Tuesday, August 29, 2017 By Dahr Jamail, Truthout | News Analysis
[…]
Tropical Storm Harvey, which
made landfall near Corpus Christi last Friday as a Category 4 hurricane, has
stalled over south-central Texas and has been dumping record levels of rain on
this population-dense area. The area flooded in Texas, as of Sunday, was,
staggeringly, the size of Lake Michigan. At the time of this writing, 450,000 Texans were expected to seek disaster aid.
Meteorologist Eric Holthaus tweeted last week, "Since the 1950s, Houston has seen
a 167% increase in heavy downpours. #Harvey could
bring the worst one yet."
Unfortunately for the people
of south Texas, Holthaus was spot on. More than 30 inches of rain have fallen,
with an additional 15-25 inches expected in the coming days.
At least five people have died
from the storm, and that number is expected to rise. More than 150 major roads
in Houston alone are now rivers.
Houston is the fourth largest
city in the US, with 6.8 million people in its metro area, and is the
petrochemical and refinery hub of the country. It is anyone's guess how long it
will take the city to rebuild and recover.
What made Harvey so brutal?
Scientific studies have shown for quite some time that Anthropogenic Climate Disruption
(ACD) amplifies the impacts of hurricanes by causing them to have larger storm
surges, higher wind speeds and greater rainfall amounts. All of these are
driven by the amount of heat in the oceans.
According to a study by Ars
Technica, this past winter, for the first time on record, water temperatures in
the Gulf of Mexico never fell below 73°F. These conditions set the stage for
what we are witnessing now: Warming waters intensify the strength and impacts
of tropical storms and hurricanes, as previous studies have shown. Additionally, the water
temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico this summer have been exceedingly warm, creating the prime conditions for a storm
like Harvey. ACD is amping up hurricanes.
Now, Harvey will be another
name added to the list of other deadly ACD-amplified hurricanes, like Katrina,
Ike and Sandy, which have caused record-setting levels of devastation in the
US.
"Fuel for the Storm"
In more ways than one, Harvey
has been unprecedented, and that is due to ACD's impacts on the conditions for
the storm.
Sea-surface temperatures near
Texas were between 2.7° and 7.2°F above average, making them some of the warmest
ocean temperatures on Earth. This caused Harvey to ramp up from a
tropical depression to a catastrophic Category 4 hurricane in merely two days'
time.
"This is the main fuel
for the storm," Kevin Trenberth, a senior scientist at the US National
Center for Atmospheric Research told The Atlantic. "Although these storms occur
naturally, the storm is apt to be more intense, maybe a bit bigger,
longer-lasting, and with much heavier rainfalls [because of that ocean
heat]."
Trenberth also told The Atlantic, "The human contribution can be up
to 30 percent or so of the total rainfall coming out of the storm. It may have
been a strong storm, and it may have caused a lot of problems anyway -- but
[human-caused climate change] amplifies the damage considerably."
Trenberth is the author of a
2011 study titled, "Changes
in precipitation with climate change," which shows how the
water-holding capacity of air increases 7 percent for every 1°C warming, which
naturally leads to an increase in the atmosphere's ability to hold water, and
sets the conditions for epic rain events like Texas is experiencing today.
"Epic and Catastrophic
Flooding"
Late Sunday the National Weather Service announced "epic and
catastrophic flooding" had occurred in and around Houston and Galveston,
and that the flooding could worsen with additional expected rainfall.
In 2001, Tropical Storm
Allison was the worst rainstorm to strike a city in the US in modern history.
It caused a deluge in Houston, which left 30,000 homeless, killed 23 in Texas
as a whole, and caused severe damage to hospitals and other buildings in
downtown Houston.
Harvey may well exceed these
records, if rainfall continues as predicted.
Scientists are already warning
that the storm is going to cause the most devastating flooding the city has
ever seen.
"The economic impact
should be greater than any other flood event we've ever experienced," Sam
Brody, a scientist at Texas A&M University in Galveston who specializes in
natural hazards mitigation, told the Texas Tribune. "And it's going to take years
for these residential communities to recover."
Harvey is unique in another
way as well. According to Stephanie Zick, who is studying tropical
cyclones at Virginia Tech University, Harvey is the only storm on record in the
Gulf of Mexico to have ever intensified in the 12 hours prior to making
landfall.
[…]
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