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Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria were extraordinarily powerful storms, but the number of lives lost and the amount of damage caused were the result of human decisions. Two elements of human psychology sustain our irrational neglect of preventive measures, even as climate scientists warn that the risk of such storms will only continue to grow.

PRINCETON – The 2017 Atlantic hurricane season, which officially began on June 1 and will end on November 30, is likely to be the most expensive on record. Hurricanes have killed close to 300 people in the region this season, and damage estimates so far stand at $224 billion. On a scale that measures the accumulated cyclonic energy of hurricanes, this season is the first to have recorded three storms each rated above 40. Fortunately, one of those three, Hurricane Jose, remained mostly at sea, where it did little harm; but Hurricanes Irma and Maria caused widespread destruction in the Caribbean, including Puerto Rico. Irma had an accumulated cyclonic energy of 66.6, the third-highest ever recorded.

Hurricane Harvey had less energy but brought record-breaking rain and flooding to Houston and other parts of Texas and Louisiana. Harvey may be the most expensive storm in US history, even exceeding the cost of rebuilding New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Employment figures show that the United States lost 33,000 jobs in September, which analysts attribute to the hurricanes. Then, just as the season seemed to be winding down, Hurricane Nate caused at least 24 deaths in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Honduras, before heading for the US.

Harvey, Irma, and Maria were extraordinarily powerful storms. But the number of lives lost and the amount of damage caused reflect human decisions. Houston’s notorious laissez-faire approach to zoning allowed houses to be built on flood plains.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Yes, the US Government Has Experimented With Controlling Hurricanes

October 10, 2017

(ANTIMEDIA) — The 2017 hurricane season has wrought more damage on the Caribbean and the Gulf Coast of the United States than any season in the last decade. Tropical Storm Harvey smashed into the Gulf, temporarily swallowing Houston and other low lying areas. Meanwhile, Hurricane Irma caused millions of dollars in damage to Florida, Puerto Rico, and other Caribbean islands, leaving millions without power and water.

Along with the gusts of wind, property damage, and loss of life, this hurricane season also sparked a wide range of conspiracy theories regarding the possibility that the U.S. government or some other government could be manipulating the weather to strengthen hurricanes. These theories range from the idea that planes were spraying before and during the storms in order to help them grow and/or direct them at specific targets to others who believe the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), or a similar device, was used to heat up the ionosphere and “charge” the storms to cause more destruction.

There are dozens of YouTube channels where individuals focus specifically on weather manipulation and modification. They claim to have the expertise to study radar images and determine whether artificial elements were added to developing hurricanes. If you are interested in that type of research, see this. However, I will not be addressing the issue of whether or not the U.S. is currently manipulating hurricanes. I do not have the technical background to accurately report in that area. Instead, I will focus on the history of weather modification as it pertains to hurricanes. If you have limited knowledge on weather modification — or, perhaps, you even think it is a hoax — I encourage you to read on. If you are familiar with the history or science of weather modification, I also encourage you to read on, as I have included details I have not seen covered elsewhere.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Hurricane Damage To Trigger Fuel Glut

September 21, 2017

Hurricane Damage To Trigger Fuel Glut

Damage from hurricanes in the Caribbean, which sends a substantial amount of fuel oil to the U.S. Gulf Coast, could lead to a glut of the fuel, S&P Platts reported, citing sources with knowledge of the situation.

Hurricanes Irma and Maria, which made landfall in the Caribbean over the last two weeks, damaged several fuel storage terminals in the region, which are used to store fuel oil coming from the U.S. Atlantic coast, Europe, and Latin America. The fuel is then sent on to the Gulf Coast, Panama, and Asia.

After the damage, however, a lot of the fuel oil originally sent to the Caribbean terminals will likely be rerouted to the Gulf Coast, where there is already more than enough fuel oil. S&P Platts spoke to traders and brokers who said that cargoes of fuel oil are already being diverted and that this will add to a swelling glut. The glut was partially caused by increased fuel oil production: last week, the fuel oil yield from Gulf Coast refineries hit 3.8 percent, the highest since the beginning of 2014.

