Did Climate Change Create U.S, Global Warming U.S. Refugees In 2022?

People evacuating in Florida ahead of Hurricane Irma
in 2017.  In 2022, 3.3 million Americans had to
evacuate their homes, at least for a little while, 
due to extreme weather. 

Natural disasters forced 3.4 million Americans from their homes in 2022, according to a report from NBC News. 

Says the network: 

"Natural disasters forced an estimated 3.4 million people in the U.S. to leave their homes in 2022, according to Census Bureau data collected earlier this year, underscoring how climate-related weather events are already changing American communities. 

The overwhelming majority of these people were uprooted by hurricanes, followed by floods, then fires and tornadoes. Nearly 40 percent returned to their homes within a week. Nearly 16 percent have not returned home (and may never do so) and 12 percent were evacuated for more than six months."

 Some experts find the numbers from 2022 rather shocking, as NBC reports: 

"'These numbers are very distressing,' said Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change law at Columbia University, who was not involved in the data collection. 'The numbers are what one would expect to find in a developing country. It's appalling to see them in the United States.. They're only going to get worse in the years to come because climate change is making extreme weather events more frequent and more severe.'"

I have to be careful here, though. It's not like the people who  had to leave their homes due to storms are all climate refugees.

Displacement created by climate-boosted disasters is definitely a thing. And it will get worse as the years go by and climate change intensifies.

As tragic as these 2022 disasters were, it would be wrong to call all the 3.4 million people displaced by severe weather climate refugees. Any time somebody is forced out of their homes by a storm, floods or some other disaster, that's unequivocally bad.  

It's fortunate that 40 percent of the people displaced were able to go home within a week. 

But still, we've always had hurricanes, floods tornadoes and fires that displaced people for months.  years or forever. At least some of the displacement highlighted here is due to climate change. But some of it is just dumb, bad luck. 

Also some homes are built in disaster prone areas. I'm not blaming the victim here, as many people are forced by poverty or other circumstances to live in places that can be dangerous.  Racial issues also, as seemingly always, come up. 

The U.S. Census data backs this up. Says NBC:

"Those earning less than $25,000 a year had the highest evacuation rate of any economic group, and Black and Hispanic residents had slightly higher evacuation rates than white residents."  

I don't have complete information on how the number of disaster refugees compare to previous years, but other organizations besides the U.S. Census have estimates.

As NBC News reports, the 1.4 percent of the U.S. adult population that the Census Bureau says were displaced by weather/climate disasters is higher than other estimates Says NBC:

"Data from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, part of the humanitarian organization The Norwegian Refugee Council, previously estimated that disasters displaced an average of 800,000 U.S. residents a year from 2008 through 2021."

Dishearteningly, it seems adults who identify as LGBTQ are disproportionately affected by nature disasters. Four percent of LGBTQ people reported having to leave their homes compared to 1.2 percent of straight people.   

In a state by state breakdown, it's no surprise that Florida came in #1 in terms of the number of people displaced in 2022 with just under a million people, North Dakota had the fewest, with 1,088.

Here in Vermont, 1,629 people were displaced at least temporarily from their homes due to storms. I'm guessing most of that is from the effects of power outages during storms. 

You Have To Watch Pecos Hanks' Storm Videos. Exhibit # 9,999,990

Storm chaser, storyteller and musician is back with another
 great storm video that's much more than a storm video. 

There's tons of weather porn out there. 

No, not XXX-rated stuff. No sex, no naked bodies. Sorry, this is a family weather blog. 

Weather porn is videos of extreme weather, usually storms to entice and excite weather weenies like myself. Heck, I indulge in making what I call soft weather porn for my YouTube channel. Soft core because storms don't usually get as wild in Vermont as they do in other parts of the nation. 

But at least Vermont weather tends to be pretty. 

The videos I make, amateurish as they are, still tend to be satisfying to make and I hope satisfying to watch.

Then there are the big time storm chasers. 

Some of them are rather loud, with a lot of shouting. I have mad respect for Reed Timmer and his extreme storm videos, since he has an uncanny knack for being in the right place at the right time. But he gets so excited he yells an awful lot, and my ADHD-addled brain has trouble handling that. 

