It’s World Meteorological Day

I have been working in weather for 25+ years. I’m sure the WMO does important work–I just don’t know any of it.

In my nightly traipsing through the limitless Internet I have stumbled across a site for the GLOBE program. Until a moment ago I’d never heard of it. It’s a “dot g-o-v,” meaning your tax dollars at work.

World Meteorological Day is an annual celebration of the far-reaching work of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), occurring every year on March 23rd to commemorate the establishment of the WMO on March 23, 1950.

I have been working in weather for 25+ years. I’m sure the WMO does important work–I just don’t know any of it.

Weather News I Missed

At least 55 people have died and 2.5 million have been displaced as the river changed its course. Thousands more people are being evacuated to higher ground to escape the rising floodwaters.

kosi-river-nepal.jpg

I was just scouting around the web looking for as much on Hurricane Gustav as I could find. From the official Cuban government weather site I was directed to the World Meteorological Organization’s site. Usually there’s little of interest from the WMO–a top-heavy international bureaucracy with nearly no operational responsibility.

“On 18 August, after heavy monsoon rains, a dam on the Saptakoshi (Kosi) river in Nepal burst, leaving tens of thousands of people homeless and triggering flooding in the neighbouring Indian state of Bihar, where at least 55 people have died and 2.5 million have been displaced as the river changed its course. Thousands more people are being evacuated to higher ground to escape the rising floodwaters. Roads and railway tracks have been washed away and water and electricity supplies have been affected in many areas.”

That’s staggering. 2.5 million people displaced. I can’t imagine what it must be like there.

Why haven’t I heard or read about this? Are American’s really that isolated from the rest of the world? Am I that isolated?

What’s Up Hurricane?

Here’s a quote of a quote of a quote. I was reading Dr. Jeff Master’s weather blog this morning. He put numbers on the tropical weather of 2006.

In a word – average

The Atlantic was down. The Eastern Pacific was up. The rest of the world helped make the average… well, average.

Strong storms are up numerically, but experts now think strong storms were vastly underestimated in the pre-satellite, pre-radar, era. We were pretty blind back then.

Then, he quoted a recent statement from the World Meteorological Organization concerning hurricanes and global warming.

A consensus of 125 of the world’s leading tropical cyclone researchers and forecasters says that no firm link can yet be drawn between human-induced climate change and variations in the intensity and frequency of tropical cyclones.

In a statement issued in Costa Rica at the World Meteorological Organization’s 6th International Workshop on Tropical Cyclones, it was also declared: No individual tropical cyclone can be directly attributed to climate change. Tropical cyclone is the umbrella name for hurricanes, typhoons or cyclones.

The recent increase in loss of life and damages from tropical cyclones has largely been caused by rising concentrations of population and infrastructure in coastal regions.

In other words, if you build on the coast, you’re going to be hit when coastal storms come along. Period. End of story.

There’s no need to use global warming as a stalking horse to invoke fear. There will be devastating ‘big ones,’ because people have aggregated where big ones have always come in the past.

The Gulf Coast, from Florida through Texas, is alive with people. Same thing for the East Coast. Sure, Florida has been populous for a long time, but now there’s major development farther north in Florida and into Georgia and the Carolinas.

Even here in Connecticut… no, especially here in Connecticut, our shoreline is crammed with people, few of whom have heard of, much less remember the devastation of the Hurricane of ’38.

You don’t need to worry about ‘Super Storms.’ What Mother Nature naturally packs is bad enough already. You’ll see.

Cloudscapes Stamps

A few years ago the United Nations put out a series of stamps commemorating the World Meteorological Organization. They’re framed and on my wall.

Now the US Postal Service has put out a series of stamps depicting clouds and they too are destined for my office wall.

When it comes to clouds there are groups and sub-groups. These stamps take it to such specificity that I couldn’t quibble with any of the descriptions without a textbook in hand. Trust me, I’ll never look in the sky and say, “There’s a stratocumlus undulatus.”

I have no idea how long these stamps will be available at the post office, but they’re sure to go fast. They’re pretty – and pretty sells.