Ahoy, offshore wind: Advanced buoys bring vital data to untapped energy resource

Frances White in a press release at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory: Two massive, 20,000-pound buoys decked out with the latest in meteorological and oceanographic equipment will enable more accurate predictions of the power-producing potential of winds that blow off U.S. shores.

The bright yellow buoys — each worth $1.3 million — are being commissioned by the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington state's Sequim Bay. Starting in November, they will be deployed for up to a year at two offshore wind demonstration projects: one near Coos Bay, Oregon, and another near Virginia Beach, Virginia.

"We know offshore winds are powerful, but these buoys will allow us to better understand exactly how strong they really are at the heights of wind turbines," said PNNL atmospheric scientist Will Shaw. "Data provided by the buoys will give us a much clearer picture of how much power can be generated at specific sites along the American coastline — and enable us to generate that clean, renewable power sooner."

Offshore wind is a new frontier for U.S. renewable energy developers. There's tremendous power-producing potential, but limited information is available about ocean-based wind resources. DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy purchased the buoys to improve offshore turbine performance in the near term and reduce barriers to private investment in large-scale offshore wind energy development in the long term. The buoys were manufactured by AXYS Technologies, Inc., in Sidney, British Columbia.

A recent report estimated the U.S. could power nearly 17 million homes by generating more than 54 gigawatts of offshore wind energy, but more information is needed. Instruments have long been sent out to sea to measure winds on the ocean's surface, but the blade tips of offshore wind turbines can reach up to 600 feet above the surface, where winds can behave very differently....

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is commissioning two of these large buoys, which are decked out with advanced scientific instruments to more accurately predict offshore wind’s power-producing potential. Terms of Use: Our images are freely and publicly available for use with the credit line, "Courtesy of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory."

Winds of change for the shipping sector

A press release from the University of Manchester: Wind propulsion such as kites and Flettner rotors could offer a viable route to help cut CO2 emissions in the shipping sector, according to Dr Michael Traut, a Research Associate from The University of Manchester.

Speaking at the ‘Shipping in Changing Climates: provisioning the future’ Conference in Liverpool today (Thursday), Dr Traut will present research that uses a new model to couple wind-power technologies with weather data to show how in theory, and with supporting incentives, wind energy could cut CO2 and fuel use by as much as 50% on smaller cargo vessels up to 5,000 dead weight tonnes. This would also have a knock-on impact of cutting sulphur and nitrogen oxide and dioxide emissions by reducing the total amount of fuel burnt.

The study, to be presented in a session entitled ‘Future Shipping Propulsion’, will be discussed alongside presentations from more than 30 other speakers from across academia and the shipping industry. All the speakers will be exploring new issues and opportunities on the horizon for the industry in meeting the challenges faced by climate change.

The conference, sponsored by Lloyd’s Register and Shell, is integral to an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (ESPRC) and industry-funded consortium project, and will bring together an audience made up of industrialists, policymakers and academics to debate how climate change may impact on the shipping sector worldwide.

The Shipping in Changing Climates project combines expertise from two substantial existing shipping research projects with two additional research partners. Project lead Professor Paul Wrobel, from UCL, said: “Our vision is to create an enduring, multi-disciplinary and independent research community strongly linked to industry and capable of informing the policy making process by developing new knowledge and understanding of the shipping system, its energy efficiency and emissions, and its transition to a low carbon, more resilient future.”...

Flettner rotors powering a German vessel, RoLo cargo ship E-Ship 1. Shot by kaʁstn Disk/Cat, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany license

Wind and dust can predict Sahel meningitis outbreaks

Samuel Mintz at the Thomson Reuters Foundation: Scientists may soon be able to forecast disease outbreaks in sub-Saharan African’s “meningitis belt” using weather data – and use that to plan early vaccination drives to prevent or limit casualties.

In the “meningitis belt” of sub-Saharan Africa, which stretches across the Sahel from Senegal to Ethiopia, major epidemics of lethal meningitis are routine. A devastating 1996-97 outbreak killed about 25,000 people.

