . . Interview with Judith Curry, March 10, 2006.

[>] a kind of field experiment . . . Climate Audit, “The Georgia Tech Report Card,” October 4, 2006, available online at http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=846.

[>] “putting together a jigsaw puzzle” . . . Peter Webster, “Gray’s New Climate Science, Jigsaws and the Theory of Epicycles,” comment posted to RealClimate.org, May 1, 2006. Available online at http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/04/gray-on-agw/#comment-12716.

[>] blog comments . . . Judith Curry, post to RealClimate.org, August 19, 2006, 8:33 A.M. Available online at http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/08/fact-fiction-and-friction/#comment-17948.

[>] further work by the Webster group . . . See Carlos Hoyos et al., “Deconvolution of the Factors Contributing to the Increase in Global Hurricane Intensity,” Science, Vol. 312 (March 16, 2006), pp. 94–97. Other papers supportive of a significant global warming influence on hurricanes published in 2006 include James Eisner, “Evidence in Support of the Climate Change-Atlantic Hurricane Hypothesis,” Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 33, L16705 (2006); and Ryan Sriver and Matthew Huber, “Low Frequency-Variability in Globally Integrated Tropical Cyclone Power Dissipation,” Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 33, L11705 (2006).

[>] Patrick Michaels . . . Patrick Michaels et al., “Sea-surface Temperatures and Tropical Cyclones in the Atlantic Basin,” Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 33, L09708 (2006).

[>] Chris Landsea . . . Landsea et al., “Can We Detect Trends in Extreme Tropical Cyclones?”

[>] Phil Klotzbach . . . Philip J. Klotzbach, “Trends in Global Tropical Cyclone Activity Over the Past Twenty Years (1986–2005),” Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 33, L10805 (2006).

[>] Gerry Bell . . . Gerry Bell and Muthuvel Chelliah, “Leading Tropical Modes Associated with Interannual and Multidecadal Fluctuations in North Atlantic Hurricane Activity,” Journal of Climate, Vol. 19 (2006), pp. 590–612.

[>] “the card-carrying tropical cyclone people” . . . Interview with Judith Curry, March 10, 2006.

[>] an increase in atmospheric water vapor . . . Kevin Trenberth et al., “Trends and Variability in Column-integrated Atmospheric Water Vapor,” Climate Dynamics, Vol. 24 (2005), pp. 741–58.

[>] downplaying . . . the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation . . . Trenberth and Shea, “Atlantic Hurricanes and Natural Variability in 2005.”

[>] Mann and Emanuel . . . Mann and Emanuel, “Atlantic Hurricane Trends Linked to Climate Change,” EOS, Vol. 87 (June 13, 2006), pp. 233–41.

[>] twenty-two different climate models . . . Benjamin Santer et al., “Forced and Unforced Ocean Temperature Changes in Atlantic and Pacific Tropical Cyclogenesis Regions,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 103, No. 38 (September 19, 2006), pp. 13905–10.

[>] hurricane breeding grounds . . . In another modeling study by Thomas Knutson and his colleagues, the warming of the main hurricane development region in the Atlantic was again attributed to human factors. See Thomas Knutson et al., “Assessment of Twentieth-Century Regional Surface Temperature Trends Using the GFDL CM2 Coupled Models Journal of Climate, Vol. 19, No. 9 (2006), pp. 1624–51. The study suggested that “the warming late in the 20th century in this region represents the emergence of a long-term anthropogenically forced warming signal from the background of substantial multidecadal variability.”

[>] an environmentalist public relations firm . . . Resource Media describes itself as “dedicated to making the environment matter. We provide media strategy and services to non-profits, foundations and other partners who are working on the front lines of environmental protection.” See http://www.resource-media.org/.

[>] “provides the final link” . . . Resource Media press release, “New Wave of Hurricane Science: Research Since Katrina Establishes Link Between Global Warming, Hurricanes,” September 7, 2006, on file with the author.

[>] “kind of closes the loop here” . . . Resource Media conference call, August 31, 2006, authors notes.