The situation, unless it changes quickly, which is unlikely, could have a dramatic effect on fuel oil prices. According to S&P Platts’ trading sources, currently the market for benchmark High Sulfur Fuel Oil on the Gulf Coast is in normal backwardation, with the spot price as of last Thursday at a premium of US$1.80 a barrel to the October HSFO swap. Related: Is Artificial Intelligence The Next Step In Total’s Tech Push?

The spike in prices came in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, when supply was limited and traders were eager to fulfill their orders. Naturally, this premium spurred greater interest in spot deals with the cargoes shipped to Houston. One such cargo, a bulky 500,000-barrel one, should arrive in Houston at the end of the month.

With supply swelling so fast, the backwardation could fast become contango, the sources warned, if a lot of fuel oil gets marketed in Houston instead of the Caribbean.

Who Gets Hit by Mortgage Losses in Harvey and Irma Areas?

September 19, 2017

Who Gets Hit by Mortgage Losses in Harvey and Irma Areas?

“We need to ask for a policy change because the burden with these losses is too big.”

Somebody is going to pay for losses on mortgages of homes that were destroyed by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. It’s a just a question of who.

The taxpayer is on the hook, along with some investors. But then there are the servicers of mortgages guaranteed by the Government National Mortgage Association, for short Ginnie Mae. The largest of them is Wells Fargo, but they mostly include smaller non-banks such as PennyMac and Quicken Loans. The amounts could be large. And now they’re asking for a bailout of sorts.

In total, 4.3 million properties with nearly $700 billion in outstanding mortgage balances are located in FEMA-designated disaster areas in Texas and Florida, according to a preliminary estimate by Black Knight Financial Services:

Disaster areas of Hurricane Harvey: 1.18 million mortgaged properties with $179 billion in unpaid mortgages.
Disaster areas of Hurricane Irma: 3.14 million mortgaged properties with $517 billion in unpaid mortgages.

Many of these homes survived mostly unscathed. So the mortgage balances of homes that have been severely damaged or destroyed remain uncertain but are significant.

And who picks up the losses on these mortgages?

Federal flood insurance for insured homes, but payouts are capped. Taxpayers will bail out the insurance program.
Investors in private mortgage-backed securities (MBS) backed by mortgages that are not guaranteed by the government. Losses on those mortgages flow through to investors.
Banks take the losses on any mortgages they hold on their books and that are not guaranteed by the government.
Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSE), such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, will be hit with losses on mortgages they guaranteed, packaged into MBS, and sold to investors. Some of the losses will be borne by private-sector investors via risk-transfer securities. The remaining losses will be borne by taxpayers.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Can You Really “Shut Down” a Nuclear Power Plant before a Hurricane?

September 13, 2017

Can You Really “Shut Down” a Nuclear Power Plant before a Hurricane?

Soothing words before the storm: “Our nuclear plants are now shut down.”

There are those who believe the answers to life’s most pressing questions can be found in one of two movies: “The Godfather” (part one) or “The Princess Bride.” In the latter movie, think of the Spaniard’s vaguely taunting response: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” Which might also be the reply to: “Our nuclear plants are now shut down.”

Right now we are thinking about the Turkey Point and St. Lucie nuclear power stations in South Florida, in the aftermath of hurricane Irma. But we could have been referring to the South Texas Nuclear Project south of Houston, just a week or two earlier.

Those Westinghouse pressurized water reactors have six modes of operation, sort of like gears in a car. The highest level of performance, mode 1 includes power operations all the way up to 100% power. Mode 6, the lowest level of operation, describes a plant in the state of being refueled.

Senior management at NextEra’s utility subsidiary, Florida Power & Light, placed their nuclear reactors in mode 4, “hot shutdown,” as the hurricane advanced towards the plants. (Mode 5 is cold shutdown with far lower internal reactor temperatures.)

