Weather

Panel Supports a Controversial Report on Global Warming. The National Research Counsel has endorsed, with some caveats, Michael E. Mann’s famous 1999 study [pdf] showing a sharp increase in warming trends over the last decades, and particularly in the 1990s. Mann is probably most well known as the source of the so-called “hockey stick,” the graph of mean global surface temperatures showing stable temperatures for hundreds of years, followed by a swift uptick in the last few decades. Mann concluded that the 1990s was probably the warmest decade in the last thousand years, and 1998 in particular probably the warmest year. Mann has been profiled in Seed Magazine, Mother Jones, and Scientific American [pdf], among others.

I should mention that “controversial” is the NYT’s word, not mine. The report is controversial really only in the sense that there exists political opposition to Mann’s conclusions. The report from the NRC demonstrates—indeed, explicitly states—that although there is some scientific disagreement about details, the consensus of the climatology community is that Mann basically got it right.

RealClimate has more on the NRC’s report, including a discussion of the more recent research.

Does anyone else see the irony of rolling blackouts in Texas in the middle of an Enron-related trial?

Rita started lashing us pretty hard around 8:00 PM last night, and we stayed up until about 11:00 PM watching the news. We were awoken at about 2:30 AM by the wind and rain, and watched another hour of news as the eyewall started to pass through Lake Charles. We awoke at about 8:30 AM to more wind and rain, and discovered that we had no power. Needless to say, it was starting to get hot and humid, and the wind and rain were severe enough that we were worried about breaking windows. Everything held, though, and power came back on at about 10:30 AM. However, we had no cable, and so no internet. Our cable came back at about 6:00 PM, a half-hour ago. The rain subsided several hours ago, and the wind is starting to die down now, as well.

Radar at 6:40 PM.

Rita is slowly approaching landfall, and now appears to be headed for the coast between the Sabine Pass and Cameron, Louisiana. We still have power here, and are experiencing moderate wind and rain.

It’s now about 4:45 PM, and the wind has begun to increase. We can now hear the wind pretty consistently inside the building.

Here are some weather resources for keeping up to date on Rita:

* The “National Hurricane Center”:http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/ is the official source for weather information.
* The “Boat U.S. Hurricane Center”:http://www.boatus.com/hurricanes/tracking.asp has several maps, including a “current satellite map”:http://www.boatus.com/hurricanes/hurricane_satellite2.asp, the “current forecasted path”:http://www.boatus.com/hurricanes/hurricane_forecast2.asp, and—something I haven’t seen elsewhere—a “current wind field map”:http://www.boatus.com/hurricanes/hurricane_field2.asp.
* Another “current satellite”:http://www.stormtrack.org/special/ picture of Rita.
* More information from “KLFY”:http://www.klfy.com/, a Lafayette TV station, “KPLC”:http://www.kplctv.com/, a Lake Charles TV station, and “KHOU”:http://www.khou.com/, a Houston TV station..

Water Pooling at 2:00 PM

The rain has not yet started in earnest, and we already have pooling water behind our apartment. It doesn’t look like drainage is too good back there, and I’m afraid it’s going to get worse before it gets better.