An effective new vaccine has driven a decrease in meningitis, but the standard procedure in the region has been to carry out vaccination drives and antibiotic treatment of the disease in districts already suffering outbreaks – and in some cases help arrives too late to make a significant impact, health officials say.

In the near future, though, scientists might be able to use climate factors such as wind and dust conditions to forecast these epidemics and develop earlier vaccination strategies to prevent or limit casualties.

New research carried out in Niger by the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University's International Research Institute for Climate and Society found that measured levels of wind and dust can be used to predict some of the annual variability in meningitis outbreaks, at both national and district levels.

 “We’ve known that the disease is associated to climate and environmental issues for a long time, because it’s very seasonal,” said Carlos Perez Garcia-Pando, one of the lead authors of the report. The challenge, he said, to figure out which climate factors were important in order to better equip public health decision makers to act.

“The idea was to try to use models and observations from satellites and all kinds of data on potential (climate-related) parameters that might be affecting the disease, and try to use that information to provide advance warning,” Perez said....

A sandstorm in Chad, shot by Darcy Burbank, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 1.0 Generic license

Offshore wind farms can tame hurricanes, study finds

Wendy Koch in USA Today: Billions of dollars in U.S. damage from mega-storms Katrina and Sandy might have been avoided with a perhaps surprising device — wind turbines.

That's the finding of a ground-breaking study today that says mammoth offshore wind farms can tame hurricanes rather than be destroyed by them. It says a phalanx of tens of thousands of turbines can lower a hurricane's wind speed up to 92 mph and reduce its storm surge up to 79%.

Unlike sea walls, which protect cities from storm surges, wind farms pay for themselves by generating pollution-free electricity, says lead author Mark Jacobson, an engineering professor at Stanford University. "The additional hurricane (protection) benefit is free."

No offshore wind farms currently operate in the United States, although 11 are under development — mostly off the East and Texas coasts. Most of the world's offshore turbines are in northwestern Europe, but China is ramping up its capacity.

Jacobson says his study, published online in Nature Climate Change, is the first to look at how offshore turbines interact with hurricanes. He says the impact may seem surprising but makes sense: Turbines produce power by taking energy from wind and thus slowing it down....

Offshore wind turbines at Barrow Offshore Wind off Walney Island in the Irish Sea. Shot by Papa Lima Whiskey 2, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Europe's storms send power prices plummeting to negative

Karolin Schapps and Vera Eckert in Reuters: North Europe's devastating storms sent wind turbines spinning and helped strengthen a new winter phenomenon for the region - negative electricity prices. Damaging for utilities losing money making electricity, delighting traders who cash in on price swings, they will not, however, mean cheap power for households.

A raft of elements to subsidize the green energy boom make up half of most consumer power bills, shielding them from immediate wholesale market price swings.

Over the Christmas holiday, which typically causes a drop in energy demand, wholesale electricity prices in Germany, the Nordic region, the Czech Republic and Slovakia turned negative on excessive renewable energy production and mild weather.

Wind and rain bring out the best in renewable energy from turbines and hydro power, a major source of Nordic electricity. Calm weather hampers green energy output. Meteorologists say mild and wet weather could continue until March.

When renewable energy output is higher than necessary, as in stormy weather, producers face negative market prices because electricity cannot be stored in high volumes. "I think negative prices will become more common with more wind farms being built. With more wind farms the chances of having supply outstripping demand are higher and this is the cause of the negative prices," said one European power trader....

A windfarm in Germany, shot by Prankster, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication 

Soil carbon 'blowing in the wind'

CSIRO: Top soil is rich in nutrients and carbon but is increasingly being blown away by events such as the ‘Red Dawn’ in Sydney in 2009. When wind lifts carbon dust into the atmosphere it changes the amount and location of soil carbon.

