Science
Climate change likely to cause more severe hurricanes, report suggests – CBC.ca
When it comes to climate change, experts say few things have been as tricky to predict as its impact on hurricanes.
A new report in the ScienceBrief Review website published last week now suggests that many regions affected by hurricanes will likely experience storms of greater intensity as a result of Earth’s changing climate. Maximum wind speeds in hurricanes could rise five per cent if the planet warms by 2 C by 2100, the review of more than 90 peer-reviewed studies found.
And that highlights a need for cities and governments — including those in Canada — to plan ahead for a future where they may be dealing with climate issues they have not had to deal with in the past, experts say.
“It’s important that governments look at how you need to adapt to climate change,” said Canadian researcher Corinne Le Quéré, a Royal Society professor of climate change at the University of East Anglia, who edited the report. “Some of these events will occur in places where perhaps they have not seen hurricane-force winds before. And therefore, you need to develop coping measures to have these alert systems.”
The report, which analyzed peer-reviewed literature, was published as part of a series on climate change issues ahead of the United Nations’ COP26 climate conference scheduled for Nov. 1–2 in Glasgow.
In the U.S. and Canada, hurricanes are categorized using the Saffir-Simpson scale that classifies them from a Category 1 to a Category 5.
To put the five per cent potential rise in maximum wind speeds into perspective, a Category 3 hurricane produces sustained wind speeds ranging from 178 to 208 km/h. A Category 5 produces speeds of 252 km/h or higher. Hurricanes from Categories 3 to 5 are considered major or severe hurricanes.
Not a clean-cut story
The impact of climate change on hurricanes has been tricky to quantify because there are many aspects to the system involved in creating and sustaining a hurricane. And it is hard to separate how much of that is caused by natural or man-made reasons.
The report said the intensity of hurricanes will “probably” increase as a result of climate change, but it is hard to be certain due to several factors, including a lack of historical data. Since 1979, hurricanes of Category 3 or higher have increased by roughly five per cent, but it’s difficult to say how much of a role climate change has played in this.
“The reason why the picture seems … a bit murky when we present things is because it’s not as clean-cut a story as we have for something like global mean temperature, where we have these clear records going back to the late 1800s,” said Tom Knutson, division leader at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, who led the review.
“But we can contrast that with this case for hurricanes and hurricane activity where, first of all, there are lots of different ways of looking at hurricanes, lots of different metrics, lots of different regions, and things like that. But in no case, really, do we have a comparable confidence to what we have for global mean temperature.”
While the intensity of hurricanes is likely to increase, it’s also important to note that not all of these storms will necessarily reach inland.
Canada should look at hurricane threat
There are more complications with hurricanes. Climate change is warming sea surface temperatures, which help fuel hurricanes. There is also more moisture available to produce and sustain hurricanes, which results in heavier rainfall.
In addition, research has found that hurricanes are moving towards the North and South poles by roughly 56 kilometres, or about one degree of latitude, per decade and that they are also moving further inland.
With the increase in hurricane intensity, greater rainfall volumes, hurricanes that are moving further inland and poleward, countries including Canada may need to evaluate the potential fallout in the future.
“Certainly Canada should look at whether [hurricanes] are a threat … If they are more intense, then they also have potential to affect bigger areas,” Le Quéré said. “Certainly the changes in the storm tracks and in the weather patterns is something that Canada should be looking at to see if there is a need [to adapt].”
Deanna Hence, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s department of atmospheric sciences, said the report highlights the difficulties predicting hurricanes in a changing climate.
“The biggest thing that comes across from this article that is that when it comes to climate change or tropical cyclones, it’s a really complicated set of interactions and a very complicated set of possible impacts,” said Hence, who was not involved in the study.
“Essentially what people want to know is, if you live in a certain part of the world will hurricanes or typhoons or tropical cyclones hurt you more. That’s I think what really the root question comes down to … And the answer is yes, kind of, sort of.”
It’s just exactly how that is the remaining question. But Hence said that it’s time for all stakeholders to start planning ahead, especially in light of already aging infrastructure that may not be able to handle more precipitation, more storm surge or stronger winds associated with hurricanes.
Overall, climatologists agree that more research needs to be done, and that only time will tell how people will be affected.
“Humans are changing the climate system. And so we’re sort of running this experiment, whether we like it or not, this global warming experiment, and we’re going to find out — as we continue along with this trajectory of warming — we’re going to find out how various things do or don’t change,” Knutson said. “We’ll get more information coming as we continue to alter the climate system.”
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) – NASA has finally heard back from Voyager 1 again in a way that makes sense.
The most distant spacecraft from Earth stopped sending back understandable data last November. Flight controllers traced the blank communication to a bad computer chip and rearranged the spacecraft’s coding to work around the trouble.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California declared success after receiving good engineering updates late last week. The team is still working to restore transmission of the science data.
It takes 22 1/2 hours to send a signal to Voyager 1, more than 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away in interstellar space. The signal travel time is double that for a round trip.
Contact was never lost, rather it was like making a phone call where you can’t hear the person on the other end, a JPL spokeswoman said Tuesday.
