Category 6 And Cones Of Uncertainty: Changes In Hurricane Forecasting Coming

With some hurricanes getting stronger under the influence
of climate change, should a new Category 6
be designated for the strongest ones?

 Category 5 hurricanes are probably the worst storm anybody could experience. 

These monsters have winds of at least 157 mph.  As the National Hurricane Center describes a Cat 5: 

"A high percentage of framed homes will be destroyed, with total roof failure and wall collapse. Fallen trees and power poles will isolate residential areas. Power outages will last for weeks to possibly months. Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks or months."

And that's not even talking about the monster storm surges with Category 5 hurricanes that can push tides to 20 feet higher than normal, with huge, battering waves.  

Gosh, if a Category 5 hurricane is that bad, what would a Category 6 do?

So far there's no such thing. Or is there such a thing?

Researchers suggest it might be time to create that category.

It's not close to hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean yet. That starts June 1. But people spend all year thinking about these dangerous storms.  Which means changes could be in the works. 

So, the new hurricane category is bubbling out there. 

Category 1 through Category 4 hurricanes have a specific range of wind speeds. For example, category 3 hurricanes have winds of 111 to 129 mph.

Some hurricanes have been getting stronger in recent decades. That's all  thanks to climate change, which is making oceans and air temperatures warmer. That adds to atmospheric toasty water vapor, which is jet fuel for hurricanes. Especially when that water vapor is super warm. 

Cat 5s, have no upper wind range. Just 157 mph or more.  I would put the upper limit of Category 5 storms at about 175 mph.

Given the rising potential for stronger hurricanes, the question is should there be such a thing as a Category 6 hurricane?  We've already had a few hurricanes, or typhoons with sustained winds of 175 mph or more.

Typhoon Haiyan in 2013 had maximum sustained winds of 175 to 195 mph, depending on which meteorological agency was doing the measuring.

Hurricane Patricia had top sustained winds of about 210 mph off the west coast of Mexico in October, 2015. Patricia was a very weird hurricane, a very small in area storm that went from a nothing burger to extreme in a very short period of time, then rapidly weakening as it approach landfall. 

Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas back in 2019 might also have qualified as a Category 6, with winds close to 200 mph. 

These type of super storms look like they're going to be more and more common with climate change. 

As Axios explains:

"(The study) also finds that human-caused climate change has more than doubled the res, of Category 6-strength storms since 1979, buy investigating shifts in metric called potential intensity."

I'm not going to get into the weeds on potential intensity, but the bottom line is some hurricanes are going to get a lot stronger than such storms used to be. 

The researchers suggest Category 6 hurricanes should have winds of at least 193 mph, but that figure is not cast in stone. 

While studies are ongoing, there's no word yet as to whether the World Meteorological Organization will sanction category 6 hurricane designations, or when that might happen 

CONE OF UNCERTAINTY

Another big focus is not so much on hurricane intensity but rather the prediction of those storms. 

A cone of uncertainty map for Hurricane Ian in 2022.
Changes are proposed for this type of map to help
the public better understand the dangers they face. 

Those who have ever seen hurricane forecasts have seen the "cone of uncertainty." That's the range of paths the center of a hurricane might take. 

For instance, a forecast might have a hurricane making landfall in say, Charleston, South Carolina.

 But at the point you see the prediction, the range of possibilities for landfall is as far south as Savannah, Georgia or as far north as Wilmington, North Carolina. That question are is known as the cone of uncertainty.   

It turns out, though, that this forecasting method can confuse or mislead some people in the possible path of danger. So the National Hurricane Center is coming up with a potential fix.

The Washington Post reports:

"The hurricane center will issue an experimental version this year that will depict watches and warnings for inland tropical storms and hurricanes, superimposed on top of the forecast cone, aiming to communicate not just the storm path but the extent of its potential impacts. 

It could prevent a repeat of Hurricane Ian, when many Floridians said the cone was a reason they underestimated the 2022 storm's widespread and severe effects."

