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Jacob Feuerstein, an atmospheric sciences student and contributing author for The Washington Post, is fascinated by the weather. In this episode, he talks about new developments related to weather and forecasting, weird and unusual weather events in the past few years, and how we can best be prepared in this changing environment.
You already know the facts about climate change. Now, we need cultural evolution. In this podcast, we apply cutting-edge insights from diverse fields to tackle climate change and environmental issues more effectively.
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Alison: I'm Alison Gregory and you're listening to Climate Clear, powered by AreaHub. We help you discover climate and environmental issues in a clear, digestible way by talking to experts on these topics- all within 15 minutes. Here with us today is Jacob Feuerstein, atmospheric sciences student at Cornell University and contributing author for the Washington Post's weather section.
Jacob is also a 2021 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Hollings Scholar, and has worked at the National Weather Service. Jacob, we're so happy you're joining us today. You have such a unique connection to weather and the environment that started from a very young age. Tell us a little bit more about that. When did your fascination with weather?
Jacob: Thank you. It's great to be here. I guess I was always interested in a lot of things and I didn't really hone in on the weather specifically until 2013. When I was 11, there was this really epic blizzard that impacted central Connecticut, where I lived at the time, and we got more than three feet of snow at my house.
I was, on one hand, really curious about how the heck that happened. I mean, I was barely over three feet back then and I was just blown away by this. And at the same time, reading about the snow reports brought me to the National Weather Service webpage. And there's just a ton of different ways to learn about the weather once you're at the National Weather Service webpage.
I kind of took this curiosity that I had always had, and this new found fascination with this storm that I had seen, and I really ran with it. And the more that I learned about the weather, the more amazed I was by what I was learning. And there's just so much information that was available to me. Eventually, I just got to the point where I am today, where it's always kind of been carried by this fascination that I've always had with weather.
Alison: That's great to hear. And obviously you're pretty fascinated about the weather. For example, if I recall, you seem to have an affinity for dates and weather and an ability to recall specific dates of weather. So would you mind sharing with us, from memory, was there anything in particular noteworthy about say January 27th?
Jacob: As far as January 27th, I was reading there was a very famous winter storm called the Knickerbocker storm a hundred years ago today that was actually a tragic winter weather event in Washington, DC. A hundred years ago, they didn't have nearly the same capacity to forecast to environment that we do now, and so the storm was actually very disastrous. And if I recall correctly, it led to a theater collapse. So just a horrible event, but that was today a hundred years ago.
Alison: To bring things a little closer to the current, are there any developments or technologies related to weather or extreme weather that you're keeping an eye on and that you think are promising?
Jacob: I think that when it comes to protecting people from natural disasters, protecting people and property, there's kind of a double-barreled approach to improvements by the research community.
On one hand, there's actually the forecasting, which is kind of the objective research that I was doing, where you're trying to take what we know about the atmosphere and use it to learn more about predicting damaging, extreme events.
On the other side, there's communicating extreme event forecasts to people. So every year in the meteorological community, there is a massive amount of work done and understanding social sciences, really, how to turn a forecast into an actual impact- based report that can help people because the most wonderful forecast in the world is essentially useless if nobody actually makes actionable decisions based on it. So, I guess in that regard, I think that the most exciting thing that's happening now is that the Weather Service as a whole is transitioning to something of an impact- based focus on weather forecasting rather than a forecast- based approach. So that means that the forecasts made by the Weather Service are only those that can actually help partners make decisions for certain impact. And it's less of a new research development as more of a social development of the weather world, but it's really promising because it shows that, whether or not forecasts can really substantially improve, the outcomes of those forecasts can improve.
Now on the forecasting side, there are massive developments being made in the ability for computer models to forecast weather. Just a decade ago, the fact that we have these super high resolution models that run every hour and every six hours, up to 48 hours, and can predict things like thunderstorms and snow bands would have been unbelievable. And because of advances in computing power and advances in the way that we process the atmosphere, these things are possible now. And that's awesome, frankly, and is an incredible step in helping forecasters figure out what's actually going to have. Even if it isn't that far in advance, these really small scale things in the atmosphere are very hard to forecast. So it's great.
