A Few Things Ill Considered

Life’s little ironies

Posted by coby on June 29, 2009
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(The following is offered as an amusing example of how reality sometimes seems to have a sense of homour:)

My wife is from the Czech Republic and was mentioning to me her family’s worries about the recent flooding (they are not in immediate danger). I google-news’ed it and went to the first hit, an AP article, that mentioned among the rest of it that there have been several major floods in the last 10 or fifteen years.

She mentioned that Czech never had these kids of events when she was growing up. I mentioned that increased flooding is an expected consequence of climate change in many regions. I also mentioned how Vaclav Klaus, the president of the Czech Republic, is a prominent global warming sceptic (of the same caliber as Christopher Monkton). Then I noticed the listing of related news article offered by the AP website:

Results for “czech floods”

Czech floods widen, death toll rises to 13 Saturday, 27 Jun 2009 08:00pm EDT

Eight die in Czech floods, central Europe on alert Wednesday, 24 Jun 2009 08:00pm EDT

Six die in Czech floods in northeast of country Wednesday, 24 Jun 2009 08:00pm EDT

Don’t endanger free markets, Czech president warns Sunday, 8 Mar 2009 08:00pm EDT

Disclaimer: I am not implying that this most recent flood is attributable to global warming, nor do I know if this region of Europe is in fact one of those expected to experience flooding. I am also not specifically denying that the free market is in fact endangered

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Comments

  1. #1 Gloster
    June 29, 2009

    Who would have thought You are somehow connected to Czech republic… Interestingly enough, I have been having exactly the same thoughts. We’ve never had flash-floods before, certainly not on this scale. The recent events seem to be caused by a change in circulation; we are normally receiving our precipitation from the west but now the prevailing airstreams are coming from the east, from the Balkans and the Adriatic sea. Naturally, I have no idea whether that is in any way directly connected to GW, but it certainly raises a few questions.
    As for Vaclav Klaus – he makes me grateful for the fact that we are such a small, politically and economically insignificant country, incapable of affecting the world events and opinions…

  2. #2 jyyh
    June 29, 2009

    Connecting weather with climate is a tricky thing. Some thoughts… one very interesting result of GCMs would be the projected locations of low and high pressure areas with a higher tropospheric energy (stored there by the anthropogenic CO2, water helping.). Basic meteorology tells of semi-permanent highs and lows, these may well change locations. The Hadley cell in the tropics has expanded (what was the study?, i may recall this wrong), the Antarctic Circumpolar Current has moved a bit south, the North American jet stream has moved northward, these shifhts in large scale climate systems are definitely indicators that some things in weather are going to change. One might even think the added energy imbalance in the system creates weather systems that bring the added heat northwards in the form of clouds instead of the “normal” (what is normal??) midlatitude westerlies. Anyway, attributing local flash floods (created by individual cumulonimbus and series of those) to warming is (to me) doubtful, but the long-standing events such as this could well be attributed to it (depending on location, f.e. is the Australian drought made by the ACC moving south?).

  3. #3 Anon
    July 1, 2009

    I have a freind from Benesov! What city is your wife from?

  4. #4 coby
    July 1, 2009

    She grew up in Jesenik

  5. #5 Snowman
    July 11, 2009

    Coby – I have never had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Coby, although I am sure she is a delightful lady. I hope, therefore, that you will not consider me ungallant when I point out that we all know how selective our childhood memories are.

    In my own case, I distinctly recall summers of unending blue skies and sunshine, even though I know that the record shows otherwise.

  6. #6 seks
    August 15, 2009

    Connecting weather with climate is a tricky thing. Some thoughts… one very interesting result of GCMs would be the projected locations of low and high pressure areas with a higher tropospheric energy (stored there .