Launched in 1977 to study Jupiter and Saturn, Voyager 1 has been exploring interstellar space – the space between star systems – since 2012. Its twin, Voyager 2, is 12.6 billion miles (20 billion kilometers) away and still working fine.
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SpaceX sent yet another batch of its Starlink internet satellites skyward today (April 23).
A Falcon 9 rocket topped with 23 Starlink spacecraft lifted off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station today at 6:17 p.m. EDT (2217 GMT).
The Falcon 9’s first stage came back to Earth for a vertical landing about 8.5 minutes after launch as planned. It touched down on the SpaceX droneship Just Read the Instructions, which was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.
It was the ninth launch and landing for this particular booster, according to a SpaceX mission description. Five of its previous eight liftoffs were Starlink missions.
The Falcon 9’s upper stage will continue carrying the 23 Starlink satellites toward low Earth orbit (LEO) today, deploying them about 65 minutes after liftoff.
This evening’s launch was the 41st of the year for SpaceX, and the 28th of 2024 dedicated to building out the huge and ever-growing Starlink megaconstellation. There are nearly 5,800 operational Starlink satellites in LEO at the moment, according to astrophysicist and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell.
The Starlink launch ended up being the first half of a spaceflight doubleheader: A Rocket Lab Electron vehicle launched two satellites, including a NASA solar-sailing technology demonstrator, from New Zealand today at 6:33 p.m. EDT (2233 GMT).
Editor’s note: This story was updated at 6:30 p.m. ET on April 23 with news of successful launch and first-stage landing.
Science
Exploring ecological networks in a digital world | News | Vancouver Island University | Canada – Vancouver Island University News
Getting to know Samantha Letourneau
By day, Samantha Letourneau is Vancouver Island University’s Canada Learning Bond project lead and Volunteer Tutor Coordinator. She’s also a musician and dancer and for the past two years, she’s been collaborating with Swedish artist Mårten Spångberg, thanks to funding obtained through Crimson Coast Dance, to create a digital art installation that goes live on Friday, April 26. A launch event takes place at Black Rabbit restaurant in the Old City Quarter that night. Samantha is also hosting a creative process workshop on April 27 and 28.
Can you share a bit about your background as an artist and how you got into it?
I have been working in art for a very long time, as a musician and dancer as well as an art administrator and program coordinator. I started music at the age of 11 and dance came later in my life in my early 20s. I always wanted to do dance, but I grew up in a small community in Yellowknife and at that time the only dance classes available were highland dancing, which I was not very interested in.
In my early 20s while living in Vancouver, I took classes in contemporary dance and was fortunate to land a small part in the Karen Jameison Dance company for a piece called The River. The River was about rivers and connection between the reality of a real and physical outdoor river and the different reality of “the river within.” It was both a piece of art and outreach for the community. It included working with the S’pak’wus Slu’lum Dancers of the Squamish Nation. Somewhat ground-breaking for 1998.
From there I was hooked and wanted to do more in dance. I studied a lot and took many classes. Fast forward to now, I have been involved with productions and performances with Crimson Coast Dance for more than 15 years and greatly appreciate the talent and innovation that Artistic Director Holly Bright has brought to this community. She is amazing and very supportive of artists in Nanaimo.
How did this international exchange come about?
The Nordic/Nanaimo exchange is one of the innovative projects Holly created. At the height of the pandemic, funded by BC Arts Council and Made In BC, Crimson Coast Dance embarked on a project that explored the ways in which Nanaimo artists could participate in online exchanges.
Two artists in Nanaimo – myself and Genevieve Johnson – were introduced to artists from Europe and supported through this international exchange. My collaborator, Mårten Spångberg, is a Swedish artist living and working in Berlin. An extension of that exchange is funded by Canada Council for the Arts – Digital Now.
What brought Mårten and myself together – and I quote Mårten here – is “questions around climate change, ecology and the influence contemporary society has on its environments. We are not interested in making art about the ecological crises or informing our audience about the urgency that climate change implies, but instead through our research develop work that in itself proposes, practices and engages in alternative ecologies.”
We share an understanding that art is a unique place, in the sense of practice, activation, performance and event, through which alternative ecologies can emerge and be probed and analyzed.
Tell us about the launch event.
We are launching the digital art installation that Mårten and I created on April 26 at The Attic at Black Rabbit Restaurant. The event is free to attend but people must sign up as seating is limited. I produced video art with soundscapes that I recorded mixing field recordings with voice and instrumentation. Marten explores text, imagery and AI.
My focus is on the evolving and ongoing process of how we communicate with each other and to nature within a digital context.
During our collaboration, Mårten and I talked about networks, though not just the expansive digital network of the internet but of nature. We shared thoughts on mycelium, a network of fungal threads or hyphae, that lately has received much attention on the importance of its function for the environment, including human beings.
Building off this concept, ideas of digital and ecological landscapes being connected emerged. From this we worked both collaboratively and individually to produce material for this digital project. Mårten will be there via Zoom as well and we will talk about this two-year process and the work we created together.
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