 NHC always includes this disclaimer with a hurricanes cone of uncertainty: "Note: The cone contains the probable path of the storm center but does not show the size of the storm. Hazardous conditions can occur outside of this cone."

But as the Washington Post noted in an article not longer after Hurricane Ian in 2022:

"But the disclaimer is often stripped off versions of the cone displayed on television, and research has repeatedly shown that a minority of people understand what the cone does and does not depict.

Of 2,847 Floridians surveyed, almost half incorrectly believed that areas outside the cone were safe from hurricane damage."

Even if the cone of uncertainty turns out to be correct, damaging winds, destructive storm surges, and dangerous inland flooding routinely occurs outside that area. 

The new maps will depict the locations of hurricane and tropical storm warnings to better convey where the hazard risks are. A shortcoming to this is there isn't a good way to also include risks posed by storm surges and inland flooding without making the  cone of uncertainty maps confusing and too cluttered.

The National Hurricane Center does have separate graphics for storm surge and inland flood warnings. But that cone of uncertainty is what usually makes it on the evening news.  

Conveying the risks from hurricanes to the public will always be a challenge, but I'm glad people are trying to improve things the best they can. 

 

Is Climate Change Accelerating? Leading Scientists Clash On The Issue

Famed climate scientist James Hansen worryingly says
climate change is accelerating, but other top
scientists aren't so sure about that. 

Two of the nation's top climate experts are clashing politely on a subject that will deeply affect all of us

Are things bad, or really bad?

More specifically, is climate change accelerating, or is it still a steady, dreadful uphill climb?

Either option is of course sub-optimal  for us, to say the least. 

 If the world keeps warming at the pace it's been for the past several decades, we can expect more and longer deadly heat waves, worse storms, rising sea levels and politically destabilizing climate mass migration.  

If the pace of climate change is increasing, all of the above problems will be that much worse. 

This all started last week when famed former NASA scientist James Hansen said that the pace of climate change has steepened by 50 percent since 2010.  

Hansen, you might recall, first alerted the American public and put climate change front and center in the nation's conversation during dramatic Congressional testimony he provided back in 1988.

Hansen's main argument now is there is more sun energy in the atmosphere after 2010 thanks to efforts to cut pollution. The downside of less pollution are less sooty particles - known as aerosols - to bounce the sun's heat back out to space, so warming increases. 

As the Associated Press reports:

"Hansen's study said from 1970 to 2010, the world warmed at a rate of 0.18 degrees Celsius per decade, but projects that would increase to a rate of at least 0.27 degree Celsius per decade after 2010. NOAA data shows that 0.27 degrees is the rate since September, 2010."

So much goes on in the atmosphere, both via climate change and natural processes, it's easy to get into the weeds. It's hard to parse out what's a temporary thing, what's climate change, what's some other influence. 

There are bursts in which the global climate warming accelerates, and we are in one now. El Nino boosts global temperatures.  A record breaking volcanic eruption in Tonga back in January, 2022 threw an unprecedented amount of water vapor high up into the stratosphere. 

So, climate change, El Nino, and to a much lesser extent Tonga and new sulfur pollution rules are boosting this year's global temperatures  to what will be the hottest on record. 

Michael Mann, one of the world's leading climate
scientists, respects James Hansen but is highly
skeptical of Hansen's assertion that climate
change is accelerating. 

Another very strong El Nino occurred in 2015-16 and that boosted global temperatures to what were then record levels.

 El Nino transitioned to a cooler La Nina in the late 2010s and the first couple years of the 2020s, so the rate of warming temporarily leveled off somewhat during that period. 

After Hansen's study came out  another titan of climate change science, University of Pennsylvania scientist Michael Mann posted a rebuttal to Hansen. While careful to note he has deep respect for Hansen, Mann thinks Hansen's hypothesis is overblown.  