[>] “increased federal funding for tropical cyclone research” . . . William Gray, comment on “Forced and Unforced Ocean Temperature Changes in Atlantic and Pacific Tropical Cyclogenesis Regions,” on file with the author.

[>] “that’s not a big issue” . . . Interview with Chris Landsea, November 8, 2006.

[>] some misleadingly framed the findings . . . See, for example, Randolph E. Schmid, “New Study Ties Global Warming to Stronger Hurricanes,” Associated Press, September 11, 2006, noting in its first sentence, “Most of the increase in ocean temperature that feeds more intense hurricanes is a result of human-induced global warming, says a study that one researcher says ‘closes the loop’ between climate change and powerful storms like Katrina”; Katy Human, “Report Blames Humans for Storms’ Ferocity: The new study points to greenhouse gases as the cause of warmer ocean waters where hurricanes form. Other scientists argue that the methodology is flawed,” Denver Post, September 12, 2006, whose opening begins: “Human beings are warming the oceans where hurricanes are born, scientists said Monday, and the storms are getting fiercer as a result”; and an editorial in the Charlotte Observer, September 13, 2006, which began: “Researchers in a new study of global warming and rising sea surface temperatures have drawn some conclusions that ought to compel the attention of policymakers, public officials and taxpayers in the Carolinas: Increased hurricane intensity, they concluded, is almost certainly related to manmade pollution.” For a counter-example, see Martin Merzer, “Report Points to Link Between Global Warming and Hurricanes,” Miami Herald, September 11, 2006.

[>] “windshield wiper” effect . . . Andrew Revkin comment made in a public debate at the 2006 Society of Environmental Journalists conference. Audio available online at http://www.desmogblog.com/podcasts-from-the-sej-2006-conference.

[>] strategic communication . . . This distinction between different strategies for communicating about climate change has been highlighted by American University communication professor Matthew Nisbet. Matthew C. Nisbet, “Framing as a Tool for Engaging the Public,” Environmental Science Seminar Series, American Meteorological Society, Washington D.C., November 28, 2006. Summary available online at http://www.ametsoc.org/atmospolicy/EnvironmentalScienceSeminarSeries.html.

[>] Nature . . . Jim Giles, “Is U.S. Hurricane Report Being Quashed?” Nature, Vol. 443 (September 28, 2006), p. 378.

[>] an internal group of government experts . . . Interview with Ants Leetmaa, October 18, 2006.

[>] not particularly controversial . . . The document can be read online at http://hurricanes.noaa.gov/pdf/hurricanes-and-climate-change-09–2006.pdf.

[>] Leetmaa got an e-mail . . . Giles, “Is U.S. Hurricane Report Being Quashed?”

[>] “war on science” . . . Quoted in Randolph E. Schmid, “Journal Says Agency Blocked Report on Hurricanes, Warming,” Associated Press, September 27, 2006.

[>]–43 promptly contradicted . . . Giles, “Is U.S. Hurricane Report Being Quashed?” p. 378.

[>] a statement . . . “Message from the Under Secretary—Scientific Debate and Transparency Within NOAA,” October 3, 2006, on file with the author.

[>] “perched on a ledge” . . . David A. Fahrenthold, “2 Men Arrested on a Ledge at NOAA Building; Silver Spring Demonstration Staged Over Global Warming,” Washington Post, October 24, 2006.

[>] a press release . . . U.S. Newswire, “Protesters Occupy Ledge Above Federal Agency To Demand Action on Global Warming; Standoff with Police Occurs at NOAA Headquarters in D.C. Area; Six Protesters Blockade Main Entrance Denouncing Bush Climate Policies,” October 23, 2006.

 

CHAPTER 14: Hurricane Climatology

 

[>] Frank Lautenberg . . . J. Scott Orr, “Global-warming Factions Agree: Let Data Flow; Senate Panel Hears Plea Against Censorship,” Newark Star-Ledger, December 7, 2006.

[>] The resulting study . . . Jim Kossin et al., “A Globally Consistent Reanalysis of Hurricane Variability and Trends,” Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 34, 2007, L04815, doi: 10.1029/2006GL028836.