Some carbon falls back to the ground while some leaves Australia or ends up in the ocean. CSIRO research scientist Dr Adrian Chappell and an international team of experts in wind erosion and dust emission recently calculated the extent of these carbon dust emissions.

“Carbon stored in our soils helps sustain plant growth. Our modelling shows that millions of tonnes of dust and carbon are blowing away, and it is uncertain where all that ends up,” Dr Chappell said. “We need to understand the impact of this dust carbon cycle to develop more accurate national and global estimates of carbon balances and to be able to prepare for life in a changing climate.

“Australia’s carbon accounts, and even global carbon accounts, have not yet taken wind or water erosion into consideration and when this happens it could have significant impacts on how we manage our landscapes. While soil organic carbon lost through dust is not a major contributor to Australia’s total emissions, it is a major factor in our deteriorating soil health.”

Carbon is an essential ingredient for the healthy soils which underpin Australia’s capability to produce enough food to feed 60 million people. Understanding the movement of carbon through the landscape is a necessity if we are to improve the quality of our soils and support farmers and land managers to store carbon.

This is not an issue for Australia alone. Other countries will also need to know the fate of their wind-blown carbon; countries like the USA and China with larger dust emissions will likely face similar challenges when including wind borne dust in their carbon accounting....

The "red dawn" dust storm in Sydney in 2009, shot by Nico Nelson, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license 

The disease vectors, my friend, are blowing in the wind

MedicalXpress.com:  Australian researchers are developing a new tool to help track and manage the vast numbers of disease-carrying insects blown from Asia into northern Australia every year by cyclones and monsoon winds.

The new software and modelling tool is among the projects to be developed as part of the CSIRO's new Biosecurity Flagship launched in Canberra today, a dedicated vehicle bringing together CSIRO experts around the range of Biosecurity issues that challenge Australia.

The Tool for Assessing Pest and Pathogen Airborne Spread, known as TAPPAS and jointly being developed by the CSIRO Biosecurity Flagship, the Bureau of Meteorology and the Department of Agriculture Fisheries and Forestry, will model the risks associated with wind-assisted migration of species like Culicoides, a biting midge that carries an animal disease called Bluetongue virus.

Bluetongue virus in livestock can cause fever, oral and nasal haemorrhages, swollen tongue, emaciation and can slow down wool production in sheep. Its potential spread within Australia is a major concern.

"The appearance of some strains of Culicoides can only be explained by wind-borne movement and we know of a number of other insects that are detected across northern Australia after cyclones," said Gary Fitt, Director CSIRO Biosecurity Flagship.

"That's part of the reason why one of our projects is to develop a model to help predict wind-assisted arrivals of insects or plant pathogens into northern Australia, or in fact into any part of Australia. With the same models, we can then predict where these organisms might spread and also use the model in reverse mode to backtrack where they may have came from. That helps us better understand how to prepare for and manage an outbreak."...

Culicoides imicola blood feeding female midges showing stages of blood feeding in relation to transmission of viruses. Shot by Alan R Walker, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

NASA to launch ocean wind monitor to International Space Station

Space Daily via NASA: In a clever reuse of hardware originally built to test parts of NASA's QuikScat satellite, the agency will launch the ISS-RapidScat instrument to the International Space Station in 2014 to measure ocean surface wind speed and direction.

The ISS-RapidScat instrument will help improve weather forecasts, including hurricane monitoring, and understanding of how ocean-atmosphere interactions influence Earth's climate.

"The ability for NASA to quickly reuse this hardware and launch it to the space station is a great example of a low-cost approach that will have high benefits to science and life here on Earth," said Mike Suffredini, NASA's International Space Station program manager.

ISS-RapidScat will help fill the data gap created when QuikScat, which was designed to last two years but operated for 10, stopped collecting ocean wind data in late 2009. A scatterometer is a microwave radar sensor used to measure the reflection or scattering effect produced while scanning the surface of Earth from an aircraft or a satellite.

NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have studied next-generation replacements for QuikScat, but a successor will not be available soon. To meet this challenge cost-effectively, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and the agency's station program proposed adapting leftover QuikScat hardware in combination with new hardware for use on the space station....