And there's iCyclone, whose real name is Josh Morgerman, who travels the world to enter the eyes of as many hurricanes and typhoons as he can. The results come in unbelievable, amazing footage. And if you want a master class in calmness amid extreme chaos, he's your guy. 

Then there are the incredibly stupid storm chasers, of which there are many. These are the idiots who drive right into tornadoes, pretend to be police officers to clear the path for their own "videography," the ones that cause traffic jams to block escape routes if a tornado makes an unexpected turn, drive at 90 mph and on the wrong side of the road to capture their video, innocent crash victims be damned.

And then there's Pecos Hank, the most unique storm chaser out there, and easily my favorite. I've touted this guy before in this here blog thingy and I have to do it again.  I just hope he doesn't think I'm stalking him.  

The reason I bring all this up is because Pecos Hank  just released a video reflecting on his storm chasing exploits of 2022.

As always, what I love about this latest video is it's not just dramatic storms and tornadoes, though there's plenty of that.  His videos are so good because he doesn't just show clips, he tells a story in his easy Texas drawl. And he's quirky as hell. 

One incredibly endearing aspect of his videos is he's constantly rescuing animals of the creepy crawly variety from rural roads so they don't get run over by cars. 

He's such a fun narrator. In one part of his recent video, he highlights a relatively anemic tornado that has suction vortices, which are min-tornadoes within the main twister. His description: "As this weak tornado passed overhead, a carousel of suction vortices was on the ground terrorizing prairie dogs and flinging grasshoppers."

You cannot get any better cinematography, narration and creativity than that in a storm video.

When you get away from Pecos Hanks' dry humor and look at the cinematography, it's occasionally almost on the level of famed storm videographer Mike Olbinski

Pecos Hank is also an accomplished musician. He uses some of his storm footage in his music videos, such as in "Drive Under The Moon."  He also uses his music in some of his storm videos, like the review of 2022 tornadoes that I've been talking about.

 At one point, he uses the broken nozzle of a Do-It-Yourself car wash slapping against the machine in the wind on a stormy day to establish the beat for a song he sings toward the tail end of the video. 

Here's his Tornado of 2022 video. Click on this link or click on the image below if you see it to view, 

  

  

2022 Lightning Strikes Reveal National Weather....

 When climatologists do deep dives in how a climate might or might not be changing, they look at lightning strikes. 

Lightning activity, or the lack thereof, can tell us where droughts are developing, where droughts are ending and where severe weather is moving, changing or just being weird. 

A weather and environmental monitoring company called Vaisala Xweather compiled an analysis of lightning in the United States in 2022 into an annual report, something the company has done since at least 2015. 

Vaisala said lightning zapped in the United States a total of more than 198 million times in 2022. The state with the most strikes was Texas, with just under 30 million. 

As the Washington Post reports:

"Recently released U.S. lightning data by weather and environmental monitoring company Vaisala Xweather showed portions of the Midwest and Texas - typical lightning hot spots - had a weaker display of activity in 2022 compared to its recent average. The lack of lightning was a signal itself of atypical weather across the country last year, including major drought across the Mississippi River basin."

The Washington Post explains why lightning data is important:

"Lightning detection is like measuring a person's reflexes: The system can appear normal overall, but certain areas may show more signs of struggle than others. That's what happened in 2022. After back to back years of concerning low activity in 2021 and 2020, the total number of lightning strikes was closer to average. Still, pockets of the country showed record low or high activity in ways that left researchers surprised."

Lightning was below average in the Mississippi River basin. Which is bad, because that area receives about half its annual rainfall from thunderstorms.  It was the third consecutive year with below average lightning activity in that region. 

The Mississippi River fell to nearly record low levels in the autumn. Simply measuring rainfall is of course the obvious way to figure out whether you're in a drought. But lightning data can help show what type of rainfall was lacking. 

The dearth of lightning meant that the downpours usually associated with thunderstorms was lacking. Since torrential rains are more likely to flow into rivers, that provides more evidence as to why the Mississippi was so low.  

Other areas had a lot of lightning. 

Florida, due to its geography and climate gets zapped with tons of lightning strikes each year. However, 2022 was an especially busy year for lightning in Florida. They had 33 percent more lightning compared with the 2015-2021 average, says WaPo

Part of the problem was Hurricane Ian, that intense storm that caused $60 billion in damage. 

