Fragilecologies Archives
23 September 2004
As researchers interested in how climate and human activities interact, some colleagues and I have for the past few years been thinking about and starting to research the notion of “superstorms.” We were attracted to the idea of superstorms because someone for whatever reason happened to label a severe winter storm in North America in mid-March 1993 as a “super” storm. We wondered why. Was it because of the intensity of the event? Was it because of the impacts on society that it caused? Was it because the media might have been seeking to grab the attention of the public on an otherwise uneventful news week? [N.B: As far as we can tell, it was the Weather Channel that first referred to this particular winter storm as a superstorm].
Climate scientists have been telling the world that, accompanying a global warming of the climate system, there would likely be an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme meteorological events. They have also suggested that there would likely be a change in the geographic range of those extremes, such as droughts, floods, frosts, fires, and severe storms including summer, winter and tropical storms. This reinforced our interest in the notion of a superstorm.
METEOSAT infrared satellite photo March 1993 “Storm of the Century” (13 March 1993). Source: NOAA National Climatic Data Center
In 2004 forecasters at the US National Weather Service developed an index for rating such winter storms for their level of severity. As luck would have it for our research, the 1993 wintertime superstorm turned out to have been the worst winter storm (#1) in the United States 1950-2000.
My colleagues and I decided that, by focusing our research on various physical and societal aspects of this particular storm, we could use it to not only understand the superstorm and its impacts but also to foster the cooperation of researchers interested in various aspects of weather, climate, climate change, and climate forecasting as well as the societal impacts of each of them.
Weather researchers and forecasters can review the cascade of weather forecasts that stemmed from the original 5-day forecast. Climate researchers and modelers can use Superstorm ’93 in their study of seasonal variability and extremes. Climate change researchers can focus on whether this is the kind ofevent that is more likely to occur with greater intensity in the future. Social scientists can use this to study societal responses to forecasts and to impacts of both the forecast and of the impacts on people and the built environment. They can also use it to check how well societal responses were before — and after — the superstorm struck.
In retrospect, most people agree that the forecast of the mid-March superstorm 5 days in advance of its onset was considered to have been very correct and timely. In other words, it was truly a weather forecasting success story. However, as the superstorm moved eastward, some of the forecasts that followed were not as good. Florida, for example, was hit by severe winds, heavy rains, a storm surge and coastal flooding. While Floridians expect and are used to a hurricane season (June to November) and to named tropical storms, they are less aware of severe, out-of-season storms. As a result of the storm’s death toll and destruction in Florida, the storm was called the “No Name” storm. The public as well as the forecasters were caught by surprise. Today, they keep an eye open for such storms and are less likely to be surprised by a similar one in the future.
As I write this commentary, we are in the middle of the 2004 hurricane season in the Atlantic and the typhoon season in the Pacific. Countries along the western boundary currents in both the tropical and sub-tropical Atlantic and Pacific oceans are under a continued threat from tropical storms of high intensity, high frequency, storms that seem to be following along a certain trajectory. In other words, not only are devastating tropical storms occurring within a broad geographically defined area, but a significant subset of them seem to get locked into a certain track that leads them to make landfall in approximately the same locations. I believe that this is an aspect of tropical storms that has not been highlighted as yet either in global warming studies or in weather studies.
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Tokage typhoon, October 2004 (AP Photo)
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We now know that there have been ten typhoons so far this year that have had negative impacts on Taiwan, for example. We have also witnessed that three major tropical storms hit some part of Florida in less than six weeks, causing billions of dollars in damage and scores of deaths. Is this a unique occurrence?
Aside from whether this tropical storm season turns out to have been a one-of-a-kind unique occurrence, or whether it portends of an emerging new pattern of tropical storms, one can ask what such a storm tendency, e.g., lots of devastating — some might say “blockbuster” — storms means for political, economic and social impacts and responses of affected countries in the future?
What is being suggested here is that the tropical storms of 2004 in the Pacific and Atlantic foreshadow the possibility of a new normal (that is, average) seasonal phenomenon that might be labeled as “superstorm seasons.”
Climate varies from season to season, year to year, and decade to decade.We must now think about the possibility of a new kind of hurricane or typhoon season, one in which there are numerous superstorm events in succession. Even though a local, state, or national society might well be able to cope today with a single such event in a season, maybe even two of them, it might start to think about what it might need to prepare for, as well as respond to, multiple superstorms within a few weeks and within the same geographic location.
Hence, the tropical storms of 2004 in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans have expanded the original notion of the superstorm from one focused only on a single isolated event to one that raises the specter of superstorm seasons.
Regardless of one’s views about the global warming issue, it can, we believe, be argued convincingly that what has happened in the recent past could likely happen again. That means that societies (their researchers and their political leaders at the least) must begin to take such a likelihood into their strategic development and disaster avoidance planning processes.