NASA shot of the International Space Station

Violent winds in Nigeria after floods

Gloria Usman in AllAfrica.com via Leadership (Abuja): The Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NIMET) has warned Nigerians to take precautions against violent winds that may occur during the dry season, due to the effects of climate change.

The director-general of NIMET, Dr Anthony Anuforom, gave the warning in Abuja yesterday in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN). He said that windy weather was expected during the dry season, following more heavy rains likely to lead to more floods between September and October. He cautioned people not to stay under trees during the period.

Anuforom said: "We are transiting now from rainy to dry season; the kind of things we may experience are violent winds. Therefore, we advise people to avoid staying under trees. The reason why we alert people is for them to know ahead of time and take necessary precautions. We have no ability to protect against natural disasters but the ability to observe what the weather is and inform the people early. Part of the mandate of the Ministry of Aviation is safety and we as an agency under it have keyed into it."

He noted that forecasts by the agency, if strictly adhered to, could help save the situation, adding that any emergency situation could only surprise people unexpectedly if there were no early warnings. "If adequate disaster risk measures are taken, the number of deaths will decrease because people must have known what to expect," Anuforom said.

The NIMET chief said that the 2013 annual seasonal rainfall predictions bulletin on weather and climate would be released early to get people prepared and make use of it....

Houses submerged in Makurdi town Nigeria due to the flooding of Ladgo reservoir in Cameroon, shot by Achakpa, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Winds arrive in storm-weary Pacific Northwest

Manuel Valdes and Nigel Duara in the Seattle Times: Strong winds descended on the storm-weary Pacific Northwest and thousands of people remained without power Saturday after a winter storm left a tangle of fallen trees and damaged power lines. Around 195,000 customers remained without electricity, reported Puget Sound Energy, one of the region's largest utilities. That was down from a peak of more than 260,000 customers.

Wind gusts close to 50 mph arrived in much of the region, which could combine with the remaining snow to bring down more trees. Four snowmobilers were rescued from near-whiteout conditions in Todd Lake, west of Bend.

"It's a recipe for more down branches and potential power outages," said National Weather Service meteorologist Dennis D'Amico. "The good news is that we've had above freezing temperatures for over 24 hours. We're on our way to melting the snow."

In Oregon, worries about flooding and high winds subsided Saturday. Highways along the coast were closed for several hours as high water crept over roadways, but warnings of potential flooding in Benton County proved unfounded...

Des Moines, Washington seen from Point Robinson, Maury Island, Washington, shot by Joe Mabel, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Global winds could explain record rains, tornadoes

David Tenenbaum in the University of Wisconsin-Madison News: Two talks at a scientific conference this week will propose a common root for an enormous deluge in western Tennessee in May 2010, and a historic outbreak of tornadoes centered on Alabama in April 2011. Both events seem to be linked to a relatively rare coupling between the polar and the subtropical jet streams, says Jonathan Martin, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences.

But the fascinating part is that the change originates in the western Pacific, about 9,000 miles away from the intense storms in the U.S. midsection, Martin says. The mechanism that causes the storms originates during spring or fall when organized complexes of tropical thunderstorms over Indonesia push the subtropical jet stream north, causing it to merge with the polar jet stream.

The subtropical jet stream is a high-altitude band of wind that is normally located around 30 degrees north latitude. The polar jet stream is normally hundreds of miles to the north. Martin calls the resulting band of wind a “superjet.”

Jet streams in the northern hemisphere blow from the west at roughly 140 miles per hour, and are surrounded by a circular whirlwind that looks something like a tornado pushed on its side. The circulating wind at the bottom of the jet stream blows from the south. On the north side, the circulating winds turn vertical, lifting and cooling the air until the water vapor condenses and feeds precipitation.

A superjet and its circulating winds carry roughly twice as much energy as a typical jet stream, Martin says. “When these usually separate jet streams sit atop one another, there tends to be a very strong vertical circulation, which produces clouds, precipitation and tornadoes under the right conditions.”...

