Sixty years of tornadoes

That screenshot? It's the tracks of all the tornadoes over the last 60 years, at least those that caused enough damage to be recorded. It's intimidating, but a little misleading, since that's all of them  since 1951. You can see a video of the tracks by year below, produced by IDV Solutions. Each trail (or dot) is an individual tornado; the fiercer the winds the brighter the trail.

 

You can also find a longer video with the tracks by month here.

NOAA answers some basic questions about tornadoes, here.

Warming ocean surface temperatures, and a cool chart

Did the water at your East Coast beach seem warmer than usual last summer? That's because it was: sea surface temperatures for the Northeast Shelf Ecosystem, which reaches from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina to the Gulf of Maine, reached a record high of 14 degrees Celsius in 2012, higher than the average of 12.4 degrees Celsius for the past 30 years. That's according to a new report from NOAA's Northeast Fisheries Science Center.

And it's not just the surface temperatures that are increasing - the warm water thermal habitat was at a record high, while cold water habitat was at a record low. Warm water went deeper than usual, and the habitat is changing. What is the impact? According to NOAA,

Temperature is also affecting distributions of fish and shellfish on the Northeast Shelf. The advisory provides data on changes in distribution, or shifts in the center of the population, of seven key fishery species over time. The four southern species - black sea bass, summer flounder, longfin squid and butterfish - all showed a northeastward or upshelf shift. American lobster has shifted upshelf over time but at a slower rate than the southern species. Atlantic cod and haddock have shifted downshelf.”

You can see the movement in the chart at the top of the post. Or, as Grist.org puts it, "record-breaking temperatures  . . . are driving the fish away from fast-heating waters to more hospitable depths and latitudes."

The warming won't affect the appearance of mung seaweed on Cape Cod, at least not according to this National Park Service information sheet. That apparently drifts in from points farther north.  

I am quite taken with the way the chart incorporates geographical information to show the movement of species. Do you agree?

Climate news roundup from Climate Central

That image? It's a toxic tide in Lake Erie - something that, as Climate Central reports, could come more often, with greater intensity, as the climate warms. 

It's just one of six images, linked to related reports, in Saturday's "Six to See" Slideshow on Climate Central's website. Another story covers NOAA's new hurricane warning and watch system, developed in response to Hurricane Sandy.

Beginning on June 1, the agency will be permitted to leave watches and warnings in effect even if a hurricane transitions into a post-tropical cyclone, which technically speaking is a different type of storm than a storm of purely tropical origins, provided that the storm still poses “a significant threat to life and property.

Other stories involve Antarctic sea ice, projected droughts this summer in the Western United States, and other economic and social impacts of climate change.

New nautical charts for the Arctic

 

UPDATE, March 5: Grist.org reports today that by 2040 some ships will be able to cross the North Pole itself during the summer - a route now covered in 65 feet of ice. 

You may have heard that the Northwest Passage, the sea route between Europe and Asia via the Arctic, has been open, also here, and traversed by vessels. Now, in order to make navigation safer, NOAA is developing new sea charts for Alaskan coast areas seeing more shipping traffic. (NOAA, a US agency, provides charts and "other features required for safe navigation in US waters.)

Why is this important? Ships have not been able to travel here in the past. In fact, NOAA says in its announcement,

[M]any regions of Alaska’s coastal areas have never had full bottom bathymetric surveys, and some haven’t had more than superficial depth measurements since Captain Cook explored the northern regions in the late 1700s.

This is climate change coming our way. As Climate Central puts it:

The world as a whole is warming due to heat trapped by greenhouse gas emissions, but the Arctic is warming faster than average thanks to something called “Arctic Amplification”: as bright, reflective sea ice melts, it exposes darker ocean waters, which absorb the Sun’s heat. That heat warms the air, which makes new, thick ice harder to form, setting the stage for even greater warming the following season. By 2030, or perhaps even earlier, the Arctic Ocean could be largely ice-free during part of each summer. - See more at: http://www.climatecentral.org/news/noaa-to-map-alaskas-increasingly-ice-free-arctic-waters-15664#sthash.8fZF5qx8.dpuf

The world as a whole is warming due to heat trapped by greenhouse gas emissions, but the Arctic is warming faster than average thanks to something called “Arctic Amplification”: as bright, reflective sea ice melts, it exposes darker ocean waters, which absorb the Sun’s heat. That heat warms the air, which makes new, thick ice harder to form, setting the stage for even greater warming the following season. By 2030, or perhaps even earlier, the Arctic Ocean could be largely ice-free during part of each summer.

The world as a whole is warming due to heat trapped by greenhouse gas emissions, but the Arctic is warming faster than average thanks to something called “Arctic Amplification”: as bright, reflective sea ice melts, it exposes darker ocean waters, which absorb the Sun’s heat. That heat warms the air, which makes new, thick ice harder to form, setting the stage for even greater warming the following season. By 2030, or perhaps even earlier, the Arctic Ocean could be largely ice-free during part of each summer. - See more at: http://www.climatecentral.org/news/noaa-to-map-alaskas-increasingly-ice-free-arctic-waters-15664#sthash.8fZF5qx8.dpuf

The world as a whole is warming due to heat trapped by greenhouse gas emissions, but the Arctic is warming faster than average thanks to something called “Arctic Amplification”: as bright, reflective sea ice melts, it exposes darker ocean waters, which absorb the Sun’s heat. That heat warms the air, which makes new, thick ice harder to form, setting the stage for even greater warming the following season. By 2030, or perhaps even earlier, the Arctic Ocean could be largely ice-free during part of each summer. - See more at: http://www.climatecentral.org/news/noaa-to-map-alaskas-increasingly-ice-free-arctic-waters-15664#sthash.8fZF5qx8.dpuf

The world as a whole is warming due to heat trapped by greenhouse gas emissions, but the Arctic is warming faster than average thanks to something called “Arctic Amplification”: as bright, reflective sea ice melts, it exposes darker ocean waters, which absorb the Sun’s heat. That heat warms the air, which makes new, thick ice harder to form, setting the stage for even greater warming the following season. By 2030, or perhaps even earlier, the Arctic Ocean could be largely ice-free during part of each summer. - See more at: http://www.climatecentral.org/news/noaa-to-map-alaskas-increasingly-ice-free-arctic-waters-15664#sthash.8fZF5qx8.dpuf

The world as a whole is warming due to heat trapped by greenhouse gas emissions, but the Arctic is warming faster than average thanks to something called “Arctic Amplification”: as bright, reflective sea ice melts, it exposes darker ocean waters, which absorb the Sun’s heat. That heat warms the air, which makes new, thick ice harder to form, setting the stage for even greater warming the following season. By 2030, or perhaps even earlier, the Arctic Ocean could be largely ice-free during part of each summer. - See more at: http://www.climatecentral.org/news/noaa-to-map-alaskas-increasingly-ice-free-arctic-waters-15664#sthash.8fZF5qx8.dpuf

The world as a whole is warming due to heat trapped by greenhouse gas emissions, but the Arctic is warming faster than average thanks to something called “Arctic Amplification”: as bright, reflective sea ice melts, it exposes darker ocean waters, which absorb the Sun’s heat. That heat warms the air, which makes new, thick ice harder to form, setting the stage for even greater warming the following season. By 2030, or perhaps even earlier, the Arctic Ocean could be largely ice-free during part of each summer. - See more at: http://www.climatecentral.org/news/noaa-to-map-alaskas-increasingly-ice-free-arctic-waters-15664#sthash.8fZF5qx8.dpuf