Hurricanes don't usually produce all that much lightning, but this one did. At its peak, it was producing lightning every three seconds in the hurricane's eyewall. 

The eyewall is a circle of especially intense winds surrounding the calm eye of a hurricane.  

Most of the extra lightning strikes across Florida, though, were just due to a busy summer thunderstorm season that was even more active than usual. 

Another state that saw an increase in lightning over previous years was Arizona. In mid to late summer, humid winds from the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean are drawn toward Arizona by low pressure created by summer heat.

That creates what is known as a monsoon season, in which thunderstorms frequently erupt in the Desert Southwest. Contrary to recent years, the Arizona monsoon season was more active than usual

Another very weird lightning hot spot was around Buffalo, New York during their epic Christmas lake effect blizzard. A good 1,0000 lightning strikes were detected during the blizzard over three and a half days, which is more lightning than anyone can recall in such a weather pattern.

Climate change is blamed for just about everything that goes wrong in the weather and elsewhere. However, so far at least, there are no discernible overall trends in lightning frequency in the United States because of climate change.

VERMONT LIGHTNING

Here in Vermont, we don't have a lot of lightning, compared to many other places east of the Rocky Mountains. 

Given the Green Mountain State's relatively small size and fairly low level of thunderstorm activity, we had the four least amount of lightning of all the states and the District of Columbia.

Vaisala detected 62,954 lightning strikes in Vermont during 2022. Only Rhode Island, Hawaii, and the District of Columbia had less lightning during the year. 

Overall, lightning activity during 2022 in Vermont was near or a little below average. In 2021 Vermont saw 71,264 lightning strikes.

Maybe a better way to measure how Vermont and other states rank is lightning density, which Vaisala defines as events per square kilometer. Measured that way, Vermont ranked 43rd in the nation in terms of lightning density. 

For fun, Vaisala nominates the lightning capitals of each state. It's where lightning was detected the most. In Vermont, this year's lightning capital was Danby. In 2021, Vermont's lightning capital was Ripton. So you see it's pretty random. 

Speaking of random, it's interesting that the highest lightning density in Vermont in 2021 was in central parts of the state, with less north and south. In 2022, it was just the opposite, with somewhat higher lightning density south and north, with lesser amounts in central Vermont.  

World In 2002 'Was 5th or 6th Hottest On Record, Depending On Who You Ask

Global trend in temperatures since 1880. See a trend?

Climatologists continue to crunch the numbers on the world's weather and climate for 2022, and it's becoming clear that the year was either the globe's fifth hottest or sixth hottest on record. 

On Thursday, NOAA ranked 2022 as the sixth hottest year on record. Meanwhile, other organizations, including NASA, Copernicus Climate Service of the European Union and Berkeley Earth, an environmental data science non-profit, said Earth had its fifth warmest year in 2022, the Washington Post reports. 

The difference in rankings stems from varying ways scientists measure the Earth's temperature. The differences between the two organizations are only at most a few hundredths of a degree.

According to NOAA' National Centers for Environmental Information, the new data means that all of the last nine years were the Earth's warmest on record and all the top 10 hottest years have occurred since 2010.  If you are under the age of 46, you have never seen a year on Earth that was cooler than the 20th century average. 

The latest count shows 28 nations set new records for warmest year in 2022. They're all over the place, too, not just one region. They include several European nations, China and New Zealand. 

Record breaking, deadly heat waves cropped up all over the world in 2022. Examples include India in March, Pakistan in April, much of western Europe and swaths of the United States, China an Japan in July and August and parts of South America in November and December.    

Additionally, 11 nations or territories broke or tied all time high temperatures. They are Paraguay, Australia, Uruguay, Vatican City, United Kingdom, Jersey, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Barbados, Dominica and the Falkland Islands. 

Extreme droughts and devastating floods hit many countries in 2022,with some nations, like Pakistan and the United States, suffering through both. Droughts and floods have always occurred, of course, but climate change accentuates them, making the disasters more intense than they otherwise would be. 