[>] Kossin had presented the results publicly. Jim Kossin, “What Can We Say About Hurricanes and Climate Change With Our Present Data?” Presentation to the American Meteorological Society Environmental Science Seminar Series, October 20, 2006. Available online at http://www.ametsoc.org/atmospolicy/documents/Kossinl02006.pdf.

[>] “primate change” . . . Bruce A. Harper, “On the Importance of Reviewing Historic Tropical Cyclone Intensities.” Presentation at the 2006 American Meteorological Society 27th Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology, April 24, 2006. Extended abstract available online at http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdipapers/107768.pdf. Recorded presentation available online at http://ams.confex.com/ams/27Hurricanes/wrfredirect.cgi?id=5477. (Quotation is from the recorded presentation.)

[>] “I’d have to step back” . . . Interview with Kerry Emanuel, October 19, 2006. Similarly, during a January 15, 2007, presentation at the annual American Meteorological Meeting in San Antonio, Emanuel was asked about the Kossin study and replied, “I do agree with Jim’s results, I think they’ve done very, very nice work on that.” (Author’s notes from the event.)

[>] Storm numbers in the Atlantic . . . See Greg Holland and Peter Webster, “Heightened Tropical Cyclone Activity in the North Atlantic: Natural Variability or Climate Trend?” Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical Engineering Sciences, 2006 (accepted).

[>] “no rational reason” . . . Greg Holland, “On the Changing Characteristics of Atlantic Hurricanes,” Presentation to the American Meteorological Society Environmental Science Seminar Series, October 20, 2006. Available online at http://www.ametsoc.org/atmospolicy/documents/Hollandl02006.pdf. Holland also made this point while presenting at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco on December 15, 2006 (author’s notes).

[>] a new data-centric argument . . . As this book went to press in early 2007, the hurricane-climate debate was just fully shifting into this new phase. For more details, see the author’s report on a debate between Holland and Landsea at the January 2007 American Meteorological Society meeting in San Antonio, entitled “AMS Dispatch: Numbers Game.” Available online at http://www.scienceblogs.com/intersection/2007/01/ams_dispatch_numbers_game.php.

[>] Earth Simulator . . . Kazuyoshi Oouchi et al., “Tropical Cyclone Climatology in a Global-Warming Climate as Simulated in a 20km-Mesh Global Atmospheric Model: Frequency and Wind Intensity Analysis,” Journal of the Meteorological Society of Japan, Vol. 84, No. 2 (2006), pp. 259–76.

[>] 14,000 . . . E-mail communication from Harvey Leifert, January 4, 2007.

[>] “The tropical cyclones’ contribution” . . . William M. Gray, “Hurricanes: Their Formation, Structure and Likely Role in the Tropical Circulation.”

[>] ocean heat transport . . . Emanuel, “Contribution of Tropical Cyclones to Meridional Heat Transport by the Oceans.”

[>] “tropical cyclones running around all the time” . . . Interview with Matthew Huber, September 5, 2006.

[>] complementary account . . . See Kevin Trenberth, “Changes in Climate and Hurricanes,” Preprint: AMS Meteorology and Oceanography of the Southern Hemisphere, Brazil, April 2006, noting, “It is thus suggested that tropical storms, and hurricanes in particular, play a unique role in the overall heat budget by cooling the ocean . . . Hence they should also play this role as the climate changes.”

[>] hurricanes do a far more efficient job . . . This description of hurricanes transporting heat from the tropics is based on an interview with Kevin Trenberth, February 14, 2006.

[>] redistributing heat . . . The atmospheric redistribution of heat in hurricanes occurs in the vertical; heat also gets transported pole-ward in the storm’s outflow jets and by atmospheric winds. In addition, when tropical cyclones undergo extra tropical transition, that also has the effect of transporting heat pole-ward. These forms of pole-ward heat transport presumably complement the pole-ward heat transport that Emanuel has described tropical cyclones as producing through ocean mixing. (Interview with Greg Holland, January 2, 2007.)