Alison: Jacob, I'm encouraged to hear that our ability to forecast and to communicate warnings has been improving because it does seem that we need this more than ever. Just the past few years have seen such extreme weather compared to prior years.
In 2021 alone, we had numerous examples that were more intense and/ or more frequent than ever before. We had the winter storm that caused parts of Texas to lose power for extended periods. There were massive heat waves that caused hundreds of casualties and killed masses of Marine life in the Pacific coast. And we had wildfires affecting a number of states and impacting air quality across a good portion of the U S. Those were a few of the examples from 2021, but we could probably list even more. What is going on? Can you please describe what's fueling these rare weather events?
Jacob: As somebody who watched a lot of these events and disasters happen, I was personally just blown away by some of the events you just described. Because while there are events every year that are extreme and cause a lot of destruction, there were also a lot of events. Especially the last couple of years, that were just completely unprecedented in the destruction and in the actual atmospheric things that happen.
For example, the cold wave last February in Texas was a very, very devastating event. It was actually the most costly winter storm on record, which is an astonishing statistic considering the competition that it has and doing so, but at the same time, it was kind of a weather event that wasn't quite unprecedented.
Texas has gotten that cold before. There were some record cold spots, but many spots did not actually break record cold temperatures. The duration of the cold, it was unusual. And the extreme cold itself probably only has a return interval of once every 30 to once every 50 years. But this wasn't quite an atmospherically unprecedented event. What it was, was a terrible social reaction. The atmosphere and a failure to prepare that led to such a catastrophe from something that atmospherically has happened before.
On the other side of the equation, we look at the June heat wave from last year that affected the Pacific Northwest. I think that it is a fair thing to say that that was the most extreme heat wave ever in the modern history of the world. There has never been a more extreme heat wave recorded in the last hundred years, anywhere on the globe, given the amount of temperature records that were broken, by how much the temperature records were broken, and where this heatwave occurred. And in these types of events ,where they're just so far out of climatological left field that unprecedented almost doesn't do them justice ,that you really start looking at, "Wow. Climate change almost certainly had a big role to play in this event."
I'm no climate expert. I focus on whether, not climate. But there are certain events that have clear fingerprints in climate change, where climate change can actually make the events much worse than would be expected. And an example of that are heatwaves.
Heatwaves are much worse than they linearly would it be expected to be. So it's not like every heatwave is one degree worse than it would be in a planet that's one degree cooler. Rather there are heat waves that are five degrees warmer than they would be in a world in which climate change was not happening.
And I think that a really good example of that with really disruptive catastrophic results was this June heatwave that unfortunately killed hundreds of people and was actually part of a really destructive and expensive drought/ heatwave/ wildfire season out west.
Another example of these climate change- enhanced events are the wildfire seasons that have been occurring out. Wildfire seasons have a multitude of causes. Obviously, ignitions are almost never atmospheric. There are some examples where lightning strikes light wildfires, but mostly it's from things like gender reveal parties, or fireworks, or arsonists, or power lines falling down.
But what climate change and the atmosphere do collude to do are create these long duration so-called mega droughts out west, where persistent temperature anomalies in the Pacific Ocean may lead to persistent atmospheric high pressure, which actually blocks wet season rainfall. And the results are these droughts that have never really been known to happen, both in duration and intensity. And the result are these extreme heat waves and extreme wildfire seasons that have been so devastating lately in California.
Of all of the wildfires known to ever occurred in California, four of the five largest happened since 2020, which is just an unbelievable statistic.
Alison: That really is. And on this topic, what are some of the other weird, unusual, or extreme weather events that have been occurring and catching your attention lately? And why are they interesting or intriguing to you?
