Global Warming and Hurricane Preparedness
The Center for American Progress is having a panel Monday at 1 pm at its DC headquarters in conjunction with the release of the report, Forecast: Storm Warnings.
Featured Panelists:
Dr. Peter Webster, Professor in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Tech
Mayor Richard T. Crotty (R), Orange County, Florida
John B. Copenhaver, President and CEO, DRI International
Jane Bullock, Former Chief of Staff, FEMA Director James Lee Witt
Come if you can: I’ve heard Webster a number of times, and he’s a great speaker — plus he is sure to talk about his important new paper, “Heightened tropical cyclone activity in the North Atlantic: natural variability or climate trend?”
I’ll post the report and the video when they’re available.
August 23rd, 2007 at 4:19 am
I just heard Dr Webster on an NPR OnPoint podcast, along with the ever-valuable Chris Mooney, and Chris Landsea. Landsea spent a lot of his time defending his characterization of Webster’s latest paper as “sloppy” for melding heterogeneous datasets. He also made the point that older datasets underestimated hurricane intensity (e.g. recording what we would call a Cat 5 hurricane as a Cat 3 hurricane; and that older datasets may have failed to record up to 6 hurricanes per year.
Of course, this doesn’t make the reality of human-caused global warming any less real an imperative for policy makers, but I hope Webster addresses these concerns in his talk.
August 23rd, 2007 at 4:44 am
Over the 10-year period as a whole, climate continues to warm and 2014 is likely to be 0.3 deg C warmer than 2004. The overall trend in warming is driven by greenhouse gas emissions but this warming effect will be broadly cancelled out over the next few years by the changing patterns of the ocean temperatures. Want more information click on www.LifeOfEarth.Blogspot.com