As the Washington Post reports: 

"Heat record fell last year despite the presence of La Nina, an episodic cooling of the ocean temperatures in the tropical Pacific. The Earth's top several warmest years on record have occurred during El Nino events, when the tropical Pacific has been warm. La Nina is likely to fade this year, which could boost the planet's overall temperature and make weather around the world more extreme." 

The UK Met Office is already predicting that on a global basis, 2023 will be hotter than last year, since La Nina will be fading. If El Nino really takes charge, some scientists think 2024 might end up breaking the record for hottest year for Earth on record. 

NOAA Says Was Disaster Prone, Drought Prone, And Warm And Dry During 2022

Almost all of the nation was either warmer than normal or
much warmer than normal for 2022 as a whole. Only six
Midwestern states were near normal, and none 
were cooler than average. 

 NOAA has finished crunching the weather and climate numbers in the Lower 48 of the United States for 2022 and, to nobody's surprise, it was a warm, dry year. 

The warmth did not set any records for the nation as a whole. The average annual temperature for 2022 in the Lower 48 was 53.4 degrees, or 1.4 degrees above the 20th century average. That would put last year among the warmest third of the 128 year record.

An average temperature or 1.4 degrees above normal might not seem like much, but it's fairly substantial for the entirety of a year over such a large chunk of real estate. 

Six states had one of their top 10 warmest years in 2022. Vermont wasn't quite in that list, having had its 11th warmest year on record. However, within Vermont, Burlington did have its 5th warmest year on record. 

On average, precipitation in the contiguous U.S. totaled 28.35, according to NOAA. That's 1.59 inches below average and among the driest third of the 128 years people have been keeping track of this sort of thing. 

Over the course of 2022, drought covered between 44 and 63 percent of the nation, the most extensive drought in a decade.

The United States experienced 18 weather and climate disasters that each caused at least $1 billion in damage. The only one of those disaster that affected us here in Vermont was the broad ranging winter storm the swept most of the nation on December 21-26.

Total damage from these 18 disasters amounted to $165 billion.  It was the third most costly weather year in the United States, behind 2017 and 2005 in inflation-adjusted dollars.  

Hurricane Ian made up the bulk of the destruction, with $119 billion in damage. It was the third costliest hurricane in the U.S. since at least 1980.

I'll also note that in this young year of 2023, I suspect we already have one billion dollar disaster with the storms this month in California. 

The United States had a slightly above average year for tornadoes, with a grand total of 1,331 twisters reported. March was especially busy, with 293 tornadoes reported, the  most in any year since at least 1950.   

In One Of World's Hottest Years, 2022 In UK Was Off The Charts

United Kingdom had its hottest year on record in 2022.
Other nations might follow suit, and globally, 2022
will be among the top 10 hottest. Where the world
ranks will be known for sure by the middle of this month.

 We won't begin to get great data just yet on how 2022 stacked up in the list of world's hottest years.

So far, the expectation is it certainly won't be the hottest year ever, but still will crack the top 10, probably somewhere between sixth and eighth hottest. Pretty remarkable for a year with a La Nina, which tends to cool the world a bit. 

The United Kingdom, though, came in with a scorching hot year.  The UK has been keeping track of temperatures since 1659, the longest period of instrumental data in the world.

After all those years, 2022 will be the hottest, according to provisional data from the UK Met Office.  The Met Office is the British equivalent to the National Weather Service in the U.S. 

As the Met Office reports:

"Dr. Mark McCarthy is the head of the Met Office's National Climate Information Centre. He said, '2022 is going to be the warmest year on record for the UK. While many will remember the summer's extreme heat, what has been noteworthy this year has been the relatively consistent heat through the year, with every month except December being warmer than average.'"

Every month of 2022 was warmer than average in the UK, with the exception of December, which looks like it will be a little cooler than average. That's thanks to a cold snap during the first half of the month. 

As the year closed, it was unusually warm in the UK, and as the New Year began, unprecedented winter warmth spread into most of the rest of Europe. 

Several other European nations might have also had their warmest year in 2022.  If the way 2023 is beginning continues, those records won't last all that long.

Data is starting to come in regarding how 2022 ranked globally, and we'll have a very good idea of that ranking by the middle of this month. 

I'll keep you posted. 