The Washington Post reports:

"Mann argued that the ocean's heat content is growing steadily, but  - in contrast to Hansen and his co-authors - is not accelerating. Mann also cited data showing that there does not appear to be a sudden shift in pollution from aerosols  over the past few years. Other researches have found a decline in aerosol pollution from cleaning up shipping would only shift global temperatures by 0.05 to 0.06 Celsius."

That said, Mann did note, "It has always been risky to ignore (Hansen's) warnings and admonitions." However, Manns also but also said of Hansen's new research: "The standard is high when you're challenging scientific understanding.....And I don't think they've met that standard, by a long shot."

Mann isn't exactly relaxed about the whole business of climate change though. The steady state increase  without an acceleration of the pace "is bad enough," he said. 

Another key difference between Hansen and Mann is that Hansen tiptoed into the realm of policy advocacy in his recent study. That's not typically what scientists do. Scientists will say "this is happening" and leave it to politicians, the public and the world in general to decide what to do about it. 

Hansen suggests some geo-engineering - namely deliberately putting those aerosols back up into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight. 

Mann is still old school. He doesn't believe scientists should put policy recommendations in their peer reviewed studies. Mann also thinks Hansen's geo-engineering ideas are actually dangerous and could backfire on humankind. 

All this must seem like a gossip column about scientists, or some weird click bait that gets views by highlighting conflict.

But the dispute between Hansen and Mann is in an odd way reassuring. It's how science is supposed to work. Scientists do fresh studies, other scientists question those studies. That yields further studies in an attempt to see who's right. All this is done without screaming matches or manufactured outrage. 

It's two respected scientists who respect each other, but disagree on one aspect of their work. That the two are trying to find more answers to climate change is good, even if the subject they're studying is very, very bad. 

 

Working From Home Helps Battle Climate Change

Working from home instead of commuting to work
can help combat climate change, but
you have to do it right. 

 Your boss might not like you working from home. But you might, since you don't have to hassle with the annoying commute every day.  

If you want to press your case to work remotely instead in the office, try this really good argument, courtesy of the Washington Post: 

"Fully remote workers could produce less than half the climate-warming emissions of people who spend their days in offices according to a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."

Switching from working onsite to working from home full time could reduce a person's emissions by 50 percent. Hybrid schedules, where people work from home two to four days a week can cut emissions buy 11 to 29 percent. 

It does seem like a large proportion of employers are gravitating toward the hybrid model, but that won't  reduce fossil fuel consumption as much as working exclusively from home could. 

Many employers have really gravitated to a hybrid model, but that might have that much effect in battling climate change.

The climate benefits of working from home only work if you do it right. Which can get complicated. 

As Scientific American reports, the analysis regarding the environmental effects of working at home looked at five factors: Commuting, non-commute travel, information technology devices and residential energy use. 

If at least part of  your motivation for working at home is to fight climate change, you still have to be smart about it. Sure, eliminating your commute will prevent fossil fuel emissions. But the analysis indicates some people who work from home end up taking several short car trips during the work day, which cancels out the positive effects of avoiding a commute.  

Working from  home might also tempt you to crank up the air conditioning in your home on hot summer days, or blasting the heat in the winter. That also offsets the climate change fighting power of working at your home office instead of commuting in to the cubicle farm.

(OK, as I write this from home, I just now realized an unnecessary light was on.  This story inspired a tiny, tiny bit of good: I just shut off the light. Perfectly bright enough in here).

If your boss insists on making you come to the office, you can greatly offset your carbon footprint by taking public transportation or riding your bike.  In many places, including here in Vermont, public transportation is woefully inadequate in getting people to and from their jobs with a decent level of efficiency.  

 

  

Antarctic "Doomsday Glacier" Label Is An Exaggeration, But Still A Big Problem For World.

They call it the "Doomsday Glacier" but how much is
this disintegrating ice shelf in Antarctica going to raise
sea levels. Could be a lot - eventually 

 Scientists are beginning to get a better handle on trouble with a so-called "Doomsday Glacier" In Antarctica that is falling apart a lot faster than climate experts would like. 