In so-called hot shutdown, a nuclear plant has one primary requirement for ongoing safe operation — a reliable supply of electricity (assuming competent staff of course).

Even though nuclear plants produce electricity for the grid, they also require large amounts of electricity to maintain their own operations particularly in this instance for: 1) cooling the fuel in the recently operating nuclear reactor core and 2) cooling the spent fuel pools where used fuel rods are placed after removal from the reactor. These activities are known as residual heat removal.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

On Repairing/Rebuilding 100,000+ Damaged Houses

September 10, 2017

On Repairing/Rebuilding 100,000+ Damaged Houses

Almost lost in all the dollar estimates of property damage is the human loss, suffering and stress.

I am not an expert in repairing flood damage, or in dealing with insurance companies, FEMA or all the other pieces that will go into homeowners getting the funding needed to repair or rebuild their homes.

But I do know a bit about construction after 44 years in the field, and I have been soberly reflecting on the many hurdles that face everyone involved in restoring / repairing tens of thousands of homes, more or less all at the same time.

Preliminary estimates set the number of flood-damaged homes in Houston at around 100,000. More recent estimates put the number at around 40,000.

No one yet knows how many homes in Florida have been damaged by Hurricane Irma, but the number will undoubtedly be a big one.

Here are some semi-random thoughts on the challenges of repairing/rebuilding so many dwellings in as short a period of time as possible:

1. The average cost of homes in Houston is reportedly around $300,000. Many coastal areas in Florida are similarly valued. Just as a guess, many of the affected homeowners probably have mortgages in the $200,000 range.

It’s been reported that only 1 in 6 in the affected areas of Houston have flood insurance, suggesting 85% of those whose homes were rendered unlivable will need to borrow money to fund the repairs.

It seems federal agencies offer homeowners loans for this purpose, or access to what is effectively a second mortgage.

If the repaired home will be worth $300,000–questionable, perhaps, for those houses which have been repeatedly flooded by lesser storms–then how much money will homeowners be willing to borrow to keep the home?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

In a Summer of Wildfires and Hurricanes, My Son Asks “Why Is Everything Going Wrong?”

September 9, 2017

In a Summer of Wildfires and Hurricanes, My Son Asks “Why Is Everything Going Wrong?”

THE NEWS FROM the natural world these days is mostly about water, and understandably so.

We hear about the record-setting amounts of water that Hurricane Harvey dumped on Houston and other Gulf cities and towns, mixing with petrochemicals to pollute and poison on an unfathomable scale. We hear too about the epic floods that have displaced hundreds of thousands of people from Bangladesh to Nigeria (though we don’t hear enough). And we are witnessing, yet again, the fearsome force of water and wind as Hurricane Irma — one of the most powerful storms ever recorded — leaves devastation behind in the Caribbean, with Florida now in its sights.

Yet for large parts of North America, Europe, and Africa, this summer has not been about water at all. In fact it has been about its absence; it’s been about land so dry and heat so oppressive that forested mountains exploded into smoke like volcanoes. It’s been about fires fierce enough to jump the Columbia River; fast enough to light up the outskirts of Los Angeles like an invading army; and pervasive enough to threaten natural treasures, like the tallest and most ancient sequoia trees and Glacier National Park.

For millions of people from California to Greenland, Oregon to Portugal, British Columbia to Montana, Siberia to South Africa, the summer of 2017 has been the summer of fire. And more than anything else, it’s been the summer of ubiquitous, inescapable smoke.

For years, climate scientists have warned us that a warming world is an extreme world, in which humanity is buffeted by both brutalizing excesses and stifling absences of the core elements that have kept fragile life in equilibrium for millennia. At the end of the summer of 2017 — with major cities submerged in water and others licked by flames — we are currently living through Exhibit A of this extreme world, one in which natural extremes come head-to-head with social, racial, and economic ones.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Meanwhile Two More Hurricanes Form: Jose Right Behind Irma, Katia In The Gulf

September 6, 2017

Meanwhile Two More Hurricanes Form: Jose Right Behind Irma, Katia In The Gulf

As previewed yesterday, moments ago the National Hurricane Center said that “quickly strenghtening Jose” which has been quietly following in Irma’s foosteps, has become a hurricane.