Jacob: Arguably, one of the most unusual weeks of weather in the last several years, maybe even decades, occurred in December, 2021. What happened in mid- December was this incredible confluence that resulted when record warm sea surface temperatures met an absolutely roaring December jet stream, and the result was this really unprecedented outbreak of winter tornadoes and severe weather.
Within just a week, on December 10th, one of the deadliest, most destructive tornado outbreaks in modern meteorological history occurred. The fact that that happened in December is not even those astonishing part about it, which should really tell you a lot.
I mean, there was a single super cell that tracked through four different states and produced two extreme, long track, violent tornadoes, and it killed, I believe the sixth, most people in modern meteorology.
And just was this insane, devastating, unbelievable tornado outbreak. And again, it happened in December. Tornadoes typically happen with the lowest frequency in December. And so the fact that such a violent, unbelievable tornado outbreak happened as tornadoes typically wane in intensity was really just a remarkable, incredible tragic thing.
And then, less than a week later, it was followed by this just unbelievable windstorm over the Northern Plains, which produced so many severe thunderstorm reports that it actually produced the most wind gusts beyond hurricane strength from any severe thunderstorm outbreak in modern meteorological history- ever since we started counting in 2004.
This event, on December 15th, produced the most hurricane strength, thunderstorm wind events. That is an unbelievable statistic because these things normally happen in May, June. I mean, these things don't normally happen, period. This was an unbelievable historic event, whether it happened in May or June or December.
The fact that it happened in December, like the earlier tornado outbreaks, is unbelievable. This December actually probably had the largest tornado anomaly of any month in recent meteorological history. And I say recent meteorologists history because our record keeping doesn't go that far back to that reliable of an extent, but there has never been a month, at least to my knowledge, that has seen such an unusual amount of tornado activity, where this December saw tornado counts that were more typical of a super active April or May or June. And they exceeded the normal December tornado count by something like 900%.
I was blown away watching all of this happen. I mean, aside from maybe the June heatwave, believe it or not in 2021, I don't know that I've ever been more taken aback by a weather event, how unusual it is and how destructive it is, as I was multiple times during December, 2021.
Alison: That is shocking. I was wondering if we could close with you clarifying for people, what can we do to prepare for these coming weather changes to our environment? We know from the UN report and from what you were just describing, that the intensity and the frequency have been increasing, we also can experience and see that ourselves. So how can people best be prepared and protected in this new environment or world in which we live in?
Jacob: Back when Hurricane Ida, or its remnants, were moving up the coast and it looked like very dangerous flooding was eminent for my parents and friends back home., I remember saying that people had to really do something they had never done before and think earnestly and honestly about whether or not they lived in an area that could foreseeably flood.
And I'm not talking about, has your area flooded in the last 50 years? Because this is not a 50- year flood. This is probably a 100- to 1000- year flood. And you need to think beyond what has happened and think about what could happen. And I think that that is advice that really should be widely distributed, even in times in which there is no imminent weather hazard.
I think that right now it would be a good exercise, a prudent exercise, for everybody who lives somewhere to think really hard about what potential hazards could impact their area, and think, how do I actually stay safe if this happens?
Because forecasting right now is great. But if I tell you that there's going to be a hurricane that hits your house in two days, unless you started preparing ahead of time, that information will only help you to a certain point. Really, everybody I think, should think really hard and really honestly about what possible weather disasters can impact them, and then they should preparing.
Put together kits, consult the National Weather Service or the National Hurricane Center about what they should plan to do if disaster strikes, and then they should stay reasonably informed, especially if the conditions for this sort of event were to come together.
Alison: At AreaHub, we completely agree, which is why we have our searching capability and why we have our Knowledge Center explaining what people can do. And I do hope more people are taking to heart learning about the relevant things in their area and what they can do to prepare.
Jacob, thanks very much for joining us today. This has been incredibly helpful. You're listening to Climate Clear and we encourage you to check out AreaHub to learn about your area's climate and environmental health. Thank you for listening, and please stay tuned for the next episode.