As the Associated Press tells us, polar scientist Britney Schmidt of Cornell University created a robot to poke around this glacier, whose real name is the Thwaites ice shelf. 

 Reports the Associated Press: 

"Before, scientists had no observations from this critical but hard to reach point on Thwaites. But with the robot named Icefin lowered down a slender 1,925 hole, they saw how important crevasses are in the fracturing of the ice, which takes the heaviest toll on the glacier even more than melting. 'That's how the glacier is falling apart. It's not thinning and going away. It shatters, said Schmidt, lead author of one of two studies in Nature."

That shattering accelerates the overall erosion of the ice shelf, scientist said.  

The glacier is about the size of Florida. People call it the Doomsday Glacier because if it all melts, global sea levels would rise by two feet, not including sea level rise from other sources. 

The good news is that it will take a few centuries for all of the Thwaites ice shelf to melt.  

On a geological scale, however, the changes with Thwaites are super rapid. Warmer water is eating away at the ice shelf from below. 

More from the AP:

"'Thwaites is a rapidly changing system, much more rapidly changing than we started this work five years ago, and even since we were in the field there years ago,' said Oregon State University ice researcher Erin Pettit."

Petitt wasn't part of the study mentioned above. But she continued:  "I am definitely expecting the rapid change to continue and accelerate over the next few years." 

Lots Of Weather Extremes With Relatively Modest Global Warming:What's Up With That?

Lytton, British Columbia, Canada burns in June, 2021 the 
day after setting Canada's all-time hottest temperature 
of 121 degrees in a climate change-fueled heat wave

 The world has warmed about 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit since the late 1880s. That really doesn't seem like much. 

But as we increasingly see, this seemingly modest change has led to a huge increase in weather extremes. 

How much more extreme are things now? And how bad will they get in a couple decades as climate change continues? There's no easy answers to this. The question is muddied by how one defines an extreme, the perception of the person experiencing it, and how much media confuses us all about there subject. 

In our wired, social media soaked world, extreme weather is in our face 24/7. Take this example here in Vermont. 

Stories of the extreme flooding in the Great 1927 flood in Vermont seem to pale in comparison to the roughly equally intense floods in Vermont from Tropical Storm Irene in 2011. That's despite the fact the death toll in 1927, with 84 deaths, was much worse than what happened with Irene, with 7 deaths. 

By 2011, social media like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter was already popular, so the Irene disaster gave us stunningly vivid visuals.  

Even against this backdrop, there's certainly growing evidence that weather extremes are growing more frequent and more, well, extreme as we plod further and further along into climate change. 

Scientists to this day cannot get over the incredibly heat wave in southwestern Canada and the northwester United States in June, 2021, That heat wave killed more than 1,000 people. It also brought on Canada's all time hottest temperature of 121 degrees in Lytton, British Columbia. The day after that record was established, Lytton burned down in a ferocious wildfire, as Jeff Masters and Bob Henson tell us in a Yale Climate Connections article this month.

 The World Weather Attribution initiative said the June 2021 heat wave would have been "virtually impossible without human-caused climate change."

We've always had extreme weather events, with Vermont's 1927 flood being just one example. All-time heat and cold records from 1934 and 1936 still exist in the Great Plains. 

The trouble is, even taking into account past extremes and media constantly blasting us with images of intense storms, even those that are pretty normal, extremes have gotten greater.

Here's how Masters and Henson put it: 

"All weather is now occurring in an atmosphere fundamentally altered by global warming. Heat is energy. More heat in the atmosphere means that there is more energy to power extreme weather events. Moreover, the extra heat energy from human-caused global warming has fundamentally disrupted atmospheric circulation patterns. 

The combination of more heat energy and a disrupted atmospheric circulation has made extreme weather events more common and more intense, a phenomenon climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe calls 'global weirding.' The resulting weather disasters are severely stressing a society construction for the old, somewhat calmer climate of the 20th century."