[>] 80 or 90 tropical cyclones per year . . . Others question whether the 80-storms-per-year number signifies anything special—after all, the number had to be something. See, for example, William M. Frank and George’S. Young, “The 80 Cyclones Myth,” presentation at the 27th Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology, Monterey, California, April 2006.

[>] “cart horses” . . . Interview with Peter Webster, March 10, 2006.

[>] paleotempestology . . . For an introduction to the subject, see Kam-biu Liu, “Paleotempestology: Principles, Methods, and Examples from Gulf Coast Lake Sediments,” and Jeffrey P. Donnelly and Thompson Webb III, “Back-barrier Sedimentary Records of Intense Hurricane Landfalls in the Northeastern United States,” both in Murnane and Liu, eds., Hurricanes and Typhoons: Past, Present, and Future.

[>] Jeff Donnelly . . . J. Donnelly, “Climate Forcing of North Atlantic Tropical Cyclone Activity over the last 6000 years,” presentation at the “Tropical Cyclone-Climate Interactions on All Timescales” panel, American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, San Francisco, December 15, 2006.

[>] “hurricane climatology” . . . This phrase is not uncommon, but my use of it was influenced by Richard Kerr, “A Tempestuous Birth for Hurricane Climatology,” Science, Vol. 312 (May 5, 2006), pp. 676–78.

[>] “merely statistical extrapolation” . . . Peter Webster and Greg Holland, “Hurricanes in a Warming World: From Genesis to Revelation,” PowerPoint presentation on file with the author.

[>] for over a decade . . . For the early history of the Marshall Institute’s global warming “skepticism,” see Weart, The Discovery of Global Warming.

[>] partly funded . . . The George C. Marshall Institute received $115,000 from ExxonMobil in 2005, according to the company’s 2005 giving report available at http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/Files/Corporate/giving05_policy.pdf. The 2006 giving report was not available as this book went to press.

[>] independence from fossil fuel interests . . . William Gray, “The Global Warming Fuss,” undated, on file with the author. Gray states in this article: “Most of the meteorological skeptics I know (including me) do not have any association with the fossil-fuel industry or right-wing organizations. We just don’t believe humans are now or will in the next century be able to significantly alter the globe’s temperature.”

[>] evening out the ledger . . . Interview with William Gray, October 12, 2006. For Gray’s insistence that he doesn’t accept industry payments, see also Alan Prendergast, “The Skeptic,” Denver Westword, June 29, 2006.

[>] the Marshall Institute talk . . . William Gray, “Hurricanes and Climate Change,” George C. Marshall Institute Washington Roundtable on Science and Public Policy, October 11, 2006. Slides available online at http://www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/461.pdf.

[>] “Not any more” . . . Quoted in Jim Erikson, “Tempest Erupts Over Hurricanes; Global warming debate at conference spawns name calling,” Rocky Mountain News, October 26, 2006.

[>] “look it up in the book of Genesis” . . . Senate Floor Statement of James Inhofe, “Peace in the Middle East,” March 4, 2002.

[>] “economy-killing carbon caps” . . . Environment and Public Works Committee, “Senator Inhofe Reacts to U.N. Climate Conference in Kenya and Comments on Upcoming 110th Congress,” November 16, 2006. Available online at http://epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=265956.

[>] “natural cycles at work” . . . For the joint PowerPoint presentations of D’Aleo and Gray, see http://epw.senate.gov/repwhitepapers/DCMeetingNovl6.pdf.

[>] “. . . absolutely revolutionize human life.” Bertrand Russell, Sceptical Essays (London: Unwin Books, 1961), p. 10 (original edition 1928).

 

CONCLUSION

 

[>] “the wonderful world of projections” . . . Interview with Greg Holland, February 13, 2006.

[>] El Niño tends . . . For an overview of the effect of El Niño on hurricanes see Pao Shin Chu, “ENSO and Tropical Cyclone Activity,” in Hurricanes and Typhoons: Past, Present, and Future. Note that the effect of El Niño in the Pacific varies: For the Northwest Pacific, storms shift eastward, equator-ward, and last longer; for the Northeast Pacific, storms shift westward, get more intense, and last longer, in the process also traveling farther westward; and for the Central Pacific (north of the equator), more storms form and more also arrive in the basin from the Northeast Pacific.

