Extreme weather events not new...been around, was here before Moses was.
Friday November 11
On this day in 1911, the famous Great Blue Norther weather event occurred. A fierce cold front swept across the Plains causing temperatures to plummet from the middle to upper 70s to below freezing within hours. In Kansas City, it was 76 degree at noon and by 2 a.m. early the next day, the temperatures was 11 degrees. The front also triggered severe storms that produced several tornadoes, including one that caused nine deaths near Janesville, Wisc.
1911 Great Blue Norther
The 1911 Great Blue Norther damage in Virginia, Ill., Courtesy of Cass County, Ill., Genealogy and History via National Weather Service
Saturday November 12
The deadliest tropical cyclone in modern recorded history hit the coast of East Pakistan, present-day Bangladesh, on November 12, 1970. This Bay of Bengal cyclone – equivalent to a hurricane or typhoon, struck with peak winds of 115 mph. An estimated storm surge of at least 30 feet hit part of the coastline, causing massive destruction while drowning numerous coastal communities. An exact toll isn’t known but it is estimated that up to a half-million people died in this cyclone.
Bhola Cyclone
Bhola Cyclone satellite image (NOAA via Wikipedia)
Sunday November 13
The Nevado del Ruiz volcano in Colombia erupted on November 13, 1985. Melting a glacier, a lahar or a volcanic triggered flood of water, mud, ash, plumice and rock moving up to 40 mph, rolled down the volcano flank. The Lahar flooded nearby river valleys and buried the town of Armero, Colombia. More than 23,000 people died and several thousand more were injured. Thousands of homes were destroyed.
Columbia Lahar
The destruction left behind by a lahar near Armero, Colombia. (Jeffrey Marso, USGS Geologist via Wikipedia)
Global temperatures over last 24,000 years
Global temperatures over last 24,000 years show today's warming 'unprecedented'
by University of Arizona
<figure class="article-img" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;">https://scx1.b-cdn.net/csz/news/800a/2020/warming.jpg<figcaption class="text-darken text-low-up text-truncate-js text-truncate mt-3" style="box-sizing: border-box; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap; color: rgb(113, 115, 139); margin-top: 1rem !important; font-size: 1rem !important;">Credit: CC0 Public Domain</figcaption></figure>
A University of Arizona-led effort to reconstruct Earth's climate since the last ice age, about 24,000 years ago, highlights the main drivers of climate change and how far out of bounds human activity has pushed the climate system.
The study, published this week in Nature, had three main findings:- It verified that the main drivers of climate change since the last ice age are rising greenhouse gas concentrations and the retreat of the ice sheets.
- It suggests a general warming trend over the last 10,000 years, settling a decade-long debate about whether this period trended warmer or cooler in the paleoclimatology community.
- The magnitude and rate warming over the last 150 years far surpasses the magnitude and rate of changes over the last 24,000 years.
"This reconstruction suggests that current temperatures are unprecedented in 24,000 years, and also suggests that the speed of human-caused global warming is faster than anything we've seen in that same time," said Jessica Tierney, a UArizona geosciences associate professor and co-author of the study.
Tierney, who heads the lab in which this research was conducted, is also known for her contributions to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports and climate briefings for the U.S. Congress.