 Deciding which weather event is more extreme than other, similar past calamities does seem subjective. But scientists are getting better at objectively comparing and contrasting. 

A warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapor. That added water vapor adds to the potential for especially torrential rainfall. 

Not long ago, Stefan Rahmstorf, the head of Earth System Analysis at Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, tweeted a chart of record breaking daily rainfall events around the world. The chart shows that from between about 1950 to 1990, the number of these events held pretty steady. Since 1990, the record breaking rainfall incidents climbed sharply. 

Additional research showed to the period 1951 to 1980, 24 -hour precipitation records increased by 30 percent globally by 2016.  

Overall, the science of attributing specific weather events to climate change is still fairly new, but is making strides.  In January, NOAA explained pretty well how it works:

"Now in its 11th year, Explaining Extreme Events from a Climate Perspective presents new peer-reviewed analyses of extreme weather and climate across the world during 2021 and 2022. It features research from NOAA and other leading international climate scientists on extreme weather occurring across the globe, including the U.S. UK. South Korea and China. 

Research teams use both historical observations and model simulations to determine whether - and by how much - climate change may have influenced extreme weather events."

NOAA and other researchers are finding that more and more extreme heat waves are all-time record highs due to climate change.  

Specific examples include a hot October in 2021 that under conditions from 1990 to 2020, it had a one in 6,250 chance of happening. But within 60 years, such a hot month would be a 'new normal"

An intense heat wave last spring in East Asia was made up to 20 times more likely due to the climate change the world has experienced so far.

I'm sure we'll find more and more of these attribution studies that link weird weather events to climate change. However, it is safe to assume that even mildly strange weather has some links to climate change. 

Exxon Did A GREAT Job Of Predicting Climate Change In 1977. But Of Course Favored Profit

 I was struck by recent reporting from the journal Science that showed scientists at the oil giant Exxon had a great handle on the future of climate change as far back as the 1970s.  

As the Associated Press reported: 

"The study in the journal Science.... looked at research that Exxon funded that didn't just confirm what climate scientists were saying, but used more than a dozen different computer models that forecast the coming warming with precision equal to or better than government and academic scientists." 

It has been known for awhile now that Exxon was aware of climate change decades ago, but publicly casted doubt about it. The Associated Press again: 

"What the new study does is detail how accurate Exxon funded research was. From 63 percent to 83 percent of those projections fit strict standards for accuracy and generally predicted correctly that the globe would warm about 0.36 degrees (0.2 Celsius) a decade."

The Exxon-funded science was 'actually astonishing; in its precision and accuracy, said study co-author Naomi Orestes, a Harvard science history professor. But she added so was the 'hypocrisy because so much of the Exxon Mobil disinformation for so many years...was the claim that climate models weren't reliable. "

This was during the same time that the oil giant publicly doubted that warming was real and dismissed climate models' accuracy.  

The Exxon studies in this piece were done in the late 1970s and early 1980s.  Though scientists at the time already had an idea that fossil fuel emissions would raise global temperatures, there was a lot of what turned out to be false media narratives of a coming ice age. 

Fossil fuel research into climate change was really quite extensive in the second half of the 20th century, even as their spokespeople were telling us climate change was at best uncertain and at worst a hoax. 

Public statements from Exxon since the 1980s cast climate science as uncertain and unreliable. The company's public position was clearly to dismiss or diminish the evidence that human caused climate change was about to occur, or occurring. 

The journal Science published the review of Exxon scientists' accurate climate change studies published decades ago. 

As the journal Science notes:

"In 2015, investigative journalists discovered internal company memos indicating that Exxon oil company has known since the late 1970s that its fossil fuel products could lead to global warming with 'dramatic environmental effects before the year 2050.' Additional documents then emerged showing that the US oil and gas industry's largest trad association had likewise known since at least the 1950s, as had the coal industry since at least the 1960s, and electric utilities."

The Exxon document said the effects of climate change would become detectable by around the year 2000, give or take five years.