[>] some type of change ought to occur . . . Interview with Kevin Trenberth, December 29, 2006.

[>] a new consensus . . . For another useful overview of the state of the debate as this book went to press, see J. Marshall Shepherd and Thomas Knutson, “The Current Debate on the Linkage Between Global Warming and Hurricanes,” Geography Compass, Vol. 1 (2006): 10.1111/j.l749–8198.2006.00002.x.

[>] summary statement . . . World Meteorological Organization, 6th International Workshop on Tropical Cyclones, “Summary Statement on Tropical Cyclones and Climate Change,” 2006. Available online at http://www.wmo.ch/web/arep/press_releases/2006/iwtc_summary.pdf. In addition to the summary statement, a longer statement was released after being developed at the workshop, available online at http://www.wmo.ch/web/arep/press_releases/2006/iwtc_statement.pdf/.

[>] “Summary for Policymakers” . . . Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis, Summary for Policymakers,” available online at http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf.

[>] more than justify worry . . . For a debate among hurricane experts over the extent to which we should take a precautionary outlook on the question of hurricane intensification due to global warming, see Pielke, Jr., et al., “Hurricanes and Global Warming”; Anthes et al., “Hurricanes and Global Warming—Potential Linkages and Consequences,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, May 2006, pp. 623–28; and Roger A. Pielke, Jr., et al., “Reply to ‘Hurricanes and Global Warming—Potential Linkages and Consequences,’” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, May 2006, pp. 628–31.

[>] half of the U.S. population . . . National Science Board, “Hurricane Warning: The Critical Need for a National Hurricane Research Initiative,” Draft, September 29, 2006.

[>] “we’re not prepared for hurricanes as they are today.” Interview with Chris Landsea, November 8, 2006. See also R. A. Pielke, Jr., and R. A. Pielke, Sr., Hurricanes: Their Nature and Impacts on Society (London: John Wiley & Sons Press, 1997), p. 187, noting: “Before asking if we are prepared for the future, we ought to ask if we are prepared even for past known events and climate fluctuations. The future is uncertain—the recent past, however, is certain. Once we consider ourselves prepared for the past,’ so to speak, we can seek additional proactive improvements for the future.”

[>] top-ten list of places . . . International Hurricane Research Center, “10 Most Hurricane Vulnerable Areas.” Available online at http://www.ihc.fiu.edu/media/docs/10_Most_Hurricane_Vulnerable_Areas.pdf.

[>] “it should in no event detract” . . . Statement on the U.S. Hurricane Problem, July 25, 2006. Available online at http://wind.mit.edu/-emanuel/Hurricane_threat.htm.

[>] “You just have to adapt.” Interview with Roger Pielke, Jr., January 5, 2007.

[>] mandatory caps . . . See Roger A. Pielke, Jr., “Turning the Big Knob: An Evaluation of the Use of Energy Policy to Modulate Future Climate Impacts,” Energy and Environment, Vol. 11 (May 22, 2000), pp. 255–76.

[>] “conservative estimate” . . . Interview with Hugh Willoughby, May 16, 2006. 269 “a cultural distinction that’s unnecessary.” Interview with Kerry Emanuel, May 22, 2006.

[>] “a considerable debating disadvantage” . . . Curry et al., “Mixing Politics and Science.”

[>] honed in on scientific disagreements . . . Nisbet and Mooney, “The Next Big Storm.”

[>] “Katrina is the standard” . . . Press Briefing by Scott McClellan and Senior Officials on Levee Reconstruction, December 15, 2005. Available online at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/12/20051215–4.html.

[>] The protections ignored worst-case scenarios . . . My analysis of Hurricane Betsy and its aftermath relies upon John McQuaid and Mark Schleifstein’s Path of Destruction: The Devastation of New Orleans and the Coming Age of Superstorms (New York: Little, Brown, 2006), centrally Chapters 3 and 4. See also U.S. Government Accountability Office, Testimony before the Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives, “Army Corps of Engineers: Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection Project,” September 28, 2005. Available online at http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d051050t.pdf.