Located about 1040 miles east of the Lesser Antilles, Jose is headed at 16 mph on a steady west-northwest track, steered by the same ridge that is helping to direct Irma.

On its current track, Jose would reach the northern Leeward Islands by Saturday, but the ridge is predicted to weaken enough by Saturday to allow Jose to arc just northeast of the islands. Conditions are favorable for Jose to strengthen into a hurricane by later Wednesday, and it could approach Category 3 strength by late in the week. About 25% of the European model ensemble members bring Jose into the northern Leeward Islands, but all of the GFS ensemble members keep Jose north of the islands.

The news means that there are now two major hurricanse barreling toward Florida in the Atlantic, as shown in the map below.

Meanwhile, Katia, which was christened as a Tropical Storm by NHC at 5 am EDT Wednesday, was also just upgraded to a Hurricane.

Opinion: No, hurricanes are not good for the economy

August 29, 2017

Opinion: No, hurricanes are not good for the economy

Yes, GDP may get a temporary boost from rebuilding, but there’s nothing positive about destruction

Think of the increased production of motor vehicles to replace all those flooded trucks!

Once the immediate danger of a natural disaster subsides, and the loss of life, property damage, cost of rebuilding, and degree of insurance coverage can be assessed, attention generally turns to the economic effect. How will Hurricane Harvey affect the nation’s gross domestic product?

You will no doubt hear assertions that the rebuilding effort will provide a boost to contractors, manufacturers and GDP in general. But before these claims turn into predictable nonsense about all the good that comes from natural disasters, I thought it might be useful to provide some context for these sorts of events.

The destruction wrought by a hurricane and flooding qualifies as a negative supply shock. Normal production and distribution channels are destroyed or disrupted. Producers have to find less-efficient (i.e. more expensive) ways to transport their goods. The net effect is lost output and income, and higher prices.

Over the years, I’ve observed a tendency among economists and traders to view such events through a demand-side prism. They see lost income translating into reduced spending on goods and services, which might even warrant some largesse from the central bank.

Of course, that is precisely the wrong medicine. Supply shocks reduce output and raise prices. The Federal Reserve’s interest-rate medicine affects demand. Lower interest rates will increase the demand for gasoline, among other goods and services, but they have no effect on supply. An easing of monetary policy under such circumstances would increase demand for already curtailed supply, raising prices even more.

Worst Hurricane Season In A Decade Threatens Gulf Coast Production

June 5, 2017

Worst Hurricane Season In A Decade Threatens Gulf Coast Production

2017 could be an “above-normal” year for large hurricanes, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a potential problem for Gulf Coast oil drillers and refiners.

NOAA puts the odds of an “above-normal” season for hurricanes at 45 percent, while the chances of a normal and below-normal season are at 35 and 20 percent, respectively. In fact, they said that there is a 70 percent likelihood of 11 to 17 named storms, which are storms that have 39 mile-per-hour winds or higher. About 5 to 9 of those could become hurricanes (winds of 74 mph or higher); 2 to 4 of which could become major hurricanes (winds of 111 mph or higher). The average season (which runs from June through November) tends to have just 12 named storms, so the potential for 17 named storms puts the 2017 hurricane season in more treacherous territory.

“We’re expecting a lot of storms this season,” Gerry Bell, lead seasonal hurricane forecaster with NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, told reporters. “Whether it’s above normal or near normal, that’s a lot of hurricanes.”

Part of the reason for the expected uptick in hurricane activity is because the El Nino phenomenon is not expected to show up. El Ninos tend to suppress hurricanes. Also, sea-surface temperatures are above-average, which contributes to stronger storms.