 

Vermont Weather, Cloud, Nature Year 2022 In Photos

A cloudburst unleashes over St. Albans, Vermont in 
August.  Weather is always interesting or at least pretty
in the Green Mountain State and was in 2022

For the most part, weather in Vermont isn't particularly extreme all that often.  I

t's not the national hot spot for storm chasers, that's for sure. 

But the changing seasons, the clouds, the nature and the landscape sure make for pretty weather photos.  Near the end of every year, I like to compile some of my favorites.

The photos were all taken in northwestern Vermont during the course of 2022

Spoiler, you pretty much have to watch the video at the bottom of this post.

Click on the image below to view. Or if you don't see the image, click on this link to check out the photos. 

2022 Hurricane Season Just Ended (Maybe): Not As Bad As Feared, But Still Awful, And Weird

Satellite view of Hurricane Ian just about to slam
into southwestern Florida on September 28.

Sometimes the end of a season is a good thing. The conclusion of hurricane season last week is one of those good things.  

The Atlantic Ocean's hurricane season runs from June 1 through November 30, though you can get a tropical storm sometimes outside of those dates. In fact, as I write this, a disturbance in the central Atlantic Ocean has a decent chance of becoming a subtropical or tropical storm this week.

Overall, this hurricane season was both less intense than in recent years and also less intense than had been predicted. 

As Jeff Masters, writing for Yale Climate Connections reports:

"The 2022 hurricane season draws to an official close on November 30, after generating 14 named storms, eight hurricanes, two major hurricanes, and an accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) of 95.  Those numbers compare with the 1991-2020 averages for an entire season of 14.4 named storms, 7.2 hurricanes, 3.2 major hurricanes and an ACE index of 123.

Thus, the season was near average for number of named storms and hurricanes, and below average for major hurricanes and ACE index, and it breaks an unprecedented streak of six consecutive years with an above average ACE index."

I'd better explain ACE index here. 

Accumulated cyclone energy, or ACE, is kind of complicated. Without getting totally in the weeds, it has to do with a tropical storm or hurricanes maximum sustained winds, as measured every six hours. 

It is a convenient way to compare hurricane seasons. A long lasting, strong hurricane will contribute many ACE points. Then again, a large swarm of modest tropical storms or relatively weak hurricanes would do the same.

We did see two or three really destructive, extreme hurricanes amid a season that featured plenty of weak, short-lived tropical storms. It only takes one or two hurricanes to really cause some pretty extreme disasters. We had that for sure in 2022.

The worst of the bunch was surely Hurricane Ian, which killed at least 145 people and caused more than $50 billion in damage. It was the fifth deadliest Atlantic hurricane of the past 60 years, Masters reports.

The National Hurricane Center recycles hurricane names every six years unless a particular hurricane is exceptionally destructive and/or deadly.  So I'm sure they'll ditch the name Ian, and come up with some other name for the "I" hurricane in six years. 

The 2022 hurricane season got off to a really quiet start, which surprised pretty much everybody. 

When there's a La Nina weather and ocean pattern, the Atlantic hurricane season is almost always pretty damn active. (La Nina is a cooling of the Pacific Ocean waters off the west coast of South America).

La Nina was big in 2020 and 2021 and we had plenty of tropical storms, including a pretty high number of early season storms. 

Satellite view of Hurricane Fiona dumping feet of rain on
Puerto Rico. Fiona later turned north, causing the worst
storm damage on record in Atlantic Canada.

We had no named storms in the Atlantic Ocean between July 3 and August 31, the first time that has happened since 1941, notes Dr. Phil Klotzbach, a Colorado State University hurricane expert.

Meteorologists are puzzling a bit over the lack of storms early in the season. For some reason, upper level winds over the Atlantic remained strong, which tore apart any system that wanted to become a tropical storm. Also atmospheric moisture over much of the Atlantic Ocean was lacking in July and August.

La Nina probably influenced the later part of the 2022 hurricane season, which was especially busy. October was super quiet, then November hit. 

November doesn't usually produce many tropical storms and hurricanes, and those that do form tend to be nothing burger tropical storms or brief, weak hurricanes. 

Here are the November stats, from Klotzbach:

-- November had three hurricanes (Lisa, Martin and Nicole, tying with 2011 with the most November hurricanes on record.