[>] “Are the levees protecting them” . . . Interview with Mark Schleifstein, November 24, 2006.

[>] the agency had promised to comply . . . Mark Schleifstein, “Flood Protection Plans Lacking; Changed Standards Mean New Strategies,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, August 28, 2006.

[>] “the 100-year storm is the 86-year storm” . . . Schleifstein, “Flood Protection Plans Lacking.”

[>] $32 billion or more . . . See John Schwartz, “Category 5: Levees are Piece of a $32 Billion Pie,” New York Times, November 29, 2005.

[>] Category 5 defenses . . . Peter Whoriskey and Spencer’S. Hsu, “Levee Repair Costs Triple: New Orleans May Lack Full Protection,” Washington Post, March 31, 2006.

[>] press release . . . See Curry et al., “Mixing Politics and Science.”

[>] lower Manhattan . . . NASA Press Release, “NASA Looks at Sea Level Rise, Hurricane Risks to New York City,” October 25, 2006.

[>] “fundamental rethinking” . . . Munich Re, “Hurricanes: More Intense, More Frequent, More Expensive,” 2006.

 

APPENDICES

 

[>] “classifications of cyclones” . . . Quoted by Dr. Jeff Masters in “Thingamabobbercane Revisited,” November 8, 2006, available online at http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=574&tstamp=200611.

[>] eyelike structure . . . For an illuminating discussion of “blizzicanes,” see another posting by Dr. Jeff Masters from February 14, 2006, available online at http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=303&tstamp=200602.

[>] “Halloween Storm” of 1991 . . . For a full meteorological account of the 1991 Halloween Storm, see this useful page from the National Climatic Data Center: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/satellite/satelliteseye/hurricanes/unnamed91/unnamed01.html.

[>] “the subtropical cyclone” . . . Interview with Richard Pasch, November 8, 2006.

[>] “Polar Low” . . . See Masters, “Thingamabobbercane Forms off the Coast of Oregon,” November 2, 2006. Available online at http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?enttynum=569&tstamp=200611.

[>] Alfred Russel Wallace . . . Wallace’s famous essay, mailed from the island of Ternate in the Malay Archipelago and describing an idea that had come to him during a feverish malaria dream, was entitled “On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type.” Receiving it by mail forced Darwin’s hand. After consulting his scientist friends, Darwin had his own unpublished work presented jointly with Wallace’s essay before the Linnean Society, a scientific club in London. Then Darwin rushed to press with The Origin of Species. By the time Wallace got back to England from the Malay Archipelago several years later, having collected over 100,000 specimens and named more than a thousand new species, all of Victorian society had been shaken by Darwin’s (and his own) discovery. For more on the Wallace-Darwin episode, see Michael Shermer, In Darwin’s Shadow: The Life and Science of Alfred Russel Wallace (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 118–21.

[>] “these tempests might be so increased” . . . Alfred Russel Wallace, Man’s Place in the Universe (New York: McClure, Phillips & Co., 1903), pp. 242–43.

[>] the weight of air molecules . . . For scientific critiques of Wallace’s thoughts on hurricanes I am indebted to Richard Anthes, Greg Holland, and Kevin Trenberth.

[>] not uncommon at the time . . . For details on early speculation about the relationship between solar changes and climate, see Spencer Weart, “Changing Sun, Changing Climate.” Available online at http://www.aip.org/history/climate/solar.htm#L_0279.

[>] Tor Bergeron . . . For an account of Bergeron’s life, see Cox, Storm Watchers, Chapter 21.

[>] “Another problem, of much more far-reaching consequences” . . . Tor Bergeron, “The Problem of Tropical Hurricanes,” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, Vol. 80 (1954), pp. 131–64.

[>] “Back then it was surprising” . . . Interview with T. N. Krishnamurti, May 31, 2006.

[>] “more intense hurricanes” . . . Interview with Joanne and Robert Simpson, October 12, 2006.