A public domain image of a jet stream

Building codes may underestimate risks due to multiple hazards

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (US Department of Commerce): As large parts of the nation recover from nature's one-two punch—an earthquake followed by Hurricane Irene—building researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) warn that a double whammy of seismic and wind hazards can increase the risk of structural damage to as much as twice the level implied in building codes.

This is because current codes consider natural hazards individually, explains NIST's Dat Duthinh, a research structural engineer. So, if earthquakes rank as the top threat in a particular area, local codes require buildings to withstand a specified seismic load. In contrast, if hurricanes or tornadoes are the chief hazard, homes and buildings must be designed to resist loads up to an established maximum wind speed.

In a timely article published in the Journal of Structural Engineering, Duthinh, NIST Fellow Emil Simiu and Chiara Crosti (now at the University of Rome) challenge this compartmentalized approach. They show that in areas prone to both seismic and wind hazards, such as South Carolina, the risk that design limits will be exceeded can be as much as twice the risk in regions where only one hazard occurs, even accounting for the fact that these multiple hazards almost never occur simultaneously. As a consequence, buildings designed to meet code requirements in these double-jeopardy locations "do not necessarily achieve the level of safety implied," the researchers write.

Simiu explains by analogy: a motorcycle racer who takes on a second job as a high-wire performer. "By adding this new occupation, the racer increases his risk of injury, even though the timing and nature of the injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident or in a high-wire mishap may differ," he says. "Understandably, an insurer would raise the premium on a personal injury policy to account for the higher level of risk."...

Wind zone map shows how the frequency and strength of extreme windstorms vary across the United States. Wind speeds in Zone IV (red), where the risk of extreme windstorms is greatest, can be as high as 250 miles per hour. Credit: Federal Emergency Management Agency

Don't blow me down! The sculptures of Tim Prentice menaced by the hurricane

On the Friday before Hurricane Irene reaches the northwest corner of Connecticut, I paid a call on Tim Prentice, a neighbor who is best known as a kinetic sculptor. Tim and his team create mobiles. These delicate structures of wire, Lexan and other materials hover in the air, or are attached to vertical surfaces, where they spin or wave in the breeze. Some move slowly, others are more intricate. Tim's house and shop are a compelling attraction, since his yard teems with startling mobiles unlike anything you'd expect to see on a road in rural Connecticut.

His work has been installed in hundreds of venues, from embassies to corporate headquarters in the United States and around the world. On his website he says, " I take it as an article of faith that the air around us moves in ways which are organic, whimsical, and unpredictable. I therefore assume that if I were to abdicate the design to the wind, the work would take on these same qualities. The engineer in me wants to minimize friction and inertia to make the air visible. The architect studies matters of scale and proportion. The navigator and sailor want to know the strength and direction of the wind. The artist wants to understand its changing shape...."

With nonstop hurricane porn blaring from the media, I thought, how are Tim's fragile-seeming sculptures going to fare in a high wind? I paid a call on him to find out. I found Tim in his barn wrapping a video shoot for a presentation. I asked him whether he was going to bring any of his pieces inside to protect them.

"I don't know," he said. "I'm curious to see how they perform in a high wind. I had one commission that was out in the open, and the client called me before a nor'easter wanting to know if it would hold up. I told them to leave it out so we could see how it would do. But they chickened out and brought it inside."

Tim noted that some of his pieces could handle a 70-mile-per-hour wind, but was dubious about anythng stronger. He never takes the outdoor sculptures inside. "Sometimes after a tough winter we find squares of Lexan lying on the ground, and we have to fix them back up a little bit." With a shrug, he added, "I don't have to decide today. We'll see what the weatherman is saying tomorrow."

As his wife Marie Prentice (a noted poet in her own right) pointed out, Tim was philosophical about the fate of his sculptures because his shop is right there, and he can fix anything that gets too badly chewed up.