Science continues:

".....Exxon's internal documents, as well as peer-reviewed studies published by Exxon and ExxonMobil Corp scientists, overwhelmingly acknowledged that climate change is real and human-caused. By contrast, a majority of Mobil and ExxonMobil Corp's public communications promoted doubt on the matter."

As you can imagine, these revelations will probably become fodder for lawsuits, both current and existing. Numerous complicated, slow moving lawsuits against Exxon and other oil giants are slowly making their way through the legal system. 

For their part, Exxon says its understand of climate change developed along side that of the scientific community. They also said that critics are focusing on the company's internal policy debates and recasting them as a disinformation campaign, as NPR reports.  

It's been known for years that Exxon accurately knew about climate change and its effects, but the latest revelations just add more fuel to the fire, so to speak. 

In October, 2019, for instance, during House hearings, New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez showed graphs from 1982 Exxon research that predicted with remarkable accuracy the rate of carbon dioxide increases in the atmosphere and the corresponding warming it would cause. 

Exxon remains an insanely profitable company on its sales of fossil fuels. Exxon made an estimated $15.4 billion in the fourth quarter of 2022 and took in roughly $58 billion in all of 2022, its most profitable year on record. 

Believe It Or Not, Another Climate Change Danger: Domestic Abuse

A recent Washington Post article said climate change can
exacerbate domestic violence. 

 It seems like climate change is blamed for just about anything that could possibly go wrong. 

The Washington Post recently brought us another societal ill made worse by climate change:
Domestic violence. 

The link between climate change and such violence would seem like a stretch, but the Washington Post makes a compelling case that this is a thing. 

As Wapo reports:

"A 2021 study of extreme weather events in Kenya by researchers at St. Catherine University of Minnesota found the economic stresses caused by flooding and drought or extreme heat exacerbated violence against women in their homes. The research, which used satellite and national health survey data, showed that domestic violence rose by 60 percent in areas that experienced extreme weather."

If that link could be established in Kenya, it could well apply anywhere. And sure enough, a few dozen other studies came to the same conclusions. 

Think about it in terms of your own life. I would hope that none of my married or partnered readers are violent against their spouses.  But you know you are more stressed when things go wrong. 

In my blessedly nonviolent marriage, I'm supremely lucky that my husband and I never come close to hitting each other. Our relatively rare arguments are quite tame. But when I'm stressed, I'm unfortunately much more likely to snap at my husband (and regret it afterwards).

I remember one of our brief and amicably resolved arguments in the past had to do with minor damage to our house after an extreme 2019 storm (that was probably made worse by climate change.)

Now picture not the marital bliss between my husband and I, but instead a household in which at least one member is prone to violence when angry. Then imagine, instead of minor damage to a lovely Vermont home occupied by a friendly version of Statler and Waldorf,  but a drought that wipes out all of a family's crops and livestock, leaving them destitute. Or a storm that washes away an uninsured home.

Those disasters afflicting violent homes is like pouring gasoline on a fire.  

The Washington Post gives us this sad example of what can happen:

The post introduces us to a Kenyan woman named Pilot Lenaigwanai, who covers her mouth as she speaks. She does so because she's embarrassed by a missing tooth, removed during violence against her by her husband. 

She showed up at a shelter for abused women in northern Kenya. As the Post reports: "Her husband was abusive even before the drought that's now ravaged Kenya's arid north, the worst in decades. When the family's 68 cattle - their only means of survival - died, the abuse became impossible to bear. 

'He was visibly frustrated and turned the heat o me and my children,' she says. 'I just think he wanted us out, because he could not provide for us anymore.'"

In one way, the woman in Kenya was lucky: She was able to escape her abuser. 

Many women don't have that option, especially in patriarchal nations and societies, where women have few options in a world controlled by often abusive men. Many of these nations are especially afflicted by climate change.