There has been a decade-long lull in major hurricanes that have struck the U.S., but there is a growing probability that that changes this year.

That should be cause for concern for the oil and gas industry, much of which is located along the Gulf Coast. They have been spared the worst that Mother Nature has to offer for quite some time. Related: Oil Prices Fall As U.S. Rig Count Rises For 20th Straight Week

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

3 major hurricanes recorded over the Pacific for first time ever

August 31, 2015

3 major hurricanes recorded over the Pacific for first time ever

In a historic development this weekend, three major hurricanes were recorded over the Pacific Ocean for the first time since records have been kept.

Hurricane Kilo, Hurricane Ignacio and Hurricane Jimena were all classified as Category 4 storms on Sunday, according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC), the second highest classification on the Saffir-Simpson scale.

It was the first time on record that there were three Category 4 hurricanes in the Pacific at the same time, and the first time three major hurricanes—defined as Category 3 or higher—were recorded over the Pacific, according to Weather.com.

“Sea surface temperatures are extremely warm, averaging 2 to 5 degrees above normal,” said meteorologist Chris Robbins, a former NHC forecaster and founder of Robbins Meteorological Consulting and iWeatherNet.com. “This anomaly is well north of the oceanic warming associated with a typical El Niño.”

The rare event was greeted with some enthusiasm by hurricane expert Eric Blake of the NHC on Twitter:

Eric Blake @EricBlake12

Historic central/eastern Pacific outbreak- 3 major hurricanes at once for the first time on record! #ElNino #climate pic.twitter.com/t4fdIZwhOO

4:52 PM – 29 Aug 2015

J Whitehead @ntxweathersoonr

@EricBlake12 i sense some drooling

Follow

Eric Blake @EricBlake12

@ntxweathersoonr one can’t use enough superlatives to talk about how unusual it is. Cpac has no business looking like this

4:56 PM – 29 Aug 2015

By 8 a.m. Eastern time Monday, Hurricane Jimena, still classified as Category 4, was moving west with maximum sustained winds of 150 miles per hour. The hurricane was not expected to lose much strength in the next couple of days, according to the NHC’s latest advisory.

Hurricane Kilo also remained a Category 4 and was heading toward the international dateline, according to the NHC. The storm was located about 1,370 miles west of Honolulu and had maximum sustained winds of 135 miles per hour.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Real Lesson of Katrina: the Worst is Yet to Come

August 27, 2015

The Real Lesson of Katrina: the Worst is Yet to Come

Three weeks and three days before Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans 10 years ago, a paper of mine appeared in the scientific journal Nature.

It showed that North Atlantic hurricane power was strongly correlated with the temperature of the tropical Atlantic during hurricane season, and that both had been increasing rapidly over the previous 30 years or so. It attributed these increases to a combination of natural climate oscillations and to global warming.

Had Katrina not occurred, this paper and another by an independent team would merely have contributed to the slowly accumulating literature on the relationship between climate and hurricanes.

Instead, the two papers inspired a media firestorm, polarizing popular opinion and, to some extent, scientists themselves, on whether global warming was in some way responsible for Katrina.

While the firestorm was mostly destructive, benefiting only the media, it had a silver lining in inspiring a much more concerted effort by atmospheric and climate scientists to understand how hurricanes influence and are influenced by climate.

We have learned much in the intervening years.

Sea Level and Storm Surges

An obvious point is that slowly rising sea levels increase the probability of storm-induced surges even when the statistics of the storms, such as top wind speed, themselves remain stable. Storm surges are physically the same thing as tsunamis but driven by wind and atmospheric pressure rather than the shaking seafloor, and they typically arrive near the peak of the storm’s fury.

As with Katrina and Sandy, they are often the most destructive aspects of hurricanes. Had Sandy struck New York a century ago, there would have been substantially less flooding, as sea level was then roughly a foot lower. As sea level increases at an accelerating pace, we can expect more devastating coastal flooding from storms.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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