The fate of art subjected to climate change impacts rarely comes up in your average climate discussion. But maybe it should, especially when the art exists to make use of the wind, the way Tim's art does.

All photographs by Brian Thomas, which you can use under the Creative Commons license of your choice

Increase in tornado, hurricane damage brings call for more stringent building standards

Science Daily: Researchers from a team funded by the National Science Foundation have examined some of last spring's massive tornado damage and conclude in a new report that more intensive engineering design and more rigorous, localized construction and inspection standards are needed to reduce property damage and loss of life. As one of the nation's most destructive tornado seasons in history begins to wane, and hurricane season approaches its peak, experts are working to determine if old, tried-and-true approaches to residential and small building construction are still adequate, or if it's time to revisit these issues.

"Modern building codes are not what we would call inadequate, but they are kind of a bare minimum," said Rakesh Gupta, a professor of wood engineering and mechanics at Oregon State University, and one of the members of the NSF team that traveled to such sites as Tuscaloosa, Ala., and Joplin, Mo. -- where a massive EF5 tornado in May killed more than 150 people and caused damage approaching $3 billion.

"Beyond that, in the actual construction process, buildings are often not built precisely to codes, due to inadequate construction work or code enforcement," he said. "We can do better. The damage didn't have to be as bad as it was. We can design and build structures more rigorously that could withstand wind forces up to 140-150 miles per hour, which would help them better resist both tornadoes and hurricanes." ...Among the findings of the new report:

• It's not possible to economically design wood-frame structures that could resist damage from the highest winds in extreme tornado events, such as EF4 or EF5, but irreparable damage from lesser winds could and should be reduced.
• Tornadoes and hurricanes apply different types of forces to buildings, and what will adequately protect from one type of storm event isn't identical to the other. Implementing hurricane-region construction practices in a tornado-prone region is a good start, but not an end solution.
• Vertical uplift, one of the special risks from tornadoes, is often not planned for in traditional construction approaches.
• Interior closets and bathrooms can provide some protection at lower wind speeds, but more consideration should be given to construction of "safe rooms" that can save lives in major events.

A tornado rips through Springfield, Massachusetts, on June 1, 2011, shot by Matt Putzel, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Why winds are slowing

Joseph Milton in Nature News: Increasing amounts of vegetation could be causing up to 60% of a slowing in wind speed across the Northern Hemisphere, according to researchers analysing three decades of wind-speed data in Nature Geoscience1 today.

The decline is a potential concern for wind-turbine efficiency. But researchers cannot tell whether the effect, an average 10% slowdown, will make much difference to wind turbines — the slowing winds measured are at 10 metres above the ground, whereas turbines operate at 50–100 metres up, where there is little global data.

Several previous regional studies looking at the United States, Australia, China and parts of Europe have shown decreasing wind speeds just above the planet's surface. Climate change, afforestation and urban development had been mooted as possible causes. But, says Robert Vautard, at the University of Versailles Saint Quentin in Yvelines, France, "people always said the data were rubbish. There was no quality-controlled global archive of data."

…Changing patterns of atmospheric circulation at high altitudes have previously been blamed for slowing wind speeds — as air temperatures and pressures in different parts of the atmosphere shift with a gradually heating Earth. But Vautard and his team say that only 10–50% of the change they observed could be explained by current understanding of how changes in high-altitude circulation affect surface wind speeds.

…Increased vegetation — resulting from ex-agricultural land becoming overgrown, afforestation and changing landscape-management practices — could account for 25–60% of the observed stilling in wind speed, says Vautard. The researchers used satellite images to estimate increases in the volume and height of vegetation, and computer climate models to see how this would affect wind speed. "We need further investigation of whether afforestation affects wind speeds," he says, "but it's almost certainly having an effect."…

Wind contributing to Arctic sea ice loss, study finds

David Adam in the Guardian (UK): Much of the record breaking loss of ice in the Arctic ocean in recent years is down to the region's swirling winds and is not a direct result of global warming, a new study reveals. Ice blown out of the region by Arctic winds can explain around one-third of the steep downward trend in sea ice extent in the region since 1979, the scientists say.