---Hurricanes Lisa and Martin had top sustained winds of 85 mph at exactly the same time in November. That's the first time two November hurricanes were simultaneously that strong since 1932.

--- Hurricane Lisa hit Belize on November 2 the first November hurricane in that Central American nation

---Hurricane Nicole was the latest calendar year hurricane to make landfall along the east coast of Florida. 

So let's face it, the marquee hurricanes in 2022 were Ian, Fiona and Nicole.

HURRICANE IAN

Hurricane Ian will be most remembered for its incredible storm surge around Fort Myers, Naples and Sanibel and Pine islands.

Masters in Yale Climate Connections again:

"The primary reason for Ian's high death toll is straightforward:  A large number of people in a vulnerable location being hit by a strong hurricane, increasing the risk of deaths. The amount of risky development that has occurred in southwest Florida, near sea level, on barrier islands, and on former wetlands - was a disaster waiting to happen, and it happened. Cape Coral, where some of Ian's deaths were reported, was a particularly vulnerable location because of unwise building practices."

In general, deaths from hurricanes in the United States had been declining, but Ian added more evidence that that lower death toll has bottomed out and reversed, as I noted in a post back in October.  Ian was the nation's sixth deadliest hurricane since 1963.

Hurricane Ian was also the eighth costliest United States hurricane, in a list corrected for inflation over the years. Ian caused at least $50 billion in damage.

HURRICANE FIONA

To be honest, it's not all that surprising that Hurricane Fiona caused so much trouble in Puerto Rico.  The island regularly gets hit by hurricanes.  Flash flooding on Puerto Rico's steep topography is inevitable. 

Still, rainfall on Puerto Rico was extreme even by their standards. Ponce received 31.34 inches of rain. Rio Cerrillos, Puerto Rico had 27.14 inches of rain within 24 hours, setting a new record on the island for most rain in that short of a time period. 

The island also has a criminally weak haphazard electrical grid, so power outages become widespread even in relatively mild tropical storms.

After trashing Puerto Rico Fiona took a sharp right hand turn and made a beeline into Atlantic Canada, with devastating results. 

Dying tropical storms and hurricanes hit parts of eastern Canada occasionally, but Fiona was especially concerning, and might well have been influenced by climate change. 

Water temperatures off the coast of New England and Canada were far above average, following a pretty consistent trend in recent years. The warm water allowed Fiona to maintain much of its strength, even as it was in the process of transitioning from a tropical system to an intense non-tropical system.

This meant Fiona's wind and storm surge were much worse than Atlantic Canada has seen from past tropical systems. Damage came to at least $495 million, making it the worst storm on record for this part of Canada.

HURRICANE NICOLE 

Hurricane Nicole demonstrated graphically how a previous hurricane can "prime the pump" and make a new hurricane much more damaging than it otherwise would be. 

Although Hurricane Ian primarily damaged southwestern Florida, Ian still caused a lot of beach erosion and other coastal damage along the east coast of Florida.

There was really no time to repair that damage before Nicole came ashore not far from Vero Beach in November.  Although Nicole arrived unusually late in the season, on November 10.  It was "only" a category one hurricane, with top winds of 75 mph.

A Florida hurricane of that strength would normally only cause minor to moderate storm surge damage, relatively light wind damage and some inland flooding. 

However, with the previous damage from Ian still there, Nicole caused enormous damage to coastal homes and high rises. Numerous homes, especially near and in Daytona Beach, toppled into the sea.  Several high rises were evacuated after being undermined by Nicole's storm surge.

These three destructive hurricanes show that even in what is considered a "meh" year for tropical storm activity, the United States and other nations can suffer extraordinary cruel blows from these storms.

Consistently Hot: World Had Sixth Hottest July

Once again, lots of red on the world map for
July, 2022. The areas in darkest red had their
hottest July on record this year. No area had
their coolest July. 

 The numbers are crunched and in from NOAA, and the world had its sixth hottest July since reliable records began in the 1880s.  

On the one hand, you might think this July would have been #1 hottest given the extreme heat waves around the world this summer. On the other hand, coming in a #6 makes the most sense.