The Washington Post offers up an example of a woman with seemingly no escape in India. This woman's husband is violent, especially during the annual monsoon when flooding hits their property. With climate change, the monsoons - and the abuse - are getting worse. 

It's not like climate change causes domestic abuse. In almost every, case, that's pre-existing. But the stresses of climate change make it worse. This is an awful way to put it, but a women who has to deal with abuse is better off with occasional violence than constant violence. Though, to be clear, NO woman deserves any kind of violence.  

The issue of domestic violence and climate change is of course not limited to third world countries. I'm sure it's happening here in the grand old U.S. of A. 

Predictably, the Washington Post article about climate change and domestic violence got instantaneous backlash from climate deniers and, for the lack of a better word, "conservative" media. 

Fox News pooh poohed the Washington Post article, claiming it "undermined its warnings of climate change fueling abuse because it wasn't totally scientific."

In its article, WaPo said, "Unlike the hard science of climate change....the complex drivers of violence cannot be easily captured in numbers."

What the Post was trying to say, was that it's easy to measure, say the temperature. There are instruments and tools for that. The human psyche, on the other hand, is not easily measured by some sort of thermometer or other measuring device. 

Fox New also criticized the Post for noting that the link between domestic violence and extreme weather needs more research. Which is true. But the fact that more research should happen doesn't mean the idea is false. It just means we need to know more about it. 

Fox also implied that the fact Wapo said that climate change does not cause domestic violence, but exacerbates it means their thesis is wrong. 

Um, no. 

As anyone who actually reads the article, which of course is linked several times in this post, The point is, climate change can make existing ills worse. 

Sure, more study is needed on the climate change/domestic violence link. It needs to be better understood so it can be hopefully prevented or at least mitigated. What's wrong with that?

 

Winters (For Most Of Us) Are Getting Shorter

Climatologist Brian Brettschneider did some interesting
number crunching to find that by at least one measure,
winters are getting shorter with climate change. 

 As we launch into a late autumn spell of warm, dry weather, and await winter, we have additional evidence that winters for most areas of the northern and central U.S., and Alaska, are getting shorter. 

Including here in Vermont. 

Alaska climatologist Brian Brettschneider crunched a lot of numbers and posted his results on Twitter, under his handle @Climatologist49.

Brettschneider clearly has a lot more patience with math than I do.  But do check out his twitter feed. It's interesting and very accessible and easy to follow for non-scientists. 

Here's what Brettschneider did:  He looked at 292 weather stations across the U.S.. and figured out for each station what the first early winter five-day period where the average temperature was at or below 32 degrees. He did the same for the last such cold period of the winter at each station.

He compared this data the way it was 70 years ago, and what things are like today.  He found that for 90 percent of the stations, the time between the first cold period of early winter and the last cold period in late winter had shrunk over the past seven decades. That means only ten percent of the stations have had longer winters. 

By at least one measure, winters are getting shorter in
most areas of the United States, including here in Vermont. 

Judging from Brettschneider's map, it seems that in general, the winters grew shorter by the most days in areas near the southern reaches where you can have a long period of sub-freezing winter days. (I posted the map on this post. 

It's interesting that in some areas, sites with shorter winters are in close proximity to ones that had longer winters. This could be due to the vagarities of stations at difference elevations, or whether the measuring site moved a little since the early 1950s.

I see that here in Vermont, the winters have gotten somewhat shorter, according to Brettschneider's data. 

In Burlington, the interval between the first and last five day average of 32 degrees is 10 to 20 days shorter than it was in 1953.  For Montpelier and St. Johnsbury, the change is smaller, amounting to ten days or less.

Interesting, parts of northern New York seem to have had very slightly longer winters, at least under the parameters of this research. 

For us here in Vermont, this data is especially important, given the prominence of our ski industry. I can infer from this data that the period in winter in which ski areas can make snow is growing shorter. 

 And it highlights the difficulty cross country ski centers in low elevations have had in recent winters with warm spells. 

It's all just one of many indications that the times, they are a'changing with the world's climate.