The study does not question that global warming is also melting ice in the Arctic, but it could raise doubts about high-profile claims that the region has passed a climate "tipping point" that could see ice loss sharply accelerate in coming years.

The new findings also help to explain the massive loss of Arctic ice seen in the summers of 2007-08, which prompted suggestions that the summertime Arctic Ocean could be ice-free withing a decade. About half of the variation in maximum ice loss each September is down to changes in wind patterns, the study says.

Masayo Ogi, a scientist with the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology in Yokohama, and her colleagues, looked at records of how winds have behaved across the Arctic since satellite measurements of ice extent there began in 1979. They found that changes in wind patterns, such as summertime winds that blow clockwise around the Beaufort Sea, seemed to coincide with years where sea ice loss was highest.

Writing in a paper to be published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the scientists suggest these winds have blown large amounts of Arctic ice south through the Fram Strait, which passes between Greenland and the Norwegian islands of Svalbard, and leads to the warmer waters of the north Atlantic. These winds have increased recently, which could help explain the apparent acceleration in ice loss….

The Beaufort Sea around 1950, from NOAA

Southern Ocean winds open window to the deep sea

CSIRO: Australian and US scientists have discovered how changes in winds blowing on the Southern Ocean drive variations in the depth of the surface layer of sea water responsible for regulating exchanges of heat and carbon dioxide between the ocean and the atmosphere. The researchers’ findings – published on-line today in Nature Geoscience – provide new insights into natural processes which have a major influence on the rate of climate change.

The surface-mixed layer is a crucial pathway between the atmosphere and the deeper layers of the ocean. Changes in the depth of the mixed layer can affect air-sea exchange, carbon and heat storage in the ocean, and the rate at which water sinks from the surface ocean into the deep ocean.

Changes in the mixed layer also affect biological productivity, by altering how much light and nutrients are available to support growth of plankton at the base of the food chain. The paper’s lead author, CSIRO Wealth from Oceans Flagship oceanographer Dr Jean-Baptiste Sallée, said the winds over the Southern Ocean had increased in strength and shifted closer to Antarctica in recent decades.

“The shift in winds is one of the strongest trends in southern hemisphere climate over the last 30 years,” Dr Sallée said. “The key question is; ‘How does the wind change affect the ocean?’ Our knowledge of how the Southern Ocean changes in time is poor because of the lack of ship-based observations in this remote region. But we now have seven years of year-round observations from a fleet of profiling floats known as Argo, which allow us to see for the first time how the Southern Ocean changes with the seasons and from year-to-year.”

The researchers, including Dr Steve Rintoul from the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC and CSIRO and Professor Kevin Speer from Florida State University, examined the relationship between changes in wind and changes in the surface-mixed layer.

“We found that the depth of the mixed layer was more sensitive than we expected to a wind pattern known as the Southern Annular Mode, the major mode of variability of the southern hemisphere atmosphere,” Dr Sallée said. “Even more surprising was the fact that the response is very different in different regions.”…

The tip of an Argo float, shot by Joe Mabel, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License

Storm leaves Northeast soggy, windblown and dark

Bruce Shipkowski in the Associated Press: Utility crews pushed through fallen trees and windblown debris to reach downed power lines Sunday, working to restore electricity to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses as strong winds and heavy rain that wreaked havoc in parts of the Northeast pushed on into New England.

The storm, which battered parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and Connecticut on Saturday with gusts of up to 70 mph, struck about two weeks after heavy snow and hurricane-force winds left more than a million customers in the Northeast in the dark. More than a half-million customers in the region lost electricity at the peak of Saturday's storm, and roughly 500,000 were waiting for power to be restored Sunday morning.