We still have a pretty strong La Nina weather and ocean pattern going on in the eastern Pacific. This pattern tends to cool the Earth just a little bit.

This La Nina has lasted close to three years now. During the past couple of years, due in part to La Nina, pretty much each month has been coming in as around the fifth or sixth hottest on record.

If you think the world is running a fever now, just think what would happen if we flip to the opposite pattern, El Nino.  The El Nino tends to heat up the world, in general. 

More from NOAA's National Centers For Environmental Information:

"July marked the 46th consecutive July and the 451st consecutive month with temperatures above the the 20the century average. The five warmest Julys on record have all occurred since 2016. "

I mention this every month, but it's worth repeating since it's such a remarkable record:  If you are under the age of 37, you have never seen the Earth experience a cooler than average month. 

The year so far, like July itself, is running as the sixth hottest year on record. At this point, it looks like there's a 99 percent chance that 2022 will rank among the top ten warmest years on record but only an 11 percent chance that it will rank among the top five. 

A big part of the reason 2022 is unlikely to score in the top five warmest list is because that La Nina is expected to last at least to December, if not beyond that.  That will tend to temper the effects of fossil fuel emissions just a little bit. And I emphasize little.

In July, the hottest spots on Earth, relative to average, were in southern and central Europe, eastern Asia, central South America and central North America. Parts of Spain, Portugal, Italy, the United Kingdom, Japan, China, northern Africa and central South America had their warmest July on record. 

The few chilly spots  were over the eastern Pacific due to La Nina, northern Australia, and pockets of southwestern and northwestern Asia. None of these areas had their coolest July on record.  

Early Look At 2022 Hurricane Season: Another Bad One?

Hurricane Ida approaching the Gulf Coast last year. 2021
was a busy and destructive hurricane year, and forecasters
feared this year could be just as bad.

 Severe thunderstorm and tornado season is just going into it prime time right now.

It looks like there will be another nasty outbreak of twisters much of this week  in the middle of the nation.

While that's the most immediate threat, other meteorologists are looking ahead toward the late summer and fall. Those meteorologists do not like what they see.  

We could be in for another rough hurricane season. 

The past six hurricane seasons have all been busy and awful, and it would be nice if we caught a break this year. 

At least one team of hurricane experts are saying, "No such luck."

The scientists from Colorado State University, led by research Philip Klotzbach, just released their annual hurricane prediction, and it ain't pretty. 

Their report calls for 19 named Atlantic storms this year, against an average of 14.4. They predict nine hurricanes, compared to an average of 7.2  The researchers also predict four major hurricanes, with winds of at least 111 mph.  The average number of major hurricanes yearly is 3.2.

This prediction covers all of the Atlantic basin, and says nothing about how many, if any, end up making landfall in the United States. However, the greater the number of tropical storms the greater than chance that at least one, or a few, make their way to American shores.  

On top of that, the Colorado State hurricane researchers say some meteorological factors will help increase the chances of United States landfall. They put the chances of major hurricane hitting somewhere in the United States at 71 percent. 

As the Washington Post reports, the major reason for the grim hurricane prediction is a lack of an El Nino. 

Instead, we're in the opposite La Nina pattern which reduces wind shear over the tropical Atlantic.  Wind shear is a change in wind direction and speed with height. Wind shear can rip apart wannabe tropical storms, so a lack of that shear can help encourage hurricanes to form.  

Even if La Nina weakens over the course of the next several months, we almost certainly won't flip into El Nino during hurricane season, so the chances of a lot of such storms would remain strong.

Another factor that could increase hurricane danger in the United States this year is water temperatures. Those temperatures are already above normal in the Gulf of Mexico and off most of the East Coast. Warmer water is more efficient at nurturing hurricanes. If water temperatures are above normal, then that much more energy could go in to budding tropical storms to make them worse than they otherwise would be. 

The Colorado 'State hurricane forecast is rather grim, but the science isn't perfect yet at all on long range hurricane predictions. There's always the possibility that some unknown factor could come up between now and late summer that would either help reduce hurricanes or make the season even wilder. 

The hurricane prediction also can't tell us where any particular hurricane would hit the United States or when.  We wouldn't know that until a few days before the storm actually appears and approaches the coast.