…Traveling was problematic on the rails and in the air. More than 500 passengers on a New Jersey Transit train were stranded for six to seven hours because of power supply problems, spokesman Dan Stessel said Sunday. Amtrak service between Philadelphia and New York was suspended for hours before limited service was restored, spokesman Cliff Cole said.

…Flights at Newark Liberty International Airport were delayed by as many as four hours Saturday, and some flights bound for New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport had to be redirected to Boston's Logan International Airport.

At the storm's peak, more than 265,000 customers in the New York City area and 235,000 customers in New Jersey were without power. The Philadelphia area reported 70,000 customers without electricity, while more than 80,000 customers in Connecticut sat in the dark.

…Flood warnings were issued for rivers in northern Jersey, including the Ramapo River at Mahwah and Saddle River at Lodi, where minor to moderate flooding was expected Saturday night and Sunday. A coastal flood advisory was in effect for the Jersey Shore. In northern New England, a wind advisory and flood watch were in effect for extreme southern Maine and parts of New Hampshire….

Saco, Maine, April 20, 2007 -- A home that succumbed to storm surge following the Patriots' Day Nor'easter. FEMA/Marty Bahamonde

Warmer means windier on world's biggest lake

Science Daily: Rising water temperatures are kicking up more powerful winds on Lake Superior, with consequences for currents, biological cycles, pollution and more on the world's largest lake and its smaller brethren. Since 1985, surface water temperatures measured by lake buoys have climbed 1.2 degrees per decade, about 15 percent faster than the air above the lake and twice as fast as warming over nearby land.

"The lake's thermal budget is very sensitive to the amount of ice cover over the winter," says Ankur Desai, atmospheric and oceanic sciences professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "There is less ice on Lake Superior during the winter, and consequently the water absorbs more heat." A wide temperature differential between water and air makes for a more stable atmosphere with calmer winds over the relatively cold water. However, as warming water closes the gap, as in Lake Superior's case, the atmosphere gets more turbulent.

"You get more powerful winds," Desai says. "We've seen a 5 percent increase per decade in average wind speed since 1985."

…In theory, that increase in wind and current strength would make for more mixing within the lake and, in turn, a boost in the growth of organisms that make up the earliest links in the food chain. But Lake Superior's chlorophyll levels -- a measure of the presence of phytoplankton -- have been falling. The effect went largely without explanation until the researchers' modeling showed that the period of temperature stratification (well-defined separation of cold, deep water and warm surface water) was growing alongside surface temperatures and wind and current speed…..

Photograph of Lake Superior from Brockway Mountain in the Keweenaw Peninsula of Michigan. Shot by Charles Dawley Flickr Profile, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License

Scientists 'poking into' reasons for slower wind speeds; climate change eyed

One of those strange, unexpected impacts....Mike Lyons in the Palm Beach Daily News: Tropical Storm Ida's landfall near Pensacola last week was easily the most documented tropical weather event of the year. That's because Ida was the only tropical weather event of the year.

…The TV folks had to be a bit disappointed, however, since none of the dozens of cameras stationed along the Gulf Coast captured that quintessential hurricane picture: the palm tree bending in the wind. And, based on a new study from Iowa State University, palm trees may not be bending much in the future. The study found that surface wind speeds, especially in the Midwest and the Northeast, have decreased by an average of 0.5 percent to 1 percent each year since 1973.

"We see this trend toward slower wind speeds and our unanswered question is whether this is part of global warming or something else," said Bill Gutowski, a professor of geological and atmospheric sciences and one of the four Iowa State scientists working on the study.

…The scientists looked at surface wind data around the country from 1973 to 2005 using wind-speed measurements from anemometers and computerized climate models to reach their conclusion. While a reduction in wind speed may mean fewer bad hair days, the group points out that less wind could lead to problems in agriculture, increased air pollution and the growing wind power industry….

…"There are some good theoretical reasons to think that global warming will cause lighter winds in regions between the tropics and the Arctic," he said. "But, we would like to confirm our theory with data, and (so far) our results think the theory is on track."...

The West Wind, Winslow Homer, 1891